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Notes on Looking

6/9/2022

An image from Kenneth Anger's Scorpio Rising (1963) featuring Bruce Byron.

  There is a scene in episode four of the HBO series Looking where Patrick, our young(ish), insecure, video game designer leaves the office he is working in on a Saturday to join the Folsom Fair in San Francisco he can see crowding down on the streets below; it is a celebration of the leather scene, and he has lied to his gay boss Kevin (with whom he is soon to have an affair) that he is not interested, almost with the same level of dishonesty that he has denied to himself that he is interested in Kevin (who has a partner).  It is an episode all about denial: sending Kevin home so that he will not be tempted, pretending to work, hesitating when his friends call him to join them in the festival on the street.  But Patrick does go down to the street, meets his friends, and finds himself with Doris undressing and redressing him in a leather vest, bare-chested underneath, demanding that he join the play, the fun.  Patrick, played by Broadway actor Jonathan Groff, is as midwestern as pie, all round eyes and curly hair, but he is well built and gym-toned, and while the vest doesn’t suit his incredulity, the contrast between his frightened face and how a new identity might work for him after all, to giving in to what is literally all around him, to living outwardly as a gay man, well, it was so charged with tension and relief that I started to cry.  For me, it summed up an essential truth of gay life (especially for gay men): that just a couple of moves can release the possibility of who we are.  For all of the razzing and teasing he gets, in this episode Patrick finally looks like the man he might want to be, and even though this is scripted, all of the actors seem to be looking at him differently because he is doing it.  He is in that process that is coming out.

Looking premiered in 2014 and I watched, of course; this was the product of Andrew Haigh (writer and director of the gay masterpiece Weekend) and Michael Lannan, and the buzz was considerable.  However, for me, it didn’t work; something about the series felt frozen in amber—the San Francisco locale a hologram of a more beautiful 70s milieu, and too many references to Instagram and Facebook in what seemed an obvious attempt to make it current.  I loved the actors: Murray Bartlett as Dom, the clone, Frankie J. Alvarez as Agustin, the wayward drug-addicted artist, the wonderful Lauren Weedman as Doris, best friend to Dom, Russell Tovey as Kevin, and the unbelievably handsome and sensual Raúl Castillo as love interest Richie.  Groff as Patrick drove me a little nuts, an assemblage of tics and insecurities the writers cursed the character with throughout the two years and the final movie in which the series ran.  Looking was not a hit; it attracted a following but never seemed to enter the zeitgeist in the way the HBO show Girls (which premiered in 2012 as an obvious precursor) did.  As a middle-aged viewer I found it neither nostalgic nor insightful (besides being well-written); instead, I just kept waiting to feel something.

June is Gay Pride month, and because all we do is stream the many channels syphoning our dollars, and because apparently corporations have a lot more Pride than our state and federal overlords, I was reminded by HBO to watch these movies and shows that have “Pride”, and Looking was listed.  It had been a while, and I thought ‘why not’.  Well, not true.  Aging as a gay man is a never-ending hunt for the spark nostalgia can provide; like any addict I needed a hit of something.  Becoming reinvolved with the series I could not have been more surprised at what the seven (eventful) years had done to the messages of the show.  Where once I found a vague search for its moment I found instead a penetrating exploration of the last years of our gay bars, a story of the city’s inflation pricing out it’s subcultures, and in Patrick, that once annoying character I could hardly watch, the true story most gay men live (if they are lucky): that slow, agonizing, coming-to-terms with oneself as a viable homosexual man.  Looking had not been what I once imagined it was about (the new gays on Grindr); instead was about the spiritual lives of gay men, the archetypes within our groups, and, yes, it was about the Patrick in all of us: halting, shy, and inevitably pushing his life toward a real family, his friends and lovers.  Then again, perhaps it wasn’t about this either, but instead it was about our history in the last 100 years, how we survived AIDS or did not, how we hung on, how we arrived but did not, how the struggle goes on in the shadow of straightness and parents and childbearing.  I was reminded that we are still living in that periphery because so many of us (gay, trans, bi) are still in the struggle to feel seen and loved with the ongoing threat that our lives are not relevant. I saw it when Patrick tried on that leather vest for the first time, chancing coming fully into a new identity based on something that could possibly be perceived as corny, ironic, or dated.

Beyond the good writing and wonderful casting of the show, the moment that hit me really hard this viewing (and yes, apropos of Pride) was the first episode of season two, “Looking for the Promised Land”, written and directed by Andrew Haigh, in which our three male leads go on a cabin retreat (although it’s hardly a cabin) in the Russian River district.  I will never tire of the theme of “into the woods”—it is so quintessentially American.  There is tree hugging and minted tea and an attempt at communing with nature that is comical, but the real action begins at night, where they are all led toward a late night bacchanal, accompanied with lights and disco music by a real fairy sporting a saturnine costume and one exposed, red, glittery nipple beckoning our leads toward the party in the woods.  To a remix of Sister Sledge’s “Lost in Music” the characters are filmed dancing in a slow-motion, drug-fueled haze, the gay ritual of communion and drugging and sex and forgetting that places them as far back as the Greeks, toward Fire Island, to the disco culture of the 70s, and beyond.  It is a scene resplendently layered in gay history and very detailed in the bonding of gay men. I was listening through headphones and still found myself rolling my fists, arms in the air, swaying to my own history, my own culture, and finding a true release in the scene.  There it was!  That is us.  It is how we are different, and how we are the same.  Lost in Music, indeed.

For gay men of my generation, besides the books and musicals and the radio, the way we really connected to who we would one day become is our eyes.  I have been considering the title of the series, so beautifully chosen, as an example of how gay men have always connected—by looking.  Yes, it is how we find sexual partners but it is also that human need of finding one another in general, and it is also how we begin to see ourselves reflected, at first by intimation, and then by example.  It is the soul of the series, those things that have remained constant in our search for identity through the years, the decades, the centuries, and it is possibly why the show did not explode upon the culture with a Girls-like effect.  This was not a show about hipness; it was a show about the search for the self.  The best gay movies and literature have always been about this: do we matter, outside, at the edge?  Is there a coming-of-age?  Is there acceptance?  Is there love, true love, without children?  The answers provided by the show are fragile ones.  The series was cancelled before the show could really try to unknot some of the identity and relationship issues it was exploring, and when it returned as a movie a year later a lot of the momentum and kinetic reality the players were building was lost.  Oh—I still watched, mind you.  But I felt the loss that one-year hiatus had taken from the show.  It is possible that it led to the quasi happily-ever-after ending that didn’t quite live up to the depths achieved by the seasons before.  But it did have a scene with Tyne Daly playing a justice of the peace marrying one of our gay couples in San Francisco city hall, and Patrick, our seeker, as usual, nervously asking her if she can tell which couples will work out.  She says no, but she can tell the ones that might want it more.  “How long have you been married,” he asks, pointing to her ring.  “Oh, uhh,” she says, “between you and me, not married.  It’s a prop.  Nobody wants a fat trainer at the gym,” she jokes, leaning in.

I’ll take it.

Happy Pride.

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A Christmas No. 1

1/5/2022

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The first time I slept with Bobby it wasn’t the night we spent together that I recall; instead, little details will spring back to me, little specks of memory, glimpses of objects, or the sense one has of coming into a room for the very first time. Where were we that night after the bar? I cannot recall. But I do remember the light coming into the small bedroom the next morning, that old yellow light that must have poured into that part of downtown Savannah for so many centuries and which was now baptizing our ‘morning after’: the small talk, the nervous laughter, the quick gathering of our clothes to hide our shyness.

I do not remember where we were headed. I remember his mustache, his reddish-brown Ford Pick-up, and then temporarily being left alone in the passenger seat while he dropped something off at a friend’s house. This left me some minutes to explore the cabin of his truck. It was a newer 80s model, and the seats had a kind of brushed tan cloth I kept idly running my hand back and forth over to make a pattern. I spied a cassette sticking out of the tape deck and greedily pulled it out (my tastes for music at the time expanding rapidly) and then marveled that it was the Pet Shop Boys’ latest cassingle, “What Have I Done to Deserve This?” on the EMI/Manhattan label, the logo created in 12 bold capital letters, four rows of three squares, which I remember well because I pondered it. Record buying, even record listening, was so wrapped up in all of the tiny graphic details on the merchandise back then. I know these complicated design details are on all of our products, even, say, a bag of potato chips, but do they impart the same mystery? These details mattered because music had a defining quality for me, and there is never a more potent time for having our experiences widened than our teens and twenties.

As I idly popped the “cassingle” back into the Sony digital tape deck (even though they wouldn’t be called cassingles for a couple of years) I saw another cassette peeking out of the hold below. This one was in a rectangular black and red cardboard jacket, open at either end so you could easily release the tape. It was M/A/R/R/S “Pump Up The Volume”, the single version, not the extended one with mixes, because Bobby wasn’t in the least bit cool (being from the country); also these two songs were currently the biggest hits at the gay club where we met, which had to have been the Who’s Who, before it burned down, or was burned down, one of the local mysteries no one has ever seemed to solve, or ever will, because its importance has slipped away and been replaced just like most things. However, the image of these two tapes, well, they are just as clear now as that morning was to me. Just touching them planted them firmly into my consciousness.

In that moment I made many connections which reverberate to this day. I perceived that Bobby and I didn’t own music in the same way; these cassettes were just the songs he danced to at the bar. Even if he loved music as much as I did he certainly didn’t have a fetish for it. I also realized that it was remarkable that the Pet Shop Boys, a very gay duo (at the apex of their “Imperial” phase) were also extremely popular and radio-friendly. They weren’t cool, exactly, except that they were. The M/A/R/R/S in his Ford pickup was even more remarkable because it was one of the of first giant dance hits to incorporate hip-hop beats and what amounted to little more than found samples and a hypnotic beat. It was an extremely alternative record that had found a mainstream audience (Mars. Needs. Women). Looking at the block red letters spelling out the title, waiting for Bobby, I thought about the contradictions of the moment: my sleeping with a cowboy type, the fact that our music lined up, the gay bar, the country, the small town of Savannah itself. Mostly, I thought of the music, and how it was marking this time for me.

Staring at his tape deck little could I have known that the Pet Shop Boys’ were very soon to hit a career peak with “Always on My Mind”, a disco cover of the old hit (they were no strangers to contradictions themselves). I wouldn’t love the song but when it came out that winter I bought it immediately because it was them. By then they had become my favorite band ever. You had to buy the single because the single would come with a “B” side, and the B-side for “Always on My Mind” is now one of their classics, “Do I Have To?”. Some of the lyrics in that song state

Do I have to?
Oh, don’t say
Do I need to
Love you

which fits right into the moment in the truck, because back in the 80s gay men sleeping with one another conjured up many negative connotations—in fact it could be as full of wonder and innocence as the music on those cassettes. Did I buy the single for “Always on My Mind” on cassette? I am sure I did—they didn’t really have cd singles then. It was either vinyl or cassette; compact discs were still relatively expensive. We all had them, those cassettes, because the tape players and boom boxes were much more ubiquitous, more “normal”. What I didn’t know that morning, sitting in Bobby’s truck, going through his things, making my judgements based on his tastes, taking leaps in time just by touching the music, was that the Boys were soon to top the charts in England with the Elvis cover. In fact, I didn’t know how big a deal it would be for them over there. To land the top spot in December is a thing in England—there is a long history of bands jockeying to be the last song of the year to top the charts.

Suddenly I experienced this electric feeling of being caught out and hastily returned Bobby’s cassettes as he dramatically opened the driver’s seat door to scare me, popping in with his mustache and smiling the cutest smile. He knew I was snooping but couldn’t have cared less that I was looking at his tapes. As he slid in and turned over the engine to drive me home I couldn’t know that I would never sleep with him again, or that by the end of that year I would be perusing my own all-white cassette in the same wondering way, making my connections, or that the Pet Shop Boys were soon to achieve one of their biggest hits with a one-off cover of an old Elvis song. In the US they would go top ten with “Always on My Mind”, but in the UK it would turn out to be one of the absolute peaks of their career. That year,1987, every new song seemed to make an impression on me; but for the Pet Shop Boys, unaware that they were nearing their pinnacle with a throwaway single created for an Elvis tv special, it must have been the last thing they expected: a Christmas No.1.

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Rabbit Hole

7/23/2020

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Last night, searching for something to watch, I fell down a YouTube rabbit hole.   I find that this is much easier to do with a smart app or Roku box attached to your television; the YouTube channel has an ingenious algorithm for the apps that I do not experience on my phone.  It seems to understand my secret heart, and pulls up old flames and memories I see nowhere else.  Often I find myself watching the late night talk shows from my formative period, especially Johnny Carson, who certainly perfected the genre with the high wire tension of his real Midwestern manners, a brutally sharp intellect, and his appreciation of comedic genius.  This is not to mention his deep sadism toward women, with whom he never failed to wolfishly pressure with sexual innuendo, or questions about their marital status.  Even as a child I noticed this leering quality of his as essentially American.  Johnny was king for many years, and no matter the guest, they all played the game as he set it up, because for most of them they knew he could make or break their careers at his whim.  Way back then I pretended to be appalled by his power but I never failed to watch; he was just so good at what he did, and it was all so very American.

So I watched a couple of long things: Robin Williams and Jonathan Winters exploding with one another during the promotion for Williams’ The Fisher King film, and then watching Shelley Winters (truly obnoxious) pour a cup of whiskey over Oliver Reed’s head (even worse) right after a station break because he was playing that ‘women in the kitchen’ game with Johnny.  Both stars came off as terrible hogs for the limelight.  But it was entertaining, with Johnny presiding, breaking the fourth wall now and then with an effective (if insincere) ‘well, what can I do?’ look toward us, his television audience.  I will give him this – he was perfectly at ease with the camera.

This grew tiresome, however, and I next selected a long compilation of Eddie Murphy appearances on David Letterman’s old Late Night show on NBC.  I never really pieced this together, but I disliked David back in the day too; he was just as Midwestern in his attitudes, Aw Shucks, a poison dagger underneath.  He was tight, mean, small, rude, hateful, sexist, and also possessed a killer sense of humor.  Of course I watched.  The show was brilliant.  It was the only heir to Carson; it had the same real American quality of glitter and grit, junk and fun.  These shows were so us because they epitomized the permissiveness of such a rich and wonton place as the USA.

I was fixated watching this first appearance by Murphy on Late Night.   The year was 1984, perhaps his most Imperial year: he was promoting Beverly Hills Cop, which was a massive runaway smash, and David was clearly nervous because Eddie was at the time perhaps the biggest star in the world.  I remembered Eddie’s SNL years – looking skinny, tough, young, and well, average; it was his talent that got you.  Watching him on Letterman was another thing entirely.  He looked ravishing; he was wearing tight black leather pants (because he could), a beautiful and expensive gold watch, a handsome couture sweater that buttoned femininely at the shoulders, and a gold cross; he was young and lithe and gorgeous.  He looked like money, and he had that invisible sheen that money bestows upon a person: utter relaxation is his presentation.  But Eddie wasn’t relaxed.  He was upset with Dave because Dave had never invited him to the show!  He claimed that Late Night was the hippest thing going and he had never gotten the call.  I would say that Letterman almost had the upper hand because Eddie’s feelings were really shy and a little raw; I can only guess that there are always doors that are closed to any of us at any level of success that suggest we haven’t made it, that we don’t deserve what we have, that actually, we don’t belong.  It was fascinating to watch them play this out, with Dave (dishonestly, I believe) insisting that Eddie was just too big a star to even consider for the show, and Eddie cracking beautifully sincere jokes around the issue (“oh, ok. I guess now we are just going to stroke each other”).  They talked about his films and his success, but all I could really see was the glow of fame surrounding Murphy, and the weird tension between the two stars over accepting one another.  It was uncomfortable because David was embarrassed but still unkind, and Eddie was hurt.  And yet the show went on, and Eddie entertained us, and they both cracked jokes, and it was as fresh as they day I first saw it, and had lost none of its tensions.  It felt perfectly contemporary to me; no – it felt eternal.  Because instead of nostalgia I felt myself reminded of some of the never-ending themes of America: fame, money, tension, race, and more fame, and more tension.  I would say sex, but Letterman never allowed sex; unlike Carson he was not just locked down but an actual prude on his show.  What was most astonishing about this episode, on YouTube in the wee hours right before I retired to bed last night, was not how good they both were at this moment in time, but that Eddie, the biggest star in the world, wouldn’t leave!  Dave said goodnight to him, thanked him, and Eddie said wait a minute, you’re not going to show a clip?  Don’t you always show a clip on this show?  To which Dave went to break and half-heartedly complied, showing Eddie’s clip to an audience who hardly needed it because everyone in America had been to see the movie, and still Eddie wouldn’t leave, because Dave hadn’t satisfactorily answered his plea: why don’t you like me?  I don’t think Dave had an answer for him; maybe there wasn’t really an answer.  But there he was: Eddie Murphy on Late Night at the very pinnacle of a brilliant career, making Late Night go so much later, and then there was David Letterman, at a complete loss: backing away, backing away, backing away.

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The Plush Moment

8/29/2019

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This has been a rotten year for pop music. Not that 2019 was an especially good or bad year in general for listeners; there were the usual percolating surprises and pleasures. What I am referring to is that this is the year HBO debuted the 4 hour-long Leaving Neverland, a documentary detailing painful child sexual molestation allegations from Wade Robson and James Safechuck against Michael Jackson. Intimate reminiscences from the boys as well has their family members and loved ones, it is as damning a morality tale as one could get from Tinseltown: darker than a 40s Film Noir, more fantastic than the Moonwalk he thrilled us with in ’83. Need I mention that it was all too plausible? It was. I had that same sinking feeling with which one receives all bad news. Regardless of my age (I am in my 50s) I felt a certain portion of my innocence draining away as the film progressed, and a sad, slow sense of loss has ensued. I wondered if I could still listen to Michael without feeling poisoned? It only took a couple of visits outside—his music is ubiquitous. So I guess I can. But this new consciousness has replaced the old one, and a certain buzziness his lovely songs once produced is gone.

American Pop music has always been a magician’s trick, a coercion into the fantasies of your particular moment. My first coming of age was the reign of AM radio in the mid 70s. Nestled between the big productions of Elton John and singer songwriters were the dreamy, beautifully executed country pop songs of that era: songs like Orlean’s wistful, romantic “Dance With Me” (1975) or Player’s “Baby Come Back” (1977). Like the plush, lime green shag carpet in our living room, songs in the 1970s seemed designed to transport you, to swathe you. There was a lushness. As the decade progressed this plush vibe found a perfectly delivery system as disco music crept out of the clubs: songs like Van McCoy’s “The Hustle” (1975), KC and The Sunshine Band’s “Shake, Shake, Shake (Shake Your Booty) (1976), and The Bee Gees’ “You Should Be Dancing’” (1977) just lodged themselves in your brain. It was the second phase of my early youth, and like a little teenaged addict I was a slave to Top 40 and these little symphonies. The pinnacle of this moment was Michael’s “Rock With You” (1979) and Olivia Newton-John’s “Magic” (1980). Both are masterpieces of their kind; syncopated pop fantasies.

And then I got cool. Gary Numan’s “Cars” (1979) was a pivotal single. This planted a seed that stoked an appetite for electronic music that dominated the 80s and my college years. The music I was falling in love with by necessity took on more of an edge: The Smiths’ lead singer Morrissey wailing “How Soon Is Now” (1985), a nasal spoken-word lyric from Pet Shop Boys’ Neil Tennant asking “What Have I done To Deserve This?” (1987), or the serial gloom of all of Depeche Mode’s Violator (1988). In the 90s Acid House and Rave Culture took me to another level, a higher high; these long, druggy musical trips took me further out than I could have imagined in the 70s. However the plush pop song still dominated my tastes, inspired by those first 70s singles. I needed to feel music first inside, then out. It was always the synthetic rush I was searching for.

I love music, so I have had many dalliances and affairs over the decades, but very few true loves. George Michael and Pet Shop Boys both evinced a kaleidoscopic sense of pop sounds, and an unashamed love of the plush moment. They kept my search for soulful soundscapes fulfilled (and still do). Ah but the heart searches onward. In 2008 I discovered the band Friendly Fires performing one of their first singles (“Paris”) on late night television and immediately downloaded the album. Something was up. I had a feeling I had not had since college—full immersion, bliss, transport. The self-titled debut was wonderful: edgy with punk, emo, and rock and roll vibes, but they couldn’t fool me: there was also a serious feeling for the sumptuous heart of pop and disco. I enjoyed many hours of pleasure before 2011’s Pala arrived. On the record lead singer Ed McFarlane displayed a true talent for the old-fashioned, soaring pop song. “Live Those Days Tonight” scaled new sonic heights: wild amounts of vocal overlays, propulsion, and echo. The album also had a tight set of 11 songs, each song contrasting the one before it, creating cohesion: themes of soaring and crashing swirled throughout the record. Coursing through the record's thundering drums, vocals and synths one did indeed take a journey. Like all good trips there was plenty to savor afterwards. Press play and you’d get another hit, another trip.

Eight long years have come and gone since Pala; the group went on hiatus for at least six of them. After a languorous, ambient side project form Ed and guitarist Edd Gibson (The Pattern Forms’ Peel Away The Ivy) in 2017 there were rumblings and then confirmation that the band would reunite.

“Love Like Waves” debuted in 2018, followed by a dribble of leaked songs (is this the new business model?—because it sucks). Something was off for me—I had not gotten my fix. I wondered if, outside of nostalgia, the trips we take on our musical highways are harder to arrange as we get older? I was fully despairing of the quality of the record when Inflorescent dropped this August. Maybe I was despairing that I had taken all the musical journeys I was allotted by now. Maybe I was despairing that in our robo-tuned present we no longer feel the need to transcend the now with the swathes of pulsating love that informed my youthful education in the 70s, then 80s, then 90s. But I was wrong. I found myself eagerly purchasing the record the midnight before it came out, skipping around the tracks (again, a tidy 11, suggesting a thematic unity) before landing on Track 4: “Sleeptalking”. Against a sneaky synth line, Ed sings:

I'm deep in insomnia
And you're dreaming by my side (Dreaming)
Nocturnal fantasies beyond my sanity
Maybe I'm dramatic, but dramatic's on my mind

And once again, I was soaring. I hit play on “Sleeptalking” again and again. I was back inside the pop moment; I was astral projecting. I was unabashedly indulgent. The plushness was back, it was right there in the song, a product of a serious romanticism:

Is it black pearls or emeralds?
Or could it be another guy?
Thoughts are running wild
Then I hear you say out loud
What I've been waiting for …

Finally! Within the tight disco of the cut there was a deep respect for the craft of the perfectly constructed pop tune. A sense of relief had come over me. How strange that I had thought my heart could grow old!

With Inflorescent Friendly Fires has once again (after Pala) created a considered set list, each song revolving around youth’s eternal push against the clock to achieve their moment: their dance, their kiss, their shot. Where Pala explored the themes of crashing and emerging, in Inflorescent the urgency is in romance, youthful glory, and the dangers laying at the edge of maturity. The album synthesizes the fizzy 70s disco, the hard electronica of the 80s, and the Rave vibes of the 90s. Gone are the insistent drums of Pala, or any hint of rock and roll preening. It is, in short, exactly the kind of music I was raised on: pure pop (for now people, or not). This is the kind of music that informed me as I was growing up, and that I desperately need right now: a form completely unafraid of the blissful moment. How clever that the whole album is also a unified expression of this instinct. Eight years to make a record this good? I would say it was worth it.

On my breaks from work I take a late evening walk in New York City. Of course I always bring my music (well, it lives on my phone). This week I strolled out onto the avenue with Inflorescent to give it a closer inspection. Coming back from the walk, headed down 6th Avenue, the tenth track, “Almost Midnight”, was in full flower, and I felt that Ed McFarlane was summing up in thought and rhythm my exact predicament. The beats soared, and I found the music so transporting, and for me, perfect, that I started to cry. It was still there, that need that artists have to express beauty: the eternal push for transcendence. And right before the ecstatic drop in the song, Ed sang:

Go in for the kiss
Now it's almost midnight
Go in for the kiss
I got so much riding on this

And one more time I got to fly on the wings of a song. With my old school iPhone earphones plugged in, the kid in me suddenly felt alive and well. He felt like everything was good. Everything was all right.

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Blurring the Lines

1/12/2017

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Before I went to art school, before I understood my queerness, one day he appeared. I was 19 and working in the mall when “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go” hit no. 1 in 1984. All the Metal heads at Chick-Fil-A were disgusted but I listened to it with curiosity, an absurdly trumped-up take on Doo Wop and Motown. But it wasn’t until I saw him in the video for the song, saw him with Andrew and Pepsi and Shirley, smiling fluorescently white before they had that toothpaste, two (not one) gold hoop earrings shining, hugging himself right at me, that I knew. I was transfixed: he was pop, glam, and wildly talented. And he was absolutely queer.

The song that truly ushered him in as indispensible was “Everything She Wants”. It was indelible the moment I heard it, and not just for the beauty of the synths and vocals (all written, produced, and arranged by Michael). There was something more. Inside the song was a very subversive, feminine approach to marriage. It was, in fact, a sensibility I too was experiencing, a sensibility I already shared. It was gayness: bitchy, cool, sarcastic, and passionate. George wasn’t just playing the spurned husband; he was playing the wife, too! A thrill of recognition ran through me.

For the rest of the 80s each new song built on this sensibility: one moment bragging of his sexual prowess (“Faith”, “I Want Your Sex”, “Hard Day”) and the next playing the long-suffering female (“A Different Corner”, “One More Try”, and yes! “Father Figure”). George Michael could project male or female with complete fluidity, and no irony. He never really camped (like Boy George) but instead existed as a hybrid. It should be remembered that Wham! was partner Andrew Ridgely’s idea: to get hits, go completely over-the-top and make a ridiculous impression. He could never have known how quickly George would absorb and transcend that image nearly instantly, or what a genius for writing personal songs he would develop. George was pure talent. He was seductive.

Very few pop stars create their own category (Michael Jackson, Prince, Bowie, Madonna) and George was one of the very select. But no one distilled gayness as he did. It was never cat and mouse with him – instead, he was its essence. By the time the business side had overwhelmed him (post “Faith”, pre “Older”) he was trapped, desperately trying to resolve his status as an icon. Because it came out of him so naturally I am not sure he ever understood his success. So he hid. He disappeared from his videos and into drugs, sued Sony for a release from his contract (“slavery”) and basically retired right in front our lusty eyes. All the public wanted was more George. Fun George. Cheeky George. The greatest irony and sadness of his later life is that George, the man who taught me so much about gayness, had such a terrible time functioning as a gay man. As an “out” person he seemed so much like a caged animal, unable to resolve the dichotomy of his gifts and our strange fixation on his sex.

It has been said that fame is a crucible. But what is there to be forged from the creature that penned the glorious “Careless Whisper” on a city bus at the tender age of 17? Like the ancient Greeks George Michael was only ever meant to be golden, and like St. Sebastian he was already beautifully pierced. He had some wonderful things to say as an older man, and an out one, but they did not match the delicious ironies of his early presence. The very first songs with Wham! hold up for being oddly mature. I will always be grateful for the day I saw him smiling up at me and mouthing the words to “Wake Me Up”. I am not sure that I expected he would stay. But I never imagined he’d go away - it all felt so eternal.

Hiding in plain sight is one of the oldest forms of drag. One just operated in their societal role and signified from within. George telegraphed this idea beautifully, but as a star. He was the costume and the closet, and could convey many messages at once: ordinary, glam, hard working, self-serious, wounded or horny. But to do it most perfectly, he needed his youth and he needed his beauty, even though as an old soul he understood neither. As one of our stealthiest gay men he crept up on us all, took our hearts, and left us way too soon.

But that is love. That is a love song.

George Michael, 1963-2016

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Certainty

12/26/2016

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This year a friend of mine lost his job. Like most of us it wasn’t a job he loved – it was a job that paid for his life. He is at that moment, right before you make a new choice, where you feel completely lost, absolutely mistaken, where every past move looks like the wrong move in hindsight. These are terrible moments of uncertainty.

This year I raced out and voted for Hilary Clinton. Not because I believed in her but because Donald Trump is so wildly unfit to be a public servant (and I will graciously leave my description at that). This was also a moment of uncertainty. I knew that if she won the inevitable American desire for a fresh change would turn rancid against her and nothing would get done. At the very best liberals, women, gays, and minorities would have been able to breathe a little easier for the next four years.

This year I saw myself through a couple of huge art projects: the completion and publishing of “This Gay Life” (a graphic novel) and “Faces New York – The Digital Drawings”. I poured everything I had into them with a real sense of urgency, and making them was truly rewarding. But did they pass muster – did they connect? Were they not rushed into production for fear that if I did not I wouldn’t have had the confidence to pursue them at all? Were they good enough? I am not certain.

Yesterday my friend called me. He said I don’t know what to do – I’m lost. And I knew exactly what he meant. To be an artist without that absolute, all consuming path, a deeply etched direction, is to be just like everyone else – a little lost. So I told him so. I admitted that while I have always been good at a lot of things I have never had a single clue just what it is I really wanted, or what I should really be doing with my life. And so what? I exclaimed. Who does? I just want to create things. I could hear him breathing on the other end of the phone line.

There. I admitted it.

Direction can be an illusion; sure to change, end abruptly, and tell us exactly nothing. I ask a lot of myself as an artist but a lot of this is vanity, or that deep insecurity that beats the drum to say yes! See me? I matter. I did this thing. And I’ll be damned if this does not remind me of a certain newly elected official, boasting and bragging all the day and night but connecting – really connecting – with no one. I wish him luck. Even more I wish him wisdom.

For me I am going to stick with where I am at – a little uncertain, and I’ll see where it goes.

See you in 2017.

x - Mark

Posted in Oranjestad, Aruba.

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Bazaar

6/25/2016

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"Bazaar" is a rediscovered piece I wrote in January 2011 and never posted. I hope you enjoy it now.

Lately I’ve been feeling exhausted (it is that time of year). Trying to find a balance between life, work and love, especially during mid-life, feels nearly impossible. I’ve been caught in a rapid, circular trap, rushing from one activity to the next (including sleeping and showering – I might be the king of the 7 minute shower) and before I know what I have done I am rushing out of the door to the next ‘do’. So yesterday I decided to take a small break. I woke up in the morning, grabbed the phone from behind my pillow, and called in sick.

Before I could begin my break I got up, made some coffee, and headed toward the deli to grab some milk. Halfway there (one block) and half asleep I thought a slice of pound cake might be a treat so at the store I bought myself one. Sitting in front of my laptop I worked on the finishing touches for an art project I’ve been on for months now and nibbled my cake with the coffee. I was working, yes, but as I had the whole day ahead of me I felt calmer already. Project done I checked all of my accounts for activity (email and Facebook) as I always do.

Oh how those hours do fly. The computer – once an object and activity of derision – now completely occupies my life. I cannot be alone. I network. I search. I watch. I rock. I roll. I draw on it, design on it, and I stare at my laptop for hours and hours on end. We all pretend to go pale when we hear of teenagers gaming for days but are we adults so removed? Day dissolved so quickly into afternoon that I barely noticed. When I looked up it was near twilight, and most of my day had been spent front of the glowing blue screen of my device.

This would not do. I quickly rose up and showered. After dressing I stood and looked west out of my living room window to watch the sun set so beautifully (as it does), staring across Queens toward NYC. I had decided to go out and try a Thai restaurant I had read about in a Times review; working nights rarely gave me the chance. I had an entrée already in mind: crispy pork with Chinese broccoli. I set out.

I travelled down Roosevelt Ave (a gritty change from the more genteel and village-like neighborhood of most of Jackson Heights) and cut right towards Elmhurst. It was night by now, and this was new territory. Walking across a couple of avenues west it became spookily quiet: a little chilly and very urban blight. I quickened my pace – ah! – Woodside Avenue. I spot the restaurant. As I enter it is nearly full – all of the bohemes and foodies of the area plus me. I am alone but I have a good book ( Joan Didion’s “The White Album” in a small vintage paperback). The pork and broccoli, chewy fat morsels meeting a pop of crunchy green in a vinegary meat broth, is superb ($8). I feel great. I feel like I am living. The meal goes down quickly and before I know it I am back on the street.

By now it is very dark outside. I am not feeling that solitary walk toward Roosevelt so I take a right toward lights and activity. I think this will also take me home. Ten years in Jackson Heights and everything on this side of town is new to me: Halal stores, 99¢ shops, vendors, fast food joints and by the time I am at 82nd street I see the Indian movie house (which I know) and a huge, well lit vegetable store called Mango Rico (which I don’t). I go right in - it is amazing. How could I have missed this store, three tiny blocks from home? I start to check out the produce lit by a warm yellow glow - a huge variety of cassava and roots I am unfamiliar with, a wonderfully fresh combination of South American and Asian food being rapidly stocked right before my eyes. The joint is packed with regulars all going about their weekly shopping and it is then that I think it (I know it): I love this city. So much around you all of the time and all you have to do is open your eyes! Mango Rico has a well-used quality that I love. We all peck around the veggies like chickens, picking up this, eyeballing that, each of us trying to forecast what might be good to eat this week. It is fulfilling enough to simply soak in the colors of the food. I grab two limes (20¢), a bunch of cilantro and parsley (79¢ each), an avocado ($1), a bunch of very fresh, tight broccoli ($1.29) and a couple of jalapeños (19¢) – just the things I am in the mood for. I walk out for around $4.

As I head home with my tiny plastic bag of treasures I feel more relaxed than I have in a while, pursuing these solitary pleasures but in the world, too. Nothing makes me feel quite as alive (save drawing and painting). The computer that has absorbed so much of my attention lately has also left me on empty (like the night shifts I pull down and the other ceaseless tasks we are all required to do every day). New York City is an especially tough place to get things done – mundane tasks feel almost impossible here. But to wander its streets – just for a couple of hours – what a wonderful thing to do. Senses reawaken. You are alone but surrounded. You are not just thoroughly but truly involved. For the few stolen hours that reality dissolves and you disappear into the crowded streets we townies become sightseers again, and it is in these rare moments I reawaken and realize something true: New York City is magic.

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My Bowie.

1/20/2016

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Let's dance
Put on your red shoes and dance the blues
Let's dance
Dance to the song they're playing on the radio
Let's sway
While color lights up your face
Let's sway
Sway through the crowd in an empty space.

Like many in my generation David Bowie came to me via MTV and the 1983 single “Let’s Dance”. Back then I soaked it all up with equanimity: Prince, New Edition, Duran Duran – it all blurred together, the avant-garde and homemade at once, and right there on TV. Television as a delivery system wasn’t new of course, but the nonstop streaming of sounds and images certainly was; unbeknownst to me one of the great pinnacles of Bowie’s career had arrived.

Later, much later, in college, and post college, and then post post college, Bowie’s catalog became more known to me. My gay friends referenced him a lot as a visual icon and tastemaker. Staring at the album covers for Low or Heroes and at his presentation, well, how could one not be influenced by it? But for me Bowie was chained to the ethos and mannerisms of Rock n Roll, and if I did not get fed via Disco or the New Wave, well, I didn’t get fed. But certain people inevitably brought Bowie back into the mix.

With his passing I now realize just how saturated Bowie is in music, fashion, and culture. With my head deep in the clubs little did I understand how important David was to every pop movement since ’69. While he never delivered a gay image per se (I was always looking for them) he was the queerest mix of outsider and insider. In the 70s, with his taste for costumes and the outré, I see him today as THE great facilitator: never settling down to one pose for fear his antennae would miss the signals and fail to bring about the next.

I see it now – Bowie had been a deep influence. Without him would Punk, Glam, Krautrock, Ambient, Electronica, New Wave or Disco be the same? David was brave. He was kind. And it seems he was completely alone in bringing it all down to America - bringing it to me. We certainly would not have his truest heir, Madonna. She followed his every move, drawing from the street, capturing the zeitgeist, and serving it to the 80s and 90s. She had the same kind of antennae. Both were presenters for their eras, and not so much by changing their costumes but by changing their hair (rarely did either star resort to a wig). In a way it is their claim to authenticity: they committed.

Even now I cannot say that I am a superfan of Bowie’s music – hey, I never was. I chose Madonna – she was gayer and blacker in her influences. But I would be infinitely poorer without him: that strange beautiful stare, the loneliness, the art, the access to the avant-garde, I mean, where else were the suburbs going to get it? Sometimes it felt like it was enough just to look at him. His poses and attitudes being more distillations than costumes, I guess David Bowie was an alien, and perhaps it was David Jones that actually left us: that sweet, smart and loving soul talking to me from the past in the many interviews online. I have really been digging watching Bowie in his various incarnations describe what he is going for as Aladdin Sane, or Ziggy, or as a Plastic. It is all so smart, so searching, and so incomplete. It is hard to contemplate a man who is always in process, and now that he is gone there is this incredible record of that process. The whole of it feels like art, and I feel richer for it.

This week, with so much written about his life and work the song that seems to be on repeat in my brain is from the album Scary Monsters: “It’s No Game (Part 1)”. I guess it is apropos. For David Bowie it was no game; he was truly reaching out, and beyond, and then further beyond. It feels as if he is reaching further still.

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Keeping It Fresh.

1/14/2015

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What defines a movement? What makes something alive, and of the moment? I awoke this morning with these things on my mind.

Some of you are following my graphic novel This Gay Life (www.thisgaylife.net), in weekly installments. When I began the series I was nervous to draw, type or write the word “Gay” every week. It had me asking questions: is it obnoxious to self-identify as gay over and over again? Does this let people in, or does it shut them out? Is it embarrassing? More importantly – is it interesting?

The excitement of working through my story (semi-fictionalized but grounded in my history) gave me the courage to do something so “Gay”. I found that the more I challenged myself to be truthful the better the comics became. As I distilled my experiences onto “paper” (I compose on a Mac) I slowly realized how common my feelings and ambitions actually were. I wasn’t documenting anything revolutionary; instead I was showing the pains and trials of growing up. Yes, I am recording my little slice of gay history (sorely needed in this holographic age) but I am also retelling the universal story of becoming who you are while slowly piecing together who you are not; writ small, the story of self-acceptance.

Alack! as they say in Shakespeare. After 2 Seasons and into the middle of the 3rd that initial thrill has become hard, hard work. On many days I wonder: if the thrill is gone, why continue? I have struggled to keep it going. I do have those moments, when the drawings and story transport me, but then it is back to the grindstone. Do I really want to grind these out? Was this my intention?

Well, I guess I do. Every time I am convinced that I should quit, the story calls me back. I am never too sure that it will all be cohesive (even though the episodes are carefully plotted) but perhaps this blindness is one of the things pulling me along. I am also conscious that I am recording my bit of gay history – the 80s into the 90s – because one day it may be important for someone, somewhere to make a connection with this period of gay bars, compact discs, Mtv and the AIDS epidemic. Back then this potent mix felt so fresh and modern. The music was so good. The art was so good. There was a lot to fight for. Of course this was just another decade defining itself.

Nowadays we are past it all. With social media it’s Flash! Flash! Superstars, one and all. No small town gay bars, no smalltown boys and girls. My fear is that we’re all forgetting where we’ve been. So I write This Gay Life. I continue.

By now the word doesn’t seem so Gay anymore. Gay men and women are being absorbed into the mainstream. As a result our particular struggle, language, culture, and outsider status seems to be vanishing. I guess it is only natural – the struggle moves on. Watching this season’s best new show, Transparent (which tells the story of a straight father of 3 grown kids transitioning from male to female) has shown me how the ideas of straight, gay, and queerness can evolve into new and fresh patterns. Yes! Here are people like me still looking for love, honor, and acceptance. Here are characters like me but not just like me. And as they tell their stories perhaps I become a little wider, a little deeper, a little more compassionate. The revolution is indeed still on, but it won’t be televised. It’s streaming on Amazon.

(This Gay Life premieres a new episode each Friday.)

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Facsimile

3/31/2013

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This Week I just finished watching Steven Soderbergh's documentary (collage?) of Spauding Gray's life called And Everything Is Going Fine. Spaulding Gray, actor and monologuist from the 70s-00s, is perhaps most famous for a piece called “Swimming To Cambodia”. As an artist he has always lurked on the edges of my consciousness; I understood that his was performance art as much as anything. I also knew that this was a performer working out his history through his neurotic tendencies and as such I avoided him. For some reason the time felt right to look back.

Soderbergh's film is just Gray – snippets of interviews and video recordings of his performances in skip time. I loved the opening scene – obviously a lo-fi vhs tape- with Spaulding in his classic set-up: a lone table, a mic, a spiral-bound notebook, and a glass of water. The image flutters from acid color to b&w and back again quite beautifully (so like Soderbergh to open with tape) as Gray begins to unwind his stories for us. I didn't find him funny; dry and amusing is more like it. But his accounts of life as a New England Wasp are entrancing. He is completely transparent in his need to perform, as if the only way to understand his life was to tell it back to an audience. What was surprising was how unneurotic it actually all was. These pieces have a beautiful calm. It did become art, and of the best kind: pieces easy to absorb because the artist has done all of the work. It also occurred to me how prevalent this kind of work has become, undoubtedly influencing ironists like the writer David Sedaris and the NPR series “This American Life”. It is also possible that Gray is a link between the confessional but high-toned writer of the past and reality television today. What preserves Spaulding Gray as unique is an 80s East Village vibe (it is no mistake that Jonathan Demme directed his only film). This stuff is redolent of the New Wavers and the 80s art scene in New York. He was a part of that time and space.

There is a slide show above

Another artist has reached me obliquely this week as well – Justin Timberlake's new album “The 20/20 Experience” has just been released to boffo sales (no surprise). To be honest while some of his songs are quite good I have never warmed to his voice. I was oblivious to 'Nsync and tepid at best to “Future Sex / Love Sounds”; the latter sounded new in one way – stripped and robotic – and glaringly derivative in another – one in a long line of Michael Jackson wannabes. However hearing the first single “Suit & Tie” I was surprised at how much I liked it – warm, fizzy and charming. I was surprised again to read some very lukewarm reviews of the new album. Even after “Suit & Tie” debuted to explosive sales I read critic Sash Frere-Jones describe it as a “widely regarded misstep”. Huh? Of course I had to download the album, and it is really beautiful. A little bumpy in the “funk” parts, it is delicious in its shimmery production and unabashed love for 80s RnB – the kind I love. I think what the critics smell here is the dread m.o.r.: middle of the road / soft rock / dance music. The kind they play on the radio, or used to, a lot. The kind of fusion “Off The Wall” perfected. And yes, he is no Michael Jackson but for once Timberlake does not seem to be pushing so hard to replicate this soul style or that vocal chop. Instead he is channeling the past just like he should, not as some kind of facsimile soul hitched to a brutal beat, but as sweet, impeccably produced rhythm and blues. Will it last? Who knows. For now it is a lovely distraction.

Speaking of the middle (the road, the brow, popular taste) I recently watched Judd Apatow's last film “This is 40”. Apatow produced the wonderful “Freaks & Geeks” for NBC in the late 90s but really cashed in with crude teen-styled film comedies in the 2000s: he directed “The 40 Year Old Virgin” (2005) and “Knocked Up” (2010), extending his brand as a producer with “Superbad” (2007) and the wildly successful “Bridesmaids” (2011). What all of these films share beyond an adolescent male sensibility is a soft humanism, good dialogue, and dead-on jokes. Apatow makes films everyone seems to agree on – smart, silly and fun. Yet again I was intrigued as one tepid review after another appeared for “This is 40”, all to suggest that 'we love you Judd...but don't get old'. A good looking film with a deluxe budget, a lovely cast (including the always dependable Paul Rudd and a wicked Albert Brooks) as predicted the film goes nowhere. A family with money problems drives their BMWs to palatial homes with their swimming pools twinkling in the California sun. No one looks middle aged, and the jokes don't land. It would seem that even acting like an adult takes the fun out an Apatow movie. While not exactly humorous it is, like its director, extremely good humored and fun to watch. OK it's Life-Lite, dressed up impossibly fancy, and with nowhere to go dramatically. But like his doppelganger James L. Brooks even when it is all too much like a sitcom one never comes away exactly empty handed. Everyday people and all of their foibles are lovingly filmed, and that accounts for something.

And as a parting thought, what is HBOs “Girls” actually all about? We are two seasons in and no wiser. Is this Apatow produced series one long Lena Dunham journal entry? Is it a style piece? A pop tart? Why can't those girls cry convincingly? If their parents don't support them who pays for those one bedroom apartments in Williamsburg or Bushwick? Is this retrograde or future feminist? Is it teeny bop or current slice-of-life? The tone jumps around like crazy and while I enjoy Lena Dunham as a writer and enjoy these characters let's face it – none of these girls can act. It's appalling, actually. Where's Stella Adler when you need her? Ok she is dead but can't they cut an onion at cry time or something? Because if I remember correctly 20somethings, even in hip Brooklyn, do have feelings – lots in fact. And as a New Yorker I am here to tell you that in reality these cute white girls would actually be living in The Bronx. Because bad actresses without an income don't make it in New York, baby. Not without some tears.

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Notes on Looking

A Christmas No. 1

Rabbit Hole

The Plush Moment

Blurring the Lines

Certainty

Bazaar

My Bowie.

Keeping It Fresh.

Facsimile

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