A Night in Hollywood, A Day in Shangri-la

 Originally posted  4/26/2011

After posting those last two exercises in egomania, I felt remorseful. This is not the place to get the blues from tabloid fodder or mis-matched dates. By and large, there are some really great encounters...where nothing is expected other than fellowship. The play is natural and equal, and while no promise for a repeat is planned, you are thankful for the time spent together.

I went to my first orgy in 3 years: a home halfway between my digs and the Hollywood sign. I'd been invited by a tall, lean and hairy filmmaker. His partner, who I deduced was there to keep an eye on things, was a bit heavier, a bit hairier and silent as a statue. They had not a Doberman or Pit Bull, but a Mr. Winkle-like canine(but butch)I'll call Mr. Marvelous that followed me as if I had sirloins strapped to my feet. When it was suggested Mr. Marvelous might start to hump my leg, I replied that MM might find himself drop kicked out the window. A ring of the doorbell, and our next guest arrived...a hot man with an incredible penis. Yet, another person was due..and I sensed a long night on Art Linkslammer's House Party.

Having time to think, I began to question why we'd been called together. Was this get together being videotaped?...and assured that was not the case. But I didn't think to ask about streams and web feeds: even so, I think the audience, if there was one, deserved a refund..because the night became more about film theory and business...Inside the Amateur Actor's Studio kinda.

Our host learned an important lesson that night: when you are in charge, don't get so fucked up things go sour. In his quest to have a dozen tops to fuck him....he ended up with three tops and two bottoms, and our host who had cast himself in the role of the star bottom, ended up fucking the other bottom while we three tops watched bemusedly. 'Topping for the Tops...followed by 'Grey's Anatomy': ABC Thursdays!

We were a 5-some with minds worthy of Mensa and conversations got very interesting. For an hour, we brainstormed ideas on film making, brand merchandising, concepts and style. It was probably one of the least sexual, but most stimulating nights I'd had. Everyone participated, everyone had great ideas, but I grew restless. I  thanked my fellow entrepreneurs and left.

That Tuesday was followed by a Swimmingly Saturday spent with a sexy, hirsute handyman, young enough to be my son (and no he wasn't), and another casual afternoon talking...when I wasn't following behind him shoving my cock in his butt or my tongue down his throat.  Delicious.

The good play far exceeds the days where things go haywire. Because if you have read my past adventures...haywire, well, is haywire.

People Who Live in Garages Shouldn't Throw Radiators

Originally posted 4/24/2011 on another site in a slightly different format

"The best defense against bad manners is good manners," so an old saying goes. I stand guilty. I lost my temper and tossed a guest out. No, not over the balcony railing. 

A few weeks back I was invited down to the beach for some play. Knowing full well I'd be better off staying home, there I was, zipping southwest down Sunset Blvd. And then he texts: 

"Shall we play a game?"

I phoned back, knowing full well I wasn't hooking up with Matthew Broderick or Ally Sheedy.

"What did you have in mind?"

"I'll have all the lights out, but come into the open garage door. Be quiet because Mummy, she's  bedridden...but will be asleep upstairs. I'll be in the garage..and you come up behind me, admin..." said Beach Boy (who's older than me) in a throaty whisper that called to mind Watergate. 

I politely declined his inane idea, primarily because I'd never been to his place before and wandering into a dark open garage didn't sound wise when the residents have a private security patrol on duty.

Parking a few houses away, I hopped out of my car, was greeted by my 'date'. It seems he had converted the garage into his bedroom: ala either Keith on The Partridge Family or Greg on The Brady Bunch and a) was reminded how QUIET neighborhoods are at 2AM b) stunned by the framed and signed photo of Barbara Bush above the deep freeze, c) learned that Mummy was not bedridden, and d) was tossed out because my offer to be timekeeper and stop the play at 6AM was ignored and it was now 8AM and someone had to get to work.

You'd think I'd not invite disaster into my home, but I did. The incentive this time was a) he'd drive up to see me b) he would bring a friend (a cute friend) who was a phlebotomist c) I don't have a garage. 

They arrived and to my horror, Beach Boy looked as if his clothes (the few there were) had been through a shredder after an attack of moths. Since my building isn't on Tobacco Road and I have a doorman, camera security and NEIGHBORS, I was irritated. Clearly I had a Marie Antoinette-type who enjoyed playing with imagined peasants. I laid out house rules, most of which were broken within an hour. His Sidekick, I learned was indeed a phlebotomist but had no experience as an administrator : another lie exposed with a ‘sh*t-eating grin' that only blue bloods can pull off. 

Under my firm direction and gentle threats, Sidekick learned a new skill; using Beach Boy as the pincushion.  Tying Beach Boy down left me free to focus on my new student: who informed me he was a virgin under the watch of aliens. I offered to show his otherworldly masters how an typical Earth male fucks, but they didn't respond. Neither did he so I suggested breakfast. They declined, and I went by myself thinking they might get the hint and leave: Beach Boy being wealthy, theft was not a concern. 

I returned, finding to my dismay there were still there, but I'd popped into Goodwill and presented Beach Boy with Ralph Lauren flamingo pink shorts, a royal blue seersucker shirt with embroidered yellow whales and an orange ball cap and to wear out (best 4 bucks I've ever spent),.

But the fat lady hadn't sang. Somehow, the conversation veered to my long-deceased parents, their money and Beach Boy asking "why wasn't I given a private university education? "

His question was trivial, and my reaction unbecoming of a man orphaned at 12 and one walked away from Baylor University's Pre-Medical Studies to follow his own drummer.
My parting words to this stuck-up SOB? 
"At least I know how to dress when I go to the city to visit!" Ce que les mots cruel!

In my case, it was clearly was the drugs talking: that drug being Tylenol, to combat my headache.

For the record, I believe class is a state of mind, not one's financial position or zip code.

Thy Name is Trigger

Originally posted 4/11/2011 on another site in a different format

Situations can go so off-track one questions investing in a friendship beyond a hook up. If there's chemistry in the dungeon, shouldn't the same be true in the glare of daylight and reality? Last week, the script changed yet I was still reading the blue pages instead of the new goldenrod ones.

Across the canyon from Uncle Gustav are my other two uncles: Charley and Martin. They are a couple who aren't a couple, but look after each other in one of those spooky Cielo Drive-like ranch houses. The kind where you can hear ice rattling in pipes up and down the canyon....or maybe it's a blender creating a Rum Frappe next door. Charley and Marty wisely isolate their kink to the back 40 of their rambling acreage. A structure which originally served as a clubhouse in Our Gang comedies of the 30's has been rehabbed as the Treehouse of Iniquity with wall to wall leather, every possible restraint, probe and shackle available. It features Dr. Jekyll's Soda Fountain, which is a fully stocked bar, a room with costumes for a cast of thousands...and if you look close...tiny cameras tucked in every beam. You never play with both Uncles. You click with Charley: Marty's running video editing up at the house. You're making it with Marty: Uncle Charley's in post-production. I love them both and their approach to life in a twisted VistaVision and Stereophonic Sound meets Big Brother live feed way.

But one does not live solely for play sessions that start when the wolf bane blooms and the moon is full and bright. I was off to meet Uncle Charley in Beverly Hills for lunch, but that morning I had two house guests presumed in jail, and before I learned how to post bail, I cancelled lunch.  My message never made it to the Polo Lounge.

We rescheduled but getting my Uncles into clothing and back out of their compound ain't easy. Plan B was that I'd pick up lunch at a cafe near their place and help with some spring cleaning that originally was fall cleaning. I looked forward to it.

I'm about to leave, when I get an email from Uncle Charley arrives in my in-box. His third cousin, twice removed, had passed in Scottsdale, there's tons of film to edit and he's in hermit mode. Uncle Martin is there for him, as he always is. Charley wrote me that sex is ok...but not today. Marty mustn't be angered. Don't call us: we'll call you.

How buying lunch and cleaning closets morphed into Frisky Frolics prompted me to call Uncle Charley who reiterated his e-mail. I found this heartbreaking and then I got mad. After numerous nights of intelligent, non-sexual conversation, my Uncles: now viewed me as the Pied Piper of PNP and no more. With a finger pressing the ‘send' key,  I was written off their show.

It's a fatal flaw in cyberspace friendships that needs to be resolved: not objectifying each other as triggers, but as brothers in arms. Who better to seek advice from than a guy who's been there? I know the party mantra: ‘don't take it personally' ‘it's them, not you'.

That doesn't keep the sadness away, when one feels so very much alone and so very out of place.

With the Compassion of Sandpaper

 Originally posted 4/24/11 on another site


One part of my ‘re-booting' program: after sleeping, eating and popping vitamins, is reading. Think about it: you're replenishing the body, shouldn't the mind follow? (Nourishing the soul is a subject for another time).
I don't infer you attack The Wall Street Journal or Nietzsche in the original German either. As with most passions, I'm voracious....lists and phone directories give me a woody. As a writer and a human (yes, me) I get hot under the collar when the reporting is glaringly inept.

Granted, it was STAR magazine, and the unflattering Lindsay Lohan cover photo hooked me just as intended. I did not buy a copy, opting to read about LL in NEWSWEEK (now edited by Tina Brown, which shatters the illusion I'm a closet high-brow).
I've seen Ms. Lohan twice; at my breakfast hang-out during her lesbian period and looking frail, and last November, alighting from a car and looking fantabulous. I truly hope she recognizes her troubles as opportunities, since I empathize with her situation, and am about the same age as her so-called parents (an internet article entitled Dina Lohan Slammed by Producer made me curious as to cyanide's liquidity with saline or hot water).

My beef boils down to two quotes.  "She'll be an addict all her life," says the 'source' who got paid for his uncanny insight. Anyone who's been there and is addicted knows that addiction is a life-long battle so let's not demonize it.
As I often say, my addictions include Lipton iced tea, Tex-Mex dinners, Art Deco architecture, French bulldogs and...bad writing. (Kidding on the writing assessment)  Addiction is my cross to bear and how I do, or don't shoulder it well is my journey. The other pearl of wisdom I gleaned and I paraphrase, "Some days she's serious about her recovery, and other days not at all." I suppose that could mean LL, like all of us, has her ‘good days and bad days' which sounds a little more caring.

I was surfing Cam4 last Sunday and happened to land on a popular page...and noticed one half of a duo needed to be burped and put to bed.
The viewers were made up of two camps: clueless as to why he looked ‘as if he'd been drugged' and judgmental as only those with something to really hide can. I chimed in with an appeal for compassion, and promptly put myself in the hot seat.  WHY? I was asked. In a rare display of brevity I answered, "Why not?"