God Hates Fags, But...

...we are all redeemed by a much higher source. News report here.

Will, Grace & a Donkey

Like Jackie Broyles, I can't stand having bats or gay people getting in my face, so I've avoided talking about this whole gay marriage thang. So I thought I'd leave my thoughts to the always spot on Red State Update boys. And, remember, don't sue the Bible 'cause you don't want to take on a book full of Jews.

Reproductive Rights for Cat Partners!

Besides the referred to movie, these illustrations have nothing to do with this post besides the fact that they were sights from this evening's walk as this post formed in my over-worked little brain. This is how my mind works. Talk about Strange Maps!

I’ve been watching Cat Girl Kiki this evening with the English subtitles turned off. For some reason it seems to make a heck of a lot more sense that way. It’s a good alternative to what’s been going on the rest of this week. Something called work. It’s pretty typical that I put in 50-60 hours a week. Not exactly the killer hours of my youth but probably above average. This week I’ve probably already put in 80 hours and plan to have a somewhat saner Friday. I had a coworker in town this week for a variety of foundation visits and work on a killer proposal. If I have to utter the words “reproductive health” or “uterine prolapse” one more time I will friggin’ freak out.

Non-profit culture often means that visiting coworkers do homestays when they are in town, something that I do not offer the way I used to, but this visitor is one I liked and we had a shitload of issues to cover. That meant 7 a.m. to 12:30 a.m. workdays, but we got a lot accomplished.

In the midst of all of that we had a variety of discussions on some of the most random of topics and the intent behind words. One phrase that we analyzed or over-analyzed is the term is reproductive health itself. Although I’ve raised a few million for this topic, I have never taken that much time to think about my own reproductive health. Guess what, I really don’t ever plan to use my reproductive organs for, well, you know that. So does that mean that I have no reproductive health? I’m sure that Surgeon General nominee James Holsinger (sorry, I refuse to refer to him as “Dr.” since we’re on the subtleties of nomenclature.) would say that my reproductive health needs a good dose of Drano to use his grotesque plumbing metaphors. I guess he gets out the monkey wrench when he and Mrs. Holsinger are feeling a little jiggy. If you aren’t aware of this quack and have any concern about the future of public health, be sure to go to the Human Right Campaign’s site and send this letter to your member of Congress.

Another word of annoyance that came up in our conversation is “partner.” When supposedly progressive employers hold gatherings for staff and their families, everyone is encouraged to “bring your partner.” Does this offend me because I don’t have one or because I haven’t gotten laid in a while? Or is it something deeper, more primal and condescending on the order of “Oh, since we’re so progressive we’ll call our husbands and wives partners so it feels as if we’re all equal.” It really feels like asking people with gaping head wounds whether they prefer to have cocoa or mint tea while waiting in line in the emergency room.

Mind you, I am all for employers embracing a comprehensive definition of domestic partners including allowing unmarried straight people to claim their significant others. However, I doubt that even the most progressive employer would allow me to claim my main squeeze of the past 18 years, my cat Bunter, as my domestic partner. That thought has certainly entered my head since he’s due for a check up at the vet in July. If, in the perfect Kafkaesque/Cat Girl Kiki world, I woke up tomorrow to find Bunter transformed into the adorable Yoshiro, the male lead of that movie, I’d sign him up in a second. On second thought, I love my cat partner just the way he is.

Addicted to the Cure?

I have nearly completed the Lincoln Kirstein bio which has yielded numerous interesting new insights on his era and circle (fuller "review" to follow").

Though inserted quite randomly, there is a most curious indirect reference to Aimee Semple McPherson, a precursor to today's ruling religious wackos.

I never knew that much about McPherson besides portrayals of her in films like the trashy Disappearance of Sister Aimee with Faye Dunaway and Bette Davis back in the 1970s and her thinly disguised counterpart, Sister Sharon Falconer, in Elmer Gantry. Recent books on her life have revealed how her many wrong-headed ideas were infesting the American psyche nearly a century ago but took many decades of brewing before they took such a hold on the political system. Queers were not front and center of her various campaigns the way her ideological spawn would ultimately use them with such insane zeal during the last quarter of the 20th century. However, her ilk already had their eye out for us as evidenced in this amusing reference from the book on Kirstein:

• While in California, Lincoln heard a great deal about a woman who had taken as her mission in life to 'unqueer queers' -- a sort of secular Aimee Semple McPherson (whom Lincoln referred to as 'Jesus' little bitch'). The heterosexual missionary's 'scientific' technique was to extract semen from '100% butch normal males like firemen, lifeguards, truck drivers,' grade the semen (90 percent, 80 percent and so on) and then inject it into 'queers whose corresponding ...[quotient] is only, say, 5% or 10% or 15%' -- and 'voila! they're even butcher than the other non-bitches.' How she extracted the fluid remained a mystery Lincoln was unable to penetrate, though he entertained a string of fantasy scenarios. The woman missionary had managed to persuade the Pasadena chief of police and a judge to let her inject queer prisoners in the local jail -- 'over their furious protests.'

Funny, I've been extracting semen from a number of cops and truck drivers over the years as well. Perhaps it has increased my butch quotient just a tad, but it has made no impact except a desire to repeat the exercise. Or as they say: Addicted to the cure.

Runt Worship: How Low Can We Go?

On the list of things JunkThief does not like about San Francisco, high up would be the Bay area’s gay fetish culture. Fetishes are all good and well in the JunkThief book, but the ones here are just so lame and lack creativity.

Leather/S&M? Ew, no, boring, ugly costumes. And cold steel just never has done it for JunkThief. We’re sure they were cool in…1957, but move on for Chrissakes. Bears? Shouldn’t they be called hogs? If JunkThief wanted to fuck the fat and furry crowd he would have diddled with his cousins more often than he did as a youth. Then there’s the local twink fashion crowd who, on the whole, look like little Caucasian Modesto transplants who think they’re urbane because they put $3,000 of H&M duds on mom’s credit cards and hang out at the Bar on the Castro that has a design theme that would have been really chic were it a bar in Omaha back in, say, 1987. Guess all that’s left is Cowboy/Brokeback Mountain drag. Sorry, JunkThief spent enough time in the Great Plains to know what those dudes smell like. No thanks

Sorry, the right fetishes just ain't out here in the fog.

So JunkThief is already feeling twinges of “Things we wish there’d been enough time to have done while in Manhattan.” Salty Miss Jill brought to his attention Runt at the Nowhere Bar on East 14^th on Wednesdays. It’s a night for height challenged men and their admirers. It was started by Stephen Merritt of the Magnetic Fields. (We're not sure if it still happens, but it looks like great fun from the various reviews.)

JunkThief may seem like a mere peep pip squeak next to the towering Bryce Digdug, but at 6'2" in sock feet, he would still qualify for the tall club in most people's books. He endured the “Do you play basketball?” comments from relatives as a teen. JunkThief has usually said that his ideal mate is somewhere between 5’7” and 5’9”, and some of his favorite celebs like Jeremy Piven fall into that category, especially the lower end of the scale. But daring to dip below the 5’7” plateau is one of those excitingly taboo and intriguing prospects he has yet to dare himself to explore. It's so wrong that it's right.

All of this shorty chasing/runt ravishing might suggest that JunkThief has some boy-chaser or power play complex which could not be further from the truth. First, the runts must be fully adult, ideally 35 or older and second JunkThief prefers that they be the pursuer,/aggressor which they typically have been in the initial dance of the whole dynamic of short-tall. (JT has never had a beau taller than him.) It’s sort of the Krazy Kat/Ingnaz Mouse dynamic of unlikely pursuit.

In his many years of therapy, JunkThief never got to the topic of his obsession of having those little banty roosters to topple the tower of his manhood. Come to think of it most of his therapists were height challenged Jewish men, but so be it.

One fetish JunkThief would like to see brought to the forefront is the odd appeal of New Jersey transit workers. No, we’re not hot for not surly, chubby 60-year-olds in orthopedic shoes and stinking of Jack-in-the-Box breath, but ones like the guy we’ll call Vinnie (didn’t catch his name but that’s the one we’ve assigned him) on the train yesterday to the airport. This mid-30s surly dude with just the right mix of face fuzz, Italian American lineage, working class Jersey accent and surly attitude was the stuff to fuel JunkThief wet dreams for a week or two. Top it off with that blue uniform and 19^th century transit worker cap adorably slightly askew as he punched JT’s ticket and mumbled, “Newark Liberty is the thud stop. Thud stop!” JT was quivering and mapping out in his head a Jersey transit night at the right bar to lure in the right boys in blue as we had a little fun playing with new takes on the bridge and tunnel trade. We could throw those boys Jello shots as they brought new meaning to the various stops along the Northeast Corridor line. JunkThief and Vinnie could give a whole new meaning to the word “Secaucus.”

As Johnny Cash so eloquently put it, “I Gotta Thing About Trains.”

Why is it that JunkThief has always found working class boys from the Mid-Atlantic States intoxicating but dumb fuck crackers from the South to be, well…dumb fuck crackers from the South? Not that JunkThief hasn’t had his share of Southern boys, but they tend to be over-educated, hyper-intellectual types.

In the meantime JunkThief will be on the prowl for the proper Runt by the Bay. And, no, to date he has yet to spot a single Muni or BART employee that comes anywhere close to embodying something remotely close to hotness.

(Oh, dear, we already tremble thinking of the comments this post will bring, but bring it on. No bring on an appropriately hot and aggressive Jersey transit runt.)

Two Lives for the Journey

Certainly the last thing I needed was yet another book to add to the pile on the nightstand shelf, but Martin Duberman's The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein is proving to be worth the $37.50 investment. Kirstein has always been a fascinating figure, if only for that pouty, overly self-aware expression in all of his photos. (He did an entire series posing as gangsters and boxers despite his Harvard roots.) I've read at least a couple of his self-penned memoirs and other books chronicling his era and circle that sometimes crossed with the previously mentioned Leo Lerman who cites him occaisionally in his journals. These two long lives that were contemporaries. give or take a couple of years, shared a commonality of various same sex couplings but chose very different paths in their mutual marriages. Lerman was with a male partner for decades, and Kirstein was married to a woman in a virtually chaste but not unloving relationship. The crankiness in those photos is apparently not a pose but perhaps connected to his likely bipolar disposition.

Though his lineage and circle are ones I could only dream about, there is much about this 6'3" jewish man's life I could relate to, particularly his own memoirs such as Mosaic in which he muddled fact and fiction and used an anonymous 1930s magazine photograph to represent a past lover. What is fact and what is fiction? And why should one muddle with clarifying those two f-words instead of focusing on truth? That, indeed, is why I ultimately abandoned my path in journalism, but then recent infractions at the Times and New Republic prove that I am not alone in the blurring of the lines.

Kirstein himself summed it up best when introducing a teenage production as being "a world wholly, profoundly dedicated to the realization of the unreal." A "bad "student who was too inventive to follow instructions or color within the lines, he ambled down many paths before making his name in the ballet world and proving one of the most influencial forces in 20th century art. Knowing that it's nearly impossible to sort out the fact and fiction of his life makes the book all the more interesting of a read.

The last thing I am interested in following is a tedious tale of mental disfunction, but that's fortunately a small part of this 723-page read. A couple of decent books, of course, are welcome additions to the impending chase of the sun across America and a good diversion from trying to guess how many people in the two surrounding rows have TB.

Humor as a Verb

Growing up, I always remembered the image at the top of this post as a familiar sight in the library of my mother’s sister’s home. It was a print about 11” x 14”, and I didn’t know the name of the original painting or the artist. Years later I would discover that was the work of John Koch whose 1964 painting “The Sculptor” would become a favorite in my high school years and a key to his world.

The painting above “The Cocktail Party” from 1956 features a number of famous heads that would eventually become familiar to me as I grew up, including Virgil Thompson and Koch himself attending bar. I came to love Koch’s work that often juxtaposed ornately appointed Upper East Side residences with frankly nude bodies or commissioned portraits of his wealthy clientele and peers.

How fitting, then, that over this long weekend I’ve been devouring The Grand Surprise, the journals, letters and random musings of Leo Lerman who is the bearded man crouching in the foreground. It’s filled with tons of dishy, bitchy gossip. A few excerpts:

“Andy Warhol more wraith than ever – the badly complected boy who never grew up, but became craftier and craftier, filling with a slow-seeming cunning and a positive-seeming cunning and a positive destruction – lighting up like a tallow candle whose flame burns dimly within the candle rather than atop it. He lights shallow, surface places hitherto hidden.”

“Faye Dunaway – very Okie – albino in atmosphere. She has determination. Her technique shows like some girls’ slips or brassiere straps.”

There are plenty of nasty accounts of sexual couplings and groupings of all combinations, but they don’t equal the pithy dissing such as these.

In many ways it’s like entering the cocktail party illustrated by Koch half a century ago, a world I longed to enter as a child with my aunt as a guide. She was fond of such gatherings, or – as she tended to put it -- “fancied putting on an affair.” She used quite a number of words as verbs in a way that most people in the heartland never would. She also would often tell me, “Might I be so bold as to suggest…” or “Oh, humor me, if you will.”

At the time I thought she meant that she wanted me to make her laugh. Of course the actual definition of that word as a verb is: To comply with the wishes or ideas of (another): cater, gratify, indulge. Reading the accounts of Lerman and his circle that included Capote, Vidal and other gay men of a particular era reminds me of the women from a certain class who needed a mascot or jester to humor them in that definition of the word. The lap dog homos were deluding into thinking they were expected to perform some giggle inducing stunt or utter a pithy witticism.

My aunt deluded herself into thinking that she was the caliber of swan that should attract a similar circle of younger men who would admire and exalt her with unfailing good humor.

Ever since her suicide this past Christmas, I’ve struggled with trying to write about her legacy intertwined with my own self-perception and our relationship which was simultaneously close and distant, cold but intense, filled with contempt and mutual admiration. She introduced me to Scott Walker, Poulenc, Proust and John Koch. She would excite and devastate me in the course of a weekend visit to her tastefully appointed home. She felt it her role to instruct and insult me, always with disquieting calmness. She embodied one of my favorite quotes from David Mamet: “The greatest test of superiority is to never be upset by impertinence.” Thus she never raised her voice or exhibited any emotion beneath her elegant mask, and she uttered the most devastating dismissals with an exquisitely graceful smile.

Reading Lerman’s book feels like a portal into the world she deluded herself and me into believing that we might someday be a part of. Much like Capote’s mother Nina, she longed to be a part of the Park Avenue registry, a goal she strove through upwardly mobile serial marriages. When, late in her career, she briefly put a ring on her finger that took her to that world – albeit a few doors down on Lexington Avenue – it ultimately proved to be a disappointment when she was not the focus of the spotlight. She was a nobody in the 10028 zip code. It was much easier to attract admirers as a swan in the shallow waters of Kansas City.

This Memorial Day, my thoughts go back to those years when I tried to humor her and the futility of indulging and attempting to gratify someone whose approval is ultimately the empty space at the end of a maze of ornately appointed rooms.

Free Willy 911

Having wrapped up an ultimately and surprisingly productive work week after securing some Upper East Side appointments of great providence for June, JunkThief decided to exit the salt mines shortly after 5 p.m. and headed across the ‘hood for drinks at Bruno’s . A and R and D were there, and it was a good opportunity for a little pre-dinner chitter chatter over gimlets and witticisms before a long weekend of gardening, reading untranslated Proust and doing a little memoir writing. Just as the second drink was arriving, JunkThief’s Treo rang. It was a distraught Alejandro on I-80 headed to the Delta for the big whale rerouting. JunkThief was afraid that he might be in some great peril and that Carole Migden was back behind the wheel.

There did seem to be a crisis, but not locally. As if the whole Delta-locked whales were not enough, now it seems there is another water mammal crisis down in Florida. Of course, there’s not a speck of mainstream news coverage despite all the hoopla about that runaway alligator down in LaLaLand.

It appears that Al Gore’s worst nightmares seem to keep coming true daily. Now there are random reports of land bound dolphins holding up Circle K stores in the Sunshine State. There have been a string of reports from Tampa to Tallahassee, and these sons of Flipper are especially prone to go for all the Red Vines and Coors in a store. And if you have never been around a drunk dolphin, just let it be said that it’s not a pretty picture.

Alejandro insisted that he must go down there Tuesday to confirm if these reports are substantiated. So it appears poor old JunkThief will have to fly solo up to the time of his flight to Newark.

Just as things were coming to a head on that topic, Alejandro shifted gears and asked JunkThief if he wanted to go to that big homosexual festival on Market Street at the end of June. Well, needless to say, one gimlet already in his belly, JunkThief let loose with a few words he now regrets not in their intent but in their delivery. Mind you, JunkThief has engaged in virtually all 378 positions outlined in the Farmer's Almanac's guide to homosexual acts, and a large percentage of his best friends are Nancy Boys. But any time there are more than eight poofster in the same room, he goes ballistic.

Pride? All JunkThief feels when surrounded by a gaggle of homosexuals is contempt and malice. If he wanted to hang out with a bunch of screaming, drunken nipped and tucked swishy boys who all look alike, he’d go to a family reunion. Oh, wait, that’s what he’s actually doing at the end of June.

Lately JunkThief has been distraught that his beloved southeast corner of the Mission could be turning into a haven of light-in-the-loafer boys. More and more upscale coffee houses are opening, and "luxury" condos are coming every day. You know what that means -- luxury real estate calls for decorators, florists, hair designers, and it just keeps going down hill from there. There seems to be a lot more yoo-hoo boys wanting to show him their crack than the usual yo-yo-yo boys that used to sell crack on corners.

The very thought of living in a predominately homosexual neighborhood really stresses poor JunkThief. The increased equity is just not worth the psychic angst that accompanies it. He doesn't even like to visit such places, let alone live there. The Castro? No way Jose. SOMA? Get out of town! The only homosexual neighborhood JunkThief frequents is Polk Street since it's rare that you will see more than six fudgepackers in the same block these days. Those boys with peroxided tresses and three teeth in their head peddling their oral services to garner bus fare back to Branson don't count. They are, as they say, simply tradesmen.

Sluggo Sleepover

Most people recall their first big crush, even if it was on a movie star or fictional character. I certainly recall mine who serves as a role model to this day – Sluggo. The comic strip Nancy & Sluggo was one of several strips like Blondie, Dondi, Our Boarding House and Gasoline Alley that were set in a netherworld that certainly was not contemporary and seemed somewhat stuck in the 1930s. Most of the styles and characters in those strips gave me the willies with the exception of Sluggo.

There was something so sumptuously rounded about him, and there was that buzz cut head that certainly conjured up images of wanting to run barefoot through it. He usually covered it up with that little red tough guy cap, but when he sometimes let the world see that sensuous bristle noggin of his, my entire body quivered thinking of what it must have felt like to touch. Though I certainly was not like Rollo, Nancy's rich kid friend, I knew that Sluggo came from the wrong side of the tracks and wore wonderful tough guy clothes instead of mine that had gone through two cycles of fabric softener and a light sheen of spray starch administered by our housekeeper. Of course, in my worst nightmare I was Nancy -- a chubby little fuzz head in a too tight skirt and blouse with a pathetic little ribbon on top like a maraschino cherry on an unworthy ice cream dessert.

Besides owning a monkey, one of my recurring pre-middle school fantasies was to have Sluggo over for a sleepover so I could feel that crisp, sandpaper sensual scalp as we snuggled in my bed with my stuffed toys and favorite blankets. From the age of five to about 11, I loved having boys from school for sleepovers, and just when their breathing suggested that they had fallen asleep, I’d haultingly move my hand from my visitor’s stomach to the top of his head to see if he possessed the crown I was in search of. Only once did one wake and mumble, “Hey, what are you doing?”

“Oh, just trying to see if you have Sluggo-worthy hair.”

“Okay. But just don’t try any funny business.”

Alas, I never found a worthy Sluggo surrogate at my school. Most were too equally intrigued with watching Kukla, Fran & Ollie’s International Film Festival or making toll house cookies with me to convince me that they had that Sluggo edge.

Finally I decided that it was because I lived in the wrong part of the country. I sense that Sluggo was probably from Newark or south Boston, the perfect urban animal. When my grandparents took me to Manhattan every October beginning at age eight, I was always on the look out for some little Sluggo hanging out in an alley. I was prepared to be my own Fresh Air Fund of one to sponsor an inner city boy of my exact age, giving him all the great Midwest sunshine and unpolluted air that would strengthen his little lungs. Sadly, most of the other eight year olds attending How Now Dow Jones and George M! were equally overly intense grandsons with doting grandmothers straightening their blazers with faux crests as they meticulously read the “Who’s Who” in the cast from Playbill. “Look Grandma, she was in 70 Girls 70 that we saw last year!”

Looking back at my most passionately adult romantic pursuits, there was always a Sluggo factor in the process. Always a hope that he was from the wrong side of the tracks but would still be interested in me. Several of them wore caps and striped shirts and would look both ways before sneaking a kiss in public.

I once wrote a short story about what happened to the adult Nancy and Sluggo. They ended up in San Francisco in the mid-1980s where Nancy, whose round face and figure were always at the center of her self-esteem crisis, took a very low level job at the Bank of America. She commuted every day from her tiny, overpriced studio in Alameda. The plumbing leaked, and the ceiling was sagging, but she lacked the self-confidence to complain to her landlord.

After first sharing the apartment with her, Sluggo soon went through a series of increasingly wealthy boyfriends until he finally settled with a partner in Noe Valley where they had a quaint garden and a pair of Jack Russell terriers named Chucko and Mimi.

Nancy was driving home from work in her 12-year-old Honda Civic in October 1989 when the expanse to the Bay Bridge collapsed and she died instantly. Sluggo went into a deep depression, repeating: “I always told her to drive across the bridge with at least one window partially rolled down. That way you’ll have a chance to breaking out of the car from the bottom of the bay.”

I wonder if Sluggo is still out there? Maybe I’ll have dinner in Noe Valley tonight after all.

Did You Get the Message?

A Date? At My Age I'd Settle for a Fig!!!!

The slides show starts over here.

24 Years Ago - Stalking Memories & Raspberry Kimonoes

The twisted tale of the past couple weeks of the thwarted perusal of Gavin Newsom by Han Shin, the much scrutinized photo of them with His Honor wearing a raspberry kimono and Sup. Dufty's characterization of the alleged stalker as "a cross between Liberace and Hello Kitty" brought back some bittersweet memories.

Back in the period of 1983 to 1985, Junk Thief was the object of at least two stalkers of varying levels of mystery. One called Junk Thief's home regularly, giving an actual name and pleading to hook up, claiming to be a former neighbor. Repeated refusals of the offer did not deter him. It went from annoying to creepy when he proceeded to describe what I was wearing and where I was standing in my living room, visible from the eight-foot glass windows nine stories down. For no apparent reason, the almost nightly calls ceased for six months, would return for a week or so and finally disappeared.

Around the same time, a female friend (I won't use the FH word for fear of linking her to Ann Coulter) in the top image where she is wearing her ever popular bee keeper uniform was being pursued by a married municpal employee. She caroused my involvement by calling the guy to tell him to stop. Although it encouraged him to give up on annoying her, he proceeded with a series of "I gonna getcha" calls and carved his name into the fender of my car. Not a great idea to leave your signature when vandalizing property. By coincidence, I met him on a work related assignment with my job as a newspaper editor, and we both seemed to be a bit surprised by the dramatic disparity in our mutual physical statures -- he was at least seven inches shorter than I. Though I am pretty much a total wimp, I sometimes under estimate how I am perceived by men smaller than I, even banty rooster types such as him.

Oh, and around the same time I did a series of stories about a sex scandal within an evangelical church (why do they never happen with Unitarians? Oh, right, Birkenstocks aren't too sexy). Anyway, I got a series of calls from unidentified members who promised to expose me as a faggot and Nazi. And then it advanced to "gonna getcha" and even death threats. Maybe it goes back to my dad's teachings of the best way to diffuse a bully is to ignore them. So I usually responded to the "Gonna kick your ass, faggot" calls with "Fine, could you give me a time range on that and your name so I can plan my day." Those calls never amounted to anything.

And THEN, I went on a date with a guy who revealed just after kissing me goodnight that he was in a long-term relationship. Oh, great. I called it off and never had a second date, but his significant other (I finally gathered after details that crept up in the calls) phoned me at work and home off and one for nearly 18 months. This little queen's violent banter was even more threatening than the evangelicals. And he just as mysteriously would disappear or reappear, and then he stopped.

Then, two years later, his mother came to work at the same place as I. Shortly after she became irate with her supervisor (whom I had huge conflicts as well), the supervisor started getting threatening calls from an unknown male who used the exact lines that my mystery caller sent.

I never got any snapshots from the waste down or pink kimonoes, but, ah, the memories of being stalked. One of the advantages of rotting away into my dottage is that the risk of being the object of an inappropriate obsession diminshes daily.

Ann Coulter -- Hag or Fag Hag?

Not even a week after calling John Edwards a fag hag, it turns out Ann Coulter is hanging out with the real thing. One Marine Corps reservist and Columbia University student Cpl. Matt Sanchez has been making the conservative talk shows recently complaining that he has been attacked by leftist student groups for his military service. He was at the Conservative Political Action Coalition event last week where Coulter made her infamous remark and reportedly posed with him for the above photo. Fair and routine enough, but it appears Sanchez did share with Ann, Bill O'Reilly and other right wing pals some of his previous gigs. Not that JunkThief regularly follows that sort of thing, but he had a flourishing career on the DVD and VHS rental circuit under the name of Rod Majors and made such high toned flicks as Jawbreaker, Donkey Dick, and Glory Holes Of Fame 3, using his often reported "11-inch uncut monster cock" to burn a few memories. f Well, JunkThief thought that face and, uh...voice were familiar. But his film work featured much simpler words. An evolving account of this is evolving over at the great joe.my.god site, and it will be interesting to see how it evolves. "Sanchez" has launched his own blogger site and MySpace site. If, in fact, it turns out to be true that he was attacked by a group of campus socialists at Columbia, he has a right to speak out and ask for action from the administration. And he does not necessarily have an obligation to details his sexuality or porn career when taking on this new issue. However, to suddenly cozy up to people as rabidly anti-gay as Coulter and O'Reilly is where a line is drawn. Just when it seemed all the Republican closet doors had blown open, Cpl. Sanchez's case suggest there are many more still in hiding.

So it will be interesting to see where this goes from here. Maybe Matt can invite Ann for a coffee date to go check out the next sale at Barney's or the matinee of Grey Gardens.

UPDATE: The story has since made it onto MSNBC's Countdown as well as Salon.com where he wrote a rather wimpy letter, admitting his past but defending his present.

UPDATE: And it just keeps getting freakier. With a USMC investigation underway, Sanchez's website just keeps gettin' stranger.

Coulter Recants...Sort Of

Though engaging in dialogue with Ann Coulter is like playing ball with a rabid dog, it's hard not to at least acknowledge her recent implication she made that John Edwards is a "faggot." Coulter, pictured right at a press conference where she spoke about the supposed verbal slip, is rare evidence of a transgendered M to F (or is it the other way around or just plain MF?) who still manages to be a prick. Coulter told the New York Times the remark was meant as a joke. "I would never insult gays by suggesting that they are like John Edwards," she said. "That would be mean." To borrow from the old Truman Capote about Jacqueline Susann, I'd call Coulter a crack whore but I don't want to insult the crack whores. After all, unlike Ann they're just trying to make an honest dollar.

Happy Birthday, George

Happy 84th birthday to George Birimisa whose celebration I attended today in the Castro. Since 1999, I have attended his Intergenerational Writing Workshop which got me back to writing something other than press releases, promotional magazine articles and grant proposals.

Though the main focus of the class is prose, there probably would not have been this JunkThief spot or JunkThief TV. I've wandered away from the group fromtime to time but appreciate knowing that it's always a home to come back to.

George is an inspiring and incredible spirit that has taken many roads to where he is today. Recently, he co-edited the book Return to Caffe Cino that chronicles early avant garde and queer theater that he was a part of in 1960s. In addition to one of his plays, it includes the works of several other trailblazing writers of the era

Drought: Officially ended

Okay, I said earlier that if not as a resolution, then as an intention that in 2007 would give dating, itimacy and...uh...sex, a go for it again. Surely sometime in the first six months. Not a week into January, and at least a couple of tick boxes can be checked off. I plan to repeat it. It was affirming if not an epiphany. I don't want a epiphany, I doubt my heart could take it. Well, it probably could, but I want it to be a real one not just faking it. It was okay. Not awesome, amazing, fabulous.

Regardless, some observations:

• I do like waking up with someone next to me in the morning, but three to four times in a month is enough. The rest of the time I'd rather be in bed with the cat.
• If an overnight stay is involved, the stakes have to be really high if I am not going to do it in my own bed. I travel enough that I consider it torture to use someone else's sheets and towels in my own town.
• My fear that I'd officially joined the walker and prune juice set has been pleasantly shattered by more than one less than 30-year-old for whom there was mutual attraction. Mutual attraction, mind you, not compatability (emotionally, economically, spiritually). It was pleasant, and there won't be repeat performances. Thus, I took his number without comment and did not offer mine.
• If any person I am dating ever suggests that we "just hang out together," I will be clear on my intent and not compromise on this ever again. Being forced to "just hang out together" is up there with being hung by your fingernails or on the noose next Saddam.

Okay, that's as close as I will go to details and will let the metaphorical images tell the rest of the story. I don't want those Nielsen folks to ranks this site TV-14. But, as promised plan to see more about life and the future, not death and the past this year on JunkThief.blogspot and JunkThiefTV

Smoldering Mug Shot Memories...

As a preview of the junk to come on this site, I am including this link to my new YouTube post, Desire and Denial. Originally developed in early 2004, I've updated it just a bit to include a fairly biting slam of the dreaded, impending Folsom Street Fair. Folsom Street Fair, ugh, alternately known as Scared Straight. If that is what it means to be gay, I think I may change teams.

Mind me, I have no problem with rebellion and breaking norms, just not under the rigid, outdated rules of the Folsom Street Fair.

So what's this little slide and music piece about? The dance between aging and wasted youth? The lure of making was last dive into a shallow pit? The masculinity and indulgence of architecture. I'm not sure myself, but I'd love to hear comments. Bonus points if you can spot how many times Reynaldo Hahn appears. Or how many images relate directly to Louis Sullivan. And can you tally the number of images of the most featured star, Eros Ramazzotti. And, if not obvious, who is this celebrity criminal couple and what are the two movies and now a musical based on their misdoings in Chicago. Clue: It's not Bonnie & Clyde.

Neurotic Like Me

A (more or less) accurate transcription of a phone conversation

Wednesday, July 19 - 8:30 p.m.

Phone line ***-3925: Bring, bring, bring, bring, bring

Me: (Huffing from running from the back storage room, reeking of sweat, Fabuloso, Bon Ami, Target leather wipes and cucumber all surface wipes) Hell-oh…

Friend: Oh, hi, Gregg. I’m standing outside the Castro Theater and about to go in for the 8:45 p.m. screening of Johnny Guitar.

Me: Okay, cool.

Friend: It’s been a while since I’ve seen it on wide screen and I was thinking you were one of the few people who would be able to fully appreciate the whole neurosis of the film.

Me: I must say I am flattered by that characterization. Yeah, I knew it was going to be there and had thought about…

Friend: Well, if you really dash in the next 10 minutes you could still get here. (Comment/reality check: The Castro Theater is 2.11 miles and “8 minutes” away from me according to mapquest.com. That is a 40 minute walk; 10 minutes in a cab plus waiting 15-20 for the cab to get to my house; 8 minute drive plus 15-20 minutes searching for parking.)

Me: You know, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen it on a big screen, though I have it on a DVD from VHS transfer plus the Martin Scorsese interview. (Comment: imdb.com claims that there is a DVD available, but when you follow the link to amazon.com it says it's not available, but you can buy the above mentioned VHS for $59+) Gee, let me think, how long does it run?

Friend: Oh, about normal length, I think, 90 to 110 minutes.

Me: No, how long is the engagement or booking at the Castro Theater? Bluh, bluh. I mean how many more days is it there?

Friend: Through today – Wednesday. This is the last showing.

Me: Gee, I’d really like to see it, but it is kind of short notice.

Friend: Rent a helicopter if you must to get yourself over here.

Me: Okay, I’ll get Donatella on her cell now to get me in her ‘copter right now to paraphrase Miranda Priestly.

Friend: (After a short silence.) Well, I called just on the chance…

Me: I’m really trying be more impulsive, but I guess I’ll just have to say no this time. Sorry, don’t want to make you late for the screening.

Friend: Well, okay, see you Monday.

Okay, gee. Just when I said I should be getting out more!