Click the bird to return to 2000 index
Love’s Supreme Desire Tabloid, January 2000 (enjoyable read by Agnes
or Fred in Simpletext)
OK, so the last Tabloid was scandalous and disgusting, at least according
to my sisters, who didn’t get the joke, and worry about me excessively, which
is OK because they are my sisters and they care about me. The thing about
the $3 blowjob factory was a JOKE! I was trying to think of something that
would be a metaphor for hitting the skids. Don’t you think working at a $3
blowjob factory is an OK metaphor for being down on your luck? Now they think
that I used to work at an actual factory on Market Street where the floors
are cold and the light flickers on and off and people line up to receive
blowjobs at bargain-basement prices.
So I had to deal with a tiny bit of family drama at the
very end of the 20th century, which still hasn’t fully resolved itself. I
include this here because although it is personal drama, it is relevant to
the Tabloid because for better or for worse the Tabloid is ABOUT me and my
personal drama, and my musings and wanderings about in life. Please keep
in mind that everything that you read in the Tabloid is not necessarily factually
true. I mean, I write about my life and my experiences, but I often exaggerate
to be funny and entertain. I’m not lying, I’m being a writer. I’m both telling
the whole story and not telling the whole story.
> Dear Blu,
>
> Thank you for your understanding responce to my last e-mail. I
regret the
> timeing of it all. I truely do not want to go into the New Year
with any
> bad feelings between us or anyone. We have all been through
alot together
> and should view any friction simply as bumps along they way.
Sandy, it's no big deal. It always felt weird sending the tabloid to
you all because it's so personal, number one, and number two it's not all
entirely factual, i often exaggerate things just to be shocking or outrageous
(ie entertaining in some twisted way). The problem arises when the joke is
not coming through in the translation and it gets taken as fact. Maybe I
should
learn to write better. Anyway, with my other readers I don't care if they
get the facts twisted because they are either friends, casual acquaintances,
or total strangers who are unlikely to be personally scandalized by any of
the stuff that i write. You are family, and that makes your reading of the
tabloid an entirely different situation, and so i've decided that I'd rather
not send it out to you all, not like I'm in a tiff, but so that none of us
will to have to deal with this situation in the future.
As a note of explanation to Mary and Karen, as if you
couldn't already tell by the past few letters we've written, Sandy was mildly
scandalized by what she took to be my lifestyle as presented in the last
tabloid, and she wrote and asked me not to send her any more, which is her
right as an individual, and I'm fine with that.
When Mary (and at another time, Karen, and at another
time, mom) and I once had a similar discussion, in which she expressed her
concern that my life was in a stray shopping cart rolling toward the freeway,
I told her pretty much what i will tell you now. Yes, I lead a fairly bohemian
lifestyle. But i am not an evil person, a flake, or a degenerate. Well, maybe
i am a bit of a degenerate (JOKE). I've worked ever since I was a pre-teenager,
I am not addicted to or even interested in hard drugs (all i do is smoke
grass on the weekends and take the very infrequent psychedelic). I've paid
my own bills ever since college, never asking for a handout,
struggling at times to live here in the most expensive city in America. Starbucks
has enough faith in me to make me a Shift Supervisor, in essence giving control
of the store and all of its money and employees over to me during my shift,
and they've only known me for five months. I've successfully completed a
number of plays and other artistic and spiritual adventures in my life, and
although my form of spiritual expression is not mainstream, i daresay it
is every bit as loving and well-intentioned as any others. In short, what
I am saying here is: thank you for your concern about my life, but please
remember that I am 34 years old and I have been through
a lot and I know what i am doing and what to avoid. I've rejected people
in the past who are too far-out for me because of drugs, angry ugliness or
sheer craziness. I have an ordinary life, i am stable. But I am an artist
and therefore a bit of a freak, and I always will be, and that is that. I
may have been self-destructive in the past, especially when i was dealing
with internalized homophobia and my own anger about issues from our family
past, but i am no longer self-destructive. Yes i continue to have an active
sex life, but i am safe, and it is my business how i choose to express my
sexuality. I do not look at sex as an immoral or dirty thing. Sometimes it
can be debasing, yes, but that depends on the situation. Sex outside of marriage
in and of itself is not a debased thing (you may recall that gay people are
denied the legal right to marry, so we don't really have much of a choice
in the matter), in fact I find it to be a celebration of life.
Anyway, i've gone off on a bit of a defensive tangent there, i hope i didn't
sound huffy, but i bristle at the suggestion that I have gone too far in
my life and that certain doom is before me. If anything, my life is improving.
I have a better job with more responsibility, not less, and I am planning
to go back to school to learn computers. I have a happier, more honest and
mature partner in Owen than I did with Elroy, though from the outside it
probably looked as though Elroy was better for me. He was richer than me,
he had his own house, but he wasn't better for me then Owen. I took a brave
step in leaving him, heading out into the unknown, and I am proud of that.
I'm proud I've taken chances in life, i have no regrets. I do not desire
to be part of the criminal fringe, the welfare class or any such nonsense.
Again, I live a different life than you, but that does not make me hell-bound
or headed for destruction or anything else. Though i will always be the little
brother, I am all grown up now, I'm taking care of myself, have been doing
it for quite some time and doing a good job of it, though it's true I don't
have a high-paying job and a house in the suburbs (yet).
(note: when I said “welfare class” I did not mean that as a judgment of people
who are on some sort of public assistance. For all I know I may be on public
assistance someday, if I should need to be, and that would be fine, public
assistance is humane and good. I support it wholeheartedly, But I do not
wish to be taken care of in this way, unless I should really need it someday.
Also, though I do have an interest in getting a high-paying job which interests
and stimulates me [why wouldn’t I want such a thing?], I only added the “yet”
to take the sting off of the line “a house in the suburbs,” because that
is where my sisters live. I personally have no interest in literally living
in the suburbs, but I wanted them to see that I do have aspirations)
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Today is December 31, as I write this the year 2000 is exactly 12 hours away.
I had to go into work this morning at 4:30. I passed an ATM which at this
time of the day never has customers, and there are three guys in line. I
overhear the old dude at the machine saying he’s getting ready for Y2K. My
boss, who I like a lot although she can be a hard-ass, tells me she got a
new job and will be leaving in two weeks. I’ll miss her, and I hope my new
boss will be cool. We have almost no customers so I go home early. It’s a
San Francisco financial district tradition to throw loose-leaf calendars
out the window of your skyscraper, so the streets are full of litter. The
big businesses along Marlet Street have boarded up their windows, so it seems
like a very unfriendly place. Why is everybody so paranoid about the year
2000? Nobody I know wants to have a riot, they just want to have a good time.
I’ve been looking forward to the year 2000 ever since I was a kid. I’m not
afraid of it, I’m going to Marty’s house on 14th street to party.
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Cindy Anna Quindlen's
Villanova Commencement Address: (thanks Sandy)
"It's a great honor for me to be the third member
of my family to receive an honorary doctorate from this great university.
It's an honor to follow my great-Uncle Jim, who was a gifted physician, and
my Uncle Jack, who is a remarkable businessman. Both of them could have told
you something important about their professions, about medicine or commerce.
I have no specialized field of interest or expertise, which puts me at a
disadvantage, talking to you today. I'm a novelist. My work is human nature.
Real life is all I know.
Don't ever confuse the two, your life and your work. The
second is only part of the first. Don't ever forget what a friend once wrote
Senator Paul Tsongas, when the senator decided not to run for re-election
because he'd been diagnosed with cancer: 'No man ever said on his deathbed
"I wish I had spent more time in the office." Don't ever forget the words
my father sent me on a postcard last year: 'Even if you win the rat race,
you're still a rat.' Or what John Lennon wrote before he was gunned
down in the driveway of the Dakota:
'Life is what happens while you are busy making
other plans.'
You walk out of here this afternoon with only
one thing that no one else has. There will be hundreds of people out
there with your same degree; there will be thousands of people doing
what you want to do for a living. But you will be the only person alive
who has sole custody of your life. Your particular life. Your entire
life. Not just your life at a desk, or your life on a bus, or in a
car, or at the computer. Not just the life of your mind, but the life
of your heart. Not just your bank account, but your soul.
People don't talk about the soul very much anymore.
It's so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit. But a
resume is a cold comfort on a winter night, or when you're sad, or broke,
or lonely, or when you've gotten back the test results and they're
not so good.
Here is my resume:
I am a good mother to three children.
I have tried never to let my profession stand in the way of being a
good parent.
I no longer consider myself the center of the universe.
I show up. I listen. I try to laugh.
I am a good friend to my husband.
I have tried to make marriage vows mean what they say.
I show up. I listen. I try to laugh.
I am a good friend to my friends, and they to me.
Without them, there would be nothing to say to you today, because I
would be a cardboard cutout.
But I call them on the phone, and I meet them for lunch.
I show up. I listen. I try to laugh.
I would be rotten, or at best mediocre at my job, if those other things
were not true.
You cannot be really first-rate at your work if your work is all you
are.
So here's what I wanted to tell you today: get a
life. A real life, not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger
paycheck, the larger house.
Do you think you'd care so very much about those
things if you blew an aneurysm one afternoon, or found a lump in your breast?
Get a life in which you notice the smell of
salt water pushing itself on a breeze over Seaside Heights, a life in which
you stop and watch how a red-tailed hawk circles over the water gap or the
way a baby scowls with concentration when she tries to pick up a Cheerio
with her thumb and first finger. Get a life in which you are not alone. Find
people you love, and who love you. And remember that love is not leisure,
it is work. Each time you look at your diploma, remember that you are still
a student, learning how to best treasure your connection to others. Pick
up the phone. Send an e-mail. Write a letter. Kiss your Mom. Hug your Dad.
Get a life in which you are generous. Look around
at the azaleas in the suburban neighborhood where you grew up; look at a
full moon hanging silver in a black, black sky on a cold night. And realize
that life is the best thing ever, and that you have no business taking it
for granted.
Care so deeply about its goodness that you
want to spread it around. Take money you would have spent on beers and give
it to charity. Work in a soup kitchen. Be a big brother or sister. All of
you want to do well. But if you do not do good, too, then doing well will
never be enough.
It is so easy to waste our lives: our days, our hours, our minutes.
It is so easy to take for granted the color of the azaleas, the sheen of
the limestone on Fifth Avenue, the color of our kids eyes, the way the melody
in a symphony rises and falls and disappears and rises again. It is so easy
to Exist instead of live.
I learned to live many years ago. Something
really, really bad happened to me, something that changed my life in ways
that, if I had my druthers, it would never have been changed at all.
And what I learned from it is what, today, seems to be the hardest lesson
of all. I learned to love the journey, not the destination. I learned that
it is not a dress rehearsal, and that today is the only guarantee you get.
I learned to look at all the good in the world
and to try to give some of it back because I believed in it completely and
utterly. And I tried to do that, in part, by telling others what I had learned.
By telling them this: Consider the lilies of the field. Look at the fuzz
on a baby's ear. Read in the backyard with the sun on your face. Learn to
be happy. And think of life as a terminal illness because if you do you will
live it with joy and passion as it ought to be lived.
Well, you can learn all those things, out
there, if you get a real life, a full life, a professional life, yes, but
another life, too, a life of love and laughs and a connection to other human
beings. Just keep your eyes and ears open. Here you could learn in
the classroom. There the classroom is everywhere. The exam comes at the very
end.
No man ever said on his deathbed I wish I had spent
more time at the office.
I found one of my best teachers on the boardwalk
at Coney Island maybe 15 years ago. It was December, and I was doing
a story about how the homeless survive in the winter months. He and
I sat on the edge of the wooden supports, dangling our feet over the side,
and he told me about his schedule, panhandling the boulevard when the summer
crowds were gone, sleeping in a church when the temperature went below freezing,
hiding from the police amidst the Tilt-a-Whirl and the Cyclone and some of
the other seasonal rides.
But he told me that most of the time he stayed
on the boardwalk, facing the water, just the way we were sitting now even
when it got cold and he had to wear his newspapers after he read them.
And I asked him why. Why didn't he go to one
of the shelters? Why didn't he check himself into the hospital for detox?
And he just stared out at the ocean and said, 'Look at the view, young lady.
Look at the view.'
And every day, in some little way, I try to
do what he said.
I try to look at the view. And that's the
last thing I have to tell you today, words of wisdom from a man with not
a dime in his pocket, no place to go, nowhere to be.
Look at the view. You'll never be disappointed."
Upcoming events, internet links and contacts:
Life Support 1: weekend long production fundraiser for the Hard Candy
Theater Project and Bay Positives and The Premier Youth HIV Services Center
in San Francisco. Saturday Feb. 5th, 6-9 PM: The Artists Art and Performance
Event. Sunday, Feb. 6th, 5-9: A Dance-4-Love Dance-a-thon. $15 general admission,
$25 both events, sliding scale available. The Belcher Street Studios, 69
Belcher Street, SF. 415-447-0735 info. lifesupport1@email.com.
This event also marks the first gathering of a new monthly
art salon conceived by me and painter Al Walz. It doesn’t have a name yet
(New Moon Salon?) but the basic idea is that we’ll get together once a month,
around the new moon, share our new work with each other and gab about future
projects. Then we’ll hang out, depart to a gallery opening, show, and/or
party.
Upcoming benefits for Faerie Freedom Village hangout space at SF Pride Parade
2000:
LUCKY CHARMS: Friday, March 17th featuring the usual diversions
at 455 14th street, SF. Potluck, green food encouraged, 9-2 AM. Suggested
donation $10-20
SLEAZY SOULS at Terrance Alan’s New Meat Campus Theater,
220 Jones Street, SF Friday March 24th, hours TBD, featuring cabaret/drag
show, strippers, the public premiere of new SHOW SHOW comedy material, blacklight
body painting, the fabulous Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, and all of the
usual Campus Theater distractions.
Stevee Postman’s fantastic computer-generated Cosmic Tarot: http://www.stevee.com/
Freakdom website of Nicholas Jordan, the fabulous faerie who co-conceived
the Love’s Supreme Desire artist’s collective with me back in 1995: http://www.geocities.com/freak2of6/freakdom.html?945979027110
Saturday Night Drag show at Aunt Charlie’s, 133 Turk st, SF. Fabulous, fun,
down-home inner city drag show hostessed every Saturday night at 10 and 12
by Miss Gypsy Callabresie, with regular appearances by the spectacular Vickie
Marlane, “the $2 Million Lady” Miss Gina, Grizzella Presley, Daphne Divine,
Miss Mona Lott, Miss Noczema Jackson, Reality and others.
Suggest a link: What do you think would be of interest to the other readers
of Love’s Supreme Desire Tabloid? Drop me a line with a brief description
including URL, of course.
If you’d like to submit information about an upcoming
event, please email plain text, upper and lower case, with as few artificial
paragraphs as possible. Make sure to carefully edit your text, as I am too
goddamned lazy and shiftless to do it myself