balding angrily

There has to be a better way to die than naked on your bathroom floor. Well, obviously there is. Probably 10,000 better ways. Running with the bulls. In the arms of a hot guy. Heck, I would have been happy to have died during a particularly nice wank. But naked on your bathroom floor? That tells the world that you were clumsy. You slipped and fell. Clumsy moron. Clumsy, naked moron.

Would I do it again? What do you mean would I do it again? Would I have taken a shower? Probably not. Or at least I would have watched my step getting out.

Oh! Would I live my life the same way? Of course I would have lived it differently. What a dumb question. Do you ask that of everyone that comes through here? I can’t imagine everyone’s waltzing through the gates going, “That was perfect! Wouldn’t change a thing!” And if there are those people, I don’t want to know them. In fact, you can write that on your little form there. “Does not want to be around people with no regrets.” Gah, can you imagine spending an eternity with a bunch of unbearably satisfied people? Makes me shiver.

No, please put me with the people that are just like me. You guys tortured me enough in life surrounding me with a bunch of differing opinions and different outlooks on life. It drove me crazy. All I wanted was a world where everyone agreed with me, and it seemed like at every turn someone was coming up to me and shoving their differences in my face. You know I used to fantasize about marrying another guy named Alex who looked just like me? Talked just like me? Same build? Same fashion sense? Yeah, of course you know. You’re you. But then you sent me this guy who was skinny and sweet and, well. Happy. It drove me out of my mind.

And the people he brought into my life? Chatty and friendly and nurturing and gentle? I could have done without all that, thankyouverymuch. If you’re sending me back down, please get it right.

No going back, eh? Well that’s good. Life was shit. Just as long as you put me with a bunch of me’s. And just as long as I get to have lots of sex.

I gotta say, that’s one thing you guys got right. Sex was awesome.

Sex with Jerry? It was awesome. I just said. Are you listening?

It was always a surprise. Like Easter baskets when I was a kid. I knew I was going to get treats. And I knew they would be delicious. And I knew there would be a lot of it. But I never knew EXACTLY what the treats were going to be. Sometimes there were solid chocolate bunnies. Sometimes there weren’t. Sometimes there were peanut butter eggs. Sometimes there were jellybeans. Sometimes not. Sometimes there was a totally new candy that had just come out. And sometimes there were hollow chocolate bunnies. You know, there’s something I gotta tell you. Those hollow chocolates were a real fuck you. A real donkey punch. You peel off the foil, and you see this huge bunny or Santa or whatever, and it’s HUGE, and, like, obviously full of chocolate. And you bite into it. And, like, nothing. Air. You bite into air. I hope you’re sending the inventor of hollow chocolate somewhere else because that is a mortal sin if there is such a thing.

Anyway that’s what sex was like. An Easter basket. Pretty damn familiar and predictable but just enough variation to keep it exciting.

Oh, I see what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to get me to say that I loved Jerry because of his differences. I put it to you that I would have loved him more had he been just like me.

No, no, no. The sex would have been BETTER.

Nah, ignore what I said before. Comparing sex to an Easter basket? That’s retarded. Believe me, the sex would have been better if he was just like me.

We’re done? That’s cool. Just point me to my area full of me’s, and I’ll be outta your hair.

But you just said no one goes back.

I thought you guys weren’t allowed to lie. Like that was a rule or something.

Fine. But don’t expect me to like it. And don’t expect me to be singing your praises down there. I’ll remember this. Mark my words.

Both fantabulastic and hurtsmyfeetandbrain. We stayed in Midtown, on the east side - across Times Square from the theaters and Hell’s Kitchen. So we always had to cross Times Square when we wanted to do something. This is bad. Times Square is just too overwhelming; I’m finding that I don’t do crowds and visual over-stimulation anymore. I think in high school I thrived on it, but now I can’t handle it. My brain gets all schizy and my sphincter clenches. The best times we had were in Lower Manhattan and on the West Side: Greenwich Village, SoHo, Chelsea, the West 40s. Even though those were still Manhattan it seemed like they were neighborly, inwardly-focused. One day we walked all the way from our hotel near Grand Central Station down to SoHo. We ate at a cool Mexican restaurant, I bought myself douche-wear (pre-torn jeans and tight knit shirts), and Jerry shopped galleries. He was a little disappointed in the galleries. He said that the galleries all held works by famous names. We were hoping to find more galleries with works from local artists. I guess that scene has moved to the Meat Packing District. Next time we’ll make it down there.

As usual we had some great meals. Our best were at Gotham Bar & Grill and Esca. We liked Esca a little bit better because it was a surprise to us. We were just strolling through the West 40s and we came across it. We shared a salt-crusted whole sea bass in olive oil. It was to die for. Our most relaxed-but-good was at Jack. Our biggest disappointment was at Serendipity 3. Don’t believe the Oprah-hype. When we weren’t feeling like interloping child-molesters due to the high female tween population, we were being assualted by Victorian kitzch. The frozen hot chocolate - their signature item, the confection that a Food Network star described as complex and rich - was nothing more than a Starbucks mocha frappuccino. Luckily Jerry fell for the hype instead of me. I enjoyed a delicious peanut butter sundae.

We saw Spring Awakening, Xanadu, and In the Heights. I enjoyed Spring Awakening and Xanadu the most. We sat in the front row, just off center during Spring Awakening. Jerry got sweat and spit on by the singers. We were close enough to see them cry, and we cried. It was just really intense. Xanadu was a fun, fun lark. Silly, stupid, old-time frivolity with Whoopie Goldberg doing a limited stint. In the Heights was good but the music wasn’t really to my tastes. The Heights is Washington Heights, which, according to the play, has a strong Hispanic population. The acting, singing, and dancing were all wonderful - the dancing especially - but I just couldn’t get into the Latin vibe of the music.

We walked a lot, as was our intention. Since I knew we were going to eat a lot, I wanted to maintain some semblance of health by walking. Consequently I was tired the whole time. Next time we’ll plan on eating less, walking less, and staying near NYU. That seemed to be the area that was central to all the places we liked the best. And we won’t be duped into Oprah’s recommendations.

We plan on gong to London early next year. I think I’m going to ask my doctor for an anti-anxiety medication. Hopefully that will help me to relax and enjoy myself more.

Julia Fordham sings a song called “Porcelain.” The opening lyrics go:

I am very, very much in like with you

I hope that it’s enough ‘cuz it’s all that I can do

‘Cuz you treat my skin like porcelain

Rare and special porcelain

I just completed a short story. One of the characters in it says, “[My daughter] is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. That sounds so pat, I know, but that’s how it is.” I’ll get to why that’s important later in this post.

I dated a lot of crummy guys before Jerry. One of these guys - let’s call him Jim 2 because he was the second-in-a-row of Jims - I dated him for a time long enough that the relationship couldn’t be considered insignificant. This guy introduced me to Julia Fordham. And when Ken 2 played this song for me, he said, “I love it because I relate to the idea of being in ‘like’ with someone…not really loving someone…but liking someone enough to prolong the relationship.” That description there is basically why I label him “crummy.” He liked me enough to prolong the relationship, but he wasn’t in love with me. I wasn’t in love with him either, but what does that matter?

Now contrast that relationship with Jim 1. Jim 1 was the only other guy besides Jerry that I have loved. He treated my skin like porcelain. He was gentle, loving, and he made me laugh until I couldn’t breathe. The only reason we’re not still together is that I was very immature.

After Jim 2, I went through a period of depression that lasted for about eight months. It wasn’t just that I was sad because of the breakup. It was more that I began to see dating and relationships in purely statistical terms.

• If I could only date, say, 3-5% of the male population - the portion of the male population that is gay,
• And then I eliminated the portion of that 3-5% that isn’t within a certain age rage,
• And then I eliminated the portion of that portion outside a certain geographic distance,
• And then I eliminated any one that I couldn’t get along with (which is a very large group)…

Well, that’s a tiny, tiny sliver of guys that I could possibly meet and fall in love with. That thought drove me into depression. I’m not being flippant here; I cried nightly.

Eventually, I started living with that statistical reality, and I began to think, “Hm. So, it’s very, very unlikely that I will meet someone to fall in love with or marry. If that’s the way it’s going to be - if I’m going to go to my grave as a single person - I better start getting used to it. I better start being happy being single.”

And I did. And I started to really love being single. I relished my time alone and sleeping diagonal-wise on a Queen-size bed. I spent all day Saturday in my underwear eating ice cream and watching The Lord of the Rings. There were weekends when I didn’t leave my apartment or shower or shave or talk to anyone or think a novel thought. I LOVED it.

And then I met Jerry. And we both had a hell of time giving up our personal space.

But he treats my skin like porcelain. And he’s loving and gentle. And he makes me laugh until I can’t breathe. And that’s what I mean when I say that Jerry is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. There’s no poetic, non-clichéd way of putting it. All I can do is quote a song.

Not really; it’s just a good sentence to start with. The biggest news is that I came very close to shitting a brick when my iPhone temporarily froze this morning. I upgraded to the 2.0 software. Because Apple’s or AT&T’s servers are handling numerous service orders this morning - and because when upgrading iPhone software my computer has to talk to those servers (probably sending my bank account balances, account numbers, and names of porn sites I frequent directly to George W.) - my iPhone went, “Bwuh?”

I railed against the system for ten minutes, throwing cutlery and juice boxes, and proclaiming Apple and AT&T the worst entities since the devil. Then my iPhone went happy-face, and I rubbed it and said “Purrrrrrrr.”

My cat has a boo-boo. She has some kind of puncture wound really close to her anus. Because of the adjacency of the two holes, we’re thinking that the other cat literally tore her a new asshole. (Jerry’s joke, not mine.) The vet said she’d be fine, but we’re still unsure how exactly she got the wound. The two cats occasionally fight, but they’ve never drawn blood.

We’ve noticed that in her advanced years, the wounded kitty has been less than cat-like - failing to correctly judge the distance between a chair-back and a window sill, jumping, and dropping down the gap. It’s fun to watch; I point and laugh as she pokes her head from behind the chair, looking at me as if to say, “Tell anyone and I’ll poop on your beard trimmer.”

Jerry’s theory is that she did this once and hit herself on the sharp corner of a metal planter we have next to the window. Poor kitty. The grossest thing the vet said yesterday: “I opened up the wound to let it drain.”

Main Street, Eureka Springs is a very strange amalgamation of:

• Gays
• Rednecks
• Harley riders
• Hippies
• Christianity gone wild

Next to a jewelry shop with a rainbow flag, attended by a skinny, goatee’d gentleman, sits a coffee shop attended by a woman with dreads unafraid to let her underarm hair grow free, which sits next to a shop with t-shirts with slogans like, “If you think this THIS is hot, wait until you feel the fiery depths of hell,” which sits next to a parking lot with four or five leather-chapped-and-be-jacketed, beer-gutted, handkerchief-as-headwear-sporting gentlemen leaning on their bikes and a Ford F-150 with a Confederate Flag in its rear window. You can see all these things in a two-minute span.

I had a pretty good time, and I have to give credit to Jerry and his sister. I took photos; you can view them in my flickr photostream.

Jerry and I are in our late thirties, early forties, when a person begins to be the same person in every situation. In our teens, twenties, thirties, I think we are more malleable, shifting to meet the needs of each group we invade. For instance, I’m comfortable talking about Project Runway with my conservative step-family, making off-color jokes about the contestants. In my twenties I stayed buttoned, afraid to broach any subject that might remind them of my sexuality. Now, Jerry and I still dress differently for each group we mix with, but we aren’t afraid to be ourselves.

That’s not necessarily a good thing.

Two weeks ago we attended a formal birthday celebration for a ninety-five year old matriarch of the family. We wore suits and ties, and we drank - two or three glasses of wine - enough to exacerbate our new-found sense of familiarity.

Talking to a cousin I hadn’t seen in ten years:

Me: So, how are you? How’s life treating you?

Her: Well, you know I’m a proud mother of two. They take up a lot of my time. [Husband] is doing bridgework.

Me (thinking): But I really want to know what YOU’RE doing.

Me: So really, what are YOU doing? What’s making YOU tick?

Her: Well, you know. Kids are a full-time job. Between shuttling them between gymnastics and school and errands. There’s not a whole lot more time for me to do much else.

Me: No hobbies? Nothing?

Her: My kids. I love my kids.

Me: Huh.

Then later I let out a guffaw when another cousin flubbed a toast to the matriarch. According to Jerry it sounded like the beginnings of whale song.

Jerry and I have been watching Bravo’s Top Chef. At the end of each episode, three or four judges sit behind a long table and tell the remaining contestants what they did or didn’t do right. One of the contestants constantly had her head on the chopping block. She scowled. The judges judged and she scowled. She pinched her lips and folded her arms and scowled. She wore crocs, had a nose ring, a short hair cut, and she was surly. In other words, she screamed lesbian, though she did not, nor did anyone else on the show, say so. We shared our Top Chef love with the people at our dinner table.

Person to my right: Isn’t it great? Those meals they make look so good.

Jerry: I know! We love the judges table at the end.

Person to my right: That’s always great, but what is with that one that looks all mean?

Jerry: I know! Everyone else is being all calm, taking the heat, and that angry lesbian stands up there all mean.

Person to my right: Um, yeah. That angry one. I just don’t get her.

Jerry: Right? The camera pans across the contestants and there’s that angry lesbian.

Person to my right: That angry one.

Jerry: That angry lesbian.

Person to my right: …

Jerry: Lesbian!

Besides those three things, we generally stayed out of trouble, which was nice.

Jerry planned the best. birthday. ever. He warned me in advance to keep the day open, so I did.

Here are the events of the day, in theoretical order:

• Woke up. Made my own breakfast because Jerry loves his squishy pillow and cannot be moved in the morning.
• Made my morning coffee and poked him with a stick.
• Finished reading the announcements over the p.a. “Congratulations to Mrs. Claudia’s class for their win in the Tri-County Flame Throwing Competition. They took home the Golden Singed Eyebrow.”
• Threw a cat on Jerry.
• When he woke up, he brought me my presents: lovely Bodum coffee mugs, saucers, and the news that we would be spending the night in a historic Dallas hotel that I’ve loved since I moved here.
• Worked out. Checked into the hotel.
• Saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of Who-the-Hell-Thought-Shia-LaBeouf-Could-Pull-Off-a-Marlon-Brando-Impression?* on an overstuffed loveseat, under a thick blanket, with our feet propped on an ottoman. Ate Junior Mints and Tangerine/Lime Soda. (Not a good combination by the way. Unless you thrill to alternately puckering and feeling your teeth vibrate.)
• Napped.
• Napped some more.
• Flipped through the Garden & Gun magazine that was provided for us in our lovely suite. At first I was all, “Wuh?” Then I was all, “This I gotta see. How does a magazine manage to combine these two seemingly disparate hobbies?” Then I was all, “I fucking hate the south.” Then I saw Jessica Simpson on the cover of D Magazine, and I was all, “Oo! Jessica Simpson!”
• Went to an awesome dinner that featured muddled cucumber, a waiter with too many hand gestures (I’m all for a good wave of the hand in the direction of a drink menu. I’m not in favor of every sentence being accompanied by florish of the wrist.), a short rib dish that I thought would be something else, an upside-down key-lime pie with candied lime zest, and cheese.
• Watched Family Guy.
• Slept.

There may or may not have been shennanigans during any or all of the above, but I’m not telling specifically when or where those shennanigans may or may not have been. As I said, it was the best. birthday.ever. Yay, Jerry!

*Can someone tell Spielberg or Lucas that, in 2008, motorcycle drag is associated more with Tom of Finland than The Wild One?

The plan was that this blog was going to be my gateway to happiness, a distraction from my job. Instead it pointed out that that distraction was really, really distracting. And I got a slap on the wrist for it. Then months and months crawled by with me struggling to maintain interest in this side project. And I found other distractions - a literature class, working out, eating better. Lately I’ve been concentrating on finishing a graduate school application.

All this to say, I acknowledge that Balding Angrily is struggling to maintain life. For the two people that may be reading this, thank you for sticking around, and I haven’t given up. I see a future for BA, possibly as a very specific kind of gay porn website - bald men with twisted, red faces. Though that kind of porn is readily available, my porn would really, really focus on the bald and the angry. Just like the foot fetish websites feature pictures taken from the ground level with foreshortened legs and humongous feet, mine would feature pictures taken from above the veiny, hairless foreheads of my models.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from all of us here at Balding Angrily Central. Here is my final Christmas thought for you:

Saturday night Jerry and I had ice cream shakes because of this review. My favorite part:

Grilled Jalapeño Relish: Hey, Pickle Relish!

Pickle Relish: Yeah?

Grilled Jalapeño Relish: Fuck you.

Verdict: Great shakes. Jerry had a cake batter shake and I had a brownie/dulce de leche shake. His was better.

Hot Dog Server: Made with real cake batter.

Jerry: Mmmm. Wait. It doesn’t have raw eggs in it right?

Hot Dog Server: No raw eggs.

Jerry: (Laughing though no one else is): Good! Hate to get the salmonella!

Hot Dog Server:…

Me: Your transformation into your dad is almost complete. When you start wearing the belt line of your Wranglers around the midpoint of your butt cheeks, you’ll have crossed over.

Gimme-gimme _more. Gimme _more. Gimme-gimme _MORE.

Say what you want about this week’s Britney/VMA/Chris Crocker hubub; her robots can create an insidious brain-worm. Given this particular one is tied to a moment of infamy, I say she’s already made her comeback.

Chicago is…

It’s New York City without the people spitting on you. It’s my new favorite city. We stayed near Rush and State, the center of the hip-and-cool-party-people night-life. The weather was beautiful. Birds were singing, police gave out candy instead of tickets, and pan-handlers smelled like flowers. When we got back, I was ready to pack everything and move up there.

We had a waiter that told racist jokes. We had a cabby that got all scrunchy when we wanted to pay with a credit card. We had a tour guide that took us aside and told us in a hushed voice all the latest hot gossip about Frank Lloyd Wright. Jen-An regaled us with poop stories. Owen didn’t know how to lay on the beach and waste away. He got flustered and had to “do something.” I met some fellow Filmspotters, and ate a Mediterranean mound of chicken wrapped in phyllo. We got in-room massages in which I learned that my hands and forearms are the most intimate places on my body a person can touch.

And we ate Riesens along with lots and lots of other good foods.