Honest Conversation Is Overrated
Actual Human Interactions Witnessed Or Overheard
In Twentieth And Twenty-First Century America
In Twentieth And Twenty-First Century America
Comrade: Ewww. Someone just messaged me, "You are a sexy elf, *come* sit on my lap."
Me: Eww, indeed. Comrade: Should I ask him what kind of elf, I look like? Christmas elf? Lord Of The Rings elf? I shiver. Not in a positive way. Comrade: What? Me: Back when I was living with Alvin, one of the drunks at The Cantab met him, and then asked me if I picked up all my boyfriends in the woods. When I asked what he meant, he said that he always had to check them for pointy ears. At first I wondered why there were Vulcans in the woods, but then I figured he meant elves. Of course, this same drunk then tried to sexually assault Alvin, and sent him a series of increasingly psychotic text messages, so I don't want to give him any sort of credit for..." and I trailed off because I had no idea how to finish that sentence. Comrade: So I'm elfin? Me: I don't think so. People also used to tell me that everyone I dated looked like a middle-aged lesbian. And I don't think that's the same thing as elvish. So people are just dumb, judgy, and think they're funny. Plus, you're six feet tall. Comrade nodded, then climbed out the window and journeyed north into the forest to steal babies and kill some orcs with his longbow on his way to the North Pole to make toys just like all of the other middle aged lesbians I know.
0 Comments
My first Thanksgiving with Comrade's side of the family was a blast.
It did reach the point where people had imbibed just enough wine to say "So, are we allowed to talk about politics?" And the conversation was an entirely agreeable discussion about trying to be optimistic in this era of powerful people with no sense of empathy. There was no shouting, no awkward silences, I don't even think anyone cursed. And then one of Matt's cousins turned it into discussion about how at their school, instead of doing a mock election, they do a project where each class has to come up with an amendment to the constitution and present it to the ret of the school. There was a body autonomy amendment, one that returned voting rights to felons depending on the severity of their crimes, extending voting rights to people over eighteen, regardless of their citizenship, 50% millionaire tax, mandatory solar power for public buildings, mandatory police oversight, and lots of cool ideas. Comrade: "Remember when we went to Vegas, and my mom asked if we were going to get married while we were there?"
Me: "Yea." Comrade: "She didn't ask if we were going to get married in Cleveland." One of the big draws when we moved to this house (don't worry, this isn't going the way things usually go when I start thinking about living situations), aside from having our own laundry machines in the basement, was proximity to a locally owned diner.
I think diners are fine. Comrade thinks breakfast is The Best Ever Possible Meal, and would eat there daily. The first six months we lived here we went twice a week. It's a perfectly fine diner. The food is acceptable. The service is tolerable. They don't make anything great, but you're also not likely to find a mouse head in your eggs benedict (though, if you did, it would at least be less bland than usual). While we were in Vegas we went to three separate places that did great breakfasts, and thus any desire I had to go to the diner vanished. I'm no linecook, but I can make eggs better than them. They only serve waffles on weekends, we have a waffleiron seven days a week. Beverage selection at almost any diner sucks if you don't like coffee (and it's never good coffee, anyway) and/or orange juice. Any form of juice I can get from any grocery store is accessible to me at home. Really, the only reason to go to the diner is because it is almost always filled with The Worst Customers, and it's sometimes fun to take notes on them. Somewhere, a few months back, I have 3/4 of a post of some of the most batshit dialogue I've heard outside of a comic book store or a poetry slam. Like, some real treasure trash opinions. Nothing politically problematic, just absolute horrible takes on mundane subjects being discussed by four people who probably get a lot of food thrown at them in public. Last month, there was an incredibly awkward gay date happening in the booth behind us, where one person was so obsessed with being cute and charming, that I had to close my eyes and breathe slowly to keep from hurling a napkin dispenser at him. Many times in the last few weeks, Comrade has woken up and suggested the diner, and I've said I'd think about it. But by the time I came to a decision, he'd eaten, so we didn't go. On Friday, we went in. I didn't recognize any of the servers besides the person I assume is the owner or day manager, and we were directed to a table. Nothing really happened. Nobody around us was loud and awful. Our mediocre food came at roughly the amount of time it should take to prepare mediocre food. We finished it, caught some pokemon, talked about our upcoming trip, and were thinking of leaving when our server led an older white couple toward the table and said "Is this table okay?" And the old white lady let out a sigh that only someone who imagines she deserves servants, and secretly thinks antebellum times Weren't That Bad, can muster and said "I suppose it will have to do." I put my phone down and took my jacket off. I debated ordering another Coke. They didn't say much of import for a couple of minutes. She mostly complained about someone named Lucy who was "just exasperating." (I'm sorry, Lucy, I'm also certain it isn't you.) And then the server came over to take their order, and Granny Entitlement said "Can you change the music? It's so loud. Can't you put on some smooth jazz?" Y'all. Y'all. I didn't like the satellite station they were playing. It was folky garbage from the 1970s. But I get the appeal of it. It's fairly indistinct. The songs blend together. They're recognizable to people above middle age. And they sure as fuck aren't loud. I'm pretty sure it was all acoustic. The thing is. If she was 70 now, (maaaaaaaybe she could have been early 80s?) then this is the music that was out in her twenties or early thirties. So, it's not like "I Don't Understand This New Music." And she didn't say "I"m sorry but Paul Simon once attacked my sister with a toaster, and Leonard Cohen sounds like someone put the record on the wrong speed, could you please put on some Motown or Broadway musicals?" She basically said "Any music with any sense of artistry sounds Loud to me, and I won't be forced to listen to it. So I'm demanding this restaurant find a station that plays music based on one of America's truly original art forms. But don't play the original stuff. That was made by (and who knows what she'd say her, but it would probably be innacurate, and it would defnitely be problematic). Nay. Play the subgenre populated almost exclusively by white people who subsist solely on porridge and raisins and who don't realize that noodling on a saxaphone while turning in circles is cute when an otter does it but a human caught doing it should be as ashamed as if they'd been caught masturbating to pictures of themselves photoshopped near famous landmarks. Spokem word poets shouldn't really shit on performers from other genres, but I feel like Smooth Jazz musicians are a safe target. Nobody should force an entire restaurant to listen to smooth jazz at 2pm on a Friday. The server said she didn't control the radio, but she'd see what she could do. We waited. For a brief, Wonderful moment, the Ramones "Blitzkrieg Bop" played, and I imagined Betina Neverworkedforaliving having an aneurysm and dying right there in the diner. But, alas, after a mere verse, the music changed to smooth jazz. "You know," I said to Comrade, "We don't work here. We could totally walk by their table on the way out and say 'People like you shouldn't be allowed out in public. I bet your grandkids can't wait to put you in a really cheap nursing home.'" (This is something I would obviously never actually do. But I do love imagining doing it.) Comrade nodded. "It's not like they're going to tip the server anyway." But we just put our coats on and left, though I did eyedagger the woman and shake my head at her. I hope I gave her something she spent the rest of the day complaining about to her husband. I've been living with Selina for most of the last 14 years. She and Goose each have/had their bad habits but they never understood counters/tables or eating food that wasn't in the bowl. I couldn't train them with treats because they would only ever eat the treats when it was placed in their bowls.
Polly gives no shits about counters or tables. If she can stand on it, she's going to jump on it and see what's there. We tinfoiled the entire kitchen counter for a week and a half before I saw that she was still jumping up on the counters, just not when we were in the kitchen watching her, so I removed the tinfoil. But now that Selina has seen Polly on the tables, she has started hopping up on tables. And she has seen Polly investigating plates and bowls so now she does it. (She still HATES Polly but she's learning from her.) Friday night/Saturday morning, Comrade and I woke up to a crash. Comrade wandered around and came back with the report that Selina had knocked a spoon off the living room table. This was not the case. She had, in fact, hopped on to the living room table and pushed off a bowl that had been in the center of the table. Who cares? I grew up with ugly blue 1970s Greek inspired (but definitely not actually Greek) plate and bowls. They were grey with cauliflower inked plants. Plates aren't a big deal to me. I'll eat off napkins, paper towels, paper plates, plastic plates, and ugly blue 1970s Greek inspired plates. It doesn't matter. At some point in the 90s, my family upgraded to modern white plates and bowls with a dark blue rim. I don't remember any plates from when I moved off the Cape in 1999 and when I moved to Cambridge in 2011. And I only remember the dishes from The Crooked Treehouse because they were the aforementioned 90s dishes gifted to me by my father. When I got back from Bad Times In Florida, 2019, many of my belongings had been put in storage, but the plates didn't make it. It's no big loss. All of the actually important things were rescued, and I could have totally gone back to that house until July 0f 2021 when they finally started taking the house apart (nobody went into that top apartment for over two years, my roommate's old AC hung out the window the entire time, and I could see my old bookshelves still standing in there from across the street) to get them if they mattered. When I finally got that crappy little apartment in JP, I had no furniture, and I didn't yet know that The Crooked Treehouse had been preserved while the family fought over which piece of shit owned it. You, my very cool friends, helped me raise enough money to afford/donated things like a bed, pots and pans, towels, and other things that hadn't made it out of The Crooked Treehouse, and that I couldn't really afford to buy myself (since my employer at the time stole thousands of dollars from me in wage theft, which he has decided he doesn't need to ever repay, but you know, he's a "nice guy"). My coworker, who is less a "nice guy" and more of a Good Person, was helping another friend empty their parents' apartment out after one of them died. She arranged and moved four dining room table chairs, a couple of end tables, two standing lamps, and a very comfy living room chair to my new place, which I've moved twice since then (and she helped me move both times). I also went through that apartment's cabinets and took flatware, glasses, and a set of 1970s yellow and white dishes called the Sundance pattern, which was in circulation for two years before being discontinued. I don't know why I like them. I'm not super into yellow, but I do like plates that feature geometry as opposed to flowers. They have also come with me through the last two moves. During our first few months together, Comrade broke one of the four bowls, and we both scoured The Internet looking for a replacement, which is when I learned they were discontinued almost half a century ago, and weren't around for very long. C'est la vie. Friday night, Selina broke one of the other bowls, which means there are only two left. (I think we have eight small plates, and six large plates with the same pattern.) Comrade has saved the pieces, but there's a dozen pieces, not just 2 - 5 so I don't see it being worth reconstruction. But I did go back online and saw that there were two auctions, each for a set of 4 dinner plates, 4 salad plates, and 4 bowls last year. One went for $500. One for over $1000. I'm not alone in liking that stupid pattern. (Don't worry, this doesn't end in me asking for donations to buy a fucking salad bowl. That's not where I'm at in my life.) While searching, I found THE LAST SUNDANCE SALAD BOWL ON THE INTERNET. (It didn't say that, but I looked. It's the only one I could find. And I couldn't find any in 2021.) $20 on Etsy. I bought it. But for $80, I could get a whole nice set of new dishes/bowls from the same company that made the Sundance set. They have three or four more modern designs that I could probably care about, given time. So why the Sundance nostalgia? A couply thing since I met Comrade fairly soon after getting them, and we've used them ever since? Something to focus on as a post-coma new life thing? I appreciate and like the chairs and tables, but wouldn't be at all sad to replace them. I don't know. I just know all this introspection is Polly's fault for teaching Selina new, awful habits. Selina is already a scratcher, but I try and catnip the scratching pads every week or so, which tends to get her to focus her sharpening there, and it's always worked. Polly rolls around in the catnip, and then goes to scratch the couch. I put scratching pads in front of the couch legs, and she pushes them out of the way to scratch the actual couch. Last night, I dreamed that we clipped her nails. What a waste of a dream. In a discussion where I mentioned that my family had a dog when I was very young but my mother was allergic to it, I mentioned that I didn't know whether the dog died or was given away. I only knew that I was told it "went to live on a farm".
Comrade: "The dead dog farm?" Me: "It's more of a dead dog petting zoo. All the dogs are really well behaved. There's, like, no barking at all. I know some people like to go apple picking at orchards in the fall, but my family always used to take our trips to the dead dog petting zoo. I think that's where we should adopt our next pet from. Think you can remember to take it out for a drag twice a day?" Comrade: "What is wrong with you?" Comrade and I have known, almost since we first met, that we are going to get married. I think, at this point, both his parents and mine also know that we are certainly getting married eventually. And, since we somewhat quickly decided we were going to Vegas, neither set of parents stopped asking us all week if we were married yet.
We are not married yet, and have made it out of Vegas unmarried. That was never the plan. And this vacation was meticulously planned (aside from Thursday, but that entire day didn't exist, remember). The problem with planning is that there are things you can never take into account (but, no, this post does not involve marriage of us or anyone else). For instance, we never got to see the fucken flamingos. Not a single pink feather showed itself despite Comrade dressing head to toe (and I mean Head To Toe ... he bought a flapping flamingo hat on our first night in town, and I designed him flamingo shoes before the pandemic started) in flamingo wear. We never got to see the flamingos. The only feathers were the razors in the horrid pillows that I will happily never sleep on again. Our plan was to meet some poet friends on Thursday. Unfortunately, Thursday, remember, Never Existed. So we decided Monday would be a real day, and we'd shoot for that. In the untilwhile was The Weekend. (Also, The Weeknd, and Everybody's Working For The.) I know there were adventures. I was there. But what did we --- OH. I love pools (yea, yea, yea, hot tubs). Whenever I vacation, I go somewhere with a pool. Last October, the pool in the house we rented was Infested with colonies of ants on strike. They floated in massive islands of floating corpses. It was impossible to rid the pool of them. So we didn't swim as much as I'd hoped. I'd wanted to swim at the Adults Only pool at our casino on Thursday. It's not an ADULTS pool. You have to wear a bathing suit. But no one under 21 is allowed. I'm not sure why. The pool is less than four feet deep, and filled mainly with White People drinking White Claw and bopping their heads to songs with lyrics they should never sing along to. I find a good rule of thumb to see if there is Institutional Racism afoot at your party is Are There More N Words In Your Music Than There Are People Of Color At Your Party? If the answer is yes, maybe your party is not very inclusive. We'd spent a great deal of time in line for the pool behind a gay couple in love with Comrade's flamingo outfit (he did not wear the hat to the pool, but the shirt, the shorts, the socks, and the shoes were present), but were angry when they were told they could not bring their "expensive" new vape into the pool grounds. We snuck past them while they griped, grabbed some towels, and found the only two empty chaise lounges in the whole pool area. Comrade did his crossword puzzle while I, UNHOLY GODFUCKERS, dipped into the pool. Apparently, when you don't have children to pee in your pools, they are Very Cold. I took Pool Duck out of my pocket, and attempted to take a picture of him but he does Not Float Well. He does squirt well, though, so when Comrade entered the SHITBALLS OF BEN & JERRY pool, I squirted him with Pool Duck, and swam away. Because the scene was Not Ours, we did a minimal amount of dancing (To The Windows....To The Walls) in the pool, decided to stay there at least as long as we'd been in line to get in, and then grabbed our towels and headed back to our room. Other things happened. I'm sure of it. We had pizza for dinner, and I spent the night writing. On Monday, we got up Comrade Late, which is impressively afternoon. We were too late for Der Nasty Egg (aka EggSlut), so we ended up getting really mediocre sandwiches at a sandwich place which I won't name, since part of the problem is I ordered the sandwich a way they wouldn't normally have prepared it, so it's mediocrity was My Fault. Then we grabbed a Lyft back downtown. You've noticed a distinct lack of gambling. I don't do it. Comrade wanted to it once. Start with somewhere between $20 and $100 and stop at Zero or Millionnaire Status. No slot machines, though. Poker or Blackjack. Something that requires work and skill. Instead, we played Vending Machine Slots, and we Won. For $5, I bought a random Sock Pack that turned out to be Flamingo Socks. So we Won At Gambling. I took some pictures of Jackpot Duck in an art garden, and then my poet friends showed up. Dinner was a blast. Poets are Great Poets and Great People, still. Our service was, um, well, Comrade and I are cursed, remember. But we had a decent meal at the bar where the Great Poets met, and talked for a couple of hours. It was glorious. You really should have been there. Then, the other gamble. As I've mentioned Several Times, I don't like burlesque, but acknowledge that much of that is I haven't been exposed (ha, ha) to professionals, but some experimental amateur stuff that varied from Probably Promising Somewhere Down The Line to Vision Is Overrated. One of my friends, who serves as a sort of Las Vegas Entertainment Ambassador, as well as a few other friends, suggested that we see a show called Absinthe. I balked. We'd done a lot of touristy things and while the museums were fun, the shows we'd chosen weren't for us. Comrade continues to be amused by how much I fucken hated that Beatles Cirque Du Soleil show, even though the acrobatics were astounding. I just enjoy either a story or No Story and their idea of narrative storytelling was middle school pageant garbage. But with beautiful acrobatics. Still, The Ambassador was adamant we'd like it, and arranged for us to get comp tickets. It was only a 90 minute show, and it was in a tent across the street from The Flamingo. I figured it couldn't be As Bad as The Beatles. Thank you, Ambassador. Absinthe was, along with the Neon Museum Main Tour, and Omega Mart, one of the absolute highlights of the trip for me. For Comrade, it was tied for first with the random woman who put her hand in front of his face and yelled "FUCK OFF, SKANK!" because she was either on or off a necessary medication. I don't know why that brought him such pleasure. I'm pretty sure the emcee for Absinthe was not the usual person. His was not the face on any of the press I saw, but Hell's Jello Salad he was amazing. He was dressed and talked like the carnival barker who used to co-own a comic book store I used to work at. Only instead of being exhaustin....actually, he was The Same Exhausting, but in the context of the show, it was great. His assistant, Wanda Wheels was like a filthy Psychic Tanya from the Amazing Johnathan show. They were perfect. The acrobatics were really on par with Cirque Du Soleil, except they were 1-3 performers at a time, instead of a dizzying and unwatchable amount of people distracting you. The narrative was spare but perfect. Yea, there was burlesque dancing. There was a couple who performed amazing roller skate acrobatics, there were three jugglers who were better than most juggling acts I've seen, there was a perfect pole dance artist who didn't even bother to set up a character because she had such presence that she didn't need to speak or have a complicated intro, she just dazzled, there was a chair stunt at the beginning of the show, and a fair amount of people contorting themselves while hanging in the air. The highlights for me were the German hula hoop guy who had no lines but exuded joy and hulaed the hell out of dozens of hoops, the Polish balancing act who morphed from a very different role to a homoerotic contortionist pair where the focus was contortion not humor. I also enjoyed the host and Wanda's banter. In particular, Wanda went on a long rant about the filthy things she was going to do the mother of someone in the audience, only to be interrupted by the host who asked the audience member about his mother who, of course, was dead. "It was sweet to think of her, though." Wanda deapanned. "Happy Mother's Day." There were also many audience interaction bits that bordered on or widely stepped over Offensiveness. Some things I would have crafted differently, but it mostly punched up, and the character being misogynist and homophobic at points fit with the rest of his personality. And most of it made me laugh, as it was intended. So it was easily the best Show we saw. We got back to our room, talked about it for a bit, and then packed for our Tuesday night flight. We got up Tuesday earlyish, stored our luggage for the day, and wandered back to Der Nasty E...EggSlut. Still as good the second time. We caught some Pokemon. Then we hit The Saddest Capitalist Portion Of The Trip. The M&M Store, where you can spend too much money making your own assortment of mediocre chocolate that all tastes the same no matter what color it is, anyway. We didn't buy anything. Then, the Coca Cola store. Long time readers might remember that Twice, I've gone to the Coca Cola in Disney Springs. Once downed the alcoholic flight of Coke drinks, and once downed the non-alcoholic. I ordered the non-alcoholic one (I'm not sure they sell the alcoholic one in Vegas) to split with Comrade, and we sat by the window and did Everything Wrong. A Coca Cola Flight is two trays, each containing twelve quadruple shots of various International Coca Cola flavors. If you do it (don't do it), start with Tray #2, which is mostly terrible, and end on Tray #1, which is at worst bland, but often good. Tray 1 starts with I Don't Remember, and winds its way to That Was Pretty Good. Tray 2 starts with Beverly (actually, its name) which tastes like someone juiced a Christmas Tree Air Freshener, stopping occasionally to spit in it. It's followed by something that tastes like cherry mouthwash, which is actually a Welcome Change despite it being otherwise awful. The third drink is a cucumber soda that really does wash away the terrible taste of the first two. It's not good, it's just cleansing. Then there are various okay to mediocre flavors until you hit the end. Sour Plum Cola tastes like someone is peeing barbecue sauce into your mouth. I can not, for the life of me, understand why they'd inflict this on people who Gave Them Money To Enjoy Themselves. If you have to drink it because you're at gunpoint or you need to atone for accidentally tossing someone's grandmother into an angry nest of Murder Hornets , do it all in one gulp. DO NOT SIP SOUR PLUM COLA, you will vomit. We stumbled our way to The Venetian, which we'd been meaning to get to. Along the way, people tried to sell us their CDs (who stil has a CD player in 2022?), complimented our shirts, and that one aforementioned woman called Comrade a skank for some reason. Our plan had been to do the gondolas. I expected it to be Disney ride cheesy, but it actually just looked sad. Want to ride a gondola down a fake canal in the middle of a strip mall designed to look like a generic town in Europe (seriously, if you can tell the difference between Las Vegas's Venice, and their Paris you deserve some sort of degree). We decided to just go to a food court, put something in our bodies that wasn't carbonated garbage water, and then go back to the Flamingo and charge our phones. Instead, we headed to the airport early, charged our phones there. And then grabbed something to eat. We went to a nothing bar place with eight food items, somewhat akin to the terrible place in JFK. But they had lobster bisque on the menu. I'm a sucker for it. Most place serve you a cream and sherry concoction, whisper the word "lobster" over the top, and send it out of the kitchen. There were Huge Chunks of lobster in my bisque. I was shocked. My salad was just a salad, and Comrade's pizza was just a pizza, but that bisque, while not some five star dazzling bowl was the second biggest positive surprise of the trip, after Absinthe. We paid our check just in time to board our flight, and y'all there was no third person in our row. We put Comrade's bag on the empty seat, and my bag under the empty seat, and we both have legroom, and neck pillows (seriously, these stupid neck pillows are more comfortable than seagull feather pillows at The Flamingo), and the wifi is free, which is why I prefer JetBlue to American, whom we had to fly on the way to Vegas for some reason. All in all this was a fun vacation, and the first one I've taken without poet friends in this millenium. While I would have enjoyed their company, and I still believe that renting a house is cheaper and more fun than staying at a hotel or casino, I'm glad we did this. And that we Did Not get married while we were there. You know how much I hate cliches. I spent my thirties distrustful of Open Relationships. Mainly because the people I knew who had them never seemed happy. Most of them either divorced or separated. People freaked out when unexpected pregnancies occured where the paternity was questionable. People got mad because an Open But Don't Tell Me Partner would violate that rule. Things like that.
The worst, of course, was Zuzu and her husband. Twenty-something years of an open marriage fell apart when he had unprotected sex in a Jacuzzi (has anything good Ever Happened in a hot tub?) and got a stranger pregnant. His solution was that they would be some sort of Sister Wives thing and all live in the same house and raise kids together. He was kicked out of the house almost immediately and they never reconciled. But he was the one who called me and let me know Zuzu had been found dead in her house. Nothing more violent than cancer. But I hadn't know she had cancer, as she'd received her diagnosis while I was in a coma. And we hadn't spoken for three or four years before that. Our open friendship had deteriorated as she grew more and more venemous towards the people I cared about. As this played out, another friend broke up with his primary partner when she got pregnant from another man. Only to find out a few years later, it Was his child but his partner wanted to raise the baby with someone else. Shit is messy, y'all. But I'm in my mid-forties now. I have been with more than my and your, and all our mutual friends' fair share of guys ranging from homophobically straight to offensively stereotypically gay, and everywhere inbetween. I am Comrade's first boyfriend. Fear not, this isn't a sad breakup story. Or a happy one. Calm down. OUR open relationship works great for us. We've lived together almost since we met. Every few months, Comrade goes on walkabout. It's pretty much building his own Insafemode Journals. I have never feared he was going to leave me for any of the men he's met. I know gay men. Most of us are garbage. We are Very Lucky together. I also have permission to walkabout. But my legs are So Tired. In Florida, last fall, we tried to set up some sort of threesome situation but we aren't interested in the same type of guy, which is obvious to anyone who's ever seen a picture of us. So nothing happened. We each talked to some potential partners. As you might imagine, the skinny, effervescent, twenty something year old gets more messages than the exhausted, overweight middle aged guy who hates everyone. But the percentage of messages that we receive that we are interested in are very similar. While Comrade anded up meeting some photographer who was nice and respectful until he was creepy (his story to tell, not mine), I met someone I'd been talking with for a few days. A chill guy in his thirties who was on vacation at Disney with his partner. They had a similar open relationship. He'd been skittish about us meeting at the house Comrade and I had rented but eventually relented. It was a tired trope when I was writing the Insafemode journals: His picture was ten or fifteen years old. For me, it doesn't matter how attractive you are. If you are so terrified of what you look like that you have to send fake or antique pictures, I don't feel comfortable even spending time with you, nevermind pursuing any sort of emotional or physical relationship. I let him have a sandwich (we had too many groceries) and then told him he had to go. That was in October. Since then, I haven't had the urge to meet anyone outside of our relationship. Grindr is hilarious to me. I keep thinking back to when Ben invited me over for dinner one night in Allston, and showed me his OK Cupid matches. There were none. "I've blocked EVERY gay guy in Boston." He bragged, fluffing his hair. "No one is good enough for me." This was patently untrue. But funny. I haven't blocked Everyone on Grindr but it is the thing I do The Most. Does a person's profile mention they wouldn't be interested in someone my age or size? Blocked. Why should I bother them? Does someone send me an unrpovoked naked picture or demand one from me? Blocked. Is someone just not my type? Blocked. Is someone aggressive or problematic? Blocked. Does someone have an incompatible kink? Blocked. There are so many great reasons not to waste my time trying to get laid. #1 is ... Comrade. I had no plans to do any sexual adventuring in Vegas, but we did decide to check for possible threesomes in Vegas, as there's a wider age spectrum here than in, say, Orlando. (We are not going to try it out close to home.) Nobody that was interested in us particularly sparked mutuality. But. It's been, what, a decade since I regularly updated The Insafemode Journals? But there are people out there who read them regularly and remember them. People who saw pictures of me that I posted for Coming Out Day or other events. Maybe once or twice a year, I get a message from someone who recognizes me. And such a thing happened in Vegas. Their opening message was unspectacular. Inoffensive. Fully clothed. Just a mention that I looked familiar. Which was funny to me because they looked familiar to me, too. But I knew why. They were in porn. Not a porn star. But someone who was in a couple of videos that were from a studio that amused me. Not aroused me. Amused me. The acting was terrible. The storylines were Awful. The camera angles were weird. His accent was spectacular. He could have been from the Midwest, Florida, Boston, England. His speech pattern needed a passport wherever he was. So I told him that I used to have a sex blog, and he admitted to having some videos and asked if I wanted a link. I declined. But we decided to meet up. I wasn't quite sure sex was going to happen. I had seen his porn many years to a decade ago, and his pictures look freakishly similar. I just expected him to look as different from his 2012 self as I do. We agreed to meet at the resort he was staying at at 9pm, while Comrade was going to have dinner with someone else. The thing was, this porn guy, Carter, was staying at Harrah's. I fucken hate Harrah's. Their signage is terrible. None of their employees know where anything is. And it was just as shut down as our casino because of the stupid the NFL Draft. But it was where he was staying, so I headed over there at 8:30, even though it was a 5-10 minute stroll. I texted him that I was on my way, and was unsurprised when he wrote back that he'd be late. I wondered if he was having second thoughts. My shitty sense of self kept thinking "I'm not his type at all. I'm way too old, fat, boring, etc. for this kinky porn star." But, like, many of his partners in those videos were Older Then than me Now. And he is also ten years older than he was in those videos, so Shut Up Self. I sat down at a bar near where we were supposed to meet. I ordered a soda but tipped like I bought a real drink, which caught the attention of the bartender. "Do you work around here?" He asked. "No. Boston. But I'm industry." He nodded. "Ok. Well, thanks." and then he turned his attention to a Very Drunk woman who wanted to find the "valley", which I'm pretty sure meant "valet". "Oh, it's..." he waved in a direction. "NO NONO NO NO NO." Drunk Lady scolded. "None of you know where Anything is. Just walk me there." "But I---" he looked around the bar, there were four customers and two bartenders. "Sure. I'll help you." I put down another couple of bucks. Because fuck that particular casino. He was too nice to work there. "Adam?" I heard. "Oh, hey Carter." I said, getting up. "Good to see you." "Likewise." he said. His voice was the same as in the videos. I had assumed that was a fake accent. Whoof. He was wearing a cast on his right arm. "What happened?" I asked, pointing to it. "Oh, I just had surgery. Glass." As though that explained anything. "Oh? Car accident? Walk into a sliding glass door?" I asked. "I forgot." He sighed. "You're a writer. It's just glass." "Oh. Ok." Long, awkward pause of doom. "What have you done so far in Vegas?" "Oh." I said. "We went to the neon museum, Area 15 and Omega Mart, we saw The Beatlles Cirque Du Soleil show.--" "Was that any good?" He asked. "I saw the Michael Jackson show last night, and I had No Idea what was happening. The plot was, I don't know. Maybe I'm just too stupid for theater." "Noooooo." I said. "The Beatles show had some connecting scenes but it made No Sense most of the time." "Did your partner like it?" "He thought it was okay." I said. "But he didn't love it, either." "How old is he?" I was not expecting to be asked. "23." "So you're sugar daddying." I frowned. "No. We each have our own jobs and share of the finances. I can't afford to be anyone's sugar daddy." "But you're in Vegas." he said. "So are you. And you're on a floor so high you have to have a special card and elevator access to get there." He almost smiled. "The view is pretty nice. Oh, don't judge the room. I'm usually military clean but--" he wagged his cast. "Of course." I said. He flashed his key at the door. A red light turned on. He flashed his key again. Same red light. "Fuck. Again?" he said. "I've got to call security again." "Ok." I said. I was assuming, at this point, that he wasn't into me, and was using his key on the wrong door. His way of politely getting me to leave. So I started texing Comrade. Comrade's Meanwhile Story is that the person he'd been texting decided to go to bed but wanted to talk later because .... he is from Boston. Sure. "Hi. This is Carter in room ... Yes. Yea. I got the new key but it doesn't work, either. Could you send someone up? Five to ten minutes? Would it be faster for me to go down there? Yea. Yea. Would I have to wait in line? I don't want to wait in line again. Ok. Five to ten minutes? Ok." He turned to me. "We've got to wait a bit. You're from Boston, right?" "Yea." "What happened to your acccent?" "I broke it." I said "I moved around for a while and it disappeared." I have never had a Boston accent. I'm from Connecticut and grew up on Cape Cod. "People always make fun of my accent." "Where are you from?" I asked. "Iowa." he said. Iowa? "Huh." "You were going to guess Florida weren't you?" I shrugged. "Gainesville, specifically." "That's where my mom's from." he said. "God, what is taking them So Long?" "It's only been about two minutes." I said. "Didn't they say it would be five to ten?" He sulked. "I wish they'd stop giving me broken keys." "Yea." I said. "This place is a steady shitshow." "I'm going to call them again." My turn to shrug. "Ok." "Hi, this is Carter from Room...yes. Do you know when you're going to be able to send someone up? We've been waiting a long time. Do you know how much longer? Should I just go down there? I just don't want to wait in no lines again. It takes so long. No. No. No, don't send a medical team. No, jesus, I'm fine. Ok. Ok. I'll go down. No lines, though, right?" Every flag in the building was red. His shirt was a red flag. His pants. His shoes. His accent. His impatience. Everything red. Everything flag. "We've got to go downstairs so I can get a new key." "Ok." I said, following him into the elevator. I don't remember what we talked about because I was thinking I should probably just leave. I was beginning to think the accent included some slurring as the effect of a substance. Couldn't place which one, though. It took less than a minute for him to get the key, and for us to get back in the elevator. "I don't know why they keep doing this to me? I paid good money, you know? Hotels are expensive here. In Iowa, I can get a room for thirty a night. Nobody visits me but at least nobody's breaking my keys all the time." We got out of the elevator and walked further down the hallway than we were before. It was 100% a completely different room than he'd tried to get into earlier. "Don't forget." He said. "My arm hurts, so it's a little messy." I am, at my best, a little messy. Clothes piled in one place, a nightstand covered in chapstick, breath mints, change, and books. A little messy. This was an addict's room. Three whiskey bottles that I could see. Clothes everywhere. The TV on some random channel about Las Vegas culture. Both beds absolutely destroyed. Condom wrappers (but not condoms) on the desk. I didn't see any paraphenalia, but I also studiously avoided the bathroom because I was pretty sure that's where it was. He took off his clothes. "Do you have any condoms?" This was not quite what I had expected. "No." I said. He shrugged. "I'll just go back downstairs." and shake my head a bit. "They must have condoms in the little convenience store by the front desk. Should I get lube?" "I'm allergic to lube." he lied. "Ok. Can I have your room key? Otherwise, I won't be able to get back up in the elevator." "Oh. I don't remember where I put my key. Did you see me put it down somewhere? I have this problem where I always lose things." I shut my eyes. Red flags. "In your pocket?" He produced two keys. "I don't know which one works." I plucked them both from his hands. Opened the door, and waved each of them by the door. They both worked, of course. There was never anything wrong with the keys. There was something wrong with the keyholder. I took the elevator down to the lobby, walked to the convenience store and took a picture of the condom display. "These are all lubricated." I texted. "Is that a problem?" "Nope." He texted back. "Whatever." I bought condoms and a soda, took the elevator back up. He was ass in the air. "Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh. Fuck me dadddddddddddddddddddddddddddddeeeeeee. Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaadeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee." I Hate Age Play Sex. There is no faster way to kill the mood for me. "Please don't say that." I said. "You want to be my coach?" "No." He turned around and looked at me. "Why are you still wearing clothes? What's the matter, I'm not young enough for you?" "What?" I asked. "I get it. I don't look like I'm twelve anymore so none of the fifty year old guys want to fuck me anymore. I should just kill myself." I threw the condoms on the bed. "You can keep these." "What, are you just going to go? Can't get it up because I'm so old, Mr. Writer?" "Here are your keys." I threw them on the bed with the condoms. "Don't lose them." "Oh, you're going to take care of me now? Don't want to fuck me, you just want to be my daddy?" I walked out his door. He did not follow. I texted Comrade. "Well, this went to super shit at the speed of drug addict. Can I come back?" "Yea." he texted back. "My guy bailed. Guess we'll have to debauch with each other." "I'm going to need a few minutes." "Should we meet for ice cream?" "Yes. That sounds great." I replied. "Can you at least come back and eat my ass?" Carter texted. "I'm horny and my arms no good." I blocked his number. I unblocked his number. I didn't want to be named in a porn not star's suicide note, even if it was just as Insafemode. Comrade was waiting for me in front of the ice cream/cupcake place. He kissed me Hello. "Waffle cones?" "Waffle cones." I said. The most I've ever noticed our cultural age gap is when, in a conversation about bands and artists from Australia, Comrade asked me who "Eenks" was.
It's pronounced "In Excess". Thursdays have always just been rumors. I've never seen one happen in real life.
Since our kayaking was cancelled on account of wind, we didn't have any concrete plans, so we attempted to wander around the strip but the NFL Draft Weekend had started. And the center of it was behind the casino we stayed at. It was difficult to get anywhere without getting crunched by a bunch of couch-assed, jersey wearing drunks who varied from crying by the elevators because they couldn't remember where they were staying to randomly shouting the names of their favorite twenty-something who ended up on their team to drunkenly falling down flgiths of stairs. Thursday never happened. We shan't discuss it. Friday was our downtown day. We had to walk through three casinos to get picked up because the NFL Draft had physically shut down our area so that no cars were allowed to pick people up or drop them off. This meant walking to Harrah's which is the only casino that I would love to see burned down, its earth salted so it can't be rebuilt. Their signage is deplorable, none of their employees knew how to get anywhere. An employee who, it turned out, was Within Sight of the Uber pickup, pointed us in the wrong direction. Salt. The. Earth. (The rumor that on Thursday we had a similar problem when two employees couldn't tell us where a restaurant inside the casino was can't be verified because Thursday never happened. I will just say that we twice walked by the restaurant on Friday when we just wanted to get a Lyft.) We grabbed brunch at a restaurant where we were mostly ignored by the staff. I already posted about it. Then we walked to Writer's Block Bookstore and Imaginary Bird Sanctuary. A well-decorated (literally, not militarily) store that had a thorough and impressive stock of poetry, horror, fantasy, sci fi, screenwriting books, scripts, cookbooks, YA books, Young Reader books, marionettes, blank books, birdhouses, fake birds, partial animal skeleton reproductions, and other things one must have when buying books. If you're ever in LV, you should go there and spend money. They also had a coffeehouse but we didn't partake. From there we walked to Container Park. It was a little lackluster compared to the last time I was there. Not bad, but very quiet. Apart from having a delicious slushy that completely froze my throat, it was uneventful. Friday is seeming uneventful. A quick jaunt to Fremont Street was disappointing. Like emotionally crushing disappointing. I had been warned that much of the cool stuff around Femont Street had moved down to Main Street but seeing it was just said. I don't even want to write about it. It's someone else's place to eulogize. We took a long walk to the Neon Museum at a slow pace, as we were way early. Like way way early. Very early. But we had budgeted an hour and a half for Fremont Street, and seven minutes was six and a half minutes too long. I had booked us for a the supposedly fancy newish tour at 7, and the usual tour at 8. (I'd never been on either but Comrade's Sister had recommended it before the pandemic when the secondary tour was Tim Burton themed.) We were there at 5:30. At 6:15ish, after I'd read all of the poetry books I'd bought at Writer's Block, a very nice employee asked if we wanted to take an earlier tour. I didn't really want to, as I wanted to take the regular tour when it was dark. It's a neon museum. So he looked at my ticket, and Freaked Out. Apparently, they'd booked some private show for the 7:00 secondary tour, and we wouldn't be able to join in. He got on his radio, called over another employee. Soon, there were four people passing my phone around, trying to figure out how I'd managed to book the tickets that way. In the end, they offered a chance to go sit in The Boneyard (I'll explain later) until 8, take the regular tour, and then do the secondary show at 9. We had been there since 5:30. There are only so many Pokemon to catch, and the staff very honestly let us know that the only things to do within walking distance were the Mob Museum and Fremont Street, everything else either being closed for the night or far away. So we hung out. The regular tour of the Neon Museum is totally worth that wait. Our guide (who was moving to New Mexico the next day because ... "the fucking economy" ... according to her boss who had been chief Freaker Outer about our tickets) was excellent. The tour is beautiful because of the art and the lights but also woke in a way that will upset your shitty Uncle Donald but impress you. There was a huge focus on the women and people of color who helped shape Vegas's sign history, and a talk about how the first integrated casino was built and the shitty reasons it closed within five months. There was also some discussion about the queer clubs, the bootleggers who struggled through Prohibition, and other cool things. I loved it. One old man huffed and scoffed a few times, but he was also the guy who was getting visibly and audibly upset when one of the other dozen people on the tour walked in front of him as he tried to take shots of every sign from every possible angle. We were just supposed to wait for his private photo shoot, I guess? Take the regular tour. If Brilliance is the secondary show when you go. Skip it. Brilliance is about a cool technology where someone has traced all the bulbs on dead neon signs, and programmed a computer to create a show where it looks like they're lighting up again. It was super interesting and about three minutes worth of impressive. It was a 45 minute show. First, we walked by a mural filled with some historical figures involved in the history of Vegas neon signs. Again, the focus was people of color, women, and queer men. This time, no one scoffed. But the guide was either very tired or very bad at his job. He just gave a very Over It vibe. When the show started it was .... Comrade described it as "A pretty competent middle school power point presentation." I thought it felt like watching a screensaver from 1996. The same eight signs lit up in similar ways for 45 minutes while songs about Vegas that you've heard in Every Movie About Vegas Ever Made played. Liberace, Elvis, Tony Bennet, Frank Sinatra, two modernish songs that weren't but could have been The Killers. It was super boring, and a waste of the technology. We ordered a Lyft back, forgetting about the NFL Draft. Our poor Lyft driver was stuck slowly orbiting the basic area of the Flamingo/The Linq/Harrah's before we just got out behind the promenade and walked back to our room. We hadn't eaten. We were so hungry. But the promenade and the casino were so packed with the kind of pathetic fandom that makes poetry slam groupies seem reasonable that we didn't want to go back out. I logged into DoorDash to order a pizza. FOUR HOUR WAIT. Cancelled the order. Ordered from a much closer Italian place. FOUR HOUR WAIT. We cancelled the order. I walked down to the food court. Each place had a pretty massive line of team jerseyed fucks*. I looked to my left and to my right, saw a drunk guy hesitating at a sub place, and I just walked up to the counter like I'd been in line, definitively ordered two subs and some drinks, and paid in about a minute and a half. Nobody in line noticed. The staff did not care at all. Then we ate our mediocre food and crashed. * - None of the football fans were ever rude in my presence. They were just drunk, clumsy, vomity, and taking up more space than was available. They were much better behaved and better smelling than the average Comic Con attendees. |
Categories
All
Archives
December 2023
|