Apologies to anyone who tried to hit the site but couldn’t on Monday. A strategically placed link at Suck.com resulted in a slight bandwidth catastrophe, blocking access for a good chunk of the afternoon and evening. I don’t envision a repeat performance. I appreciate the link, but jeez, you’d think they’d warn a guy…
This Waffle House in Burlington NC may be the only one in captivity which deviates from the standard brown walls and yellow roof prototype so common in the south. But even in its deviance, it’s still a chain prototype. It used to be a Sunoco station. That said, you’re now ready to read about my trip home to North Carolina a couple of weeks back. Finally. Enjoy.
If you’re inordinantly interested in my past life, you can also check out the lost journal entries from 1988 and 1989-1992 that I found at home, while dodging raccoons and squirrel shit. They come pretty close to filling a big gap in the series. Or you could just skip ’em.
Unrelated to the above:
I seem to have developed a strange sort of Christmas fetish this year. I’ve been listening to the music and watching the assorted cartoons. I have an urge to bake. I’ve even been contemplating buying a tree. I’ve never bought a Christmas tree on my own, although I used to decorate the elephant plant when I lived in Charlotte. I don’t think Irma would let me decorate her.
Maybe it’s because I probably won’t be going home for Christmas this year until sometime in January. Maybe it’s my newfound domesticity. Or maybe it’s because this will probably be my last one in San Francisco. I don’t know. All I’m sure of is that I really want an illuminated plastic snowman.
This is starting to creep me out just a little. A LOT of people (including my mom) lately have commented that I seemed to have lost a lot of weight. I figured they were just being polite. Then I went out to the corner queer bar last night and ran into a frind I hadn’t seen in a few months. He said the same thing, worrying, even, that there might be some health issue involved (the standard San Francisco reaction to weight loss).
Frankly, I think I’m as much of a lard-ass as ever, although I realized last night that I no longer own scales so I can’t really tell. God knows I still eat as horribly as ever, although I have been eating at home more lately, which does usually mean more vegetables. I haven’t been eating quite as much fast food, and I’ve just about sworn off booze. But I’m still quite sedentary, perhaps even more so than I used to be.
It’s a little difficult to figure out the truth here. Friends who see me every day or every week probably wouldn’t notice, and it’s not easy to arrange chance encounters with long-lost friends.
Now that I think about it, though, my pants aren’t feeling quite so tight today and my gut may not look quite so prominent. If I have lost a lot of weight, I’m glad, because I really needed to. But it sure would be nice to know how I did it, since I haven’t really been doing anything much differently than before. September and October were pretty rough months, though. Maybe I just sweated it off…
So now I’m contemplating losing still more weight, having a check-up (just in case), and selling my secrets to the world, as soon as I figure out what they are.
***
A little later same day. My friend Paula had the same “you’ve lost weight” opinion today as we headed for the thrift stores in Redwood City. I guess I believe it now…
Time for me to do one of those heinous millenial lists now. Sometimes I feel that my life has been a quest for the perfect pop song (among other things). So here’s a list. If it seems a bit heavy on the 1970s and 1980s, that’s because that’s when I did the most looking.
Keep in mind that these are not necessarily my all-time favorite songs and arists of all time. They’re just a bunch of really bitchin’ up-tempo, often over-produced pop songs. Whiny love ballads and metal masterpieces don’t count. The songs are also in no particular order other than alphabetical, except as categorized.
Let’s just say they’d make an amazing tape or CD compilation. Call ’em lightweight, if you will. I don’t care…
The Winner:
- “Starry Eyes” – The Records
The Runners-Up:
- “Glass Onion” – Beatles
- “You Say You Don’t Love Me” – Buzzcocks
- “Downtown” – Petulia Clark
- “Boys Don’t Cry’ – The Cure
- “Every Word Means No” – Lets Active
- “Georgy Girl” – The New Seekers
- “Cruel to Be Kind” – Nick Lowe
- “Driver’s Seat” – Sniff & the Tears
- “New Romance” – Spider
- “I Only Want to Be with You” – Dusty Springfield
- “Pulling Mussels from a Shell” – Squeeze
- “Incense and Peppermints” – Strawberry Alarm Clock
The Rest:
- “I Beg Your Pardon” – Lynn Anderson
- “Hello Dolly” – Louis Armstrong
- “Every Time I Think of You” – The Babys
- “Saturday Night” – Bay City Rollers
- “Norwegian Wood” – Beatles
- “One Way or Another” – Blondie
- “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” – Blue Oyster Cult
- “There’s No Other Way” -Blur
- “Take Five” – Dave Brubeck
- “What Do I Get” – Buzzcocks
- “Fame” – Irene Cara
- “Just What I Needed” – Cars
- “Ring of Fire” – Johnny Cash
- “Seven Year Ache” – Rosanne Cash
- “Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves” – Cher
- “Street Life” – Crusaders
- The Love Cats” – The Cure
- “Happenstance” The dB’s
- “Mack the Knife” – Bobby Darin
- “Punk Rock Girl” – Dead Milkmen
- “Sausalito Summer Night” – Diesel
- “Europa and the Pirate Twins” – Thomas Dolby
- “Hello, I Love You” – Doors
- “Girls on Film” – Duran Duran
- “Morning Train (Nine to Five)” – Sheena Easton
- “Stand or Fall” – The Fixx
- “Hey Saint Peter” – Flash and the Pan
- “New York Groove” – Ace Frehley
- “One Last Kiss” – J. Geils
- “Somebody’s Knockin'” – Terry Gibbs
- “Our Lips Are Sealed” – Go-go’s
- “Hold On” – Ian Gomm
- “Live for Today” – Grass Roots
- “Midnight Confessions” – Grass Roots
- “Let Me Go” – Heaven 17
- “Don’t You Want Me” – Human League
- “Things that Dreams Are Made of” – Human League
- “Whisper to a Scream” – Icicle Works
- “You’re One” – Imperial Teen
- “I Want you Back” – Jackson 5
- “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” – Elton John/Kiki Dee
- “Wives and Lovers” – Jack Jones
- “The Break-up Song” – Greg Kihn
- “Detachable Penis” – King Missile
- “Good Girls Don’t” – The Knack
- “Lotta Love” – Nicolette Larson
- “Room with a View” – Lets Active
- “Funkytown” – Lipps Inc.
- “Ways to Be Wicked” – Lone Justice
- “Summer in the City” – Lovin’ Spoonful
- “One’s on the Way” – Loretta Lynn
- “Into the Groove” – Madonna
- “Cliche” – Male Model
- “Gemini Dream” – Moody Blues
- “Right Back Where We Started From” – Maxine Nightingale
- “Everybody’s Talkin'” – Harry Nilsson
- “Flash Light” – Parliament
- “I Wanna Be Your Lover” – Prince
- “Wolves Lower” – REM
- “Send Me an Angel” – Real Life
- “Talking in Your Sleep” – Romantics
- “Neck on Up” – Todd Rundgren/Utopia
- “Set Me Free” – Todd Rundgren/Utopia
- “My Ex” – Sex Execs
- “Homosapien” – Pete Shelley
- “Strangers in the Night” – Frank Sinatra
- “Might as Well Be Walking on the Sun” – Smashmouth
- “Tainted Love” – Soft Cell
- “I Got You” – Split Enz
- “The Fez” – Steely Dan
- “Breakfast in America” – Supertramp
- “The Happening” – Supremes
- “Ballroom Blitz” – Sweet
- “Let’s Stay Together” – Tina Turner
- “They Don’t Know” – Tracey Ullman
- “Cantaloop” – Us 3
- “Gone Daddy Gone” – Violent Femmes
- “Do You Know the Way to San Jose” – Dionne Warwick
- “Lovely Day” – Bill Withers
- “Change Gotta Come” – X-Teens
- “Senses Working Overtime” – XTC
- “Generals and Majors” – XTC
- “For Your Love” – Yardbirds
I’m getting all the rest over the Thanksgiving weekend that I didn’t get while I was on vacation. What that means is that (a) I’m still way behind on the email and (b) there are no pictures and trip journals yet. Sorry.
Now, mind you, this doesn’t mean that I’ve been sitting by the TV for all of the past three days. In addition to the new stuff you see to your left, I actually dragged my ass down the street to the neighborhood bars on Wednesday night for my monthly visit. The bar scene was no less tepid than it’s been for the past year or so, but the night was saved when I ran into a visiting member of the web family (oh, let’s just call him “Bruce”) and a couple of his friends.
Worry not, my unintentional celibacy remains intact, but it was nice having someone fun to talk to, if a bit disturbing to realize that (courtesy of this site) there are people I’ve never met who are quite familiar with my life. Nice guy, though, which was a bit of a relief as I’d already broken the rules and given him a phone number, site unseen, since I figured no one would lie about having a degree in urban planning. I have one too, and I almost never lie.
Thursday brought a great Thanksgiving dinner with Sarah and Brad. There was turkey and dressing and veggies and wine, and I brought a pumpkin pie and a can of aerosol whipped cream. Before dinner, we watched football, which seemed very traditional (and I promised to skip all wry football comments here , even though I wasn’t going to make any anyway).
Afterwards, Sarah and Brad were kind enough to sit through a tape of last Sunday’s Fox cartoons which I’d missed while waiting for a shuttle at the airport. Then Sarah and I went for a walk to look at the sea lions. Sarah was quite horrified to realize that San Francisco’s 127th Gap has just opened very close to her building.
And today, I’ve done damn near nothing but scrub the bathtub and clean the refrigerator, which sounds like a lot but only accounts for about 45 minutes. I’m not sure what happened to the rest of the day.
I may hit the corner bars again tonight (twice in one month yet) because I’m so horny I could fuck the crack of dawn right now (pardon the Southernism). It won’t do any good, but at least I’ll feel like I tried…
November’s “Idiot of the Month” award is proudly offered to Rich Tafel and his pals in the Log Cabin Republican Club. Granted, this team of faggots would be shoo-in candidates for idiots of the DECADE. But they’ve made particular asses of themselves this month by courting George W. Bush and then expressing shock that he wasn’t interested in their advances.
Imagine that: a Republican candidate for President wasn’t interested in meeting with a group of sell-out gay Republicans. What a surprise. When will Rich and his merry band of Aunt Marys ever realize that the Republicans they so idolize would be thrilled if these particular suitors disappeared from the face of the earth.
The Log Cabin types remind me of gay men who spend their entire lives chasing after totally unobtainable straight macho men. They’re absolutely nuts about individuals who (by and large) feel nothing but contempt for them. If they’re drunk enough, they might let a fag suck them off, but they’re never going to return the favor, and they’re certainly never going to take one home to meet Mom.
Same with the Republicans: they may take money and support as long as the fags don’t expect any acknowledgement or support. Bush, has indeed stated that, while not agreeing to meet with them, he WOULD accept a donation or endorsement from the Log Cabin Club, thus qualifying him for the “Hypocrite of the Month” award. The really frightening thing is that, as the Republican front-runner, Bush probably will ultimately receieve an endorsement.
Or maybe the Log Cabin Republicans can all join the Reform Party and bend over for Pat Buchanan in a back room at the convention. Hope they don’t plan on getting near the podium, though…
Home again. Bags unpacked. Clothes put away. Car stowed in a relatively legal parking space. Ears still popping from the flight.
Coming shortly, essays and photos related to:
- Squirrel shit.
- Raccoons.
- Okra, collard greens, and sweet tea.
- A party in Dennis Hopper’s place which Linda Lavin and I were at.
- Sleeping in the same motel room with my parents.
- Condos, apartments, and even houses I could afford.
- Thoroughly adorable Bosnian young’uns.
- The Raleigh-Durham airport and the evils of air travel.
- A 50-year-old supermarket on Walker Avenue.
- Mom and Dad’s anniversary party.
- The iMac.
- Tearooms (or lack thereof).
- Cheap cigarettes.
- How much I don’t want to live in San Francisco anymore.
But I’m tired, so all of this will have to wait. I wouldn’t count on a lot of email responses for a couple more days either, but I’ll be working on it. Soon…
Lunch at the cafeteria in Burlington, and off to Raleigh and the airport. We said hurried goodbyes and I checked in at the front desk. At the metal detector, a guard (LIzzie Wright is her name, by the way) wouldn’t let me go through with my fake bullet necklace.
I wasn’t really so upset that she stopped me (even though she admitted she new it was nothing dangerous). I was upset that she was so rude and hateful about it, refusing to even let me sit it down while I went to get an envelope to mail it to myself. She obviously wasn’t concerned that it would explode or anything, otherwise she would have been worried when I threw it in the trash. Which I did, since I I didn’t have time to argue anymore.
This wasn’t a security risk and she knew it (she even said so). She just didn’t want to have her fat ass bothered by actually helping someone resolve a situation. Lizzie was nothing but a bitch and a control freak. Period. So I threw it away, thanked Lizzie for her southern hospitality, and got on the plane.
After paying $120 for long-term parking (cheaper than the tickets I would have gotten otherwise), I got on the freeway toward San Francisco. I flipped off two people on the way home, got tailgated three times, and got cut off twice. I suddenly had a strange longing to be back on Merritt Drive in Greensboro with its quaint little “aggressive driving enforcement area” signs.
Welcome home.
I slept as badly as I knew I would. On the way out of town, we visited Carolina Beach and stopped at a barbecue joint in Garner. I grabbed refrigerator magnets and cheap cigarettes at a huge outlet in Burlington. And we came home.
Dinner at the J&S Cafeteria (see a trend here?) and my Dad and I went back to Harris-Teeter so I could get more provisions. I washed clothes.
I really didn’t want to go. I felt like crap, and I wanted to relax a bit and spend more time in Greensboro. But I didn’t say so, and we left early for Wilmington. My cousin and her husband had purchased a building downtown (the Masonic Temple no less) from Dennis Hopper. They were having a party celebrating the opening of the theatre and roof deck on the fifth floor.
Interstate 40 between Raleigh and Wilmington is hideously boring. I nodded off a few times. When we arrived in Wilmington and checked into the Hampton Inn, I really wanted to sleep. I was also a bit leery of sleeping in the same room with my parents for the first time in a good twelve or thirteen years. But there’s no polite way to say “I don’t want to stay in the same room with you so I’m getting one of my own. I’ll pay”
Wilmington was nice, if a bit of a traffic nightmare. The historic district downtown has not yet succumbed to the twin pressures of Starbuck’s and terminal cuteness, although a bar called “Dot-com” was a bit off-putting. I found a great dusty old used bookstore and actually spent a few bucks.
We had dinner in at the Front Street Brewery. These places aren’t known for their food in general, but this place was just plain awful. I got jerk pork. Ever eaten jerk pork with no spices at all? I don’t think they even used salt.
The party was fun. There was a play. There was music. There was beer, but I didn’t have any because I already felt rotten enough. Linda Lavin was there, although no one could quite pick her out. The view of the Cape Fear River from the roof deck was amazing. I know this because the roof deck was also the smoking area.
After the party, my Dad and I walked to the Waffle house by the motel and had real food.