A ROOM WITH A JEW

     The plane ride to Athens was perfectly smooth until the last ten minutes when there was the worst turbulence I ever experienced. It felt like Zeus was using the plane for a salt shaker. The huge Cumulus Nimbus clouds outside the tiny window were the same ones that must have surrounded Mt. Olympus. I had to do something to stop the plane from crashing. I needed to sacrifice a virgin quickly, but my boyfriend Alex was the only one near me, so we were doomed. Are you supposed to pray to the Zeus or to God when your plane is approaching the runway at Athens Airport? Choosing the wrong one could be fatal.

     Every man who worked at the airport looked like Pericles, or what Pericles would have looked like if he sat around watching too much TV and drinking too much Uzzo. They weren't in as great shape as him but each man had that same regal profile which thousands of years hasn't softened. For the first time in my life my nose wasn't big enough to compete.

     The cab ride to our hotel took 45 minutes and I kept looking for the Acropolis the entire time.

“ I thought I would see it by now.” I told Alex, a little disappointed.

“ Don't worry. Be patient.” He told me as we got out of the cab.

     When we got in the hotel room and put down our bags, he told me he was warm and looked around the room. “ Gary, open that door and see if it actually leads to anything.”

"Oh my Zeus!"

I opened it and stepped out onto a huge patio with the Acropolis right behind it! I was speechless, or more accurately, stutter-less. “Is that close enough?” Alex came up behind me and whispered. He knew all along what was behind the doors and wanted to surprise me. I turned and hugged him then turned back to it and stared, and kept staring. If I cried it would have been really impressive, but being genuinely thrilled was good enough for me. It was an amazing site—first, the perfectly rectangle base carved atop the huge stone hill, then the Parthenon perched atop the base like a beautiful broken birdcage.

     I dragged myself away from the view and we went to eat lunch. Then Alex and I came back and 'pulled a Paris' again by sleeping the entire afternoon instead of going to any museums. My new temporary philosophy about traveling and museums is that 'if you can see it inside a book, why go inside a building.' I'm sure I'll look back on this in a few years and think it's ridiculous, but for right now it's very convenient when you're feeling too lazy to hop from museum to museum. When we awoke from our luxurious lamb-induced nap, we stepped out onto the patio and found the entire Acropolis lit-up like a sports stadium with a night-time game. Nothing else was lit around it and the huge, heavy stone floated in the sky.

     We didn't want to wait for the morning to climb to the Parthenon, so we left the hotel and just started walking uphill. The streets leading to the Acropolis were the original ones designed more for foot traffic than for cars, but one wonders how many merchants lined these small streets in ancient Athens as compared to the restaurants and tee-shirt shops now. After all, having the Acropolis with all its temples and amphitheaters, Athens must have been the world's first tourist trap.

     After turning a corner onto the first of these streets, we didn't make it five feet without the owner of a rug store calling to us.

“Guyz, guyz! Come here. This first stup. I am Theo. See my rugs. Drink glass of wine whit me. Then you see Partenun.” He came between us and put his arms around our shoulders. “ You go Myknos after Ateens, right?”

“Are we that obvious?” I laughed.

“ It's gud. The gay we luf. No Muslims here. You do whatever you wunt. Everyone free here. Dat is Ateens.”

     The Muslim line was just the right hook to get us into the shop. Before I knew it, we were being poured glasses of white wine, being introduced to his father and his nephew, and shown rugs. I was on guard and leary, but Alex was already drawn in. The whole thing was a little arousing to him, reminiscent of the classic French porno filmed in Turkey by Cadinot called Sex Bazaar, one of Alex's favorites. “ This is perfect. I was going to have to buy one in San Francisco after I have my old carpet torn up.”

     “Zan Franziz-Go!” Theo toasted. We all clinked glasses, including his father, who just grinned and had no clue what any English meant.

     We didn't have a clue what any of the Greek being spoken meant either. I hoped they weren't saying anything bad, especially anything anti-gay after acting so inviting. Theo showed us different style rugs and explained the meaning of each. There was the tree of life, the shield of Athena, and the footsteps of wisdom.

     I asked if he had one for the 'missteps of ignorance', which only Alex understood enough to laugh at. Theo gave most of his attention and his wine to Alex who he could tell was going to be the one to possibly do any buying. Theo sensed correctly, and Alex had his Visa Platinum out before the third glass was poured. The transaction felt as fast as a mugging except for the fact that we were sitting in a shop having wine. It just goes to show that a handsome, pushy Mediterranean can get Alex's wallet out of his pants almost as fast as a handsome, pushy Mediterranean can get Alex out of his pants.

     “I promise we won't stop again,” Alex swore as we left the shop after giving Theo the shipping information.

     We kept climbing upwards on streets that turned into stairs that turned into plateaus that turned back into stairs that turned back into streets, all lined with more stores and restaurants with obviously no regard for any regulations or provisions for the handicapped.  A wheelchair-bound person would have to be airlifted to reach the top. It was dark under the spotlights aiming upward at the base as we climbed narrow walkways with no indications of direction. As we got closer to the iron gate surrounding the entrance a Greek woman, sitting in a metal folding chair on the path selling Parthenons made of foam that sat on the head like a pillbox hat clipped into the hair, told us the Parthenon was closed until morning.

     “Terrorists too dangerous for night to be open. You buy one? ” she pointed to the foam Parthenon on top of her hair twised into a bun that looked like the Acropolis.

     “No hair,” I pointed to my head, my baldness finally paying off after all these years. We moved away from her and got closer to the gate.

“ We could climb over,” Alex said.

“And end up in a Greek jail.”

“Sounds like a win-win situation to me.” Alex said with one of his devilish grins.

“ What Cadinot film is that fantasy from?”

“ Istanbul Cellmates.”

“I've waited since I was 10 to see the Parthenon. I can wait one more night.”

"There is no place to tan!"

     We went back to our hotel room and laid down on two lounges on the patio, held hands and enjoyed the great view again. The evening was warm and the street below was surprisingly quiet. Without realizing it, we drifted off to sleep with the Acropolis as our nightlight.

le Pitstop en Paris

     For me, this trip has always been about Greece.  Paris is not a destination; it is just a beginning. But who can complain when Edith Piaf is the opening act. My boyfriend Alex and I would start on the grand boulevards of Paris and end on the beaches of Mykonos. From high culture to the beginnings of culture.

Alex's job is to arrange everything and pay for almost everything. My job is to carry as much of our luggage as I can and pay for as little as I can. This is fair for reasons that go back 30 years, have little to do with Alex, and make no sense to anyone but me.  Luckily, Alex is amazingly generous and doesn't need or even want to hear my retarded reasoning. He has been to Paris several times already but never stayed at a gay Bed & Breakfast, and thought it would give our trip a personal touch and bring us closer to the Parisian way of life. He found one in a perfect central location right across the street from The Monument of Saint-Jacques near the gay le Marias section of town. True, it is owned by a gay man named Fredrick and true, it does have a bed in the spare bedroom of the 2 -bedroom apartment that he lives in and true, Fredrick did offer to make us breakfast if we really wanted him to, but as a Gay Bed & Breakfast, it fell short of Alex's lofty hopes. After giving us the keys and tour of the apartment that only took 30 seconds, he went into his room and promptly removed his pants and spent the next 2 days in 2 different colored Ralph Lauren high-collared polo-shirts and bikini white underwear.

   "I can't believe he's dressing like that. He's more inappropriate than you," Alex whispered to me.

   "I know, isn't it great," I said, taking off my shirt and pants so I could walk around in my underwear too. "I didn't know Bed & Breakfasts were like this."

    "This isn't a Bed & Breakfast, it's a locker room."

“If Fredrick was a swarthy French serviceman in his underwear you wouldn't mind so much.”

“ For that I'd pay double what Fredrick's charging,” Alex said with a devilish grin that showed the less hoity-toity and more debaucherous side of him.

     We were so exhausted from the 12 hour flight that we slept from 1:00 PM to seven at night, missing the entire afternoon. We felt guilty for not forcing ourselves to stay up and see more of Paris since we were only staying for 2 nights before the flight to Athens, so we promised ourselves that we would stay up late and at least go out at night. But we ended up getting drunk  at a great meal where I was served my first peeled tomato, came home and had great sex for 4 1/2 minutes, and passed out again and slept until almost 2:00 in the afternoon. Fredrick had been barricading himself in his small office whenever he wanted to smoke which was whenever he was awake, so he missed the one time Alex and I had actually left the apartment.

“ This is the first time that I had guests who never left the apartment. It's like Ann Frank in the attic.”

When we calculated that we had basically only spent 8 hours awake in Paris so far, we were even more embarrassed of ourselves. Our plane to Greece was leaving at 7:00 the next morning which meant we had to be at the airport by 5:30, which meant we had to leave by 4:45, which meant we had to get up by 4:00 at the latest. We decided there was only one thing to do-- forget about going to bed at night and take a vampire's tour of Paris by moonlight. To celebrate our plan we went back to sleep for a few more hours.

We had a very late lunch at six o'clock then began our walk without any intention. The last time Alex was in Paris was eight years ago so he wasn't sure where we were heading, which was perfect. As we wandered from block to block, we passed so many cafes and pastry shops that we started comparing the number of them to the number of fire hydrants. I can confidently say that there are more places to buy sweets in Paris than there are fire hydrants. This means that French firefighters would stand a much better chance if fires could be extinguished with pralines & crème rather than water. Just by chance, we stumbled across world-famous landmarks and historical monuments, plus a few old churches which we had no desire to go into, nor could we have without bursting into flames. There was one church, however, that looked so sinister it was almost appealing. “ They must have done wonderful things to Jews and gays in this one,” Alex joked. “Not a lot of laughter coming out of there.” We sat on one of the many benches forming a rectangle under trees with the thickest and lowest canopy of leaves I have ever seen. By the entrance to the church was a huge row of high, lush antique roses in gorgeous colors with thousands of tooth-sized thorns that made them as sinister as the church as they stood guard in front of. We followed the roses to the end then walked along the side of the building past one of its massive flying buttress. The side wall kept on going further and further back, forming different chambers of what was turning into a huge, block-long church. When we reached the back of it that opened onto a stone square, Alex and I turned around and realized that what we had thought was the front entrance of a neighborhood church was actually the backyard of none other than Notre Dame itself. We eventually came up on The River Seine and continued as it split in two along more residential areas, and crossed over to make our way all the way back to the gay district. It was almost 1:30 in the morning and the streets were getting more and more empty, especially since it was a Tuesday. All the walking had made us starving so we both scarfed down lamb with special sauce from The Kebab Stand, the only thing still serving food.

Then we were ready for our fête complet, the pièce d' résistance. Alex and I made a promise to each other that we would end our trip to Paris with a walk all the way to The Eiffel Tower, no matter how far it was as long as we could get back by cab in time to leave for the airport at 4:45. To Alex's credit, he had not used his iPhone's GPS app. to cheat once during the entire night, but for this Parisian pedestrian pilgrimage we needed help from the twinkling satellites above. He typed in 'Eiffel Tower' and moved his phone from side-to-side like a divining rod. “ It's 5.2 kilometers from here. And wait a second....by walking it should take under 2 hours. That gives us enough time. Follow me.”

By this time the streets were deserted. As we trekked along and saw no one else walking past us in either direction, we started to realize how special our journey was. To our amazement, we seemed to be the only two people in Paris who were out on the streets besides the homeless who were always out on the streets. It felt like Paris belonged to us alone. There wasn't even a lot of cars passing by; only the occasional cab who would stop and ask if we needed a ride. It was so desolate that we should have been more scared.

“ Alex, it's dangerous out here. There's no one to help us if we need it.”

Alex's ears pricked up when he heard the word 'dangerous' and he made another one of his devilish grins. “ I might get mugged and raped. Well, hopefully not mugged, just raped.”

“ I can't believe you're not more frightened.”

Alex pointed out the the only frightening thing about our walk was my loud farting from the lamb.

“ I can't help it. It's has to be from that stupid special sauce.”

“ You're making sure that I'll be the only one getting raped.”

“ Then I'll keep farting. It's the only weapon I have right now.”

Still there was no one to be spotted as we walked along The River Seine for the second time that night, passed The Parliament, The National Assembly, the Museum of Modern Art, The hugely obscene Petite Palace, the old Louvre and the new Louvre. In the 5.2 kilometers, we saw a grand total of one couple on a street bench, a group of five drunk teenagers yelling French at us, and an older man with his dogs. As the GPS told us we were getting closer, we searched the sky for the lights of the tower until we realized that four poultry dots of red light floating in a square shape in the sky was the only lights left on to show one of the most iconic structure in the world. As we got only a few blocks from it the streets got smaller and the echo of our footsteps got louder. When we entered the park where it stands, all we could still see was the four red lights way above us and four white lights that illuminated only a tiny bit of each corner under the base.

The City of Lights...Off

“There must be a light switch somewhere,” I joked.

“ Wait,” Alex pointed his iPhone at it. “There must be an app to turn it on.”

We both laughed at how ridiculous the lighting was as every picture Alex tried to take of it kept coming out black. But then we both realized something at the same time. How often do any tourists dare to walk all the way to The Eiffel Tower at 3:30 in the morning and see it in all it's glorious blackness. What a brilliant way to see “The City Of Lights”.

The Princess And The Punching Bag

     I know all the many ways in which  I am annoying when I'm awake, but I never thought I could be even more annoying when I was sleeping. I seem to be a 'puncher', or at least that's what some men I have slept next to accuse me of.  I have no recollection of hitting anyone. I've already swung my punches by the time the victim wakes me. It's like a nightmare only the person next to me is having it for me.
    Luckily for me and even more luckily for the man I'm sleeping next to, these nocturnal knockouts happen only when I sleep in a different bed for the first time. I realized this after it happened the third time this year. The first 'incident' occurred with my best friend of 33 years and first ex-boyfriend Scott. I had begged him to meet me in Florida to visit my fat father who was in the hospital for the fourth time for some fat-related reason. My stepmother Cecil had just re-decorated the guest bedroom and was excited for Scott and I to be the first ones to sleep on the new top-of-the-line memory-foam mattress with 1000 thread count linens and 100% goose down pillows. " Tell me how you like it in the morning, boys. Sleep well," she told us as she closed the door for the night. Eight hours later, when she went into the bathroom in her bathrobe to take her morning shower, she pulled back the shower curtain and found Scott sleeping in the bathtub with 2 of the down pillows and a spare blanket folded in half as a makeshift mattress. Scott explained that I had been punching him so much that he couldn't stay in the bed and had to find somewhere to go, and he didn't know if Cecil wanted anyone to sleep on the brand new couch that she had just gotten a few days before.  
   I refused to believe that I could punch someone and not be aware of it, and accused Scott of exaggerating. Then it happened again with one of my dearest friends, Graham. We were visiting his family in England and stayed at his mother's house where we slept in two separate bedrooms, but when we got to a hotel in London, the room only had one queen-sized bed. It so happens that before going to bed that night we had had an argument, which Graham and I seldom have. We had both gone to sleep angry at each other, so when I unknowingly started punching him in the middle of the night, he punched me back. I woke up shocked until he made me realize that I punched him first. We ended up laughing about it but I wondered if my punching episode with Scott was somehow connected.
    It was only after the first time I slept in my boyfriend Alex's bed that I connected all the dots. It was a weekday night and we both had to work in the morning. The first time you sleep over at a potential boyfriend's place could be either a 'make or break' moment.  Punching him in the kidneys as he is peacefully sleeping on his stomach is not the best way to win over a man's heart.
   " Gary, I'm sorry but I can't sleep like this. I've got a a major deal happening tomorrow. I need to sleep. I'll give you cab money and we'll try this again another time."
    " I can't believe you're kicking me out."
    " I'm not kicking you out, I'm just paying you to leave." He kissed me and gave me a reassuring hug, then gave me $20. "Don't worry. I'm still crazy about you. It's going to take more than  few midnight beatings for me to loose interest. Just try to save them for the weekends."
   After that first night I was fine sleeping at his place. It's been six months since I punched him in bed. But now I'm going to be faced with my greatest challenge. Alex is taking me on a trip to Paris for three days then Athens for two days and  to Mykonos for 5 days after. Three places means three new beds, which means three chances of Alex coming home with a black eye from our first romantic trip.

" Excuse me, does this face come in permanent press? "

    There's a trainer named Kyle  in my gym who is actually straight. The 'needle in a gaystack'. He is  either very cool or just very smart. He's got a huge following of paying clients and non-paying onlookers. It's easier to get an appointment with Steven Spielberg than with him after 5 P.M. Like a shrink, the early evening appointments are booked the fastest. Some of his clients have to re-schedule their entire work day for a  training session during the less desirable  9-5 slots, which are very often taken as well. Being able to afford him isn't good enough; you have to also be available at any time he offers. And you can't buy just single appointments, you have to buy package deals that are only refundable if you are in an accident and become a quadriplegic, but not if you become only paraplegic because he can still do upper body training with you.  His clients agree to this and anything else he says because he is beautiful. His body is better than any human or statue I can think of. Of course he doesn't think so. And he's not being humble; he's just being insane.
   " This ab is smaller than this one,"  he lifted his tank top and showed me, as if I or anyone else in the world could possibly be as concerned over it as he was.  
   " A fat person ought to come over and punch you in the face for complaining about that," I shook my finger at him.
   " Come on just look at it," he pointed to the rows of abs on his stomach. "It is, right?"
   I rolled my eyes and turned away, refusing to look. It seemed I was the only one on the entire gym floor not looking at his stomach. It was uncanny how they all sensed him lifting his shirt by picking up on each others' subtle head movements in his direction like gazelles at a watering hole. We gays are very good at that.
    Kyle and I have developed an unlikely friendship. The key is that I don't ever flirt with him. I'm not like some other gay guys who fantasize about sex with straight men. Most of these gay guys have been, as my friend Ron Brock calls it, 'dicknotized'. This is the medical term for a gay man who has been temporary placed into a semi-coma state and will follow instructions given by a gay or straight man with a big dick. A more severe form of dictnotism can make a gay man suck and get fucked by a group of two or more men who are straight or at least straight-acting, which can involve extra planning and a casting call sometimes bigger than for the movie "GLADIATOR."
      Personally, there is nothing a straight man can do to turn me on, not even a beautiful one like Kyle. After having to wait until I graduated High School before I moved to Manhattan and was finally surrounded by gay men who I could have sex with, fantasizing about a straight man was the last thing on my mind. There are so many gay guys who actually want to be part of another gay man's fantasies that having to find straight guys to fulfill your fantasizes is unnecessarily difficult and very self-limiting. And fantasies about straight men are doomed from the start. With so many gay men who will only probably make you hate yourself after sex, why bother with a straight man who will definitely make you hate yourself after?
    Our friendship started when a  friend of mine told him I worked in physical therapy, and Kyle started asking me questions about certain injuries and the exercises best to do for them. He also started confiding in me about his love life, and his frustrations over not finding a woman who was a good match.  To Kyle, a good match meant a female version of himself. Why should he have to settle for something less? He worked on himself too hard and spent too much money making himself flawless for him not to expect the same from any girl he would date. This year alone he spent $6000 on laser hair removal to bring him back to pre-pubescent levels of body hair, and spends $1000 dollars every 3 months for botox. " I want totally  ripped muscles from the mandible down and total muscle paralysis above it. If you think or laugh too hard, it wrinkles these areas," Kyle explained, pointing to his forehead, the outside of his eyes and between his eyebrows." The laser treatments are expensive but at least it's just once and you' re done forever. This other shit  keeps on costing me every 90 days. The problem is all  the guys who can afford me can afford botox too. And if they all do it, I have to keep doing  it too. I always have to look better than them. That's the whole trick.   I'm trying to get my doctor to trade for training sessions but he's got a trainer he's been using for years and won't  switch. I think this guy gives him another kind of workout if you know what I mean". 
    " See, that's where you went wrong. If you were gay, men would be throwing money at you. Well, they are now but you have to still work for it. "
   " I know, it sucks. I could be getting free botox for the rest of my life."
   " You could be a doctor's wife, every body's dream."
   " Sometimes it really sucks being straight," he complained.
    " Only sometimes?" I smiled at him.
    " Especially since I broke up with Tami."
    " Wasn't she the one you brought to your cousin's wedding?
     " Yeah, but her ass was too low."
    Every girl he dated ended up having something wrong with her. Something he would try to ignore at first but it would just get bigger, or flatter, or flabbier. He couldn't help looking at a girl with the same critical eye that he looked at himself.
          And then it happened. He was browsing through Match.Com and came across an actual real, life-size breathing version of Barbie, or what Barbie would have looked like if she was a 35 year old Jewish woman with very generous parents and a very good plastic surgeon. Kyle was ecstatic after they had dinner, and described how he fell in love with her as she told him that she broke up with her last boyfriend because of his skinny neck, and how she proudly revealed  what body parts of hers were altered, and what other work she planned on having done. She was perfect in her fakeness, as only fake can be. Their second date was running up and down the stairs at Ocean Beach seeing who would  tire first. She exercised as much as he did, and kept up  her speed even with her huge fake tits bouncing in her sports bra.
     " And the best part is she has a doctor from India who charges half of what mine does for botox, and she's going to introduce me!" 
         I had never seen him more excited about meeting someone and  he continued to give me updates  until the fifth date, which she canceled because she wasn't feeling good. " She said she was going to go to the gym like she always does when she feels sick  and do cardio for 2 hours  to get it out of her system." Even Kyle thought that was strange, not to mention excessive. As the excuses kept coming, Kyle looked sadder each time I saw him. "I didn't tell you this Gary, but last week she asked me if I ever considered getting calf implants. I don't care what she thinks, I've got good enough calves."  It was becoming painfully obvious that she was  trying to end it, and Kyle was distraught.  And  then a few days later he came into the locker room as happy as could be.
     " Guess what!" he said with a look of joy.
     " You worked things out with her?"
     " No she broke it off. But I got the name of her botox doctor before she hung up on me!"       
 

DING DONG OSAMA'S DEAD

   The fact that the most powerful country in the history of mankind with all it's resources and covert activities couldn't find Osama bin Laden for almost ten years is amazing, in the worst way. But what is even more amazing is the fact that out of all his followers who he depended on to keep him hidden, not one tried to cash in on the multi-million dollar reward for his capture. It's impossible to know just how many people actually knew where he was but just imagine what a difficult task it was to hide him and what elaborate and wide-reaching planning it entailed. And now we know it also involved hiding one of his wives and some of his children as well. Think of the logistics of it, not to mention the food, the health care, the clothing, the education of his children and whatever else he would need from the outside world. There was an entire compound to run including a small army of personal bodyguards and somehow the secret remained. Even the ones who weren't devout followers kept the secret-the doctors, the housekeepers, the cooks, the repairmen,and all the wives, girlfriends,and children of the men there. No one wanted to be a multi-millionaire enough to turn him in. Now that's loyalty.
  It's different in America. Once a reward  for someone is posted, it's just a matter of days. And now with Facebook it's just a matter of hours until the person is turned in. $5,000-10,000 seems to be the average person's breaking point. Personally, a free lunch is all the reward it would take for me to turn in any religious man who the authorities were trying to find. That, along with being a  Jewish homosexual  is on the top 10 List of reasons why I could never be a Radical Islamic Terrorist. I tend to not be blindly loyal to movements or to men who head those movements. Such loyalty can be admired, but it should also be feared. People with such absolute and unwavering loyalty to a movement or a man are usually the same people capable of terrible things. Only that degree of loyalty can turn a person into a merciless killing machine. The closest I've ever gotten to being loyal to a movement was the Gay Rights Movement, but I still would never have blown myself up even if Harvey Milk had told me to.
   Another thing I want to say about this "strangely celebratory event" is that it's great how President Obama is getting so much mileage out of this. It's like killing Hitler, almost. Hitler still wins that contest. There's even clamor that this will seal The President's re-election. First, George W.Bush gave a black man the opportunity to become The President Of The United States just by being such an awful President himself, and now another awful man is going to give the same black man an opportunity to be re-elected. What a wonderful country filled with opportunity we live in.
    The best part is that now we have a  President who can say "Mission Accomplished" and actually means it.

The Real SanFranCRISCO treat

    William Proctor & James Gamble teamed with a German chemist named E.C. Kayser who figured out how to solidify cottonseed oil through the process of hydrogenation and introduced the magic of Crisco.  They showed the world that there is nothing handier than Crisco in your cupboard. No one can testify to this more than it's two best consumer groups, Grandmothers and Gays. For generations, they have used Crisco religiously, and have kept the product popular even in the mid 2000's when the nation-wide campaign against trans-fats threatened the entire baking industry. Combined, grandmothers and gays have spent more money on Crisco than the United States Military Food Suppliers & Preparers Corps. Gays are spending more now than ever on Crisco in these times of inflated costs and job losses, where the only price rising more quickly than gasoline per gallon is lube per bottle. 

   In 2001, Proctor & Gamble sold Crisco to the jam and jelly company J.M. Smucker.  If the P.R. people in- charge of their advertising campaign were smart, they would run an entire campaign in gay cities using a grandmother and her grandson with her holding an apple pie in one hand and he holding a dildo in his hand and the both of them smiling with their other hands held up in a fist giving a variation of the 2-thumbs-up approval sign.  The Slogan can read:

            ' WITH CRISCO FROM SMUCKER, YOUR ASSHOLE WILL PUCKER. '

  The downside of using Crisco is that it's hard to clean off of anything, and your bed can permanently smell from it, like you're sleeping in a giant pie-crust shell. I've had to recently throw out several sheets and pillow cases, and even some pillows. It's even hard to get off of yourself, especially if you're hairy like me. Usually I have to shower with dish washing detergent two or three times before the evidence is gone.

     Luckily the corner market, which never has anything I'm trying to find, for some strange reason stocks Crisco. The Asian family who own the store have no idea what most of the men buying it are using it for, especially in my neighborhood.

   "It's baking time again," I tell the husband and wife who stand behind the counter, as I put  the small tub of Crisco on the counter along with a few meticulously selected smooth, round limes. "Key-lime pie this time."

  " You always bake pies but never bring piece. You bring piece this time," the husband insisted with a smile.

    "Maybe. If it comes out." I don't think they want to taste what I'll be making.

HATch an egg while you're at it

     I guess everyone who blogs has to make some comment on the Royal Wedding. Well, at least everyone who is gay and knows when a hat is not a hat anymore and has become a habitat. There were more bird nests in Westminster Abbey than at the British Bird Sanctuary. Is there a rule in the etiquette regarding hats that says the wealthier you are, the uglier your hat must be? It looked like half the women there got hit in the head with various flying objects on the way to the wedding and didn't bother brushing them off before arriving. There must be a toxic glue being used by all the milliners in England that is making them insane. Most of the hats could have come from the same annual art show I go to showcasing the very special talents of  children with Down Syndrome.
    Nothing, not even the gorgeous bride herself, was more mesmerizing than the hideousness of the hats. They truly made The Royal Wedding something to behold, and to be bewildered by. Special thanks go out to Prince Andrew for marrying Sarah Ferguson which enabled  her to give birth to their two daughters, Beatrice and Eugenia of York, who each gave birth to one of the two ugliest hats ever to be worn by royalty or anyone else human.

GOD'S ANGRY DREIDELS

    A mile wide tornado! God must be really pissed at Alabama again. Usually His angry dreidels aren't as big or as deadly. Usually they are more for show, to flex some Hebrew muscle, especially around Passover time. It's the modern version of the Seven Plagues of Egypt all spun together like cotton candy into a tight, twirling,  time-saving twister. After all, it  must be the Jewish God because why would the Christian God year after year after year keep on slamming His most devoted followers with these terrifying, murderous tornadoes that pick-off their targets one by one. The focus and intensity makes them seem cruelly intentional.
    It's a terrible thing that no one deserves, but you know darn well that as soon as the quake hits us in San Fran, it's going to be because we were wearing wigs and riding dildos, and Southerners will say we deserved it. Luckily, earthquakes only hit maybe once or twice in a lifetime. These tornadoes keep coming one after another for entire seasons. Obviously God is much angrier at them right now. It's probably got something to do with The Republicans trying to fuck with Medicare. But who knows? As they say, God knows.
    But there's a simple way for people in the Southern states to drastically decrease their chances of being  tornado victims. It's quite scientific. Statistical mathematics and empirical data has shown that gay Jews are the most unlikely group to die from an acute tornado attack. This points to one conclusion, the easy answer to preventing  tornadoes deaths. Since tornadoes hardly ever kill gay Jews, much less even find them, all that has to be done is for people in the South to turn into gay Jews. Maybe then they'll have a little better luck.

Portrait of Dorian Brown - Part 3

    This is the third, and I swear,  final blog about my beard.  I am taking an oath to not write about it again for at least one year. However, I am still free to discuss my beard in person with anyone who is unfortunate enough to get trapped in a conversation about it.

    You probably thought I'd already written everything I could possibly say about beard dyeing. You've read far more than you ever wanted to read about it  and far more than you thought anyone could ever write about it. Alas, there is still one more topic left-- the evolution of the step-by-step shaving and dyeing process I have subjected myself to as well as subjecting everyone I have dragged into it.

   It didn't start off so complicated.  The first time I dyed my beard I did it at home with the help of my friend Michael Eyencohen, the man who initiated me into the special world of "Just For Men" like us.  He sculpted my gray gruff into an actual beard with sharp borders and took special attention to make the bottom of it move with my jaw line. "Nothing is worse than 'high beard'. It's when  a guy shaves his beard-line while he's looking up, and when he looks down the beard ends up being too high. Hence the dreaded 'high beard'.  That's when friends have to step in and say something, or even a concerned stranger."

  Michael is a landscape designer and a conceptual artist, and he treated my beard with the same care and precision he gives to every one of his creations. He squeezed out a dollop of brown cream from one small tube and an equal dollop of neutralizing cream from another small tube and mixed them together into a silky caramel goo that turned into a darker brown as he brushed it on. Instead of using the thin brush that came in the box, he used a spare toothbrush he found in my medicine cabinet because it let him blend the color better. He followed the beard line perfectly and didn't get one speck of dye above or below the borders, and was able to do the entire job in the five minute  allowed by the strict directions. Then had me wash the remaining dye off first with just water then with shampoo.  He turned me to face him so he could gently pat it dry with my towel.

"Well?" I asked. "What do you think?"

"You tell me, hotstuff," he said, turning me back to the mirror.

When I saw how I looked I couldn't help smiling. "There you are, " I pointed at the mirror in amazement. "I finally recognized myself again!" I turned to Michael and gave him a big hug. "It's me again." I couldn't contain how happy it made me and I started to do my own version of The Charleston. "It's me again, it's me again, hello everybody it's me again..." I  danced as Michael proudly grinned at the joy he created in me.

   Then the realization hit me. My Charleston  stopped. "How am I going to do this again without you? Will you do it the next time too?"'

  "Gary, you don't want someone doing this for you. A beard is like a signature. Each one should be a little different. You'll experiment until you know exactly what you want and how to do it. It's easy. Just follow what I did for the first few times then start to vary it, or just keep it exactly like this. I think it looks great right now.  You'll see. It will tell you. I have confidence in you."

     I knew right there I was screwed. There was no way I could duplicate this by myself.  I had tried having a beard a few times over the years but always fucked them up because of my eyesight.  My vision happens to be as bad as my speech, but it just isn't as obvious or widely known as my stutter. Poor vision usually only affects the person whose vision it is; a stutter affects everyone who hears it. People with bad eyesight get along fine with it and even forget how bad their eyes are until they have to see something that only the good-sighted can see.  Even with my super-powered contact lenses my eyes aren't good enough to see the far shadowy corners of my new beard or judge the subtle differences between the left side of the beard and the right. The small mirror of the medicine chest in my bathroom  lit only by a one-bulb frosted glass fixture made seeing anything harder.

    Exactly what was I going to do when I needed my next shave and dye, or even better yet, who was I going to find to do it for me? After only three days my gray hair started  betraying me by growing around the dyed hair and making my beard look scraggly. I needed my next shave, and I needed it fast. I called up Michael to beg him to shave me one more time before setting me free into this new world of independent self-grooming. Being a man of high-minded beliefs and principles, he refused to help me in an effort to get me to challenge myself. I, being a man of wavering principles and desperation, immediately called every other friend  I could think of  who would be willing to shave me. I was able to convince the ones who didn't hang up on me. That got me through the first two months but I soon ran out of friends who didn't think it was totally ridiculous. I had to expand my search and find other men.  I couldn't go to my body hair trimmer Anthony because  I would have needed to see him 9 times a month which at a price of $20 minimum charge per appointment would have cost  $180 a month. For that price, I could hire a hooker dressed in a latex jock and thigh-high leather boots and have him shave my beard, which is a great fantasy but I would still need to be shaved eight other times a month. Craigslist, on the other hand,  is free and there are always guys offering to shave other guys. The only problem with that is they would want to do the unthinkable---shave the rest of my body hair too. The only other option I could think of was to just ask a neighbor. It was free too, and more convenient and safer.
     I did what seemed to be the most logical way of finding a willing neighbor.  I  sat on the bench in the lobby of my building shirtless holding a razor and shaving cream, waiting to see who came through the front door. I was going to decide who to ask  according to their level of creepiness and if they had a beard themselves. If it was someone creepy but who had a great beard, I was prepared to ignore the creepiness if I had to. What I didn't realize was how creepy I looked as I sat there shirtless holding a razor and shaving cream. Some people were giving me strange looks and others were totally ignoring me. A few gay men were looking at me strangely, and even one or two creepy gay guys had the nerve to give me strange looks too.
      A little while later Karl  the Building Manager came out of the elevator and walked towards me and asked if everything was alright. " Are you  locked out of your apartment?'
      " No. Everything's fine,' I smiled.
       " I got calls from 2 tenants complaining about some guy, you know, not being dressed. She must have said 'half-naked' but all I heard was naked. And I'm thinking 'Oh great, there's some crazy naked man in the lobby.' Glads it's just you."
        " I'm just waiting to find someone to shave me," I said as if it made sense.
         He looked at me with an even stranger face then everyone who passed me before. Only then did I realize how I must have looked, and worse, sounded.       " I'm so sorry Karl. Please just forget this. "I stood up and said, then turned and ran up the stairs into my apartment. " What was I thinking? I must have looked insane,"  I spoke out loud to myself, shaking my head and rolling my eyes. I walked into the bathroom and pointed in the mirror. " That's it. Either you're shaving yourself or the beard is coming off."
  I had spent my whole life accepting the limitations of my eyesight with the understanding  that I simply couldn't do certain things, things that were best done for me. A perfect example of this is driving a car. I knew as a teenager that I should never drive, that it would exponentially increase my chances of dying as well as the chances of people dying around me. I was satisfied to be Miss Daisy and be driven around by everyone. Nobody even knew until very recently that I had actually passed Driver's Ed when I was 16, and was given a license that I burned in a private ceremony with myself to celebrate the longer life I would be having. I now realize I owe all those people who drove me thousands upon thousands of miles a special thanks, as well as a promise:  I , Gary Glassman,  will henceforth never make anyone shave my beard again, and that I,  Gary Glassman, heretofore will shave my own beard no matter how difficult it is.
   I stood in the bathroom figuring out what I would need then went to Cliff's Hardware. For the wall to the left of my sink I bought a big, round wall-mounted mirror with a long double-jointed movable arm that flipped over into a magnifying mirror, and for the other side of the sink another mirror  2'x2' with hooks that could hang on the shower rod. I also bought enough clip-on spotlights for a Hollywood premiere at Grauman's Chinese Theater.
    I hung the mirrors and then positioned the spotlights all around the sink from above and below and hanging from a towel hook on the door behind me. Then I adjusted  the arm of the mirror as I tipped the angle of it and tried every possible angle to see if I could get a good view of  each section of my beard.  Just to make sure I did a dry run with the blade removed from my razor and went through every position of the mirror and the spotlights that I would need.  The bathroom was as bright as a lighthouse, and the heat from the spotlights was actually making me sweat. I could see perfectly though, which was all that mattered. I just had to be careful not to bump into any of them and set myself or the towels on fire. Ready to start, I organized all the supplies I needed for the shaving and the dyeing on the toilet lid.

    First, I used my electric clippers to buzz off the rim of hair that spitefully remained on my scalp and continued down to the sides of my beard which, according to an extremely gay friend who teaches at Vidal Sassoon, should end at the same point that the arms of eyeglasses go over the ear. Using  a number 3 guard, I trimmed my beard and was left with new gray hairs on my face and the remnants of the brown dyed hair in the sink. Then I was ready for the big test.      I put the shaving cream on my face and tried to keep the borders of my beard as visible as possible. I stuck the razor under hot water then lifted it to my face,  squinting my eyes as I started to follow the beard-line using all three mirrors. I was so focused on not fucking up that I kept on forgetting to breathe. Cocking  my head at every angle humanly possible, I tried to get the best view of different parts of my beard as I turned my body a little bit clockwise then counterclockwise to see which of the mirrors was catching each reflection. I was moving so cautiously and so slowly that the hair was going to grow back if I didn't finished soon. I re-examined the beard from every angle and wiped off the remaining shaving cream. I was bleeding on my neck in two places but I didn't care. The only thing I cared about was the beard, and besides being gray,it, actually looked good! I was so proud of myself. A personal triumph. Like an amputee crossing the Finish Line. Like a fat man losing enough weight to fit in an airplane seat. Like a retarded person flying a kite. Moments in life to remember.
    With the shaving done, only the dyeing part was left, and I had already figured out how to do it  myself. Not that the dyeing process was ever easy, especially  at the start. At the beginning it was a disaster. My beard has to be dyed every two weeks, and for the first two months I either mixed the formula wrong and made the color too dark, or brushed it on too quickly and got it on my face, burning my skin and turning it shades of red.  Sometimes, I wound up with a dark brown beard with the skin around it bright as red lipstick, making me look like a cross between a clown and a burn victim. I kept trying to perfect the process, and bought a chapstick made of bee's wax to outline my beard and keep the dye from getting onto my skin. Now I only hideously burn my face once every few months. I also got the brilliant idea of splitting my beard in two, doing one half at a time, each for five minutes, so I didn't have to rush to do the whole thing at once. To make sure both sides come out equal I  squeeze out the same amounts of dye in two different little plastic trays and compare the two. With all the added lighting, I was able to see the gray better and keep the dye brush on the borders without going onto the skin as much. After I dyed both sides and washed it off with shampoo in the shower, I used soap and a wash cloth to clean off the bee's wax and any dye that did get on my skin. I did the final check in the mirrors to see if the color and the shape looked even. For the first time, I did the entire process all on my own. I was follicularly liberated.
  After a half year of practice, I've gotten so good at shaving and dyeing that I don't need the Broadway lighting and magnifying mirror anymore.  I can do it practically anywhere that has a sliver of  mirror, a light bulb, and  running water. In my gym bag I always carry my electric buzzer with three different length guards, spare batteries, a razor and extra blades, shaving cream  and aftershave lotion, a box of "Just For Men" Medium Brown, a vile of shampoo, bee's wax chapstick and 2 brown washclothes, all part of my version of an earthquake preparedness kit, minus anything you would actually need for an earthquake, except the batteries.  Also always in my bag is one tightly folded and sealed plastic dropcloth that opens to 10 feet x 10 feet. I can cover an entire bathroom with it and leave no trace of my ever being there after I'm done. Like Dexter cleaning up after a murder.
      I might have to hide the names and locations of some of the places I've dyed my beard in but I never hide the fact that I dye my beard.  I don't know how hiding it is even possible. A beard grows in so quickly someone would have to re-dye it every other day. Now that's a level of vanity and of desperation I can't even fathom. Letting it go from brown to salt 'n pepper to pure salt and then re-dyeing it brown again is my way of saying I care, but I don't care too much.   
 


 

 

Portrait of Dorian Brown - Part 2

Me dyeing my beard brown is not to get more attention, it's just to hold onto the attention that I’ve always gotten and rightfully belongs to me. Unfortunately I have no proof of ownership and there is no deed or contract that would hold up in court. I do have eye witnesses though, the other gay men my age who remember when I first arrived in the Castro 16 years ago, a time period which I affectionately call "When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth" from the movie of the same name.  Of course in my mind I was the T-Rex.  No one wants to be the Brontosaurus. I see them and they see me and we acknowledge each other with nods of respect as we stomp by.  "Good to see you are still alive," we think as we smile and wave. What are they thinking when they see my schizophrenic beard go from gray to brown to gray to brown again. I feel a particular shame in front of the ones who have fully embraced their grayness and are at more peace with themselves than I obviously am.
   Since I started writing this blog 2 months ago, I have been ready to embarrass, expose, humiliate and thrown myself under the bus whenever possible for yours and my entertainment.  This topic, however, hits me right at my core, and revealing it publicly strips me naked. It's no secret to anyone in my life that attention is very important to me. Revealing this about myself is like Liberace revealing he was gay.  If he actually had ever revealed it--which amazingly he did not--even on his satin and fur covered King Louie XVI in-laid gold canopied death-bed. The fact that everyone knows this about me doesn’t make it any easier to actually talk about.  For some strange reason, admitting you enjoy attention is as off-putting as admitting you are a pedophile. Even Hollywood stars won't admit they thrive on attention even though achieving attention is the single greatest purpose of their lives. It shows a lack of humility, even if the humility is false. With that said, I would like to confess that I have loved getting the attention I have gotten and I do not know how to live without.  I am hoping that just by writing it down for everyone to see, I will get a little closer to the place where attention is not so important anymore. 
     So why do I need so much attention? What could have possibly caused this? The fault, of course, lies where all fault lies--with my mother Priscilla. She is the most fun to blame, and the most obvious. My mother is one of the great attention mongers of all time. Even her name mongers attention. I mean really, what Jewish woman is named Priscilla? Only pilgrims and drag queens and Elvis' wife are named Priscilla.  My mother was more of a walking installation than a normal person. She went beyond just dressing herself; she decorated herself, like other people decorate a room. I never knew who would be stepping out of her closet--a 1920's flapper, Annie Oakley, Esmeralda The Gypsy, Cleopatra or Captain Hook's wife in a big-sleeved pirate shirt, baggy pants tucked into tall black boots and an eye-patch for effect. She had outfits from all different eras, and coats and jackets with shoulder epaulets from wars she never heard of. She didn't care who won the wars, just as long as the clothing looked good on her. Every year to celebrate the Kentucky Derby she dressed in equestrian riding gear and rode around Great Neck in our Cadillac instead of on a horse. She wasn’t shy about hats either, and would put anything on the top of her head: an old turban, a fez, a beret, a fedora, a pillbox, a sailor cap, a black bowler, even an old safari hat from the 1930’s like she was dressed for the hunt. It was even worse in the winter when she could add to her wardrobe all the different fur coats and hats she borrowed from my father's used fur store. She had my father make matching raccoon coats for him, her, my brother Mitchell, my sister Melissa and me. In the name of family unity, the five if us would go out on cold Sundays all in our raccoons, causing a commotion wherever we went. She made it feel like it was totally normal and what to expect.  Add my thick glasses and my stutter to the raccoon coat and the level of attention got even worse. I was teased relentlessly, more than any other boy in school, making me very well known. That's the thing about being the most teased and always chosen last for any team --- it puts you in a very special light that you share with no one else. The boy who got picked second to last never experiences what I always felt.  The only other one who experienced that level of attention I got was the boy who was picked first.  This means that the first picked and the last picked are more similar than they realize.  I became accustomed to the attention, even if it was bad. It's like what they say about bad press still being press. I never asked for it, so you see it wasn't my fault. It was only my fault after I started creating it for myself. It happened when I was 15, when I was ready to flip and become my opposite equal. I knew exactly what to do because I had been watching it from the outside for so long. I got contact lenses, started working out and became the class clown. I didn't have to bother with making myself known because everyone already knew the former me. The transformation shocked everyone, especially my family, but it made perfect sense to me.  It's like moving to San Francisco from New York. They are the furthest apart from each other on opposite coasts but the closest to each other in their political influence and importance to gay culture. It's a strictly lateral move, each city being the only other alternative for the other. Nothing appealing lies in between.
  The hallways in school, once war-zones I would scurry through dodging bullies instead of bullets, became my stage. I couldn't wait for each class to end so I could count how many people I could say hello to before the next class started. Instead of being first into my seat I was usually the last, and had to be told to sit down and stop talking. Sometimes I got in trouble for passing notes and even got sent down to the principle's office, things that only happened to popular people. Places I used to dread like the cafeteria and The Student Lounge became my favorite spots to be. Wherever people gathered was where I wanted to be. It got worse after high school when I moved into the city and started going to gay bars, gay beaches and gay gyms, where my hairiness turned into a real commodity. Even my stutter started working in my benefit. It disarmed people, and actually became alluring to some men, something as a child I never imagined my stutter would be. I also never imagined that going bald would work in my favor as much as it has and would keep the attention coming. 
  So there it is, a lifetime of attention. One of the few constants in my life. Something I could always count on. I don't know how to let it go yet, even though in actuality the attention doesn't need my permission or approval to leave. Seeing how easy it has been to get a lot of it back just by dyeing my beard has been too tempting to resist. I get 5 years back in five minutes, which is much easier and far less extreme than what other men are opting to do to themselves. They spend thousands of dollars playing an endless cat 'n mouse game on their faces, trying to chase away every imperfection.  Luckily for me, I'll never have to make the decision to have work done or not for the simple reason that I don't have the money. The choice is made for me. It's the men who have the money who are faced with a real dilemma.  They can play the game if they want to. The division is happening already. Only the poor will grow wrinkled as they get old.
    No one comes to mind more than my dear, dear, dear Australian friend, Michael V. He is grossly over-paid and strangely under-wrinkled.  He has a very senior position in Human Resources for a huge company and is responsible for occasionally hiring but mostly firing people, a job perfectly suited for someone as proudly vile and contemptuous as him. I've been anxiously waiting for him to age but he’s had the same baby face for 15 years.  Last time he visited San Fran I still had a gray beard and he made sure to point out my aging.
"Thank you for getting old enough for the both of us, darling. It's very thoughtful of you," he pecked my cheek and patted my back." It's amazing how every time I see you Gary, you get older, and grayer, and balder, and poorer, and I think even shorter."
     " I don't understand. How do you look the same year after year? What are you having done?"
    " Everything you can't afford." 
    " You can't keep it up forever"
    " As long as there's white rhino horns and blue whale blubber left in the world I can."
Michael V is coming to visit in a month and he has no idea I'm dyeing my beard now. I can't wait to see his face. Even if he says something awful I know he's going to like it.  And when we walk together I'll be sure to point out the attention I'm still getting. I realize this is just stalling the inevitable and sooner or later I will be facing my greatest fear, but hopefully by that time it will no longer be a fear. Hopefully it will just be something to laugh about like everything else in my life seems to be. Eventually all my body hair will be gray and I'll have to swim in a tank of "Just For Men" Medium Brown to keep up the charade. 
   Just give me a few years to re-adjust myself. They say that for every 5 years of an ended romance, it takes one additional year to get over it. That means since I've had a romance with the attention I've gotten for almost 50 years, I should be totally over it in only 10 long years. What a relief!