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It strikes me that, on the rare occasion that I publish a bit of email on this page, it may look like I trash everyone who contacts me. I don’t. I think I tend to publish email which is negative simply because it looks a little self-absorbed to publish all the “you rock” and “I love you” messages. In fact, I rarely publish any of it, positive or negative, unless it strikes a chord related to something I want to write about.

I’d imagine that most people don’t really care about my email one way or another, but I’m sorry if the quotes I use roughly once a year make me sound particularly nasty toward readers or anything. I usually only respond harshly or sarcastically when someone is either:

  • Really idiotic or obnoxious to me first (in which case I have a really short fuse), or…
  • Seriously overreacting to some passing reference (which causes me to do pretty much the same thing they did), or…
  • Taking something competely out of context after reading one page of the site (like assuming I’m a right-wing straight homophobe when I’m, in fact, a queer homophobe with leftist sympathies).

Birthday Photos, Finally

In case you care, here are pictures from my birthday bash at Tad’s 12 days ago. Sorry for the delay, and thanks to Sarah for these, because the pictures I took really sucked…

 

It was fun. We had a flesh-based feast at Tad’s, followed by dessert at David’s Deli, both of which are becoming traditions. Met some great people, has good converastion, and actually put faces with several names. I did not, alas, do the nasty with an 18-year-old as planned, but I was happy with the evening all the same.

Yer humble host’s annual birthday picture #36…

A Break

Leaving town for a few days tomorrow. I may have someting exciting or interesting to say when I get back. I make no promises.

I’m thinking of taking a break from these front page journal entries for a little while. Those of you who have been reading them lately might get the feeling that I really did this about three months ago. I’m not sure what happened. For one thing, I got a little lazy. I haven’t had much to say. And it could just be that my life isn’t particularly interesting these days and I haven’t been faking it very well.

I should rephrase that. My life is quite interesting to me. I just can’t imagine it being all that interesting to anyone else right now. Not that it was necessarily all that entertaining to begin with.

So I’m going to spend a little time concentrating on other things, I think. I’m going to work on updating, editing, and significantly re-working the “innards” of this site, for starters. I’m also going to try to do some writing off-site. I may even do the occasional journal entry if the mood strikes and I actually have something to say. But I’m not making any promises about that right now either.

You never know. Inpsiration might strike in just a couple of days. It may take longer. This is not a retirement announcement. It’s just a little vacation of unspecified length.

If you’ve just gotta have that journal fix right now, you might check out some links or even some re-runs.

I’ll be back soon…

To Redding

 

Most people just sort of assume it will get cooler as you get closer to the mountains. Most people haven’t been to Redding in August. It’s a great place, but it’s hot as hell there. When I arrived on Friday afternoon, it was 100 degrees. It got even warmer on Saturday. This was the first two-night road trip I’ve taken in a while, and it was much more fun. I had plenty of time to see everything and even do a little reading.

Friday afternoon’s drive took me through Farifield (Chick-Fil-A) and then Williams and Willows (just to see what was there). I was beat by the time I arrived in Redding and I checked into the first Motel 6 off the highway, which was an expensive mistake. But I figured it would be a good weekend when “Keeping Up Appearances” just happened to start as I turned on the TV.

 

After a quick dinner, I went exploring in an old Safeway, marveled at the neon motels on old highway 99, visited California’s only ShopKo, and drove through what was left of downtown.

 

Heading down old 99 south of the city, I made a wrong turn from hell and ended up on some godforsaken winding road to nowhere. Being a guy, I didn’t ask directions. Not that there was anyone or anyplace to ask anyway. After a while I got out of what I later learned was something called “Churn Creek Bottom” and headed back for the Motel 6. On the way, I passed not one, but two sobriety checkpoints which convinced me I was way too tired to go out that night, so I read my book and went to sleep.

In Redding

 

I woke up early Saturday and did more exploring after moving from the expensive Motel 6 to the cheap Americana Lodge downtown. It’s a nice enough place, even though that the air conditioner smelled funny, the TV was in the closet, and one of my night tables was a dorm-size refrigerator.

My new digs only set me back thirty bucks and provided the twin benefits of being a block from the queer bar and next door to a skateboard shop. This would, I figured, allow me to get sexually frustrated in the afternoon and to pick up a willing outlet for it that night. Redding is full of scruffy, adorable, lost-looking boys. I like that in a town.

 

I covered a lot of ground Saturday, from Red Bluff to Anderson, from Shasta to Shasta Lake City to Shasta Dam, and from one end of Redding to every other end.

 

After driving around a lot, I decided to walk some, and I visited the creepy Redding Mall. This was one weird place. Essentially, the city put a roof over about three blocks of Main Street downtown, a misguided act which other small towns (Rock Hill SC) also committed in the 1970s. If “saving” downtown was the goal, it didn’t work. The mall was almost empty save for a half-stocked Rite-Aid (which hadn’t even bothered to take down its old Payless Drugstore signs inside) and a collectibles store.

 

I had dinner at a place called Buz’s Crab, which might be my favorite restaurant north of Sacramento now. It’s a cheap place specializing in (surprise) seafood. Loved it. Reminded me of Libby Hill in North Carolina, which is a good memory to have.

 

I tried to take a nap. I didn’t succeed and I watched The Seven-Year Itch instead. Hit the Club 501 on Center Street at about 11:00. There were about 10 people there, which I guessed was about half the queer population of Redding. The bartender, who was nice and bought me beers, told me the sparse turnout stemmed from the fact that every Sodomite in town had been at the pride festival in Chico all day.

It was a nice bar, tiny and (legally) smoke-filled. There was a juke box with the requisite sucky faggot disco which I often forget is so common outside the city. The crowd was friendly and some of it was even attractive. The bartender told me that the building housing the bar had originally been Redding’s first hotel, and later its first brothel.

Getting laid seemed less and less worth the effort by 1:00, so I went home and slept. I stand by my decision.

Redding, Chico, Paradise, and More

 

I checked out of the motel by 10:00 on Sunday, checking carefully for lice, and grabbed a quick breakfast before heading south toward Chico. When I left I-5 at Red Bluff, I left freeways behind for most of the day.

 

Chico was less exciting than I wanted it to be. I expected there to be cute college boys (like the one from the Doggie Diner) everywhere, especially since classes were starting Monday. There weren’t many, so I drove to Paradise, which proved less idyllic than I’d imagined. It wasn’t a bad place, just not a terribly exciting one. Ditto for Oroville. I wanted to look around Marysville and Yuba City some more, but it was getting late. I’d been there before anyway.

 

For some stupid reason, I decided to take I-80 home rather than my usual Sacramento-SF route through the Delta. I realized it was a mistake as I found myself doing about 15MPH through Vacaville. I finally got off in Fairfield and just drove through town. Things got better south of Vallejo and it was alarmingly traffic-free through Berkeley and Emeryville, until I hit the Bay Bridge. But by that time, I was so glad to be enshrouded in fog that I didn’t even care.

 

Random thoughts on Redding:

  • It’s a very white place and people sound like they’re from Minnesota. Fortunately, it’s more white trash than white yuppie.
  • I love the fact that there’s only one Starbucks downtown and it looks a little seedy, housed as it is in a former Long John Silver’s.
  • “Fast food” is an oxymoron here.
  • Redding and the surrounding area should be sort of a resort destination, but there didn’t seem to be any tourists anywhere, even at Shasta Dam (which was basically deserted).
  • Housing is just as cheap as you imagine it would be.
  • It sure is nice to see some trees scattered about, not to mention a landscape which isn’t quite so brown. Oops, I meant “golden”…

I wouldn’t want to live there, but I’ll probably go back to visit. It probably won’t be August when I do so.

 

The Weekend

Things I shouldn’t have had to deal with this weekend:

  1. Seeing Rick Schroeder wearing leather pants on a VH-1 special. Not only was he making the mistake of sporting such inappropriate trousers, but he was also wearing them with (blecchh…) a wool sweater. That’s so very, very wrong. My pronouncement du jour: from now on, anyone wearing leather pants in my line of sight MUST (a) be a rock star, (b) be performing on stage, and (c) be clad at MOST in a tank top or torn T-shirt. Anyone not meeting all of these simple criteria runs the very real risk of looking like a complete moron. And yes, patrons of queer bars included are included, thanks…
  2. Two mildly insomniac nights in a row (no doubt from thinking about people other than Jim Morrison wearing leather pants)…
  3. The cute boy with the mischievous sneer at My Place Saturday night who I would have fucked all night had he not, within five minutes of meeting me, gone into way too much detail about the 15-year-old he’d gotten high with and screwed recently at a rave. If he’d saved this revelation until, oh, an hour or two into the conversation, I might possibly have dealt with it, but jeez…
  4. The two or three complete strangers who bored me tremendously by babbling on about their assorted recent drug experiences. I don’t get high, I really don’t give a fuck, and I’m not going to give you a knowing, conspiratorial wink no matter how much of a chemical catastrophe you mistakenly believe me to be, OK?
  5. The asshole in the BMW (redundant, I know) on Highway 101 today who, as I was passing another car and doing 80MPH, ran directly up my ass, and then, as I signaled and began to move right so he could go around, proceeded to pass me on the right, keeping me from getting out of his way and almost causing a 5-car pileup. And he seemed genuinely shocked when I gave him the finger…
  6. The thousands of Silicon Valley wankers who think their ability to afford an overpriced car somehow makes up for their complete inability to drive it correctly…

Randomly Thursday

I feel a little dirty. I accidentally landed on Big Brother tonight while changing channels during a commercial. I saw about thirty seconds of it before I could get back to “King of the Hill”. Now I can no longer say (with a nice blend of smugness and haughtiness) that I missed all the stupid reality shows of the summer of 2000.

More stuff I could do without this week:

  • The current SF weather. It’s not all that terribly hot during the day (although it’s hotter than I like), but it’s also not cooling down at night like it should. I am not amused. I am also not sleeping.
  • The “Facts of Life” marathon on Nick-at-Nite.
  • Bad news about a friend I haven’t talked to in very many years.

Better news: my mom’s coming for a visit in a few weeks. I actually have room for her to stay here now, so I get a full-week visit. I probably won’t take her to the corner sex bar, but it should be fun anyway.

And now for an ethical question (gosh, aren’t we jumping around today?):

Supposing you used to have regular trysts with someone in a tearoom when you were in college. Supposing you had an awful lot of fun together on many occasions, even shared many of the same fetishes, and even made a little video together with your Fisher-Price camcorder. Even though you visited each other’s houses a couple of times, you didn’t officially know each other’s names. It was a tearoom thing, after all.

But supposing you (that would be me) really did know the guy’s name and just happened to do a Google search and find that he’s currently working as a college professor and thus has a very available email address. You’re sure it’s him (there’s a picture).

Do you contact him, offering to send him a copy of the video you promised him ten years ago and telling him you wouldn’t mind making another one the next time you happen to be in the same state?

What would Miss Manners say?