Poison Pen

I agree with those on my Friends list (and in other places) that have written how they miss the golden days of Live Journal, mentioning how posts of substance and interest on LJ have dwindled quite a bit. I definitely miss the juicy, drama-filled posts, the contemplative and thought-provoking posts, the posts thick with innuendo, the flame-wars in comments, the erudite rants and the silly rants,  the provocative posts, the hilarious drunken postings and the drunken rants, the dishy/gossipy posts, and so on.

Some have merely relocated to blog at other locations and the content is there, while others have merely left off writing and posting to go about living life. However, I think the noise vortex that is MySpace, the short-attention span/time-suck distraction that is Facebook and the useless chatter of Twitter have been very adept at ensnaring their minions.

I too am guilty of infrequent and sparse posting here on LJ. I recently consolidated to post “writing-type” scribbling on my blogspot. But I am discontent.  I don’t wish to abandon my LJ. I love reading people’s posts, especially when they are substantive in one way or another.

I’ve started to see (read) a bit of a backlash - with the current barrenness of LJ being challenged. Some are addressing the sparseness and are beginning to post substantive, interesting, content- filled posts. I am inspired by these people. I want to follow their lead, trumpet the cause, be a part of the renaissance. I hope that others will feel compelled to do the same, not just in posts, but in comments too.

I’m going to start my LJ’s renewal with a post that will be gossipy, bitchy and innuendo-filled! 

It is quite fascinating to witness the crazed , tragic, unattractive downward spiral of someone (I’ll call her Mlle. R) who, when in her 20’s, was dramatically pretty, charismatic, witty, and who was, for better or worse, very entertaining. Those were Mlle. R’s main good qualities and if you were on her good side, good for you.

If you happened to fall on the bad side of Mlle. R, then melodrama, gossip, public scenes, and public incidents would abound. Those that fell on the bad side of Mlle R were mostly her female friends, those she felt had betrayed her in some way (real or imagined). Mlle R always found a way to forgive or blithely overlook the real or imagined transgressions of the males in her life. (Funny, that.)

While in her 20’s and during her 30’s, Mlle. R. became more popular due to several specific creative associations, including one or two that benefited her personally as well. This time period certainly suited her - she took wing, she soared and glimmered and gleamed in the social spotlight for a bit. However, as with most of us in life, many unfortunate things occurred. Instead of learning from, growing and evolving past these unfortunate events, Mlle R’s looked around for people to blame and her consuming vanity and misplaced aggression took over. (She apparently has not even yet considered that she might be responsible for at least some of her unpleasant fate.)  In the past year or so, Mlle. R’s lovely sparkle began to sputter and fade along with, apparently, her rational thinking skills.

During the Unfortunate Events time frame, Mlle. R sought refuge with numerous friends. These friends gave her unlimited free shelter, fed her, covered most of her expenses much of the time, provided her with emotional, psychological, material and social support. Mlle R has since viciously turned on many of these people, spreading slanted and delusional gossip about many of them (some who are also friends of mine). 

Things continue to get worse for Mlle R, according to latest reports. She is now in her early 40’s, unemployed (and not bothering to look for a job) and couch surfing still (after years of doing so, except when she snagged a love interest with which to live ). She has been bitterly and ruthlessly judgmental about those who were once her friends (myself included) for trumped up reasons, some of which have no real foundation or which had been resolved, but have been conveniently forgotten so that Mlle. R could play the wounded, fragile victim. At this point, Mlle R’s tunnel -visioned narcissism is pretty delusional, or so it sounds from recent reports. 

Although I am angry at how my friends have been treated, and how the slimy tentacles of Mlle. R’s theatrics are attempting to pull my friends back into the cesspool of her chaos, I am also starting to pity poor Mlle R. She was once an interesting force to be reckoned with. Now she is an erratic, victimized, breathless damsel in distress who needs a tolerant, doting male arm (or the healthy bank accounts of remaining friends) to lean upon.  

How terrified Mlle. R must be to be in her 40’s with no place to live and no viable means of supporting herself except to live off of others. She used to be able to use her looks, charisma and youth as bait to acquire advantage. These days, however, she is no longer the most striking woman in the room and she is especially is not the youngest, and won’t ever be again. And while interesting, her psychotic antics cannot be considered particularly charismatic.

The clock tics. The days are slipping by and so are the years. Yet still Mlle. R races around and around in ever tighter downward spirals, cavorting, pleading, spinning, bitching, whirling, accusing, all the while seemingly trying to recapture a glory for herself that wasn’t really all that glorious, merely entertaining.  

Oscar Wilde has some amusing quips that seem apropos to this scenario:

She wore far too much rouge last night and not quite enough clothes.  That is always a sign of despair in a woman.

A man's face is his autobiography.  A woman's face is her work of fiction.

How clever you are, my dear!  You never mean a single word you say.

There is only one real tragedy in a woman's life.  The fact that her past is always her lover, and her future invariably her husband.

Every woman is a rebel, and usually in wild revolt against herself.

We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.

 

Horoscopes for everyone!

http://poisonpennies.blogspot.com/2009/07/weird-word-horoscopes-summer-season.html

For those interested in the Tarot, here’s something I wrote a while ago that you might enjoy reading.   It is possible that I previously posted this article on LJ a long time ago but who can remember back that far? Not me!  Now back to the frenetic pace that is my job (and life) these days!
 

http://poisonpennies.blogspot.com/2009/07/twisting-tarot.html

I have friends spread out over so many different social networking and blog sites that sometimes it gets a little chaotic. So, I’m going to be consolidating. I’ll still be posting here every now and again but all my “writing” type writing is going to be here:

http://poisonpennies.blogspot.com/

and I’ll just be posting titles and links here because it has been kind of tedious cross-posting between all these outlets, and yadda yadda yadda.  It will be less cluttery too. 

I’m still an avid reader of my friends list and my friends’ blogs and I check them at least daily so by all means, keep those posts a’coming!

This has been a public service announcement.  Please feel free now to go back to trolling Facebook, hanging out on ebay or looking at pron or whatever.

 

In the previous post I set up the people and summarized situations of a brief but bizarre job I had for which the soundtrack was Led Zeppelin. I will continue here with Part II. While drafting these writings, I listened to Led Zeppelin and this brought a lot to the forefront of memory. Some specific details remain forgotten (like the name of the skuzzy policeman) while other random details were prominent (like clearly remembering the tacky gold chain necklace worn by the skuzzy policeman that sported a few shark teeth for ornamentation and which rested atop a wiry blend of dark blonde and gray chest hair curling out of his open-to-the-fourth-button shirt.)

Working the breakfast and lunch shifts at the “Garden” started out okay. It was just a busy waitress job and the owners, staff and management were, as is typical, a closely knit, highly dysfunctional family (among other more insidious things). I didn’t feel the need to fit in at the restaurant. I was pretty ambivalent most of the time. I went to work, did my job, collected my tips, and went to my other job or went home, etc.

However, things slowly began to get bizarre. Or rather, as I slowly began to pay closer attention to things and was less blissfully detached, I started to realize how fucked up that place and the people were – and I had to accept that being slightly stoned most of the time was not the reason things seemed so “off” at the Garden.

(As in Rosemary’s Baby, when a half-drugged Rosemary is tied down and getting impregnated by Satan and she all of a sudden yells: “This is not a dream! This is really happening!” Like that, except minus the naked Satanists and stuff.)

There were other waitresses on duty at the Garden during the day but I don’t really remember them. They were either close friends of the family or girlfriends of the cooks. Everyone was very intertwined there. I was the only real “outsider” during the time I was there.

The manager L, described in the previous post, took a real liking to me. I wrote previously that L reminded me of Angie Dickinson but she also had moments where she reminded me of the Faye Dunaway character in Barfly – she was always pretty tipsy by the lunch rush because she started drinking in a.m. She ran that place like clockwork in spite of her drinking (functional alcoholic) and was very funny. We had a great caustic back and forth and she would laugh a lot – especially when I told her stories of my life outside of the restaurant. She told me I was scandalous and that I was a wild child.

As friendly as L and I were, she still pulled a stunt that placed me in an awkward situation and which disgusted and infuriated me: She heavily pressured me into going on a date with one of the policemen that hung out frequently at the restaurant when he was off-duty (which seemed like constantly). What I learned later through the other waitresses is that this particular policeman (I’ll call him Skuz) was also involved in some of the questionable side-activities along with the restaurant and that one of the “perks” of his “helpful” association with the Garden was that he was set up on “dates” with any waitress that he fancied. L and the other waitresses would say: “Skuz always gets a date with the new girl at the Garden. It’s sort of a tradition.”

The other waitresses thought I was an idiot for not wanting to go along with it. Eventually, because it seemed like such a innocuous thing to do, go on one date with this guy, I finally agreed.

I met up with Skuz at the Garden one evening I wasn’t at my other job for what I supposed to be a pre-date drink. The restaurant was filled with noisy people, M was waiting on the VIPs in the semi-private dining area as well as working in the regular people area. All I remember about Skuz is what I wrote above about the shark’s tooth gold necklace, his open shirt, and his chest hair. (Why I blocked the more bland details out instead of the comically horrifying ones is probably a testament to my twisted sense of humor.)

I discovered after a few minutes that the date was taking place at the Garden, and M was to be waiting on us. The dinner experience was predictably awkward and dull. Skuz was heavily flirting but he was gross and I just wanted the date to be over. M smirked every time she came around to the table but L and Big J were practically beaming like they were my parents or something. Ugh. Afterwards Skuz offered to drive me home but we ended up for a “quick drink at a friend’s bar” first. This became even more uncomfortable as I had to keep pushing Skuz’s hands off of me – off my legs, out of my lap, etc.

This goes on for a while with some dreary conversation in the meantime. Skuz is persistent but is acting more confused than anything. Eventually, the cocktail waitress came over, pulled Skuz aside out of earshot and I could see she was reading him the riot act. Skuz then came over and asked if I wanted another drink. I said “no,” the cocktail waitress glared at him, and Skuz excused himself to go chat with the owner. The cocktail waitress sat down and asked me if I was doing okay and if she could call me cab to go home. I said yes, and when Skuz came back, he gave me cab fare, shook my hand and said “No hard feelings, right E?”

At that point, lucidity returned in a wave of disgusted realization. A lot of the ugly pieces fell into place and a lot more was confirmed the next day when I furiously confronted L. There was some unpleasant tension for a few days at work because I think Big J, L and a few others thought I was going to cause “problems” for the restaurant. As soon as they realized I didn’t give a shit and that I just wanted to be left alone to do my job, they relaxed, raised my shift pay, and started putting more customers in my section. Skuz still came into the restaurant, sometimes sitting in my section, but I was always pleasant and he was not menacing or anything. He would leave me a $20 tip for a free cup of coffee.

L was very upset she had placed me in that scenario. She said: “I finally get you, E. I’m so sorry I put you through that. Please forgive me.” She had mischaracterized me and was genuinely contrite. Considering the weird dynamics at the Garden and her situation with Big J, her alcoholism, and the numerous other sordid things she was involved in, compassion came easy for me, so long as I was left out of the equation.

So ends that chapter in my stint at the Garden. There’s more coming in another part or two but that’s for a bit later on. This should be enough tawdry for now!

A bit of an interlude in this series of writings - many things intervened in May, especially my Ireland trip at the end of May which is better left put behind me. I was seriously ill the entire time, so much so that there were moments I was convinced I was going to die over there. Almost fully recovered now. Health dilemma aside, Ireland is gorgeous and the people of Ireland are warm, charming and extremely helpful.

Anyhow, onward with the latest tale!

Have you ever been closely connected to a world within a world situation that, in hindsight, engenders a bit of alarm because it was a sticky web of truly sordid intrigue embroidered by hints of organized crime activity and interwoven with undercurrents of danger?

Those are the elements of a brief waitressing stint at a random Greek restaurant my last few months in Salt Lake City before moving to San Francisco. (This piece will be in parts because there’s enough subplot intrigue here for a Sopranos season! I mean, is there such a thing as the Greek mafia?! I have no idea but, well, whatever.)

I was addicted to Led Zeppelin during this time which coincided with my having recently discovered my overwhelming affinity with marijuana. Nowadays, anytime I hear any Led Zeppelin song, no matter the circumstance, it jolts me back to some memory of this time period and the job at that restaurant.

My best friends in the world, T and T, had moved to SF a few months prior. I missed them dreadfully and grew to despise living in dull, Mormon-controlled SLC more each day. T and T kept up a campaign to wear me down, and won. At the end of that May, it was decided that I would be living in SF by early September.

I had a job at a local burger and shake joint on the University of Utah campus within walking distance from my apt. This was enough to pay rent and bills but another job was needed to fund my move. I saw an ad in the paper, got interviewed and was offered the job on the spot. Day shifts at the restaurant 5 days a week and late night shifts at the burger place 3-4 nights a week.

While working at “the Garden,” I was blissfully detached - the job was merely a tool facilitating an end goal. I was oblivious to the most sordid stuff at first because I was also always slightly stoned. It was all so amusing and entertaining! The last month at the restaurant I went stone cold sober, however, because of an amplification in certain scary circumstances.

In this post I will set up the restaurant players:

Big J - One of 2 brothers who owned and ran the restaurant. A short, balding rotund man, brusque with a volatile temper. He was involved in numerous “other business interests” that necessitated frequent meetings with “off duty policemen.” (One particular creepy policeman figures in a personally hellish experience - which acted as the trigger pushing me to lay off the pot until I could quit the Garden and move away.)

Big G - Brother 2, the other owner. He did not look related to Big J at all - tall with a thick head of hair that he styled like Engelburt Humperdink. I think he thought he WAS Engelburt - he did a variety show at the restaurant on Friday and Saturday nights. Belly dancers, live music, and Big G would sing Engelburt Humperdink songs. In the daytime, between the breakfast slowdown and lunch rush, he would practice singing in the dining room area. In my early perpetually stoned state, this was fucking hilarious and I was constantly on the verge of laughing out loud. Everyone mistook this constant “cheerfulness” as being really happy to work there. This may have been the most unfortunate side-effect of the pot smoking at the time!

Ms. L - the restaurant manager. A bawdy,trashy bottle blonde, she brought to mind the Angie Dickinson character in Dressed to Kill. She was caustically witty and I adored her. She looked after me in a twisted, alcoholic way although she was also directly responsible for the scuzzy policeman experience that shocked and disgusted me into brutal sober reality.

L always had a cigarette in her mouth and a drink in her hand - always - even at 6 a.m. She was also the “acknowledged mistress” of Big J. Theirs was an intense relationship and had been going on for a long time. It was possibly an abusive one but that might have been L creating drama, which she did very loudly and well. I never knew for sure.

M - The premier head waitress. She was a gorgeous Italian/Greek mix, tall and slim with long wavy dark hair, huge dark eyes. She looked and dressed like a model. She was very pleasant the few times I interacted with her and only ominous to me on one specific occasion toward the end of the summer before I moved. That tale is most bizarre and comes later.

M was very high in status at the Garden. She was the sole night shift waitress most of the time. (Night shifts were “bestowed” at the Garden. Shift pay was under the table and you could make over a grand in tips alone. I was told this when I was eventually offered the opportunity to become a night waitress, sharing the shifts with M.) It was a big deal to work at night as Big J frequently had private parties for his “other business interests” and for “off duty policemen” and usually only one waitress was scheduled to cater to all of them. M was probably raking in a few grand a month, easy.

M was also the long-time “acknowledged mistress” of Big G. He paid for her apartment and expenses. I have no idea what she did with all the money she made at the Garden but the mind reels!

Little J - Big J’s son. 18 and adorable, one of the cooks. I had a super big crush on him and bought pot for him and his friends. He was constantly terrified his dad would find out. He respected me because I was so discreet about getting him pot and didn’t expect him to date me or anything.

Little G - Big G’s son. Early 30’s, handsome, very much trying to separate himself from the restaurant biz. He monitored relations between the staff and L and the owners. He took me aside many times and gave me words of caution and advice on how to avoid entanglement in the “shit that was constantly going down” at the Garden. He either felt protective of me or sorry for me. In thinking back, I am grateful that he intervened at certain specific times. It probably kept me safe.

Okay this is really lengthy but a necessary set up for the rest. I need to finish up and edit the other parts. I tell ya, reading through all this, it resembles a budding script for a t.v. show. However, during this time period I wasn’t even thinking of it from the creative standpoint. It was all too viscerally close for comfort!

http://www.latfh.com/

Thanks, Gawker!

(Note: if necessary, see the first three paragraphs of my earlier entry http://poisonpen.livejournal/com/2009/04/23/  which describe the schematic pertaining to this particular series of writing and which covers the "loss of virginity song" piece.)

The next track is entitled: Feelin’ Mighty Real.

The question: What was the song that that was playing (or the song that became etched into your memory and thus specifically aligned with the experience) during your first time entering a nightclub?

The parameters on this are kind of wide because there are so many kinds of nightclub-related experiences. A good significant guideline is - whenever you hear the song these days, it has the ability to usher you back to that “first time.” You can recollect the circumstances leading up to the experience (which can be entertaining if you were underage), and bring back nostalgically all those “at first blush” sensations of entering your first real nightclub.

Onward! At the urging of two of my closest male friends T and T, who were lovers at the time and who had moved three months prior, I moved from Salt Lake City to San Francisco. To say it was “different” living in San Francisco is an understatement. The best times I had while in SLC were at the parties given by the theatre people I hung out with and at the very few gay bars in SLC that we frequented. At this point, I had never been to a real nightclub.

Once in SF, I quickly got a job at a toy store. It was a fantastic first job in my new city because the manager of this particular store was awesome. She used to leave fat (and potent) joints for her staff in the stock room. She’d tell one of us to go unpack a recent shipment, which was code for “I left you a joint near the toddler toy section.” She felt smoking pot a few times a day made us more enthusiastic about helping customers and more interested in the products. (She was correct!)

Anyway, so the job paid my very cheap rent and would soon also fund my burgeoning night life. T and T and I became roommates and one of the places we lived in was a huge flat on Haight and Masonic (above the Recycled Records store). We acquired a 4th person for the lease and the third bedroom since T&T shared one (because they were luhhhhhhverrrrrrs) and then the nightlife thing started up again only this time, there were dance clubs to explore!

The I-Beam on Haight Street. (Sigh. RIP, beloved venue.) The I-Beam was an extremely popular gay dance club, well-known in the community for their afternoon Sunday Tea Dance that started, I think, at around 4pm. One Sunday before a Monday holiday, we had finished brunch (mimosas, ahoy!) and decided to hit up the I-Beam for my first Tea Dance. The club was only a few blocks up the street – convenient! The two T’s and I smoked some pot and T1 and I dropped some acid. (This LSD was some of the old-school LSD, not a synthetic derivative cut with lots of stimulants). Tequila was the drink of champions at the time so we sipped Tequila Sunrises (because it was important to stick with the “orange juice” concept began by the mimosas earlier) and laughed a lot while waiting for the acid to hit.

Pretty soon we were heading up the street to the club. It was just after 5pm so it wasn’t really night yet but it also wasn’t mid-afternoon. However my memory seems to recall it as being “extremely bright” out, and all the sounds, smells and faces of people were melting together. There was a quick moment of panic (and probably a loud public discussion) about whether we would be able to maintain long enough to go the 3 or so blocks to the club. The need for “the dance” won out and like good soldiers, we trudged onward through the scary melting people.

Now T and T had been going to the Tea Dance at the I-Beam for a while but they were very excited to be taking me. We managed to pay the cover charge and as we headed up the steps, I could feel the music vibrating as much on my skin as it was shaking the walls and floor of the club. The current song seemed to be winding down and the DJ was in the process of transitioning to another one – it was Sylvester’s “You Make Me Feel Mighty Real” - and boy did I ever! I had heard this song many times before but never in a scenario like this.

The song started and suddenly it was like some shiny happy vortex had opened up to let us in and we were pulled in by a wall of pulsing sound, melting faces and loud overlapping conversations. I think we actually ran to the dance floor. Even if I hadn’t been high, I think the sensory input of this first time – the sound and feel of the music, the sight of the jubilant exhibitionists dancing on the stage, the colorful strobe lights, the pervasive chemical smell wafting about as tiny bottles of Rush (amyl nitrate aka “poppers”) were being passed from nose to nose – oh those days!

I will never forget being dragged into the center of the dance floor by T and T, our arms linked, laughing our asses off as we merged into the huge group of people who were dancing and singing along with Sylvester. That was also the first time I tried poppers but it most certainly was not the last! (Let’s have a moment of silence for all those expired brain cells.)

Share your own story in the comments, in your blog, or for hell’s sake at least write it down somewhere for your own posterity. You know you want to…

I’m going to be posting a series of entries that I’ve been working on as a result of being inspired by conversations or discussions with friends and acquaintances while socializing at bars, parties or other gatherings. The partaking of substances like alcohol or, uhm, other things is an integral aspect (hence the “substance abuse” part) while the soundtrack aspect of this series is an amusing byproduct of the same recounted experience. (Symbiosis!) The pieces posted will not be in chronological order and are part of a larger work in progress.

Through the years most of us have acquired a soundtrack to our lives – an evolving list of songs that were part of or have occurred during pinnacle moments. These songs thus remind us of or represent to us, sometimes forever, a significant experience in our lives. These particular songs are committed to memory and at other times may be buried in the psyche. The songs that make up this unique soundtrack can be recalled with fond sentiment, wistful nostalgia, amusement, maybe some shame and horror, or whatever.

We all will continue to have these pinnacle moments in our lives and will more than likely also continue to add to the soundtrack. For now, I want to take a trip down memory lane and pluck a song from the soundtrack that I like to refer to as the “Innocence Lost” track.

At a recent gathering of friends, helped along by indulgence in adult beverages, we all tried to recall the song that was playing when we lost our virginity, or when we engaged in our first sexual activity of any kind. (If there ever was an activity that needed a soundtrack, it was the early sexual experience activity, amirite?)

Many of us could remember that specific song. Some of the songs were awesome and others amusing and slightly embarrassing. Like mine. The song I lost my innocence to was “Space Cowboy” by the Steve Miller Band.

EDITED TO ADD:  The song is actually "The Joker" by the Steve Miller Band but I've always referred to it as the Space Cowboy song - and will continue to do so!

It was a dance party taking place at some local rec room (Streamers! Paper mache décor!). The lanky fair-haired guy I was slow dancing with had a crush on me and my friends were trying to play matchmaker so they had practically pushed me into his arms for this dance. I don’t remember the song that was playing – probably one of those dreadful “I’m a sensitive soulful guy” songs, probably Christopher Cross or Hall and Oats.

The boy I was dancing with was nice enough but he wore so much after-shave cologne that he smelled kind of girly to me. The whole situation was on my nerves because I hated being set up on dates. I graciously did my time during the slow dance, trying not to breathe too deeply of his sensitive and soulful guy cologne, and then went back to sitting against the wall where the more rowdy girls were sitting. They were bored and restless and so was I. One girl finally scoffed and said, “fuck this” and invited a bunch of us to her older brother’s house for booze and “hotter guys.”

I fell in lust with her brother instantly which was very entertaining to my friend (and apparently predictable – I guess I had a “type” even back then!) He was tall with a slim but rugged sort of build, dark wavy hair, messy and just below the ears in length. Can’t remember his eye color but I do remember he drove a pickup truck and that he was about 5 or 6 years older than me.

After a bit of drinking and listening to music (I don’t remember), eventually some of the people left in pairs to other rooms, the rest went back to the dance or left. We were left alone in the small den/living room.

I don’t remember his name (scandalous!) but we hung out on the couch listening to music and drinking. The beer was Coors (scandalous!) and there was a bottle of Jack Daniels that had been passed around as well. (I remember taking the teeniest sips of whiskey because “it tasted icky.” It seems I was okay with the watery grandeur of Coors. Ahhhh youth!)

Eventually, we started making out. He was hilarious and he smelled like a combo of soap, whiskey, and motor oil. He turned out the lights in the living room but left one on in the hallway (lighting effects!) and changed the record. He had put on the Steve Miller Band album and by the time Space Cowboy came on, things had gotten hot and heavy and, uhm, soon the tenor’s throat was cleared (as it were). He turned the record over and there was a little more fooling around but as it was almost our group’s midnight curfew, he rounded everyone up and we were delivered via his pickup truck to our homes.

Not surprising, I actually went out and bought the album after that and Space Cowboy became an instant and obvious part of my soundtrack. These days every time I hear the song Space Cowboy (which honestly is not that often – ha!) it transports me back to this experience. It is a fond memory and one that makes me laugh, especially because I can remember a whole hell of a lot of the sensory details about the experience but not specifics, like the names of actual people.

So the game to play now is: take a little stroll down memory lane and recollect (and share if you dare) the “Innocence Lost” track on the soundtrack of your life. Or, at the very least write it out somewhere and keep it as a page in your memoirs and not just as a half-forgotten song in your head.

Recently, I’ve been catching episodes of High School Reunion and was intrigued by the social dynamics that unfolded. Each participant was given a title such as “The Prom Queen,” “The Outcast”, “The Class Clown” etc., indicating the social role they played back at their high school. At first everyone was kind of reserved and awkward, welcoming and surprised, hesitant and curious. Everyone had their adulthood shielding up and fully operational.

As time went on and events unfolded, it was fascinating to watch some of them fall into probably the same sort of social dynamic and interaction as when they were actually in high school. It was especially interesting to observe those who had unpleasant business between them in the past and how they responded at this point in time

This got me wondering about changing (or rigidly unchanging) social dynamics between individuals who have known each other for a relatively long time, not through school channels, but through participation in or as part of a specific subculture group i.e. a goth or other sort of social scene.

I have been reconnecting with a number of people from my past, from differing scenes, differing areas of my life. Most of these reconnections have been refreshing. Some have been an exhilarating experience with laughing and oh the memory sharing. In still others, old rifts have been chatted through and healed – promptly giving way to a more evolved dynamic. (There have also been a few that have proven to be not worth any more to me than a shrug and a “don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out of my life” – ha!)

But in the reconnections that have been worthwhile - the sparks of the previous dynamic that remain are also the sparks that caused us to become friends in the first place. This is a joy and is also useful to build on. The fresh and pleasurable stays, the ugly and stale gets put to rest. The evolved interaction is more suited to who we are at this point in our lives.

Currently one of my dear friends is dealing with various individuals who are piteously reverting to (or rather doggedly clinging to) the uglier dynamics of the past instead of pulling it together and evolving a little in order to deal with their lives in the presenet tense. By present tense I mean, primarily, “Adulthood.”

“Why does this always happen to me? Why is this all happening again? Oh why am I always being betrayed by those I love and trust?”

Because you are utilizing stale patterns of behavior and repeating cycles instead of breaking them. Because you are participating in the desperate exercise of clinging bitterly to a former version of a dynamic as if struggling to hold onto a life raft (or security blankie).

“Round and around, getting no farther from the ground. This circle has an empty sound”

It’s no brain teaser. If you don’t learn the lesson(s), – the cycle will reboot and you will go through it all over again. You will revisit those same cycles and all that may change is the date, time, location and people.

We’ve all heard the idea that those we interact closely or regularly with, for positive or negative, are actually mirrors – mirrors that reflect aspects of ourselves back to us. Looking glass worlds – they are there for us. We are either at the mercy of events or in control of them. We take control of them by how we respond. We can change how we respond to things. This process can be started by taking a contemplative (or metaphoric even!) look into one of the many mirrors reflecting back through others.

From one of my favorite Roxy Music songs, taken out of context, yes, but still apt:

But no dilettante
Filigree fancy
Beats the plastic you
Career girl cover
Exposed and another
Slips right into-view
Oh looking for love
In a looking glass world
Is pretty hard for you

This is a long but absolutely HILARIOUS thread containing lots o’charts mocking the one sent out yesterday in the GOP’s proposed budget “blueprint”:

http://www.fark.com/cgi/comments.pl?IDLink=4291765

We are all teleprompter reading, socialist, gay-married abortionists now!

Ah my little jaunt to New Orleans. Brief but oh so satisfying! I got to spend time with some of my good friends there, although I did not get to see some others, which was poopy. "Time is a thief." (from "Suddenly Last Summer", T. Williams)

I arrived on Friday around 4pm. It was yummy/balmy out and that was a welcome weatherly embrace after being out in the 5am chill of San Francisco. In the cab to Michele's, I felt my whole body relax as though I'd ingested a delicious valium. My internal time clock stopped in preparation for the reality of "no last call," and my resolve tried to strengthen in the face of that stopped internal clock. My anticipation of a couple fun days and nights ahead, heightened.

During the cab ride, I gazed lazily out the window at the feral, lush New Orleans landscape and tried to sift through all the different emotions. The sifting went something like: I miss New Orleans, I love the history in evidence everywhere, however decaying, the architecture is graceful and moody. I loved my time living there. I love the friends who still live there, the people who came in and out of my life there whether I'm still in touch with them regularly or not. I'm still sad and angry about Katrina ripping that city apart and the Bush government's complete failure to deal with it properly. But I'm also happy and content living in San Francisco, where I'm also surrounded by history, gorgeous architecture, and where I also have many friends I love dearly. I now live in a city with a pace that is more essentially suited to me, but I still remember fondly the wild and weird experiences that could only have taken place with New Orleans as the venue, and so on. Back and forth for about 25 minutes. Sigh. Mental rollercoaster ride!

But I got over this budding melancholia rather quickly after hugging Michele and watched as she went efficiently about making delicious tequila and lime juice concentrate slushies (aka "blended margaritas"). We hung out for a few hours relaxing and catching up and then Debbie came over and we cabbed it with Michele as she went to work at the Erin Rose. Hugs to Natasha and a few others I hadn't seen in a while - sigh.

The bar was crowded and noisy due to the St. Patrick's day Quarter Parade from earlier. Deb and I decorously sipped refreshing Stoli drinks (it always starts with decorum and good intentions, doesn't it?) and then a bit later Blonde Liz arrived, and Gwen and Brian also stopped by. After that Deb, Blonde Liz and I went to One Eyed Jack's for a space-age themed thing which was fun. Although by that time of the evening, drink-wise, pretty much anything could have been fun. (Stoli Raz and soda - FTW!)

Todd arrived and he was appropriately shiny and sparkly. I also got to see and hug Angie who was doing her saucy go-go dancing thing, saw Denver and Rhiannon, Ben and his brother Tim.

Blonde Liz maintained her drinking decorum so she could drive home (bravo, dahlink! You were so good!) but I went a bit over my Preferred Limit. There was no suffering the next day but the beating downpour outside successfully blunted my get up and go until much later in the day. I did manage to see a bit of the parade and walked for a couple hours up and down Magazine enjoying the green-themed carnage.

Saturday night at Todd's there was the fabulous gathering for the Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf drinking game event. It was SO MUCH FUN watching that movie again, especially with those that hadn't ever seen it. There was a little too much Talky McTalkypants going on at times for my taste, mainly because, although I've seen this movie many times, the writing and interchange are wonderful, and it is the brilliant writing specifically that drives the story arc and developments (unlike much of today's movie fare). A lot of good lines and considerable necessary nuance is missed out on when it is talked over.

After the movie party, it was only a bit after midnight but I nixed the idea of doing a drinking tour of the French Quarter in favor of Debbie and my plans to get up at 5:30am to meet the two Micheles when they got off work at 7am for, uhm, cocktails. Debbie and I rallied superbly and got to the Erin Rose by about 6:30am, just in time for Irish Coffees! We went from there to the Johnny White's on St. Peter where I think I drunk texted a few people to meet us there, threatening them to "Be there or be sober!" I think this was around 10am or 11. Understandably, there was some demurring away from the daytime den of iniquity that I was promoting. We finished up there around 1pm or 2 and headed back to Michele's. Michele went to bed, Debbie went home, and I finished up the packing in preparation for my 3:30 cab to the airport while drinking lots of water to try and dilute the Jameson's in my system.

My weekend in Never Never Land was awesome - just long enough so that I did not do that much damage to myself. Just a wee bit. I'm pretty disoriented today but I blame that entirely on the stressful trip home. There were stupid weather conditions and a series of irritating delays at the stupid Houston airport that caused delays leaving New Orleans. There was also turbulence coming into Houston (and we circled that airport for about an hour in it). Stressful! Also? Every time I sipped my water, all I could taste is Jameson's and by that time, I did not WANT to taste anymore Jameson's.

Anyway, a bunch of us missed our connecting flight to San Francisco and had to be re-rescheduled on later flights. Continental handled it all very smoothly, however, which is why I love taking them, even if the price of a Continental ticket is slightly higher than the "very best deal." My checked luggage and I arrived at the same time, on the same flight, in San Francisco.

Today? I'm a little disoriented and any water I drink STILL kind of tastes like Jameson's.

I suppose it is time for a general update: Things are good.

More specifics? Well, okay!

This weekend looms a little closer and with it comes my three day jaunt to New Orleans to relax, imbibe, spend quality time with loved and much missed friends, and in general get outta town for a brief time. Three days and two nights. That's not so long of a trip that I can do that much damage to myself, right?

RIGHT?

Sigh. We'll see how my disciplines hold out. I'm in NOLA from Friday 4pm through Sunday 4pm. The only set plans I have now are hanging with Michele for a few hours after I get in and then traveling with her to the French Quarter as she goes to work at the Erin Rose. I'll be haunting the Quarter on Friday night. (SURPRISED?)

Saturday night I'm at Todd's for a Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolfe drinking game party (if I remember those text messages correctly) and I'm keeping Saturday day open for spontaneous THINGS, sweeties. Sunday morn I'm supposed to play Greet the Dawn with Michele and possibly others at the Erin Rose, and then when Michele gets off work at 7 a.m. - well, um. I'm a little afraid. (Oh hai. I can haz dissiplinn? My resolv. Let me show u it?) I have to leave for the airport at around 4pm on Sunday so I need to reign it in and visit with friends sans over-indulgence. (The only thing worse than being drunk and trapped on a plane for numerous hours while traveling at 35,000+ feet in the air is being HUNGOVER for same.)

All trepidation aside, I CANNOT WAIT.

Already the calendar is pointing to the Ides of March and the spring equinox is creeping up on us. This spring transition will be all the more interesting because my work hours just changed. It was a welcome and surprise development! HR asked me if I'd be agreeable to working a slightly different shift, from 11:30am to 8pm Mon-Thurs (w/regular shift on Fridays 9-5:30) to help cover the overflow so as to cut down on overtime. Of course I said YES. Wow, 15 years ago I would have sold my soul for this schedule - hah! (All good things in time?)

Peering backward over the last couple months, socially it has been very busy for me. Among all the happy hour excursions and other events I attended, the first official Whorepod happened on March 1. Whorepod is a low-key social gathering concept/idea spawned by me, Scott and Terrance. It happens the first Sunday of each month at Sugar Lounge in the Hayes Valley. It's an early evening thing (7-11pm) (uhm...no excuses accepted from the Olds or the Tireds).

The premise of Whorepod is simple: Bring your iPod, cue up some music you want to hear, and deejays Terrance and Scott (Darky Dark and HomoSuperior, respectively) will play it. There are no stuffy rules regarding the type of music. Those lads will play anything (even Whitesnake).

Sugar Lounge is a great little venue too and Whorepod is meant to be a casual, relaxing event. Just socializing and laughing, hanging out with friends and meeting new people, sipping cocktails and suggesting/bringing all kinds of music for accompaniment. Oh and fair warning: there can be intermittent bouts of interpretive dancing (Double Dutch Bus - Terrance, I'm looking at you) and/or random sing-a-longs. (Sister Christian never fails to bring out the chorus revelers in some of us.)

So THAT's all fun and new. Other interesting stuff going on is that I've been reconnecting with quite a few people from my past, some of it decades past. All of this has been pleasant and intriguing so far. This is a side-effect of being on Facebook that I enjoy, in addition to be being able to track events and read the quippy, silly or serious doings of my friends via their status or other posts.

Facebook is also infinitely less annoying than Myspace (Myspace? What's a Myspace?). I have a special love for the fact that on Facebook you can customize your profile so as to ignore or block all those horrid little applications with which people waste their time. (These apps are even worse than all that self-love, promotional blingee, music and crap you have to wade through on Myspace.) So far my forays into Facebook have been rewarding. We'll see how it goes.

I also have lots of travel excitement this year! I'm heading to Ireland for a week at the end of May for a good friend's wedding, and a trip to Paris with Amy in September, for which our apartment in the Marais is booked. In the interim, I can succor myself with a mini-trip to the Gulf Coast.

See you on the other side of Friday, New Orleans!

http://wonkette.com/406404/michael-steele-to-reinvent-gop-with-hip-hop-and-youthiness#comments

This could be an Onion article.  I am actually LOLing at my desk.  The comments are HILAR.

Oh the pen, indeed!  

Wonkette associate editor Jim Newell has outdone himself with this week's "interpretation" of Peggy Noonan's weekly installment in the Wall Street Journal.  Even if you aren't familiar with monied conservative Noonan and her insane ramblings - I think the below is a hilarious read, especially since it covers inaugural situations.

http://wonkette.com/405733/peggy-noonan-flew-on-an-aer-plane-with-africkans#more-405733

January 2009, thus far, has been stretched tight, schedule-wise.  Days and nights are tautly woven together yet also sparkling.  Social outings have been entertaining and revitalizing, and those that gleam ahead are, well, gleaming.

As I look over my calendar of “things to do” for January and beyond, I feel elated.  Yet I think that I should feel exhausted and wary.  A veil of reclusive behavior (embroidered with the threads of emotional exhaustion and trepidation) has been wrapped around my psyche for the past few years in spite of presenting as present when going out and about socially. That veil has finally drifted away and the enthusiasm that was elusive for so long has leapt out of the gates at full clip.

Other elements of my nature I thought vanquished have also returned into play. For instance, today is an East Bay jaunt to attend a birthday party.  I sense I could feel like  a fish out of water, for various reasons, and there are sure to be some moments of dreadful tension, for various other reasons.  These issues would have, only a few months ago, compelled me to cancel my attendance, to send my regrets and spare myself. (My veil, my friend, enshroud me...)

But my sisterly love for the birthday boy and his partner have trumped concerns about “dealing with stupid crap”.  I feel much stronger these days to finesse around discomfiting situations and querulous or pushy people. Strong is an incorrect word.  I feel much more devil-may-care and adventurous than I have in a long time and so, discomfiting situations are practically an aphrodisiac where once they were a repellent.  (Hey, now I remember that Merteuil part of myself!)

Anyway, after the birthday thing, tonight is a planning meeting at Sugar. (Planning meeting?  Oh sure.  Planning meeting = enjoying cocktails and relaxing while discussing and firming up the details for a monthly music and subtle mayhem themed gathering at that wonderful and atmospheric Hayes Valley bar/lounge). A lovely way to wind down from the one event and ease into the eerie faux-spring evening.

Tomorrow (I honor thee, oh Poe) brings a cozy afternoon with a boisterous group of us meeting for a late lunch and then soldiering on (heh) to somewhere else for continued camaraderie, listening to juke music, the sipping of adult beverages, amiable chatter and perhaps some creative brainstorming. 

There’s a stimulating renaissance happening in my cycle of going out and getting together with people lately.  It began haltingly, due mainly to my quiet personal battles of the last few years of chaos post-Katrina.  My return to San Francisco in March 2007 was a soothing and rewarding move but the last year and a half still found me on a sort of emotional autopilot, still struggling with that veil of reclusiveness.

But the renaissance (and its complementary companion, trailblazing), has found an important if intangible foothold.  It is creatively stimulating, fresh and welcome.  It carries with it a somewhat nostalgic pulse, a similar electricity and excitement that made up the foundation of those weekly Du Nord gatherings of yore. 

Indeed, some of the old guard are there again - me, Bat, Terrance and a few others at random times, but our burgeoning flock of painted birds is notably ripe with fresh faces and richly creative fresh blood. In essence, the keys to the castle of 2009, so far, seem to be named Renaissance and Trailblazing.  I welcome both concepts with open arms.

And now, apropos of honoring and remembrance (although I’m posting it today), Edgar:

In youth I have known one with whom the Earth
In secret communing held - as he with it,
In daylight, and in beauty from his birth:
Whose fervid, flick’ring torch of life was lit
From the sun and stars, whence he had drawn forth
A passionate light - such for his spirit was fit -
And yet that spirit knew not - in the hour
Of its own fervor - what had o’er it power.

LOL.

http://io9.com/5132361/star-wars-retold-by-someone-who-never-saw-star-wars

Con artists are fascinating. I'm not talking about identity theft experts, those who use multiple pseudonyms, or facile-level scammers. I'm talking about balls to the wall, intricately presented and carried out, grand scale con artists.

I finally completed reading a fascinating article in the January 2009 Vanity Fair by Mark Seal entitled "The Man in the Rockefeller Suit" which reported, in pretty thorough detail, the decades long con of Christian Gerhartsreiter aka Christopher Chichester, Christopher Crowe, and finally, Clark Rockefeller. This man and his lengthy con were incredible! I was amazed at how long he was able to pull it off and not just among "lesser" mortals. He cut a wide swath of high-level deception throughout various circles of the upper crust richie riches. 

What struck me as laughably intriguing about the whole thing was that these people, these seemingly well-educated, privileged, supposedly socially savvy groups and individuals actually fell for Clark's ludicrous gambit. (I'm sure adopting the Rockefeller surname accounted for at least 65% of his "credibility factor" due to the inherent shallowness of much of the richie rich society). I say "ludicrous" because in reading Clark's background story and how he cultivated his aristocratic persona, I learned that as a youngster he identified with Thurston Howell III, of Gilligan's Island fame, to the degree that he imitated the faux-aristocrat speaking pattern of the character! 

Come ON. You mean to tell me those richie riches actually fell for that haute-aristo act that included that dorky speaking pretension? Seriously, wasn't that speaking pretension at least a BIT OF A CLUE that something might be amiss with this person?

Apparently Clark also spent massive amounts of time studying and researching everything he needed to know in order to endear himself to the upper crust levels of society and ingratiate himself in all manner of places, and he was very successful at it. The article gives a lot of great dish on his progress from high school weirdo to full-blown weirdo with money, a monied wife and monied friends in important places. I recommend it to everyone who is intrigued by this sort of thing because reading the article definitely gives a better understanding of the depth and complexity of the Clark Rockefeller con.

I'm guessing it wasn't just that he was presenting an act, adopting a persona with a lot of comprehensive knowledge from research to back up his persona - but that he possibly, to a deep degree, believed the tales he was spinning about himself and his life. (I'd love to see a psyche workup on him.) Believing one's own deception would seem to be a sort of meta-important guideline for pulling off these types of complex cons.

My closest brush with someone like this (although on a very low-level scale) was during the rise of the hair band portion of the late 1980's. I was good friends with a very charismatic and sepulchritudinous girl that I'll call: "T". T had one of those sexy gravelly voices, (a la Lauren Bacall), long, wild magenta hair and a curvy body that she knew how to dress to her every advantage. She also had one of those groupie mindsets, which is always a constant source of cringing embarrassment to me. But - she was so much fun to be around that I took my cringing in stride (along with vigorous doses of crystal meth and alcohol - oh those youthful caprices of my past!)

T was very popular and, as I've said, lots of fun, so oodles of fun was always happening when she was around. T created this rock star minx persona that was expertly done because she lived, breathed, studied and slept that world. T would charismatically spin these incredulous tales of hanging out with people like Nikki Sixx, being stalked secretly by Nick Cave, being flown to Los Angeles by Faster Pussycat to hang out with them. One time she claimed she was caught by her mom sitting in a limo smoking pot with Billy Idol, which was parked in their driveway...(the limo had to leave before I got to her place to hang out too because Billy was due at a sound check, and yeah sure. With T, it was always a near miss situation whenever other people were supposed to be brought into the mix, mainly because, duh, it was all imaginary.)

Actually, now that I think about it, I don't know how many of the guys during that time bought her b.s. - but I'm sure they all wanted to sleep with her. She was hot stuff. And as for the women in that scene - well, the groupie mindset is nothing if not competitive, vicious and backstabbing, but it is also strategy.   Thus, having and including frenemies is usually more commonplace than actual friendships and that time frame was no exception. 

I never bought any of T's wild tales, although they were extremely entertaining. It was usually pretty embarrassing when she started spinning one of them. (But there was also that fascination factor at work.) I watched as many people did buy into her tales - and so many people gravitated to her because of them. T also got us quite a few scene perks because of her name dropping abilities and side-winding deceptions. We were guest-listed for so many great shows, got back stage passes, there were invites to super sekret (not) after parties, and the usual illicit substances and sexual orgies proffered. Damn, when I think back...LOL!

It's a long gap between one pretending to hang out with rock stars in a local scene in San Francisco to one pulling off a protracted and intricate high stakes con over the upper echelons of society. It is amusing to think back on T's exploits and I am kind of impressed in spite of myself with the Clark Rockefeller exploits - mainly because of his studied devotion to the deception. As for the success of his con over those wealthy privileged buffoons, I feel nothing but amused contempt for the richie riches. That is the sort of group that spawns the Bernie Madoffs of the world. Ugh. Madoff is another type of con artist altogether, whose story, when finally told, if ever, won't be nearly as interesting or entertaining.