and i'm gettin' old

why? doesn't matter--he'll know why.

i'm getting tired of telling these stories (part 2)

so i've been tryin to come up with some way to make the lorenzo half of this post at least somewhat less dreary than the joaquin half, and that means serendipitously presented itself today in the long-lost form of this boy (not the first one in there, god forbid--the second).

and now, after a long, langorous afternoon of a steady transfusion of the most potent joaquin anti-venom i coulda hoped for (because, god, sex with joey is just so fucking perfect, and even more so after a long absence), i am ready to finish this sucker.

because my afternoon with joey served as more than a mere palate-cleanser; he's also the one who, a few months after that first text exchange, inspired this little back-and-forth.  which sets this post up nicely, because said little back-and-forth coulda just as easily been about lorenzo, or all the the thousands of other lorenzos out there just like him.

including the one typing this.



i don't usually attract guys like lorenzo, or if i do, it's rarely more than a one-timer.

a classic LA hipster, lorenzo is one of those skinny-jeaned, offhand, ironic types who cares a lot about not seeming to care about much--you can see it in the attitude, in the walk, in the random, eclectic, thrift-shop outfits (the perfectly-chosen shoes, of course, always being the dead giveaway that there's nothing in the least random about any of it).

there are other clues, too--the artfully tousled just-got-outta bedhead, but the five-day stubble meticulously groomed; the mercedes key on the cheap, kitschy fob, stuff like that.

and then there's the face--el greco, always slightly haughty and amused by something you're not in on, until you say something sufficiently funny that the facade breaks in spite of itself to reveal a big, goofy grin that lasts just long enough to hint at the sweetness buried under there somewhere, before it's gone just as fast.

so that first night, i walked in, looked him up and down, got attitude back, took the place in at a glance--2,000 square feet of prime loft space, creative rubble strewn everywhere, maybe three pieces of actual furniture--figured i was a one-night aberration for sure, got down to business and discovered, to my surprise (and maybe his, who knows), how much passion could be unleashed in this boy if you hit just the right spot.

whatever--as is usually the case with guys like this, the heat of his passion pre-cumming was equally and oppositely matched by his aloofness immediately afterwards; and, no stranger to this phenomenon, i dragged myself off the mattress before the globs had even started to run, headed to the lavatory, ran half a hand-towel under warm water, wiped and dried myself, rinsed it, wrung it and tossed it at him, sorted my clothes outta our collective pile, dressed quickly, gave him a wave over my shoulder and a "call me" as i headed, unaccompanied, for the door.

and two days later, he did.  and two weeks after that, when i called back, all pretense of aloofness was gone, and he was all over me from the moment he opened the door.

i made him wait a month next time, and another month after that, and mostly ignored the interim phone calls and "are you mad at me?" texts, until i finally told him i was involved and couldn't see him anymore.

and that, as they say, was that.

did i behave like an asshole?  yeah, maybe, but i had my reasons, and they were good ones.

in the first place, i really was involved at the time; my heart, or what little of it was free to give, belonged to v back then.  but the bigger reason was, i had learned the hard way, and more than once, what happens when you drop your guard with a boy like this.

 and time, as it often has a habit of doing, would prove me right.

*     *     *     *     *

a month or so ago

he hit me up outta the blue, and at just the right time, and i did the pleasure/pain equation, thought to myself, "i'm single now", and then, "why not?".

he looked almost the same as he had the last time i'd seen him so long ago, except for the new close-cropped hair which revealed his bone structure and set off his fine features in a way the shaggy mop had not.  and the sex was good, as good as it had ever been.  and afterwards, when i surprised him, finally took him up on his long-standing and oft-repeated offer to stay the night, he acquiesced with a sudden uneasiness that didn't surprise me a bit.

and when i tried to hold him during the night and he rolled away, that didn't surprise me either.  and when i reached for him the next morning and he said he had an early call, i merely got up without reply, headed for the shower, then headed home.

i walk in the door, and jeannie, my roommate's girlfriend, is already there, supervising the workers on day two of the demo and remodel of our only bathroom.

when, in response to her remark that i look well-rested, well-shaved and well-showered, i reply, in my best mae west voice, "yeah, and i'm not particularly proud of how that happened" and she shrieks, "you can be had for a SHOWER?!", all banging and hammering comes to a halt in the bathroom as laughter breaks out, and i give the boys a wink as i sashay by on my way to my bedroom and slam the door.

he texted me a week later, invited me over; i didn't reply.  a week after that, they started coming every three days, and then every two, and now there's at least one a day.

nah, i'm not mad at you, lorenzo, and i'm not playing power games.  i'm just tired of this shit.




and nah, i'm not sayin this song is particularly appropriate to this post, but it's the random it-came-up-on-shuffle set to repeat that got me through it.

oh, and this:

i swear, you put this shit through a brita filter twice, you get grey goose.  seriously.

dream, baby

[yeah, i know, but i don't feel like getting personal tonight]

roy orbison was a weird guy, and an even weirder performer.  he'd walk out on stage looking neither left or right, oblivious of the applause, stand stiffly in fronta the microphone, deliver the goods, and then when he was done, leave the stage looking neither left or right, oblivious of the applause, the same way he'd come on.

but, my god, could the man work magic with a song.

in 1987, having faded to obscurity in the public mind and towards the end of his life, he was approached to do a "greatest hits" live concert for television, and when word got out, the biggest headliners in the music business at the time clamored for the opportunity to accompany him onstage.

the show was intimately shot at the ambassador hotel's legendary coconut grove nightclub (which would also soon die thereafter), before an audience of hollywood's best and brightest, and the resulting masterpiece would not only revive roy's career, but go down in history as one of the all-time great live performances, and one that i--who generally hates live concerts--would have given my left nut and two inches of my dick to have attended.

as hard as it would be to pick a favorite from the show, when "dream baby" came up on shuffle tonight at just the right moment of (semi) intoxication, i immediately flipped over to youtube, grabbed the video, watched it a few times, felt my mood elevate immensely, and dashed off this post.

originally released in 1962, i liked the song, but had never considered it one of roy's best--that he'd somehow missed something in the arrangement.  well, 25 years later, he found it.

accompanied by bruce springsteen on lead vocals (whom i'd never thought of as even remotely sexy before i saw this show), with elvis costello, j.d. souther and jackson browne coming in behind, and k.d. lang, jennifer warnes and bonnie raitt providing the oohs and aahs--and all of whom flew in that night and ran through it once before shooting, btw--this is, to me, as good as it gets.

if after watching it you don't agree, then all i can say is, you're either a clueless whippersnapper, or your pleasure centers are wired very differently than mine.

[and naturally, after ascertaining that the video was embeddable before writing this goddam post, and then writing the post, and then embedding the goddam thing, youtube informs me it's "restricted", so you'll have to watch it here]

or maybe you should just have a couple stiff ones and watch it again.  and again after that.  and again after that.

mkf visits a gun shop

first, understand:  i don't normally participate in mass hysteria, preferring instead to watch and laugh from a safe distance.

and while i'm a staunch defender of the second amendment--if for no other reason than because of what history has taught me about what can, and often does, happen to populations who allow their governments to disarm them--up to now i've been perfectly content to allow joe bob and bubba over at the NRA to defend my constitutional rights in that regard.

sure, being from texas and all, i've fahred me a few guns--plinked at tin cans with pistols, blasted skeet with shotguns, that sorta thing--but they've never held any fascination for me, and i've always shied away from actual ownership.  why?  for much the same reason that i've never aspired to pilot an aircraft:  i  know myself, and unforgiving technology in the operation of which the least little slip-up could result in mayhem and death really has no place in the hands of someone so careless, absent-minded and possessed of a low danger-awareness threshold as your faithful blogger.

nevertheless, i've always known that my ever-darkening view of the world would require that i arm myself with at least a handgun one day, so over the last few years, whenever i came across someone who knows about such shit, i'd say, "look, i don't have the patience or interest to go out and test-fire a thousand guns to find the "right" one for me--gimme your best recommendation," and, over and over, one particular make and model kept coming up in these conversations.  spendy, i was told, but well-made and worth it.

so i started idly shopping online, and they were plentiful--even used ones, at a good discount--and, satisfied that i could get my hands on one if and when i wanted to, i went on to other things.

and then sandy hook happened, and i went online a week later to find that they had all disappeared.

which brings us to today.  after numerous calls, i managed to track one--their last one--down at a gun shop in burbank whose name immediately conjured up a ricky nelson tune i hadn't thought about in 40 years, and headed on over, singing

it's a--gun world

to myself all the way.  i figured, middle of the day, everybody's at work, should be a quick in-and-out.

yeah.

picture a tiny shop designed to accommodate maybe three salespeople and a handful of customers, divided into two claustrophobic little rooms--ammo up front, the good stuff in back--and then picture a walmart 15 seconds after opening the doors on black friday.  combine the two mental images, and that should give you some idea of what i elbowed my way into this afternoon.

the establishment, clearly unused to such crowds, had not yet devised a way to handle same--there was no "take a number" thing anywhere--so i just attached myself to the salesguy with the fewest people clamoring for his attention, waited my turn.

oh, and observed, much like an anthropologist who had just discovered a fascinating new subspecies.

i quickly divided the herd into two contingents--the seasoned pros in the front who had their arsenal already and were stocking up on ammo, cracking jokes with the clerk and rolling their eyes at the newbies pushing their way into the back who knew nothing about guns, but were determined to get 'em at least one before feinstein and obama showed up and locked the doors forever.

it was a cross-section of humanity, lemme tellya--toothless lowlifes commingling with prada'd soccer moms, all of 'em united by a common goal.

there was the kid who asked to be put on the waitlist for the outta-stock AR-15 assault rifle he'd seen in the movies, and, when told "you don't understand. there is no waitlist--those things are about to be outlawed, and they're all gone", looked like a six-year-old who'd just found out there's no santa claus.

and the ethnic-looking guy with the vaguely middle-eastern accent whom everybody watched suspiciously as he knowingly picked out his weapon of choice.

last but not least, the biker guy and his elderly mother--the salesguy kept shoving revolvers into her trembling hand in an effort to find one whose trigger was light enough for her arthritic fingers to operate. at last, click!--and with granny locked and loaded, it was finally my turn.

i told the guy what i had come for, and it was removed from its glass case and placed in my hands--a black 9mm SIG-Sauer P229 equipped with night sights (whatever the fuck those are)--and after hefting it for a minute, turning it this way and that, i handed it back to him, said, "yeah, fine--wrap it up."

and that's when the fun really began.

lemme just say that, coming from a part of the country where buying a gun is no more complicated than buying a pair of shoes, i was somewhat unprepared for the hoops the state of california was about to put me through.

"you've taken the test already, right?"

"what test?", i asked suspiciously. "nobody said anything about any test."

apparently, california has in its wisdom devised a test to determine if one is competent to handle a firearm responsibly.  which worried my unprepared-for-this-development ass a little, until i actually got my hands on the test, which consisted mostly of questions of the

guns are dangerous weapons--true or false

level of difficulty.  i sailed through it in about three minutes, picking the most screamingly obvious answer for each question, and scored a 98.  [granny, on the other hand, who had started well before me, was still struggling with the thing long after i had finished.  i couldn't decide whether i was rooting for her or not.]

and once that was done, there was the paperwork.  lots and lots of paperwork.  finally, exhausted, i was told that, assuming the background check panned out, i could pick up my new gun ten days from now, but would not be allowed to transport it to my home without it being confined in a locking safe, since my hatchback had no trunk in which to secure it.

i thought about telling the guy that if i had bought the damn thing in texas i coulda walked out with it right then, loaded it and tossed it in the glove compartment, but i really needed a smoke, so i just thanked him, grabbed my papers and pushed my way out.  whole thing had taken three goddam hours.

so now i'm the proud owner of a gun i paid significantly more for than if i'd bought it a month ago. what am i gonna do with it?  i dunno--maybe if i listen to that sweet hook a few dozen more times, ricky'll tell me.

and the reviews are in (continued)

when i wrote the first part of this post, it was with the full intention of coming back in part 2 and doing a point-by-point response to the reviews of this blog referenced therein.

thankfully, i'm sober now and back to my usual semi-indifference to the opinions of others, so i'll spare you most of it.  but i did wanna address a couple things.

first, one of paulo's readers weighs in:

what strikes me most about gregory's review of my blog--aside, of course, from its typical compassionate-liberal viciousness--is how it completely misses the point.  no sense of humor?!  this whole goddam blog is nothing but a dark cosmic joke, and i thought i'd made that fairly clear.  so either gregory's an idiot, or i've been deluding myself as to the extent of my supposed cleverness.  god, i hope it's the former.

as for paulo himself, while he professes to love the blog, he seems to see its author as nothing more than an amoral, aging lothario drunkenly crowing about all the boys he's nailed.  to this, i can only respond with the following, from an email i once wrote to faithful commenter noblesavage:

the reason you cringe at my trick stories, rob--in fact, the reason so much of what i write is cringeworthy--is because that is the intention of this long, five-year gutter-morality tale.  or, to put it another way,

oh mother, tell your children, not to do what i have done

(and yeah, will, i know--the animals did that one, too.)

where paulo nails me to the wall, however, is with the following observation:

I believe that even though one should have some courtesy to the person reading their drivel, paying a reader too much mind can fuck with your head as a writer.

boy, is he right about that.  i'm starting to care about what you assholes think, and it's clearly fucking with my head.

because he hadda come back for more, he hadda have it one more time

yeah, except that as soon as i leave the canyon, all my missing messages magically pop into place--but nice try, cupcake.

so i sit back and await an apology from this thoughtless little twit for wasting half my day driving halfway to hell and back for nothing, but a few days go by and then i get

as if nothing had happened.  nice try again, but i don't think so.  we'll wait him out, because--and i don't care how damn cute he and i both think he is--what he and i both know he needs doesn't exactly grow on trees in this city.

but instead, i get,

what the hell are they teaching these kids in twink school these days?  but wait, there's more:

jesus, he really is reaching now.  i'm thinking three or four more of these might earn him a provisional pass back into the Rotation, but it'll be damn sure be a grudgefuck, and he'd damn well better not blow it this time.

and that's what it's come down to, folks--playing power games with twinks.  oh well, everybody's gotta be good at something.




oh, and if you think for one goddam minute that tracking down this most obscure of tracks from the furthest reaches of the internet, creating a video of same and uploading it to youtube while drunk just for the sake of capping off this lousy post was a small feat, think again.  i'm nothing if not a slave to my goddam art, goddammit.

now get up and dance.

what is the matter with people?

seems that whenever i think that nothing done in the name of artistic self-expression could surprise me anymore, along comes something new.

i have hinted (ok, more than hinted) at my contempt for much of what has been pawned off as "art" over the past hundred or so years, as its most celebrated practitioners discarded the age-old tenets of beauty, virtuosity and elevation of humanity through their collective vision, and embraced something quite different.

all of a sudden, "good" art was no longer beautiful and able to stand on its innate merits--the new art was crude and ugly, and thus had to be explained in order to be understood.  and anyone who saw through the scam promoted by these clever hucksters and their apologists, or merely didn't get the sales pitch--or, god forbid, said something as eminently sensible as "my two-year-old coulda done that"--was immediately dismissed and ridiculed by the intelligentsia as an unwashed philistine.

and thus the public were intimidated into buying the big lie--and, before they knew it, offering up their tax dollars to subsidize the artistic "creation" of such masterpieces as crucifixes in jars of urine.

corollary #1 to the mkf unified theory of the evolution of art:  beauty is hard, but ugly is easy.  so, ugly it is.

corollary #2 to the mkf unified theory of the evolution of art:  if it has to be explained in order to be appreciated, it's probably crap.

all of which is merely a prelude to the subject of today's post--if you think i have strong feelings about such static creations as paintings, sculpture and photographs of sacred objects in jars of artistic piss, you don't even wanna get me started on the subject of that bastard love-child spawned by the modern art movement known as "performance" art.

seriously, what does it say about a civilization when some guy calling himself an artist can chop off his dick and balls, braise 'em up in a pan along with some mushrooms, and serve his creation garnished with a sprig of parsley to a group of art lovers who ponied up $250 a plate

god, i at least hope he was hung

in order to partake of his genius--oh, and have a waitlist of disappointed patrons lined up with checkbooks in hand on the off chance he can manage to grow, chop off and cook another set?

i guess the better question would be, why did this giant of the art world sell himself so short?  because god knows the right gallery coulda gotten him so much more.

one for the birthday boy

.

because the only time i ever feel close to Him is when this song comes up on shuffle.  give it a listen--i promise al will make a believer outta you, too.

merry christmas, everyone.

i'll blame this one on george harrison and cheap vodka tomorrow

.

autumn 1993 [or thereabouts--noblesavage will know]

he'd summoned his courage, sneaked outta the compound and travelled to weho from venice by bus.  he knew it was against the teachings, but could deny the urge no longer.

it wasn't just the shabby clothes and weird hair that set him apart on the boulevard that night--it was the sweet, guileless smile that grew even wider when our eyes met that caused me to drop the twink i was talking to like a bad habit and head in his direction.

and so we met.

after that first night, he'd steal away after evening prayers whenever he could and come see me, usually bearing fruit or flowers from the altar.  we'd talk into the night--he loved his life and his deities, and it showed in that smile.

it was a slow seduction.  i didn't push; i knew i'd have to be careful with this one.

finally--i think it was a sunday night--

it had to have been sunday because that was their high holy day, and i remember he hung the garland he'd stolen from the statue of krishna around my neck, gave me a long kiss and used it to drag me to the bedroom

i introduced him to the garden of earthly delights.  and with each new discovery, his eyes and that smile grew wider, until his joy knew no bounds.

couple nights later, there was a knock at the door.  i answered and there he was, arms laden with treasure, eyes dancing with delight at catching me by surprise.  until he looked past me and saw the boy on the couch.

that night, i watched his smile die.

because i killed it.

day 6: how about a classy "it came up on shuffle" for a change?

.

this wasn't mere blogfodder--for my money it's the undisputed kick-ass piano composition of all time, presented to you below the way i first heard it.

and i'm glad entremont's chopin was the first chopin i ever experienced.  yeah, even to my untrained ear he's a little sloppy sometimes, but the passion he brings to the music he so obviously loves more than makes up for it.

since then, i've heard many interpretations of this piece by many different hands, and even when more technically perfect, they all seem flat and bloodless when compared to this one.

enjoy.

ok, there was that one dance track

.

even i had to admit the nubby orange case was cool--and probably the only reason i allowed him to seduce me into listening to anything by the pet shop boys, much less their dance music.

but noblesavage turned out to be right on that long-ago night in 1993:  their version of go west was--and still is--really great.





[for those who don't understand the context of this post: it's because you're not reading the comments of previous posts.

for those who don't understand why the communist armies of the world are prancing about with gay abandon to the pet shop boys in the above video:  eat me--it was the best copy i could find. ]

guttermorality blogpost #588, in which mkf tries to redeem himself for guttermorality blogpost #587

.

[i.e., another blast from the past that's been on high rotation lately]

so the other night eric clapton's cocaine comes up on shuffle as it does from time to time, and at some point after i settle in to enjoy its well-worn but eternally-cool groove--but before i allow its seductive strains to completely lull me back to its place and time--i suddenly remember it's really not eric clapton's cocaine at all.

it's actually j.j. cale's cocaine [just like it was j.j. cale's after midnight, but who's counting--right, eric?].

which got me thinking about j.j. cale, and about that day back in 1971 when my young, impressionable 14-year-old ass first heard the song which is the subject of this post and thus became aware of the existence of this guy who made music that was utterly unlike anything else on the radio at that time.

like pretty much everything else he's written, crazy mama has been covered by pretty much everybody under the sun--but unlike all the others, it's his own version of this one that's stood the test of time.

seriously, if you know a cooler song than this, please lemme know.

guttermorality blogpost #587, in which mkf reconnects with his inner teenybopper

.

it's no deep, dark secret to regular readers of this blog that i compose my deepest, darkest posts to (a) liberal amounts of vodka, and (b) more often than not, a single bouncy pop song from my misspent youth upon which i fixate and set to "repeat" when it comes up on shuffle at the optimal moment in that particular night's alcoholic cycle.


and while the booze is integral to the creative process, the song selection is probably equally if not more so.  because to me, these songs aren't just songs, they're little aural drug pushes that last precisely as long as the music does--i.e., little two-and-a-half minute endorphin-loaded packages of happiness that, in combination with the booze, hold off the darkness long enough for me to actually write something.


songs such as the one that's the subject of this post, for instance.

*     *     *     *     *

 
yeah, she's from way back in the day and her flippy hairdo was tragically wrong for her face, but lesley gore was the britney spears of her day--and even though her signature song never did much for me, this all-but-forgotten follow-up ranks, imho, among the best pop records ever made.

she was all of 18, her voice was sublime, her song selection shrewd, and the impeccable, multi-layered production was, believe it or not, quincy jones at his early best.  and if all that's not enough, it turns out that despite all her protestations of boy trouble to the contrary, she was One Of Our People all along--who the fuck knew?

and, half a century later, maybe when lady gaga manages to come up with something even half as hooky as maybe i know, then maybe i'll start to pay attention to her scrawny, desperately-theatrical ass.

unless and until that happens, i'll stay down here in the dinosaur pit, pour myself another one and keep lil' lesley on repeat, thank you very much.

because my life was so much simpler when i was sober and queer

.

and because seeing laura this past weekend resurrected dormant memories of this talented little trio from my college days in austin.

and finally, because i just realized there's a whole new generation of lesbians out there who have probably never heard this song, and that is a wrong that must be righted immediately goddammit.





experience the genius of two nice girls for yourself and then pass 'em on to your favorite dyke, ok?

i'm a fool to do your dirty work, oh yeah

.

content removed, but feel free to enjoy the music.

still, after all this time

since one of the eternal themes of this blog is mkf getting shitfaced and casting what's left of his memory back to that period when he was last happy, and since it's been awhile since i've allowed myself to wallow in that particular trough

and since it came up on shuffle tonight just as i was getting really toasted

i present for your delectation what may well be, with the possible exception of "the green, green grass of home", the ultimate country crying-in-your-beer song of all time.

mostly forgotten today, there was a long stretch back in 1963 when it was pretty much impossible to make even a short trip to the UtoteM in any red state in america without hearing this song on any radio station you picked--and even after its heyday, i personally have seen strong men, including 240-lb former NFL linebackers [ok fine, just one--and yeah, he was drunk] reduced to tears when it came up on the jukebox.

while i can't remember the first time i heard it, "still" conjures up for me so many nights half-asleep in the darkened backseat of the family car on any number of road trips, watching the glowing tips of my parents' cigarettes up front as we travelled cross-texas and countless songs like this faded in and out on the radio.

good times.

a simple twist of fate

.

i love stories about how small, seemingly inconsequential decisions ended up changing everything.

american popular music is rife with such stories--like, for instance, the low-level functionary who decided "the pendletones" was a dumb name for a band that was doing surf music, crossed it out on their first pressing and wrote in "the beach boys" instead.

or the lamentable story of boz scaggs--who, when he finally hit paydirt with "lowdown" in the late 70's and got two movie soundtrack offers, opted for the high-end production with the big stars rather than the cheesy, low-budget disco flick, and then watched with dismay as his prospects for fortune died along with the flop that was looking for mr. goodbar, while saturday night fever went on to make millions for everybody involved.

but my favorite "what might've been" story by far is the one about two high-school friends who, in their early twenties, transcended their "tom and jerry" past to produce a first album of extraordinary maturity.  a minimalist masterpiece, it was released by columbia to minimal fanfare, received minimal promotion and airplay, and died before anybody ever heard it.

it wasn't their fault they'd released an acoustic folk album just as the world was leaving acoustic folk behind--their timing sucked, that was all.

whatever.  chastened and disillusioned by their failure, the pair split up and went their separate ways, and that's the way this story should've ended.

except there was this producer who decided one of the tracks of said failed album was kinda catchy and just needed a lil' sprucing up.  so he grabbed some session musicians and overdubbed some electric guitars and drums onto it, and, without any consultation with the original artists, released the mashed-up result as a single.

i've often wondered what the author's reaction was when he first heard the unauthorized electrified version of his sacred, existential howl--and then his reaction when said unauthorized electrified version went straight to number one and made him an international superstar.

does the end justify the means?  i'd love to ask both paul simon and art garfunkel that question.

but since i can't [and since it came up on shuffle tonight and thus inspired this post] i offer up for your delectation the original version you've probably never heard.




when i was in high school i used to play this over and over and twirl the balance knob on my stereo back and forth from left channel to right to hear first one voice and then the other, and then blend the two together--because in this, the original acoustic version, art garfunkel's voice occupied the left channel and paul simon's the right, so you could fully experience their harmonic magic [this subtlety got lost in the remake, when the original got crammed onto one track in order to make room for the new guitars and drums and shit on the other].

for good measure, i'm also gonna include the title track of this lost album.  bask in its glory--or, if you wanna more fully appreciate what these two kids accomplished, do what i used to do and listen to the left channel through the first verse, then the right through the second, and then blend the two together.

i know that's harder to do now that balance knobs don't exist anymore, but trust me--it's worth the effort.

vince

.

[i suppose this could be considered a sequel to this post]

i remember the first time i laid eyes on him, this slim, impossibly cute eurasian boy, as he pulled up to the curb in his shiny red jeep and jumped out to check out our "mike's moving out" yard sale.

i remember literally running over paul (who had already spotted him and was moving fast) and a dozen or so middle-aged russian-immigrant babushkas in order to get to him first.

i showed him everything we had to offer, but he saw nothing he wanted, except me.

the look paul gave me when i called out, "take whatever you can get for my shit" as vince and i piled into his jeep and peeled off into the sunset:  priceless

i remember i shot three times that first night, and vince not once.  i remember that never having happened before, but not caring, because i was smitten--that boy was something.

a senior at USC and a virtuoso trumpet player in its band, vince was possessed of that ineffable musician-cool that carried him through every situation seemingly untouched, and made me melt from day one.

my second-favorite vince memory:  from his balcony overlooking a pool party below, he tosses a water balloon into the chattering midst of a speedo-ed gaggle of weho muscle marys, and, as they shriek and scatter in every direction, looks at me with a twisted grin and says, "not so hot now, are they?''


i remember the last time i laid eyes on him--about three weeks in and we're high and i slip a couple fingers into him as a preliminary to the fucking and he asks for a third and then begs for a fourth and before i know it i'm deep inside him in a way i've never been inside anyone before and everything i hadn't understood about vince--23 years old and already ruined--suddenly becomes clear.

i remember he looked up at me, eyes on fire for the first time, and said, "fuck me, mike", and i did, and he finally came.

*     *     *     *     *

my favorite vince memory:  he and i on melrose in that open jeep on that first day with the sun on his face and the wind in his hair and all the boys looking at him and him rolling his eyes at me, saying, "i feel like i'm on a parade float when i drive this thing", and his song of the moment blaring outta the speakers



[to be truthful, this one wasn't exactly an "it came up on shuffle"--i heard it at the grocery store tonight for the first time in years and it brought it all back]

gerry rafferty, 1947-2011

.
i'll let everybody else in the blogosphere and elsewhere posthumously pee down both legs over stuck in the middle and baker street.

me?  i'll focus instead on a couple far more obscure songs which first made me suspect (a) how talented this guy really was





and (b) how he probably idealized his childhood just like me [steamboat row, in the following clip]





[which second point would only be confirmed when i read this obit earlier today]

RIP, you talented, tortured, drunken soul.

v again

.

outta the blue, he calls

if he hadn't, sooner or later i would have

and invites me downtown to see his new place, on the fifth floor of a grand old residence hotel on spring street that had once been home to the cream of hollywood's golden age.

he makes me knock twice

i knew he'd be nervous, just like i knew i wouldn't be

and before he even has time to show me around the apartment mary pickford had once called home--and outta the 7,000 or so songs from which i know his ipod has to choose--a song i had sent him comes up on shuffle.  as the banjo twang fills the room, he turns to me, wide-eyed, says, "i swear to god i didn't plan that."

i know, babe--and if the same damn song hadn't come up on shuffle tonight, i probably wouldn't be writing this

over dinner i warn him that being around me's not much fun these days.

he says, "was it ever?"

and just like that, we're back.

*     *     *     *     *

for those of you who don't understand this post, lemme just paraphrase tolstoy and say that, while most easy relationships are all alike, every complicated relationship is complicated in its own way, and leave it at that.


or you can just listen to the music.