D O G P O E T

I’m outta here for a few days, will post when and where I can. Thanks for all the encouragement, you know who you are. I will try and leave my neuroses at home, I’m sure New York has plenty of its own. Have a great week.

Something that never seems to go away, no matter how long I have been blogging, is this almost constant desire to delete every post I’ve published. I read over them the next day, and suddenly I feel like such an asshole. My feelings about Pride now read like an annoying lecture given by the kind of guy who’s no fun at a party. Suddenly I can imagine every valid argument against my opinion, and they all sound more intelligent and more funny. Suddenly a minor quip about party boys sounds self-righteous and arrogant, and I want to change everything or just hit delete.

The posts I write about the past, the little stories from memory, are less prone to this, as they deal with past feelings and events. I still feel raw when I post them, vulnerable and anxious. I’ve gone too far this time, I think, every time.

But let me emphasize the final words of the previous post: that I am the dorky one. I am the one who is more worried about how to get to campus from La Guardia than I am about writing well during the workshop (at least, that is how I feel today. When I get there, my worries will naturally morph into new worries). I am the dork who is more worried about lifting weights during the workshop than writing during the workshop because I want to look good for when I return to SF and the space monkey finally lands. I am the dork who worries that I won’t be cool enough for New York, that all my clothes will be stupid and too casual and that I will just have to deal because I don’t want to be carting around two or three suitcases of clothes in cabs and on the subway. I’m the dork who is afraid to meet people I’ve been corresponding with for over a year or two because, well, I am a dork. I am a self-indulgent dork who can only write about himself and the dumb past.

But take all this with a grain of salt. I am a dork, but I also exaggerate everything to cover my ass. If I was really all that worried, I’d just stay home.

When the majority of those in the Stanford University lecture hall decide that a man with hissy s’s and precise articulation is gay, the professor pronounces them correct. The lesson: You can determine a man’s sexual orientation after simply listening to him talk for 20 seconds.

Junk science, or telling the truth? (via Arts and Letters Daily)

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Will be in New York City for Gay Pride soon, looking forward to seeing the city for the first time in about six years. It’s become somewhat fashionable to diss Gay Pride, for all of the commercialization and the party boy atmosphere. I know a lot of people who won’t go to their local Pride celebrations for these reasons; reasons I understand.

But I always think about something my first boyfriend once said, that we owe it to ourselves, and to those who came before us, who fought for the rights we enjoy now, we owe it to our visibility, our past, our future, to show up and be counted. My experience with the past few Pride days here in San Francisco, at least from my perspective walking in the parade with all the shelter dogs, is that the majority of people lining the route were from out of town; people who might live in towns where there won’t be any Pride celebrations, people who are out there in their cheesy rainbow clothes and fanny packs, with yards of plastic beads around their necks, having a total blast. They make me smile, they make me grateful for the life I lead. (Which is not to say that the cracked-out boys don’t annoy me, sobriety has certainly dulled their limited appeal for me. But that’s a minor loss). I will miss SF Pride this year, I look forward to seeing New York’s Pride with new eyes, to being the dorky one from out of town.

The currently page has been updated and is worth checking out not because my current interests are very interesting, but because Jim’s design skills are beautiful. He kicked it out in two hours, and it makes me feel like an art museum or something. I better work on producing content worthy of such display.

To films I would add Capturing the Friedmans, which I saw last night. Ever since my hours at work were cut, I like to find movies late on Sunday nights to check out, when the rest of the world is getting ready to go back to work on Monday. I like driving through the city at night, the half-empty streets, the parking spots, the quiet theaters.

The film, which documents the true story of a family’s destruction in the wake of sexual abuse allegations, is easily one of the best I’ve seen in the last couple of years. It explores notions of truth, and leaves no easy answers. It is heartbreaking and infuriating, and very funny.

I’ve been a little quiet around here lately. Maybe it’s the summer, maybe I am storing up all of my creative energy for the workshop next week. I’m excited and nervous, flying across the country to a school I’ve never seen, where I don’t know anybody, to work with a writer who is well known in the world of nonfiction, who edited an anthology I read for class last year. As I commit myself more to this, whatever it is, it feels as though the stakes are raised. The possibility of failure becomes more intense, more frightening. And two questions repeat ad infinitum through my neurotic skull; Who am I, and why would anyone care to read about me? I suppose these are the kinds of questions that I have no business asking, the point is to keep writing, and not look down. I mean really, it’s too late now, I won’t find happiness in a normal job. I have to do this.

I know I quoted her before, last year sometime, but because I am reading her again, and because it is so appropriate, I once again give you Joan Didion:

When I first saw New York I was twenty, and it was summertime, and I got off the DC-7 at the old Idlewild temporary terminal in a new dress which had seemed very smart in Sacramento but seemed less smart already, even in the old Idlewild temporary terminal, and the warm air smelled of mildew and some instinct, programmed by all the movies I had ever seen and all the songs I had ever heard sung and all the stories I had ever read about New York, informed me that it would never be quite the same again.

-”Goodby to All That”

We’re under the jungle gym when she says, “I wanna see who’s the best kisser.” In my humble opinion the afternoon has just gone from bad to worse.

“Yeah, right,” Joe says.

“No, seriously,” she says.

Craig doesn’t say anything.

There’s a bar that connects the four legs of the jungle gym, forming a little shaded room of sorts, a ceiling of wood, a floor of sand. Each of us taking up a side of the room, leaning against the bar, facing in towards each other.

Michelle crosses her leg, one foot bouncing in the air. I dig my feet into the sand beneath us. My stomach sinks. Stop this ride, I want to get off.

The playground is empty, school ended hours ago. The restless week before summer. Soon we will no longer be fifth graders. There will be a bigger school a mile away, where it is rumored we will be assaulted daily by eighth graders. The sun is falling lower in the sky, light streams between the wooden support beams, setting Joe’s blue eyes aglow. I watch him smiling. I watch him watching her.

“I don’t know about that,” he says, then looks at me. “Mike, what do you think?”

“What?” I ask.

“Well, you’re going out with her.”

Michelle glances at me. “Yeah, well, he hasn’t kissed me yet.”

“You haven’t kissed her?”

I don’t say anything. The sudden shift in our geometry has left me a little stunned. Allegiances are shifting and I’ve fallen behind.

“He’s shy,” she says, as if it were an affliction. She leans her head back, her blonde hair brushing the top of her shoulders. Her glasses catch the light and I can’t see her eyes. Michelle John. It’s true, I’ve held her hand and that’s it. I’m more enamored with the idea of “going together” than the actual practice. I like the note passing, the whispering, the relentless prodding by friends. But alone with Michelle, in the backseat of the bus, I am conspicuously devoid of any urge to touch her. And while a certain shyness may be attractive, I’m beginning to realize that a girl like Michelle needs more.

She tugs her halter-top up and I watch the other boys watch her. And that’s the problem. Instead of watching her, I watch them.

She folds one long brown leg over the other. “Well?”

Craig’s freckled skin is flushed red. He wears jeans and Docksiders. He has more money than the rest of us. I’ve been on his father’s boat on Lake Superior, leaning over the side, watching the deep green water rushing beneath us. Craig’s eyes remind me of that water. “It’s over 70 feet deep right here,” his Dad had said that afternoon. Or was it 700? I had imagined how dark it would be down there, what kinds of things could slide up to you.

“If Mike doesn’t care, I don’t care,” he says. He’s struggling valiantly to appear as calm as Joe.

Michelle turns to me. “Do you?”

“What?”

“Do you care?” she asks. Her words are clipped, business-like. Her frankness unsettles me.

“Um. I guess not. No.”

“Good,” she says, standing up. “I’ll kiss Craig first.” His eyes widen as she walks over and sits at his side, balancing on the bar. She turns to him but then stops. She takes her glasses off. “Here, hold these,” she says, leaning over to me. I don’t say anything, I just take her glasses. She places a hand on each of Craig’s shoulders, then leans towards him, and just like that they kiss. I watch them. No, I watch Craig. There is no tenderness, in fact they plunge their tongues in each other’s mouths, and the intensity shocks me. I feel as though everyone has suddenly grown up, and I’ve been left behind. Their eyes are closed tight. It lasts three seconds. They pull apart and without taking a breath she says “He sucks too much.” Which makes us all laugh. Craig makes a feeble effort to protest, but events have reached a momentum of their own, there is no stopping now.

She hops up and crosses to Joe, sits at his side. Joe Welecski, my best friend since last year. He lives in a low, shoddy house across the highway from the golf course. Joe has the entire basement to himself. One summer night last year he showed me how to light bottle rockets on the hill behind his house. Joe, who make us hamburgers with ketchup and mayo when I stay over. Joe, who still wears red pajamas with feet. Michelle’s going to kiss Joe.

They close their eyes and lock lips in an equally fervid collision. I watch Joe’s pale, wide face press up against hers. Their kiss lasts five seconds, and when they break apart she says “He’s good,” which again makes us laugh. Joe smiles a little, and I envy him the comfort with which he wears his body, sitting there, solid and sure.

Michelle crosses to me, sits at my side. My blush has drained to pale. Craig and Joe watch from their sides of the square. She sits close, and when she lays her hands on my shoulder I push down on the panic boiling up. I don’t know how to kiss and even if I did, I wouldn’t want to kiss Michelle John.

“Wait, stop,” Joe says. I turn towards him, grateful for any interruption. He’s looking past us, and when I turn I see a car pull up to the curb on the edge of the playground.

“Shit, that’s my father,” Michelle says, standing up. “I gotta go.” She takes her glasses from me and without a word ducks out. The three of us watch her half-run across the grass. She opens the passenger door and slips inside without looking back.

I turn back to the others. Joe pulls a comb from his back pocket and runs it through his feathered hair. “Don’t worry, Beaker,” he says. Beaker’s my nickname, because I have bird legs. “Next year we’ll get you a girlfriend, and we’ll have campfires over in the woods. We’ll bring blankets.”

That sounds awful, I want to say. Instead I watch him comb his hair. It’s a white comb, same color as mine. In fact we are both combing our hair in the boy’s bathroom later that week when he tells me that he’s going out with Michelle. I’m too pissed to reply. I leave him there. After school, when I get home I lie face-down on my bed, crying into the comforter. My mother comes in and rubs my back.

“What happened?”

“Michelle….broke up with me…” I sob, “…to go out with Joe.” I’m a pitiful wreck.

“That was the day,” she tells me, years later, “that I knew. I knew you were gay.”

“Why?” I’ll ask.

“You were more upset about Joe than you were about Michelle.”

I don’t know how she figured that out, from one tear-stained sentence. But she was my mother, and mothers always know.

Met up with Mr. Geekslut for coffee on Friday night. I always get a little nervous when I am about to meet another blogger for the first time, like a blind date of sorts, but he made for great company, and he wasn’t too bad to look at, either. His weblog has a distinctive voice, a unique combination of writing style and subject matter, the kind of blog I visit frequently. Which doesn’t mean that I always agree with what he says, I’m a little more idealistic in matters of love and devotion, but it makes for good conversation, and good reading.

Woke up Saturday knowing I was going to spend the weekend in bed; one of my 48-hour flu’s that hit me once or twice a year. Spent a few hours watching a John Hughes movie-thon on TNT. I didn’t realize that I knew all the dialogue in The Breakfast Club. It was rather sweet, actually, seeing Mollie Ringwald again. Something almost naive about all those stories of love across school cliques, the freaks and the losers triumphing in the end. Something that plays the violin to my naive, romantic heart. I always wanted, at the end of the movie, to leave the church and find a handsome man leaning against a red Porsche, waiting for me.

And indeed he is. Maybe it was the movies, I don’t know. I get these musical obsessions, where a song from my past or present infects me, and I must find it and play it over and over and stew in the blissful melancholy it usually produces. So yesterday the song was “Space Age Love Song”, by yes, a Flock of Seagulls. I searched in a fevered haze for a free MP3 somewhere, with no luck. I told the Space Monkey about this today, and later he uploaded it for me, and here I am writing to you, blissfully stewing. May someone say to you, someday:

I saw your eyes
And you made me smile
For a little while
I was falling in love

Vince has moved into some new digs, so go bring him a casserole, or as we called it in Minnesota, a hot dish.

Michael here. I got an e-mail from “Blair” saying he wanted to quit the blog because it was hard to do all that “writeing”. Personally I don’t think there is a “Blair”, I think he was some corporate marketing tool, but fortunately I was able to wrest control back from the capitalist pigs and will continue to provide you with the work you’ve come to expect from dogpoet, whatever that may be.

HI EVERYONE!!! Welcome back to BLAIR’S BLOG!!! I want to tell you all about my REALLY HOT nite out CLUBBING in San Francisco (HOLLA-BACK, YO!!!) last weekend! I was with my freinds at the END-UP and we were CHILLING on the DANCE FLOOR and we were really ROLLING, if you now what I mean!!!! (wink wink) We were looking really HOT with are shirts OFF and this one guy danced behind me and put his hands all over my WASTE but it was SO NASTY because he had a HAIRY CHEST!!! Can you say EWWWWWWWWWWWW!?!? So I told him to go bye a bottle of NAIR!!!LOL!!! And later this really hot A&F kind of guy was SMILEING at me and we danced together and pretty soon were making out!!! It was so HOT!! But then he started acting really WIERD like he was SLEEPY or something and I was like what the FUCK and then he PASSED OUT and they had to take him away in an ambulence!! But it was still REALLY HOT!! Later I got a ride back to San Jose with my friend Laurie and she’s SO FUNNY, it was really fun!!!!

ATTENTION!!! Everybody PLEASE READ!!!

This weblog is CHANGEING!!! We took a poll of ALOT of diffrent people and found out that most people would really like to read more about SEX, especialy written by someone like ME. Hi EVERYBODY my name is BLAIR and I am NINETEEN and guess WHAT?!?!?!? This is now MY BLOG!!! That’s right, Blogger has decided to replace dogpoet with ME. Because most people want to read about young gay guys haveing SEX instead of some old guy with a beard who always writes about SAD things !!!! So now you can follow all my wild adventures out CLUBBING with my friends and all about the boys I date and have sex with!!!! EVEN BETTER, YOU get the chance to vote on who I date and HAVE SEX WITH!! It’s going to be so COOL! Also you can vote on who is a BIG LOSER and needs to be SERIOUSLY DISMISSED!!! You will meet all my cool friends, some that I HAVE SEX WITH!!! Anyway more about ME: I am NINETEEN and live in San Jose, California! But San Jose is BOREING so me and my friends go to SAN FRANCISCO to PARTY with fake ID’s!!! I am 5’10”, 155 pounds, I have blue eyes and blond hair!! Some people say I look like an Ambercromby and Fitch model!! LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I’ll post PICTURES soon, I promise! I also promise to use more spell check next time but I’m REALLY late for work, I gotta catch the stupid bus!! But I promise to write MORE and it will be really HOT!!!