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.

a brief snapshot in time

this is what you said you wanted, america:

i hope you'll be happy with it.

and this is what you've brought into your midst, my cousins across the pond:

and you've freely given up your guns.

i'm getting tired of telling these stories (part 1)

or maybe it's more i'm getting tired of living 'em.  whatever--


he called outta the blue last week--a very pleasant surprise, because joaquin is special.  when last we'd spoken, he was preparing to head down into mexico, the land of his parents, to research indigenous ingredients and recipes for a cookbook he was writing--joaquin is a fine young chef--and he'd call me when he got back, fix me a great meal. that had been almost two years ago.

he was back in LA, he told me, working as a private chef for a family in the hills above sunset plaza, they were outta town, he was without a car, he'd love to see me and could i come get him?  we arranged for late last night, and when i texted him that i'd arrived, he emerged from the house looking much as i'd seen him last--lanky and cute, with thick, black hair falling over his eyes, and that smile.

and those lips--he gave me a hungry kiss when he got in, and as we drove the narrow, twisting back route connecting his canyon to mine, i remembered how it had been with him, and sped up a little.

he'd done a lot of living in these last two years, he told me during the drive--from mexico, he'd gone on to work on film locations all over the world (sixteen-hour days, nothing glamorous about it, he assured me), and was happy to be back home in a low-stress job that would allow him the time to finally finish his book (and maybe even spend some time with me, i hoped).

and then at my place, in my bed, he broke away from me at a moment in which he would have never broken away before, to reach into his bag.

"you don't mind, do you?", he asked, as he started fiddling with the paraphernalia.  "i wanna feel it with you this way--the instant the needle comes outta my arm, i want your dick going in."

and i just said, "well, we'd better time it right, then--gimme a minute, 'cause i've lost it."  and he did, and i put it outta my mind, rose to the occasion like i always do, and then we did.

and it was wild, and he was wild, and not joaquin at all.  i entered him much faster and harder than i would have joaquin, and his tightness gave way and i was deep and he was clawing at my back and gasping into my neck and sweating and bucking and straining for more, and his eyes rolled back and he was off into some place that didn't include me at all.

but whatever it was he was experiencing, it wasn't sex, i know that.  sex with joaquin had always started slow and sweet and ended with him coming like a freight train, all the while kissing my lips and looking into my eyes.  but this--whatever it is these walking dead experience, and as transcendent as it may be for them, it's not sex, or at least not human sex, because the dick always knows what sex is--and when the mouse stays soft, small and sleeping inside its little house when the body it belongs to is doing what we did, it's not sex, and i don't care what anybody says.

afterwards, drenched in sweat--mine and (mostly) his--i asked him if he's gonna be able to sleep, and he said yeah, it leaves him quickly.  and it did (after he showed me all 68 apps on his ipad in three minutes, that is), and he fell asleep in my arms, and as he snored gently like he used to, i pushed the wet strands of hair out of his eyes, looked at his face, kissed his mouth (he responded in his sleep, just like he used to), and wondered what would become of this boy whom i'd once thought was so focused, so grounded, so together for his age and so immune to this shit.

oh, joaquin is 25 years old.


stay tuned for part 2, and lorenzo

because there are rules, and there are Rules

advice to a young newbie who (shouldn't have) found my adam profile:

eighteen, my ass.

he does die at the end of the movie, right?

a kinder, gentler email to my roommate (to replace the previous ones i just took down, because they were ugly.  oh, and hey judi--long time, no see):

post 652? (yeah, let's go with that), in which mkf waxes philosophical

from a recently rediscovered email i'd written some time ago to a handsome young man who'd asked me why the right one never seemed to come along:


apropos of your existential question:  i was thinking last night about my maternal grandparents--how they met in rural west texas, and, after a brief courtship, married in 1918.  she was 16, and he 20.  they were incredibly young, incredibly inexperienced, and neither had ever dated prior to their meeting.

when i think about the odds of an arrangement like that working out--two kids, living in one of the most sparsely-populated regions of the world at that time, where the pickings were, needless to say, very slim, meeting at random--i'd give 'em about a zero-percent chance of even liking each other, much less anything beyond that.  and yet, the opposite turned out to be true.  their love was immediate and enduring, and by all accounts (and i've heard many), they enjoyed the happiest and most devoted of marriages.

of course, they had several things going for 'em:  they'd both grown up fast by necessity; they had similar backgrounds, similar values, compatible goals--oh, and chemistry (they were both fine young animals).

but they also had something else going on--something which, on its face, would appear to be a great limitation, but which i've come to believe might be the greatest gift of all.

but how do i put it?  lemme go at it this way:  from time to time, and most particularly since i've started writing myself, i'll go pull up an old handwritten letter or essay by someone like jefferson or madison, struggle through the archaic script, and marvel at the clarity of thought expressed therein--the clear, cohesive, flowing line from beginning to end, unbroken and unmarred by strikeouts or rambling incoherence.

and then i'll consider what it takes my spoiled, techno-modern ass to produce an average blogpost--the editing, overthinking, deleting, backspacing, cutting-and-pasting--and i just laugh.

those writers of the past--even the mediocre ones--could spit it out mostly right the first time because they had no other option--they had to organize their thoughts, focus their efforts and be at their best in a way modern writers with all their fancy tools and toys can't even begin to approach, simply because their primitive medium was unforgiving.

i think it was the same with my grandparents--there was no internet in their world, much less casual dating or, god forbid, divorce.  their primitive medium was unforgiving, and thus they were forced by circumstance to bring their A game to the effort.

oprah winfrey used to ask her guests, "what is the one thing you know for sure?"  had she asked me, my one thing, arrived at after many years of experience in the field, would be the belief that humanity handles scarcity far better than it does abundance.

so, you might be wondering--by way of all this, am i trying to tell you that you should just quit yer bitchin', pick one and make it work goddammit?  no.  because, unlike my grandparents, we've eaten from the tree of knowledge, you and i--we know what's out there, what's at least potentially possible, and have been mass-marketed into the belief that we won't be "happy" until we find just the right needle in that big ol' haystack.  cheery thought, no?

keeping my options open,

mkf

p.s.  needless to day, jefferson would be appalled at the amount of editing that went into the production of this email.

*     *     *     *     *

and yeah, i know, i'm like a dog with a bone with this "scarcity v. abundance" thing, but with every passing year, it just gets truer and truer.