In this year of matrimony I was all charged up for Pride, ready to fight my way with the Fireplug down to Market Street so that, if nothing else, we could be counted among the festive hordes. Friday night I did my part to welcome visitors to San Francisco, mixing up Cape Cods and Jack and Cokes at the bar in a five-hour, non-sop blur, after which I hauled home MAJOR cash along with the flu that’s been knocking around the city.

So I missed the march.

Tomorrow is the last meeting of my first Barbershop Writing Group, the workshop I’ve been leading since early May. Since nobody dropped out, and everyone submitted new writing several times each, I think I can call it a success. Looking forward to a little downtime before the next workshop (I’m thinking late September) so that I can get more work done on my own book.

And of course I need to update everyone on the other project:

Our debut event was an amazing night, and we hope you’ll join us for the next event in the Barbershop Reading Series. Normally the events will happen the first Saturday of every month, but because of the Fourth of July holiday, we’ll be skipping a week. So just keep in mind 7/11.

The evening will feature readings by a couple members of the Barbershop Writing Group, a workshop running in conjunction with the Barbershop Reading Series and led by series host Michael McAllister. Click here for more info on the Barbershop Writing Group.

Pete Kushmeider gave up pursuing a fortune in high tech in order to write, blog, and dote on his husband and partner of 23 years. He writes about the diversity of people and experiences that are the beating heart of everyday San Francisco. His stories have been published in the SoMa Literary Review.

Chris Jensen is a marketer by day and a freelancer by night. A former contributor to Out Magazine, he currently writes for SF Weekly when he’s not struggling to write page 2 of his novel.

Our musical guest, Bay Area-based singer-songwriter Kate Isenberg, combines her intricate guitar style and soulful, clear voice to create a very San Francisco form of storytelling folk-pop. Her album THE TIME COMES ON HUMMING TRACKS has been featured on KFOG’s Acoustic Sunrise, and was named one of 2007′s top three female singer-songwriter albums by the Indie Acoustic Project, a nationwide contest whose past winners include Vienna Teng, Allison Krauss, and Greg Brown. Check out her MySpace page for music samples.

Our featured author will be K.M. Soehnlein, author of THE WORLD OF NORMAL BOYS, which won the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Men’s Fiction, and YOU CAN SAY YOU KNEW ME WHEN. He will be reading from his novel-in-progress, a sequal to THE WORLD OF NORMAL BOYS. He teaches in the MFA writing program at the University of San Francisco.

Details:

Joe’s Barbershop
2150 Market St (between Church and Sanchez)

Our debut event was standing-room only, so we suggest arriving early, especially if you want to kick back in one of the barber chairs.

Saturday, July 11th, at 8 pm
SUGGESTED donation: $5 (everyone welcome)

That donation helps to cover our expenses and buys you highly addictive Kettle Salt and Pepper potato chips, baked goods, cold beer, and a Diet Coke or two.

We can always use volunteers to help set up and clean up afterward. Volunteers pay no cover and earn good karma. If interested, email Michael McAllister.

• Drinking coffee from my Grumpy mug. #

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I sort of forgot/was too unduly humble to mention that our new reading series got a write-up on a site dedicated to book publicists and other publishing professionals. In case anyone is interested, here is an excerpt:

* * *
There’s a new show in town, and publicists and authors will want to pay extra attention to this. Michael McAllister, a recent Columbia MFA graduate, has returned to the Bay Area and is launching The Barbershop: A Reading Series at his partner’s barbershop in the Castro this May. Readings will be held on the first Saturday of each month at 8 pm at the newly renovated, modern but retro Joe’s Barbershop at 2150 Market Street.

“The location is both comfortable and a little irreverent, and I think people will enjoy it,” says Michael. “Not to mention the fact that there won’t be any espresso machines frothing milk in the middle of your reading.”

A man of many trades—Michael has worked as a bartender, bike messenger, and a research assistant during grad school to author Brad Gooch—the idea for the series came to him via the book club he attends. “Our book club has remained strong after two years because we really need each other,” he explained. “We need to get out of our offices and out of our heads, and sometimes talk shop and laugh and gossip for a while. Writing can be incredibly lonely, and you can go years without feedback on your work.”

Michael’s goal is to bring the same kind of energy he experiences at book club meetings to the series, especially for writers who are looking for alternative reading opportunities on book tours through San Francisco. “I want to provide another place for writers and readers to meet and discuss literature,” he says, and points out how most readings seem to be held at bars, bookstores, and coffee shops. The Barbershop Reading Series is the kind of location that could really stick in one’s memory for being unusual. Though he’d like to set the bar high for the kind of literary fiction and non-fiction he’s seeking, the atmosphere would remain casual and welcoming, with a typical “barbershop feel.”

* * *
You can read more of the article here.

Where I attempted to get the Manly Fireplug into a pair of rhinestone-encrusted mouse ears, to no avail. Some people are simply hung up on their masculinity, present company included.

I’ve been thinking about aphorisms. Two in particular. “Be careful what you ask for” seems to be the theme of the last six months. Most writers dream of long stretches of uninterrupted time, which I’ve had in abundance and put to dismal use. My only consolation is that having exhaustively surveyed at least five or six people, I’ve come to the conclusion that NOBODY makes good use of abundant free time. Which brings me to aphorism number two: “The busier you are, the more you get done.” This seems to hold up, at least by past experience. So this semester I’ve opted to sign up with an advisor back at Columbia, who’s given me a series of strict deadlines for my book. Since I’m only on day number two I can’t offer much of an analysis yet, but I’ve reached my daily page count and what the hell, here I am posting again. By next week I could be engineering an improved levee system for New Orleans and running for the Bare Chest Calendar contest. I can dream, and you can’t take that away from me.

Horniness is a mean tyrant. One minute you’re at home, sipping a protein shake, watching Bridezillas, and the next you’re crawling across the floor of a loft in Potrero Hill, wearing nothing but a jock strap. Or following a hot yet ultimately tweaked-out, limp-dicked leather stud back to his house in the suburbs of Minneapolis, where in a moment of tender intimacy he reveals his deepest desire: to give you a buzz cut on a folding chair in his basement. Without a cosmetology license.

I’ve gone to great lengths for sex. Driven ninety minutes through a blizzard for a romp in a hot tub. Fallen asleep several split seconds on Florida’s Tamiami Trail, driving home after a late-night-through-early-morning tryst in Tampa. Even drove all the way to San Jose.

This didn’t strike me, at the time, as much of a sacrifice. After all, the poor suckers living outside gay mecca are expected to drive in for booty calls; how noble of me to deliver.

Driving an hour for sex requires rationalization, so that one’s desperation becomes adequately, casually, cloaked. I have a new car, I told myself. I like to drive! What would I do with myself if I had to wait for him to drive to San Francisco? Crank out a few sets of push-ups on my bedroom carpet? Change my underwear? Floss? Much better to crack open the moon roof and count the REI outlets on Highway 101.

But the greatest rationalization was this: to fulfill my Latino Daddy fantasy.

Oh, please, like you don’t have one.

Sure, call me racist. But I merely participated in a long tradition of interracial sexual fantasy complicated by power narratives. Colonization. Slavery. Mexican pool boys. If I typecast a man or two along the way, well, they’re probably doing the same with me. And that’s hot.

Carlos fit the bill. Mid-forties, butch, divorced. English as a second language, which led to hot online exchanges.

“Can we talk in the phone?” he asked.

But of course.

I offered to drive. To fulfill a Latino Daddy fantasy, you have to go to San Jose. It’s part of the deal. He was delighted. “Nobody ever come to San Jose!” he said. “I can’t wait to hold on you.”

That made two of us. I hightailed it south, moon roof open, Sasha rockin’ the Bose bass. I figured I was about half-way there when I glanced at the dashboard clock. Ten minutes had passed.

I remembered then the reason people generally don’t drive an hour for sex. An hour is an awfully long time; plenty of time to examine your actions and their attendant motivations. Time to realize what most of us know about casual sex; it’s an escape, and as long as you’re engaged in the act of fucking, you can distract yourself from larger questions like Am I happy? or Did I really need a $200 pair of jeans? But during the commute, one’s mind wanders. Maybe I should be volunteering for a worthy nonprofit. Which is fine if you’re just bopping over the hill to Noe Valley. But San Jose is a different story. What if my dead mother is watching me, right now? Blushing. Wondering why I wasn’t home working on my damn book. Or making a dentist appointment.

Apparently not trusting me to the twists and turns of South San Jose’s mean streets, Carlos had me meet him at a bar near the freeway, where he stood waiting for me at the edge of the parking lot. I took him in with one quick glance: faded jeans, boots, a leather vest over his bare torso. The night was turning out well; Latino Daddy and Leather Daddy in one fell swoop! He waved me into a parking spot, and ushered me inside so he could finish his beer.

The bar was leatherish, with young bartenders just a few short months out of twinkdom, their plucked eyebrows throwing the rickety display of their rugged drag off-balance. Carlos introduced me to each of them while leisurely sipping his Bud. Frankly I wanted to split. Crossing the threshold of a bar with a potential trick meant crossing the border from private into public sex life, and for this I was unprepared. When Carlos leaned down and kissed me, my Midwestern modesty swelled up and I blushed crimson. What was I ashamed of? Carlos? Strangers with plucked eyebrows catching a glimpse of my sex life? Had we been, say, in his kitchen alone, a minute after walking through his front door, I would have gladly swapped spit with Carlos. But there in the bar, on display, I met his kiss with hesitation. Sensing this, Carlos grabbed my hand and pressed it against a length of warm iron pipe filling out his crotch.

“You look good to me,” he said.

“Good,” I answered. “Finish your beer.”

Warm nights, rare in San Francisco, always make me horny. All that languid heat, the air warm as blood, feels somehow wasted without good sex. Inland San Jose ranked a good ten degrees warmer than home, and as I followed Carlos back to his place, the warm air poured in through the open windows, and my modesty faded.

His house, with a neatly manicured lawn out front, was decorated in Desert Gay; lots of pale earth tones, glass, and chrome, which clashed with the Leather Daddy fantasy; I barely glanced at his Ethan Allens. The respectable house fucked with my Latino Daddy fantasy as well; clearly Carlos was raking in the dough. Guess that made me the pool boy.

As if reading my mind, Carlos led me into his kitchen (glass of water), where he pushed me against the counter and planted a big fat wet one on me. This is the part in the movie where we would shove various pots, pans, and silverware from the counter onto the floor in our violent embrace. This did not happen. His kiss was all passionate exterior: growling and grinding against me, his hands gripping my waist. But the inner life of the kiss was missing, because he kept his tongue in his mouth. Without it our kiss was strangely chaste. Where was the damned thing? I tried teasing it out with my own, and sensed its reluctant presence just out of reach. Good sloppy kissing opens every other door. Everybody knows that, just as everybody thinks they’re an amazing kisser. Without Carlos’ tongue joining our party, I wondered how everything would fare once we hit the bedroom. Still, I had driven an hour.

In the bedroom Carlos began fiddling with a remote control, pointing it in the direction of an enormous television in the corner. My stomach sank. He’s playing porn! For our first time together! He needs porn! As if I weren’t enough of a hot package, all by myself! Sure enough, after what seemed like ten minutes of fiddling, a pair of shirtless ranch hands strolling across a green pasture filled the screen.

During the fiddling, I wasn’t sure what to do with myself. I sat on the edge of the bed awkwardly, half undressed, running through my options. Look at him? The VCR? My reflection in his carefully-positioned mirrors? I spent five minutes taking off each sock. He turned back to me once the ranch hands snuck into the barn.

He was one of those tops whose idea of foreplay is to pat you on the shoulder before bending you over the edge of the bed.

“Uh, yeah,” I said. “That’s not going to work.” Not after five years of near-celibacy. Fortunately he took requests, and once I managed to coax his tongue out from hiding, we had a pretty good time. Even when I glanced up and saw him watching the television screen. The trick to sex is to twist certain turn-offs around to their opposite. C’mon, It’s fun to be reduced to a sexual object! At least for a half an hour or so. And the mirrors weren’t half-bad, either.

Over our moans and grunts I heard noises down the hall. The roommate was getting an earful. Around the time a second pair of ranch hands began frolicking on a bale of hay, Carlos surprised me by initiating a leisurely round two. Later, catching my breath, I heard a click, and behind me some kind of machine kicked into life.

“Oh my God,” I thought, “Power drill. Electric carving knife. This is where promiscuity gets me killed.”

I glanced over my shoulder; Carlos had pulled a hand-held massage tool from out of nowhere. It looked like a padded grapefruit on the end of a flashlight, and it vibrated noisily over the television’s quiet grunts. He ran it lightly over my shoulder blades.

Whatever floats your boat, I thought.

The tool drifted lower across my back.

Hmm, I thought. What a generous man, giving me a post-sex massage.

The grapefruit drifted further south…

“Ow!” I yelled. “Fucking A!”

“What?” he said.

“Dude, that thing is not going to fit there.”

“Sorry,” he said. “I get, um, excited…”

“I can see that,” I said. Clearly he was used to power bottoms. A moment or two passed before my muscles relaxed, and the grapefruit rolled back and forth over my shoulder blades again before beating a hasty path south.

“FUCK!”

“Sorry…”

“Time for me to go.”

“I’m sorry, please stay.”

“No, really,” I said. “I have a long drive. It’s late. I’m tired.” I yawned helpfully.

As I dressed he stood beside me, rapt by the action on the television.

“Next time,” he said, nodding at the screen, “We do that?”

I glanced over. Cops had replaced ranch hands, and someone was getting penetrated by a nightstick.

“Sure,” I said. “Next time.”

He walked me to the bedroom door. I could hear footsteps in the hallway. Suddenly Carlos had a strange expression.

“Um…” he said.

“Roommate?” I asked.

“Um…no,” he said. “My daughter.”

I swallowed. “Your daughter.”

“I thought…I thought she stay with her mother tonight,” he said. “Un momento.” He opened his closet door, and pulled out a shirt.

Their bedrooms, in fact, were separated by a single wall. As we passed her open doorway I caught a glimpse of the long-haired girl (fourteen? fifteen?), her back to us, sitting at her computer, the screen casting light around her silhouette. We skulked down the hallway to the front door, where he gave me a quiet, hasty kiss.

As I pulled away from the curb I glanced out the window. My Latino Daddy fantasy waved good-bye, and a moment later the porch light flicked off.

I took 280 home. That route, or at least a good twenty-mile stretch of it, has been called “the most beautiful freeway in the world.” By whom, I’ve never known, but apparently it’s won a few awards. It seemed a good choice for a quiet drive home. During daylight the road has views of the Santa Cruz mountains to the west, and gentle green hills to its east hides the suburban sprawl. The road traces the eastern rim of the San Andreas Fault, passing a reservoir that fills the fault’s canyon.

But at midnight I could see none of this, only the dark shapes of hills against the star-lit sky. The only sign of its beauty was the scent of the valley through the moon roof; thick, floral, an unexpected gift for a late-night drive. It had been years since my last trip up that road, and I had forgotten about the darkness. There were few lights along the freeway: no neon-lit fast food joints, no pools of gas station fluorescence. I should have enjoyed it more had I not realized, a few minutes into my drive, that my fuel tank light was on. So stupid, I thought. So fucking stupid. Panic surged past reason; my foot pressed hard on the pedal. I passed clusters of cars and raced through long stretches of empty road. The sweet smell of the valley ran beside my fear. My pulse hammered in time with the stereo’s bass, and I hurtled through the night along the edge of the fragile valley. I searched the horizon, expecting rescue over each hill, finding nothing but dark valleys, black groves of trees, and stars pin-pricking the sky.

Oh my god, my last post was like two sentences about the Oscars: my blog is so BORING! Sorry kids, but I’m seriously burnt out on reading and writing, (I think I’m on book 25 or something) and have no energy left to string words together. I miss my LIFE. Just a couple of more months, then I’m back to SF, where I’m going to do nothing but walk Louie, watch reruns of Project Runway, play Halo, and have sex with men who will sleep with grown men who play Halo.

And yes, I totally owe about a hundred people emails. It’s that writing thing again. And I’ve somehow ended up on a spam list that floods my inbox every day with literary creations like the following, which I’m reprinting verbatim:

How are you Moze,

Just heard, ur GF’s still not satisfied about u in the bedroom. It’s sad
about that, but lucky for us, situations like this are why there’s,
www.xxx.com. Kevin and me both using them and have nothing but
praises for them.

evening to jungle ? up near water ? and ? an ash pile made by many fires ?.
ike a transfusion of drops of blood? (Winston Churchill – Schama – the
Churchilliad). These characteristi.
French, several native groups mixing with those of foreign origins. The
population .

reid

Sometimes I wonder why I bother with this whole writing thing, when faced with such competition. Somehow I just know they’re making more money than me.

The Times had a decent article about Sunday’s march, which is mostly a blur to me now of signs, crowds, skin, costumes, cops, heat, and noise. Unlike the jubilant nature of the anti-war marches I had attended in San Francisco, the mood of this march felt cautious, which is to be expected, considering what New York has been through. Or maybe I’m just projecting again, viewing the crowds around me with the watchful hesitation I felt all morning.

When we reached Madison Square Garden, site of the GOP Convention, protesters pushed themselves up against the barricades surrounding the building, chanting and waving their signs at the scores of police clad in riot gear. Helicopters hovered overhead, the chop of their propellers echoing down off the buildings lining Seventh Avenue. One man, thin, sweat running down his pale face, pushed his way to the front of the crowd and began yelling at the cops there; “Officers have been killed in Iraq! You should be joining us! You should be JOINING US!” He was a moment from snapping; everyone, including the other protesters, watched him warily. Everyone lingered, drawn cautiously to the most obvious point of conflict. Before we had reached the site, the avenue had been packed, shoulder to shoulder with protesters, but beyond the next corner the crowds thinned out. It was as though everyone there both wanted and feared for something to happen. I couldn’t look away from the cops and the plastic cords bunched together, hanging from their belts. I watched for signs that they might push into the crowd. I had been arrested at a protest once, many years ago in high school during the Contra War. I had been clubbed in the stomach and thrown in the back of a truck with one of those plastic cords wrapped tight around my wrists, and I didn’t care to relive the futility of that experience.

Every since then I’ve had mixed feelings about protests. I’m not always convinced that being at one matters in the grand scheme, and I have to set aside the ridicule and irreverence that rises within me when surrounded by crowds of idealists, waving their signs and chanting, “The people, united, will never be defeated!” But I don’t buy that anymore, and every time I hear it I question the chanters’ grip on reality. But the same urge that drove me to New York drives me to protests; not wanting to wonder “what if I had gone?” and instead, going and seeing for myself, and if nothing else being counted as one more body. Below the derision, there is still a spark of admiration I feel for the idealists and their tireless efforts, so different from my own defensive apathy.

Later, after a restless nap I dressed and walked down to a video/music/book store on Broadway called Kim’s, where I wanted to sign up for a rental membership. And I wandered around the store and downstairs through their aisles of dvd’s, waiting for someone to come back to the membership counter but nobody ever did. I smiled a bit at the categories under which the store had organized the CD’s. There were the typical Jazz, Hip Hop, and Electronica sections, but the rock/pop section was divided between “Establishment”; musicians who had signed contracts before 1990, and “Indie”; musicians who had signed after. Several shelves in the dvd section were reserved for the Criterion Collection (“For Connoisseurs of Fine Cinema”). The categories were both hilarious and somehow comforting to me, after so many years of wandering the obnoxiously bright aisles of Blockbuster.

Nobody ever came back to the membership counter, and the signs posted there were written precisely for keeping newbies like myself from pestering the employees at the main counter. My human interaction quota had been passed long before at the march, so I left, consoling myself with the fact that my dvd’s from Netflix would be arriving soon. I stopped back at the apartment for my laptop, and gave in to the eclair that was calling my name from the Hungarian Pastry Shop. I sat at a table back in the dimly-lit recesses and drank coffee cut with milk. I have yet to go anywhere in New York where they offer cream freely; milk seems to be the staple, but that’s probably better for me, considering the spectacular pastry that I devoured slowly, each delicate bite melting on my tongue. I’d take a bite and push the plate away, read a bit more of the script a friend had emailed me, then take another bite. I ate the whole thing in this way, stretching it out over an hour as couples and friends chatted together at the surrounding tables.

From time to time I’d glance up, startled to see a giant calico cat walking casually around the tables, hopping up on a chair and soliciting pets from a young woman sitting with her laptop. She lowered the screen a bit to murmur across the table at the cat, who sat with her eyes blinking slowly on the seat of the chair. Did you know that virtually all calico cats are female? I didn’t know that until I worked at the animal shelter for awhile. Next to the cat, at the young woman’s table, a man sat with his own laptop, his back to me. I could see his screen, and a snatch of writing visible from several feet away, the words in giant font read “The effects of globalization changes our…”

I stuffed a dollar in their tip jar on my way out, and it was dusk and the enormous cathedral at the end of my street rose up, its walls glowing dimly in the receding light.

And later I sat on a bench under the canopy of trees lining Riverside Drive as the sun slipped lower in the sky, talking on my cell to friends back in California, who told me my voice sounded good, that I sounded happy. And the evening was warm and it was summer and I sat in my t-shirt and jeans, the headband of my baseball cap damp with sweat, and a woman with an elderly collie shuffled by, and the collie gave me a sideways look, a look that said, “I have secrets that nobody will ever know.” And the woman smiled down at me because, like most dog owners, she liked that I paid attention to her collie. And when I hung up the phone I got to my feet and wandered back up 112th St, the lights of the apartments lit up and the air still and warm. And I was reluctant to unlock the door to my building and climb the stairs to my desk, where I sat and wrote this without thinking too much about it, since sometimes that’s the only way I can get things done.

///

I’ve lived in New York for two weeks, barely enough time for first impressions. But the conversations I’ve had with the people I’ve met, some fellow bloggers, some Columbia students in other programs, have each lasted for hours. Yesterday a retired blogger met up with me for lunch at Tom’s Diner, which is, from what I’ve been told, both the exterior of the Seinfeld restaurant and the inspiration for the Suzanne Vega tune. I don’t recommend their food. But later we grabbed coffee across the street and sat at a table outside on Broadway and W 113th, under the scaffolding that surrounded the building. And as we talked the rain broke through the heat and fell in waves across the sidewalk, and we were outside but dry, and this made me happy.

I’m sitting now in the Reading Room at the Public Library on 42nd St, cool air washing over me, the ceiling above me painted with rose-tinged clouds. Orientation for the writing program begins tomorrow and lasts two days, and then classes start on Tuesday, just after Labor Day. I’m anxious to get started, to have the focus and the access to the school’s facilities. But I’m glad that I arrived when I did, in time to get settled, in time to see brief snatches of the city before school work takes over. Something tells me that I will look back on these two weeks with fondness, the weeks I spent in New York with each day free, taking the subway, buying things for the apartment to make it my home, meeting people and having conversations that lasted for hours, each of them a tiny spark guiding me through the city.

The other day, while waiting at Burgermeister for my to-go order, I picked up the local gay rag, paging through it distractedly. And there among the ubiquitous phone sex ads was something a little different:

“HUSBAND WANTED!

We represent a handsome GWM HIV-, age 51, 6’0″ with brown hair and eyes with a muscular build. As a physician in San Francisco, he loves travel, good food, volunteering, independent films and dogs. He’s looking for a man in his 30′s to 40′s, slim, energetic, and adventurous. Are you warm, caring and spiritually aware? If you enjoy watching pro football that’s a plus! Respond to Ad Code 2663. (Never a charge to respond – FREE).

Find him at:
GAY MILLIONAIRES CLUB

Free memberships to exceptional men ages 21-35.
www.gaymillionairesclub.com”

Yeah, right. Like he actually volunteers.

We are now officially as lame as straight people. Yay, team.

“I am turning over a new leaf but the page is stuck.” -Diane Arbus

The Arbus show would have been perfect if everyone else had stayed home. The show is closing in a week or so, and if I had been smarter I would have picked a time other than a Sunday afternoon to see the exhibit. But I had my reasons. If certain days are more susceptible to depression than others, then surely Sunday would take top honor. Around the first of the year I finally admitted to myself that for a few months I had been submerged in a minor depression. I took some responsibility for its lingering, and promised myself to get out of house more often, especially on Sundays.

I tried my best to wander through the museum and avoid hearing everyone around me yammer on about the art. But by the time I reached the Arbus exhibit on the fourth floor, the crowds were shoulder to shoulder. Her photographs and the subdued environment of the exhibition seemed tailor-made to introspection, but that was nearly impossible.

But I was distracted long before Sunday. This is a very earnest post, and many people are allergic to earnest, so you’ve been warned.

There have been a few periods in my life that feel like (forgive the word) awakenings, when I had been shaken out of tedium and set down spinning like a top. In my third year of college I discovered “postmodern” art. This was 1992, and I had no idea what “postmodern” meant (I still couldn’t give you a definition, but that’s part of its questionable charm). In the library I had come across a photograph by Cindy Sherman, one of her early “Untitled Film Stills”; an image of a woman leaning against a door in a long, dark hallway. The woman was Sherman herself, who in the series of “Film Stills” dressed up in characters and captured herself in images that evoked obscure film noir and other B-movies. I read more about Sherman and postmodernism, which in turn led me to other artists. I ended up focusing one of my independent study projects on Sherman, Barbara Krueger, and Jenny Holzer. Early on in my research, I felt as though someone had slipped amphetamines into my coffee; I was excited to be in the library, I couldn’t read enough. That was the beginning of my love for research. (This is an ongoing passion and problem for me, problematic because I can get too caught up in the research, forever postponing my own writing). I was energized by the ideas that I was absorbing. I was also stuck in Sarasota, Florida, so naturally I was both stir-crazy and culturally deprived. I think, in retrospect, that it was all the “meaning” contained and deconstructed (another postmodern buzzword) by this art that had me obnoxiously amped. I had been writing poetry since the fourth grade. I was a meaning junkie from the get-go.

There were other awakenings. Last year, on a friend’s advice, I had rented the “Power of Myth” interviews with Joseph Campbell. I know that it’s uncool to enthuse about Campbell now, long after his opinions have reached the masses. (It’s clear by now that I’m usually behind on everything). But it was new to me, and I literally bounced around on my bed watching these interviews. Campbell said many things which I found inspiring, some of which I’ve already posted here. But there was one thing he said which I’ve taken to heart, and which helped inspire many of my recent decisions about my future. Once you’ve found your bliss, he said, lean into it, and don’t let anyone shake you off.

Campbell didn’t believe that we are searching for meaning so much as the experience of being alive, experiences that resonate within us so that we feel the rapture of being alive.

“Awakenings” implies that one has been asleep. Which isn’t too far off the mark. I’ve spent countless hours since I started this site surfing the Internet. Which means exposure to dangerous levels of media and popular culture. And let’s face it; popular culture is not structured around the search for rapture, it’s structured around its ugly stepsister, which is what, entertainment? Is it possible that anyone reading this weblog has not seen an image of the Madonna/Britney staged kiss? We all know it didn’t “mean” anything; that it was a fake experience. And yet it’s still one of the most talked-about events of 2003. (And here I’ve added to the stinking mound of commentary.) My favorite fake image of 2003 is the one of George W. carrying a plastic turkey on a serving tray to a group of hungry soldiers in Iraq over Thanksgiving.

These images beg the question “why?”, but as anyone would tell you, there’s no point to that question. I still can’t help myself. Why do I know the names of the entire “Real World: Paris” cast? Why do I know about the entire string of J-Lo’s failed marriages? Why, as Tyler Durden said in “Fight Club”, do I know what a duvet is?

I have yet to get into a fistfight. For now I have books to whack me awake. One of the best books that I’ve read in a long while is Carol Bly’s Beyond the Writer’s Workshop: New Ways of Writing Creative Nonfiction. It’s one of the first books on writing I’ve read that spends more space and energy on WHAT to write, rather than HOW to write. Most writing instruction is structured around the idea of a two-stage draft. Stage one is the inspiration, the initial first draft. Stage two involves the literary “fixings”; the cosmetic improvements that spruce up that initial draft. Bly argues for a stage to come between these two; a long “psychological” stage where the author reflects on the writing and asks herself if there is more to say. This stage is all about capturing that full experience of life; discovering and including all of it, instead of just the initial impressions and reactions.

Bly uses other tools to talk about writing, including neuroscience and psychology. As a way to push the writer beyond aesthetic concerns, she uses stage development theories to make her point. First she presents a few theories on stage development by others, like Schiller:

1. You are inclined to physical practicality.
2. You get the idea you could plan to make your own life beautiful. Your mind focuses on beauty.
3. You deplore what is horrible and become interested in governance in order to correct one or another cruelty.

And George Orwell:

1. Vanity and careerism
2. Pointless love of and efficacy in things aesthetic
3. Interest in reportage
4. Dislike of injustice

Then she presents her own:

1. One is at a premoral utterly selfish stage.
2. One is still selfish, but at least one sees that there are others out there, and one decides they have a right to be selfish, too.
3. Whatever seems to win strokes from the crowd is the highest good.
4. Whatever authority says is right is right.
5. One has developed one’s own code of rights and wrongs, which one applies universally – such as honesty, hospitality, murder: one supposes that everyone in every culture should be honest and hospitable and eschew killing people (Stage 5 people may be cultural relativists so far as styles of honesty and hospitality are concerned, but the content, the underlying principles, apply to all).
6. One has to disobey one’s own code of rights and wrongs in order to make the best judgment in a given predicament. For example, one would like to the Gestapo in order to save innocent lives. One can’t remain a clean-cut Girl Scout.

Bly’s book was both an affirmation and a challenge. An affirmation of feelings I’d already had, which is that art needs to go beyond questions of pure aesthetics. And a challenge that I wanted to answer. I’ll figure that out as I go along. But I’m growing weary of my own apathy, and the apathy of others. The ideas that have been distracting me all take the form of questions, which lead to more questions. Why, after my second trip to Nicaragua in high school, did I decide that caring about our foreign policy was too painful, too pointless? Why don’t I trust my own opinions, why don’t I feel comfortable sharing them here? Why do I care what others think of me? Why do I continue to apologize for so many of my beliefs? What is the point of blogging? Is there more that I and others can do with blogging than to provide cultural commentary? Why does it so often feel like we are rearranging the deck chairs while the Titanic sinks? Why do so many of us gay men still treat woman as accessories? Why do I get depressed when I read popular sites that are geared around gossip and irony? Why have some of my favorite bloggers quit, and why do I continue? Am I being earnest or just naive? What good is an MFA going to do for me? How do I care about these things and still make money? Why does it seem that simultaneously everyone is angry and nobody is angry? What’s worth writing about? Why am I funnier in real life?

Some of these I’ve already answered, if only to myself. But they won’t stay answered for long. I just want to wake up. I want to avoid the onslaught of our stupid culture. I want to find others who feel the same. I want to remember Virginia Woolf’s advice, that we should never cease thinking, that we never stop asking ourselves “what is this civilization?”

Act-UP is dead. Kurt Cobian is dead. Elliot Smith is dead. Diane Arbus is dead. MLK and Ghandi and Kennedy are dead. Joseph Campbell is dead, and Virginia Woolf is dead, too. Kerouac and Ginsberg and Burroughs are dead. Baldwin and Wilde and Isherwood are dead. Paul Wellstone is dead. Tennessee Williams and Joe Orton are dead. Jung is dead. We can’t go back. So what is our duty today?

The ones who record for us what we would not see otherwise. The ones who won’t dress and moisturize the disinterested king. The ones with blue ink tattooed on their faces. The ones who gave themselves to something bigger. The ones who pack themselves odd little lunches. The ones with blackberries blooming on their skin. The ones who found doors in posted dead ends. The ones who get up on Sunday morning. The ones stirring dinner through the bombing. The ones who’ve kept their hearts in their bodies. The ones who cut themselves from the trough. The ones who stay awake at the wheel. The ones with delusions of grandeur. The ones taking a bus cross-country. The ones who take it personally. The ones who talked to us after class. The ones who do it anyway. The ones with glitter on their face. The ones who are fine except obsessed. The ones who look a little off. The ones who walk for water. The ones who speak metaphor. The ones who fail the system. The ones who torture themselves. The ones who bring it to life. The ones who cry in public. The ones who kiss the dying. The ones who were caught by it. The overly sensitive. The inappropriately dressed. The ones who would not submit. The ones who crawl from ruins. The ones who remember. The ones with wings of wax. The ones who speak softly. . The ones who acted up. The ones who broke a heel. The ones who keep losing. The ones who worked the piers. The ones who close their eyes. The ones who tell their age. The ones who walk at night. The ones who try again. The unemployable. The ones who never win. The ones who saw it. The ones who can’t stop. The ones in the dark. The ones who reveal. The ones who worry. The ones who clean wounds. The ones who left home. The slightly deranged. The flagrantly flawed. The suicidal. The solitary. The ones who grieve. The singular. The obscure. The insane. The tender. The mismatched. The freaks.

Here’s to fewer apologies. Here’s to being too big for your britches. Tens, tens, tens across the board!

Thank you, gorgeous. I needed that.