joe

.
[ancient history--i lived and wrote this eons ago, but since (a) i haven't posted in a goddam week, and/or (b) this blog has become so nauseatingly family-friendly of late, i'm offering up the following]


after establishing i'm not into three-ways (because i don't even wanna think about what the sugar daddy's like)--he assures me it's cool, they play separately--he invites me over to his place, telling me he prefers to play there. i balk, telling him i'm not into being filmed or watched by the lover from a louvered-door closet (because i've had some experience in this regard). he assures me this will not be the case; the lover will have long since gone to bed in a different wing of the house by the time i get there, and from the beachfront address he gives me i can totally see how that could be true so i decide to take him at his word and grab my drink and my keys.

he answers the door looking much like his pictures--latin, short, compact worked-out gymnast's body, mid-thirties if he's a day but very well-maintained.

during the preliminaries, he starts calling me daddy--and since i've gotten that all my gay life, it doesn't kill the mood.

i fuck him well, as always, fake my orgasm and make him cum--you know, my usual. then afterwards, i pull him close, start nuzzling him and playing with his nipples (cause he loves that), and initiate the standard guttermorality post-coital interview.

i make him tell me his whole sexual history, with particular emphasis on the first time he got fucked. he's reluctant to give it up; i feel him stiffen in my arms.

but i sternly persist, and he eventually does [yes, daddy]. turns out it was a trusted employee of his father's, when he was 13. i make him give me every excruciating, secret, painful detail, and as he does i re-enact it, employing verbal skills i scarcely knew i possessed--and god, i fuck him just like his dad's employee did--face-down and screaming, mouth buried in his pillow, and he cums and i cum--hard--and it's totally hot and then afterwards, even though he's in his thirties, i walk away feeling like a child-molesting perv.

[he calls me several times afterwards; i never go back]

i miss spike

.
[alternate title: i miss 1991]

understand something: i am not now, nor have i ever been, one of those social, clubby fags--by which, i mean (a) i don't dance; (b) i don't like dance music; (c) i hate traveling in a shrieking pack; and (4) i'd rather shave my head with a cheese grater while chewing on tinfoil than scream conversation back and forth over background noise until i'm hoarse [and yeah, i know, i'm missing out on the whole gay communal experience--eat me already].

back in the day, if mkf was caught dead in a gay club it was for one reason only: to find somebody to fuck. and to the degree the club in question facilitated said objective, it placed higher on my list.

and in all the years i catted around los angeles, no club ever surpassed spike in this regard.

situated on the wrong end of santa monica boulevard, spike was this hole-in-the-wall joint that seemingly existed for no other reason than to hook people up. billed as a "levi/leather" bar, it wasn't really--it was just a dark, narrow space for guys to pack into and find each other when the lure of the glossy weho bars paled--plus, they were open til 4 on weekends. what more could anybody ask for?

get there at about 11:30 or so, order the token vodka/whatever so you'd have something to hold until you found your boy, fight your way through the cigarette smoke to the pool table (which had been covered by then so people could sit on it) or--like me--to the back of the room, settle your ass onto the stack of beer boxes lining the perimeter, light up and await developments.

and then--and this was the thing about spike--be unexpectedly blown away by the music you heard there.

over the course of the many years i patronized the place, i heard shit come outta their little dj booth i never heard anywhere else--such as, for instance, the one that came up on shuffle tonight and thus prompted this post:



only four notes to the whole goddam song, but four notes you won't soon forget--talk about creative minimalism.

[i would like to think that my fond memories of this song have more to do with its intrinsic goodness than with the blond boy who was grinding his ass into my crotch to its beat the first time i heard it, but that's open to interpretation.

whatever.]

and then that one leads inevitably to this one, from about the same time:



i've blacked out the artist on this video for a reason: because i want you to listen without prejudice, just as i did on that dark, smoky night way back in 1991 when it blew me away the first time i heard it.

i knew the song, and i recognized its author (b.b. king) on lead guitar, but i couldn't for the life of me figure out who the fuck was singing it.

[until i went over and asked--and then went out the next day and bought the first and only pat benatar album i've ever owned.]

and what ultimately happened to spike? doesn't matter--it's gone, as it probably should be. that wasn't the point of this post, really; i just hope you enjoyed the music.

from the "someday you'll look back on this and laugh" file

.
going through old emails and came across this one to noblesavage from a couple years ago:

re: the mostly unfabulous social life of [mkf]

so earlier this week i dropped into virgin megastore with the intention of picking up george michael's new single as a surprise mini-gift for sam, this guy i'm seeing (he's a huge fan and didn't know about the new release). when he realized why we were there, he hugged me and said something like, "what a great surprise! thanks, babe," at which point the kid behind the counter said, "wow, what a cool dad".

sam is 35.

so how's your week going?

and now, a word from my favorite talking head

.
market-player that i've recently become, i've started to watch the financial channels in the morning--and, for the most part, they're all populated by the same bloviating assholes spouting and reinforcing each others' blindly-optimistic bullshit.

except for one guy who, from day one, always made me sit up and take notice--the one who gets derisively dismissed by all the other talking heads whenever he joins squawk box on cnbc as "dr. doom."

first time i heard peter schiff speak, his common sense resonated with me immediately, even as he was being laughed at by the occupants of the other seven boxes on the screen.

so, me being me, i investigated--i went out and got my hands on a copy of the book dr. doom wrote in late 2006 (you know, back when the economy was "sound"), just to see.

and guess what: pretty much everything this guy forecast back then has come to pass today--i.e., had you taken his advice then, you wouldn't be tearing your hair out now.

[and yeah, this is the same peter schiff who was ron paul's chief financial advisor, although i didn't know that at the time.]

for a little glimpse into what got my attention early on, i offer to you a link to a column he wrote for the washington post* last week--it's short and sweet.

the money quote:

Just as prices in a free market are set by supply and demand, financial and real estate markets are governed by the opposing tension between greed and fear [emphasis added]. Everyone wants to make money, but everyone is also afraid of losing what he has. Although few would ascribe their desire for prosperity to greed, it is simply a rose by another name. Greed is the elemental motivation for the economic risk-taking and hard work that are essential to a vibrant economy.

and then he goes on to nail the problem to the wall:

But over the past generation, government has removed the necessary counterbalance of fear from the equation.

truer words were never spoken. and do you think either party presently pandering to the clueless electorate with their laughably unrealistic proposals for a soft landing from this mess has any intention of putting fear back into the mix? hell, no--telling the hard truth to the american people might cost 'em votes.

read the article and think about it before you wholeheartedly assume the policies of either candidate are gonna lead us outta the wilderness, ok?

[and after you do that, go buy yourself some gold and then sit back and watch the fun]

_________________

* on second thought, for those who don't have a washington post account and/or don't wanna jump through the hoops necessary to obtain one, i am hereby thoughtfully providing the article in its entirety below:


Don't Blame Capitalism

By Peter Schiff
Thursday, October 16, 2008; A19

Amid the chaos of recent days, as the federal government has taken gargantuan steps to stabilize the financial markets, realigning the U.S. economic system in the process, comes a nearly universal consensus: This crisis resulted from government reluctance to regulate the unbridled greed of Wall Street. Many economists and market participants who were formerly averse to government interference agree that a more robust regulatory framework must be constructed to cage the destructive forces of capitalism.

For the political left, which has long championed the need for such limits, this crisis is the opportunity of a lifetime.

Absent from such conclusions is the central role the government played in creating the crisis. Yes, many Wall Street leaders were irresponsible, and they should pay. But they were playing the distorted hand dealt them by government policies. Our leaders irrationally promoted home-buying, discouraged savings, and recklessly encouraged borrowing and lending, which together undermined our markets.

Just as prices in a free market are set by supply and demand, financial and real estate markets are governed by the opposing tension between greed and fear. Everyone wants to make money, but everyone is also afraid of losing what he has. Although few would ascribe their desire for prosperity to greed, it is simply a rose by another name. Greed is the elemental motivation for the economic risk-taking and hard work that are essential to a vibrant economy.

But over the past generation, government has removed the necessary counterbalance of fear from the equation. Policies enacted by the Federal Reserve, the Federal Housing Administration, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (which were always government entities in disguise), and others created advantages for home-buying and selling and removed disincentives for lending and borrowing. The result was a credit and real estate bubble that could only grow -- until it could grow no more.

Prominent among these wrongheaded advantages are the mortgage interest tax deduction and the exemption of real estate capital gains from taxable income. These policies create unnatural demand for home purchases and a (tax-free) incentive to speculate in real estate.

Similarly, the FHA, Fannie and Freddie were created to encourage lending by allowing primary lenders to turn their long-term risk over to the government. Absent this implicit guarantee, lenders would probably have been much more conservative in approving borrowers and setting interest terms, and in requiring documentation of incomes and higher down payments. Market forces would have kept out unqualified buyers and prevented home-price appreciation from exceeding the growth in household income.

Interest rates contributed the most to creating the housing boom. After the dot-com crash and the slowdown following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Federal Reserve took extraordinary steps to prevent a shallow recession from deepening. By slashing interest rates to 1 percent and holding them below the rate of inflation for years, the government discouraged savings and practically distributed free money.

Artificially low interest rates invigorated the market for adjustable-rate mortgages and gave birth to the teaser rate, which made overpriced homes appear affordable. Alan Greenspan himself actively encouraged home buyers to avail themselves of these seeming benefits. As monetary policy caused houses to become more expensive, it also temporarily provided buyers with the means to overpay. Cheap money gave rise to subprime mortgages and the resulting securitization wave that made these loans appear safe for investors.

And even today, as market forces deflate the credit bubble, the government is stepping in to re-inflate it. First came the Treasury's $700 billion plan to purchase mortgage assets that no one in the private sector would buy. Now it has recapitalized banks to the tune of $250 billion, guaranteeing loans between banks and fully insuring non-interest-bearing accounts. Policymakers say that absent these steps, banks would not be able to extend loans. But given our already staggering debt burden, perhaps more loans are not the answer. That's what the free market is telling us. But the government cannot abide solutions that ask for consumer sacrifice.

Real credit can be supplied only by savings, so artificial steps to stimulate lending will only produce inflation. By refusing to allow market forces to rein in excess spending, liquidate bad investments, replenish depleted savings, fund capital investment and help workers transition from the service sector to the manufacturing sector, government is resisting the cure while exacerbating the disease.

The United States reached its economic preeminence on the strength of its free markets. So far, the economic disaster exacerbated by government policies is creating opportunities for further government interference, which will lead to bigger catastrophes. Binding the country to a tangle of socialist ideals will seal our fate as a second-rate economic power.

The writer, who was economic adviser for Ron Paul's 2008 presidential campaign, is president of Euro Pacific Capital. He is the author of "The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets."

back to politics for a minute

.
[this blog has of late been uncharacteristically silent on the subject of the sickening course of current events, preferring instead to find comfort in the sweet immutability of the past--but never for a second think i'm not payin attention.]

it seems mccain has finally gotten smart--realizing, belatedly, that america doesn't care about wright or ayers, he's recently taken to hitting obama where it might actually hurt by calling him out as a socialist (which, of course, he totally is).

and then, in the same speech, mccain goes on to address the problems faced by all the idiots who bought houses they couldn't afford via zero-down, adjustable-rate mortgages they lied to secure, by saying (and i hereby quote),

"We [as in you, the taxpayer] need to buy up these mortgages, give you a mortgage that you can afford, so you can pay your mortgage and realize the American Dream of owning your home."

which position, of course, isn't socialistic in the goddam motherfucking least, is it, johnny boy?

* * * * *

i cannot even begin to tell you how deeply i resent the dumbass american voting populace for putting me in the untenable position of having to choose between two assclowns who are, each in their own unique and individual way, so completely and totally unsuited to the task of leading my country outta the grave peril in which she presently finds herself.

couple things

.
1. frequency

you may have noticed (those of of you who still come here, anyway) that my postings have recently become fewer and further between.

the reason for this is simple: in an attempt to pull back from the brink upon which i found myself poised a few weeks ago, i've cut way back on the drinking.

which is great and all, don't get me wrong--except for the simple fact that, unless i'm three-quarters shitfaced (i.e., like now), i generally don't care enough about anything or anybody to even call, much less write.


2. direction

they say everybody has a story to tell, but i never thought that tired cliche applied to me--until i took a left turn with this blog and started to tell what i've always thought were boring stories from my boring life.

as a consequence, i've lost about 60% of my readers in the last couple months--or maybe they've gone all techno and subscribed to me via rss (whatever--most never bothered to comment anyway, so fuck 'em).

what i'd rather concentrate on is what i've gained: a core of really smart, insightful readers whose feedback regarding said stories (both through comments and emails) means more to me than i can even begin to express here.

thanks to you all, and i hope you stick around through the ugliness that is sure to come.

long before it meant "fair and balanced" (enough, already)

.
as is so often the case with life on the downswing, this post will consist of a series of goodbyes--so let's get on with it.

1. goodbye, nino & jonni

i bet in all the excitement you'd forgotten about them, hadn't you? well, don't feel bad, because so did we.

see, beau had harbored illusions of keeping his little subterranean millionaire's club--the original fox's lair--open after he launched the disco. but from day one of the "upstairs" (as nino always derisively called it), it was all about worlds colliding. and, sadly for nino, there was never any doubt as to which world would come out on top.

and it wasn't just that the relatively few wealthy, older patrons of the downstairs club were having to compete for what limited parking space was available with the young hordes who now flocked to the upstairs club; it wasn't even that rich old men with weak, dribbly prostates were suddenly having to jockey for position at the urinal with piss-happy, drunken fratboys--we probably coulda worked with shit like that, if that was all it was.

no, what killed the downstairs club was a much more serious problem--what the folks who write for the car magazines refer to as "noise, vibration and harshness." simply put, nino's soft, melodic stylings could not compete with the amplified, percussive stomping that rained down on him every night from above.

we tried to fix it--we packed the interstitial space between upstairs and downstairs [excuse me, lemme clarify: i packed the interstitial space between upstairs and downstairs--and i still itch when i think about it] with all kinds of sound-deadening insulation, all to no effect. bottom line: in the battle of the bands, joe walsh won out, and that was all there was to it.

and it was a shame--over the course of the year he'd spent here, nino had done a pretty good job of modifying his act to accommodate local tastes, and had developed quite a following, all of whom were there to celebrate his last night in residence.

my most enduring memory of that night: nino performing, for one last time, his version of ray price's signature song, for the good times, and dedicating it to his number one fan, the adoring margie garrett--an elderly, birdlike (and infinitely rich) widow who came in almost every night, always sat to nino's immediate left and genteelly slugged one golden cadillac after another until she closed the place down, all the while never taking her eyes off him.

and, as always, he playfully changed the crucial line of the song, for her, to "hold your warm and skinny body close to mine," as he looked into her eyes and smiled. and as always, her happiness was touchingly palpable--tinged with moist-eyed sadness this time, of course, because she knew this was it.

[i don't remember which of us helped margie out and up the stairs to her own golden cadillac and drove her home that last night, but i don't think it was me.]

whatever; this one's for nino and jonni--and margie (not to mention everything and everybody else in this whole goddam post)--wherever you all are:




2. goodbye, ma

my mother couldn't stand beau--she disliked him on sight and distrusted him more, and subsequent events did nothing to change her initial impression.

and i couldn't understand her reaction; i mean, how could she not see him as i did--this smart, worldly, accomplished, endlessly-charming man who had, for whatever unknown reason, taken such a strong interest in her son?

dumb kid that i was, what i didn't realize then was that, even though they came from two completely different worlds, beau and my mother understood each other perfectly.

he, for his part, saw a widow with three kids, the oldest of whom had never enjoyed the undivided attention of a father--or any other grown male--in his entire young life.

and my mother? she saw a guy who played at life like a game, and to whom her first-born son was just another prize to be won--and easy pickings, at that. and it scared her to death.

but what could she do? she realized that if she fought him, her son would just rebel, because at the time, beau's pull was far stronger than hers.

so she acquiesced; she allowed her son to work in a bar for a guy whose motives she distrusted, and she watched uneasily as his influence grew, and as her son spent more and more time in his new home-away-from-home, often when he wasn't even working.

see, after nino's departure, the fancy downstairs club had been turned into a pinball and video-game arcade, and many was the night that young mike would head up there after-hours and hang out until 3 or 4 a.m. with the staff, playing games and shit and forgetting all about high school.

until things reached a crisis point, and young mike nearly got thrown outta school halfway through his junior year for non-attendance [this was the first time this happened, btw, not to be confused with the more-important second time which is well outlined in this post].

it was at this point that beau came up with the solution to the problem: if young mike's poor, beleaguered mother, with all her responsibilities, couldn't roust him outta bed in order to get him off to school, then by god, he, beau, would help her out, step up to the plate, straighten the boy out and make him fly right--i.e., young mike should move out of her house and in with him.

[and of course, young mike was all for the idea, and badgered his mother mercilessly as only a restless, dissatisfied, fatherless adolescent boy can.]

to this day, old mike's not sure to whom this master-stroke of genius on beau's part came as the greater shock: his mother or beau's wife, marlene. doesn't matter, really--both women acquiesced to the plan (like either had a choice), and before young mike knew it, at the tender age of seventeen, he was outta his mother's house and ensconced in beau's third bedroom.

round one to beau--but was it really?

depends on how you score it--i mean, yeah, at first, he cracked the whip, and young mike got up because it was somebody new cracking the whip; but soon enough, having achieved his objective of moving the pawn to the square of his choice, beau lost interest in the game and left young mike to his own devices.

and for young mike's part, he was perfectly happy to sleep til noon in his new place--just like he had done in the old--and then come downstairs and hang out with marlene and mocha until it was time for him to go to work at the club.

within a couple months, and for a number of reasons, the whole arrangement fell apart and by mutual agreement of all parties young mike moved back home--no harm, no foul.

[it was only years later that my mother told me how she had grieved when she lost me before she should have; but since the experience hardened her for the inevitable day when all her children would move on into their own lives, she was, in a perverse way, grateful to beau for preparing her for what was to come.  this conversation still haunts me sometimes.]

3. goodbye, marlene & mocha

christmas eve, and it's cold. we're westbound on I-20 toward dallas; beau and marlene are up front, and i'm keeping mocha diverted in the backseat. everybody's full of false cheer, but i can tell mocha's not fooled.

and the phoniness continues at DFW right up to the gate, where beau and marlene embrace, kiss and--big smiles--promise each other that it's only until things get better. hugs for mocha from both of us, and then beau and i watch and wave as they make their way down the tunnel and onto their florida-bound jet.

i never saw marlene again.

4. goodbye, fox's lair

[let's get this one over with quick]

remember all the silicon-valley idiots, and then after them the mortgage-banker idiots, and now the investment-banker idiots, each of whom were convinced that their little scams were just gonna go on forever and ever?

i understand all of them in a way that you might not, because back in the day, i was one of those idiots--and, unfortunately, so was beau.

as that year had begun, he was king of the world, and the only direction any of us could see was up.

the lair was beau's personal playground, and he milked it for all it was worth. god only knows how much cash the place took in during those tumultuous days--beau probably doesn't even know himself--but suffice it to say it was a fuckin shitload.

and since things were going so well, why not double our pleasure and open another location?

well, there were several good, sane, rational reasons not to do so, most of 'em having to do with the fact that the original club was such a piece of shit--cramped, no a/c, no parking, horrible sound, lousy dance floor--and in desperate need of either a move or a serious upgrade.

but beau figured that, since none of that was hurting us right now, why not open a second club and then use the cash flow it would inevitably generate to improve the original?

so that's what we did.

i won't go into the dumbass way the second location was chosen; suffice it to say that i hated it upon sight, not only because it was in an unfamiliar city 45 miles away, but because it was just all wrong--wrong location, wrong space, wrong everything.

nevertheless, i spent much of the summer between my junior and senior year of high school commuting between tyler and longview, toiling away on the construction of the new club.

and, finally it was done. it opened to much fanfare, and closed almost as quickly. who knew folks in longview didn't wanna party and get drunk in a place that was (as we found out too late) right around the corner from the police station?

this wasn't the only reason it failed, of course--it was a different market, and one that, in the grip of his hubris, beau hadn't bothered to explore before plunging in.

whatever; it didn't matter--the new club may be gone and all the cash may be gone, but we've still got our original iittle goldmine, right?

[sigh]

turns out that while we were away tilting at windmills in longview, this big, mob-connected dallas outfit had moved into our backyard and was busy putting together the instrument of our destruction across town in north tyler. it would be called "smith county electric company," it would be slick, spacious, well air-conditioned and well-appointed, it would boast a state-of-the-art sound system and computerized, plexiglass dance floor, and it would put us outta business.

could we have fought 'em if we hadn't shot our wad in longview? yeah, maybe--we had brand loyalty and were much closer to the college, but it's an academic question at best.

in september of that year, i turned 18 and was finally promoted to bartender--a hollow victory, because i was presiding over a half-empty club on even the best of nights.

it didn't matter; i did my best, as we all did--until the bitter end.

* * * * *

by the end of the year that had started with such promise, it was all over--first nino & jonni; then marlene & mocha; and then, finally, the fox's lair itself--all gone.

but for what it's worth, the end of the fox's-lair era merely marked the beginning of the adventures of beau & mike. maybe we'll talk more about that one of these days--or maybe not.