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Love’s Supreme Desire Tabloid, July 1999 (enjoyable read by Agnes or Fred in Simpletext)

    I probably shouldn’t start writing the Tabloid considering the frame of mind I’m in right now (beware), but then maybe I’m in this frame of mind because I need to write my feelings out in the Tabloid. Where else can I moan like a homeless Siberian coal miner with black lung and not get thrown down a flight of stairs? Oh, for the moment I’m in one of my hopeless, world-weary moods again, angry at fate for making me HIV+, afraid of what the future may hold. Afraid I’m going to be a failure at life and love, afraid that I will never amount to anything, that I’ll never be happy, or make anybody else happy, for very long. I apologize in advance for any whining you may encounter herein, but then you all should know by now how moody and basically nuts I am. One day I’m a bohemian prince with my sunshiney heart at peace in the bosom of the Universe. The next day I’m congealed vomit on a winter sidewalk in Crackton.
    Strange, almost directly after writing that beatific line about vomit in Crackton, I realized that I was feeling nauseous and threw up in the toilet. I came home from work today with a headache, maybe some slight touch of illness caused me to feel so down in the dumps (in hindsight I realized that I probably drank some spoiled milk at work). I say that because now I’m feeling somewhat less shit-like. My headache is going away and my spirits have somewhat improved. Of course I always feel better after writing the Tabloid.
    It’s remarkable how much my moods are tied to the weather. Last time I wrote the Tabloid it was sunshine and warmth in San Francisco, but for the past few days it’s been cold and cloudy. I should move to Arizona so I don’t have to kill myself. That was a joke. I’m not going to kill myself any time soon. Then I’d really be a loser, instead of just sometimes feeling like one. But for the record, I do reserve the right to check out any time I want to, if in some distant future my life becomes nothing more than a series of hospital stays that I can’t afford. Yeah, I should face these things heroically. “I’ll go to the hospital and charm them all with my cheery, upbeat fearlessness in the face of pain, bankruptcy and the humiliating loss of independence. I’ll smile as the shit runs down my legs while sitting on public transit, I’ll smile while my face turns into a rotten tomato.” Bullshit, I’m no saint, I’m no hero. I’m afraid that these things may happen. I don’t want them to happen, but I know I am ultimately powerless to stop the onset of illness and death, as are we all. I’m angry that on one drunken night of debauchery some asshole infected me with HIV. And I’m afraid that although I do not have unprotected anal intercourse with sex partners, I may otherwise infect them, just as I, like them, accept risk of one kind or the other.  But then, what am I supposed to do? Declare myself celibate? “I’m celibate.” Right. A horndog like me should pickle my gherkin in the fridge? Highly unlikely, let me tell you.
    The thing is, and this is an uncomfortable truth that needs to be discussed, when you are HIV+, it’s unclear whether you are obligated to tell the happy news to everybody that you do. This far into the history of AIDS, people generally don’t do things that they feel biologically unsafe doing, and instead they do things that they deem acceptable levels of risk. That being the case, it takes two to tango and both people are equally responsible for what happens. If someone asked me about my serostatus, I would of course tell them the truth. Most people I’ve been with don’t ask, or they already know, or don’t want to know, and they just do what they feel “safe” doing. As I said before, I don’t go around barebacking (not using a condom) when buttfucking with negatives or undeclareds, because in my mind that would clearly be biological assault (as well as personally risky). As a matter of fact I hardly ever do anal intercourse, not that I am opposed to it (in fact I enjoy it). Boy, am I ever spilling my guts here. I’m sure some of my readers will cringe when they read this issue of the Tabloid, but what am I supposed to do? Write about the adorable nature of kittens for Reader’s Digest? I’m not that kind of writer. I almost never talk about my sex life in the Tabloid, but sex is such a pleasurable part of my life, of everybody’s life; how could I not eventually talk about it? Why pretend I’m not a sexual person when in fact I’m a very sexual one? I will write about whatever I need to. These things need to be said.  I’m not the only sexually active HIV+ person out there, clearly.
    The reason I guess I brought all of this up is that last week I was paid $30 to give a blood and saliva sample and to fill out a 31 page (!) questionnaire about my sex life. I gave the blood and the saliva, but when I sat down to lie like a motherfucker (because I don’t keep terribly accurate records), I found that I didn’t want to, and wouldn’t, fill out the questionnaire. Not only was the it simply too damn long, but the questions were so intimate, so clinical, so invasive, that I just really did not want to go through the ordeal, and was in fact offended by the whole thing. The beauty, magic and mystery of sex were reduced to “how many times did you do this? How many times was this done to you? Exactly how big of a slut are you, anyway?”
    It’s unclear to me whether I have a healthy sexual appetite or if I am an over-eater, so to speak. San Francisco is a 24-hour diner with a free all-you can eat buffet, and everybody’s standing in line.  In some people’s perspective I would be the virgin queen of Scotland (or wherever she queened), but to others I might seem the whore of Babylon. Where do you draw the line between good luck in bed and “that bitch’ll pick anything up off the street and put it in her mouth” ? All I know is that men are pigs and I’m a man.
    Last night was interesting. I posed for my friend Jim, who is a computer programmer and a photographer/filmmaker. I posed once for another photographer who I didn’t know and really got into it (if you catch my meaning). One day these pictures will surface to ruin my presidential aspirations. Part of me fantasized about being similarly rambunctious but surely you know how it is, you get shy while naked en flagrante in front of friends, but not strangers. The photo shoot went well, we shot seventy pictures in no time at all, and since I was nervous I was all smiley and giggly, so it will appear as though I am less grim than I can be. But then I exaggerate when I write of my own crabbiness. I’m really not such a sour-puss, after all.
    Jim lives a few blocks away from where I used to live with “Elroy,” and though I usually avoid walking near his house for fear that I might run into him, this time I felt,  “I am free to walk anywhere I like, and I did live in this neighborhood for nearly four years, it’s natural that I would want to see how it’s changed.” I found myself walking down the old street where I lived, past the house that we had painted yellow and green right before we broke up. I saw the light in his front window, which he always turned on when we went to bed. I saw the geraniums growing at the sides of the driveway, which I had tended for years. At first I wondered if this was a healthy thing to do, to walk by my ex’s house could be seen as the action of a stalker, or of someone who had confused allegiances or couldn’t let go of the past. As I continued on my way I realized, “no, this just means that I loved him, that I have the capacity to love someone. I can’t just dismiss someone special from my life without thinking of them ever again.” As I walked down the hill towards the subway, a hill I had walked many times in my previous life, I thought of my love for Owen, and once again of how I had tried to make things work with Elroy, and knew that I had made the right decision, though it was wrenching. I also felt how deeply I wanted it to work this time, which is of course a fear-inducing attachment: “What if it doesn’t work out? What if we begin to take each other for granted? What if our communication fades, our sex life dies? What if we fall apart? If it happened before, it could happen again, and I don’t want it to happen. I don’t ever want to walk down Taylor street and look up at our little studio and say ‘I once had a life there with someone I loved but it all fell apart and now we don’t even talk to each other.’” Walking past Elroy’s house assured me that I had made the right decision in leaving him but that yes, I do miss him and I do still think of him and wish him well. I t also made me realize how much I do not want to fuck up this relationship, how much I don’t want to go through another heartbreak like that one, and how committed I am to being present and accessible in my current relationship. I really want it to work, I want us to be together for as long as we make each other happy (not that I have any doubts, but it’s only natural to worry, especially if you’re me). Love, like life and death, is impossible to control. Being in love means being vulnerable, and that is always scary. The night I walked past Elroy’s house, I dreamt of him, and he was laughing and smiling. I dreamt of him once before and he was cold and avoided me. The laughing dream felt like a message that time is healing both of our wounds.
    I think the slow funk I’ve been developing ever since last month also has to do with my relationship with my father. We pretty much split when I turned up HIV+, as some of you may recall. I haven’t talked about him in a long time. There are some old bits of my history that I try to seal off and shut away, and he is one of them. I’m probably not alone (especially among men) in wishing that I had a better relationship with my father. I don’t know what to do about it at this point. It feels like I don’t even have a father, most of the time. I try not to even think about him. I have anger towards him, because I truly believe that my most persistent character deficits (harsh self-criticism, insecurity, low self-esteem) have their roots in his treatment of me (and others in my family) when I was growing up. I get frustrated because I want to move beyond those obstacles, to accomplish something in life, maybe to show him that he should be proud of me, but it’s all too late now, he doesn’t want to hear about it anyway. I wrote him a nice letter months and months ago now, just to say hello, and got no word in response. I couldn’t decide whether I should bother to send him a father’s day card, then decided that it’s better to keep the door slightly open than to close it entirely. It frustrates me that the lack of a father’s love should have such a strong, lingering effect in my life. I’m 33 years old now. I’m trying to move on and be the best person I can be. But try as I might, I still feel the absence of his affections like a kick in the gut. I have to let go of him, of my expectations of what our relationship ought to be, and realize that I am the only person in my life, not my family, not my friends, not my lover, who can give me the validation that I need.
    Outside validation is nice, but it never completely satisfies. I need to do the work that I know I need to do in order to feel that I am a good person, a good writer, a good artist, regardless of outside validation, because I do know that I want to, and have the ability to,  accomplish something in this life. Before I can accomplish something, I have to work at it. This is not to say that I need to be a workaholic, I don’t want that. I want a healthy balance of work and play. I need to stop talking about it and just do it. But what “it” is is exactly the problem. How to work at something, accomplish something, if you don’t even know what it is you’re trying to accomplish? Maybe I still haven’t found the creative outlet that makes me feel passionate, but then again I have found it in a number of places. Writing  feels very good to me, as does acting. I am going to continue in these areas, and see what happens. I’ve decided recently that instead of studying film, I’m going to study painting, and maybe also photography. I’ve had these two outlets in my mind for so long now, and enjoyed playing with them in the past, that I just have to explore them more. I also intend to draw more cartoons and try to get published again.
    Is it realistic to say that outside validation is not important to me when it so clearly is? Why not just get out of the way, do the work, and be hopeful and optimistic for that day when I get the outside validation that I so plainly need, for better or for worse, because I know that day is in my future, I can feel it. Whether I’ll be alive or dead at the time is out of my hands, but I have to do the work in any case. Otherwise, nothing will happen and I’ll only have myself to blame. “Just admit it, Blue. You want large-scale, outside validation. It’s not that the outside validation you’ve received thus far is unsatisfying because outside validation in and of itself is bunk; what you need is more validation, intergalactic validation, enough validation to cancel out the damage done to you in your past. You want to be famous, you want to be a star, because this will make you feel that you have value in the world.” Who can blame me for wanting to be successful? This is the American way, and I’m American. If I were to say to you, my life goal is to pitter patter around but never really finish anything because I never was passionate about anything, and I wouldn’t mind dying in drab obscurity, I would be full of sanctimonious shit. I’d be flat-out lying. I’m not saying I want to be famous for the sake of being famous. I know perfectly well that would not bring me happiness in and of itself. I’m saying I want to be really good at doing something that makes me feel passionate and fulfilled on a deep level, which affects lots of other people in positive ways. I’m saying that I want to have a complete, fabulous life both in the here and hereafter, and I want to appreciate it while it’s happening. Peace, Blue

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Tabloid Tarot
    I am using the Aleister Crowley Thoth deck of tarot cards, and refer to a text entitled “The tarot handbook: practical applications of ancient visual symbols,” by Angeles Arrien, Arcus Publishing Company,  1987. I will do a three-card spread representing past, present, and future. The reading is as follows:
    Past:  Nine of Swords, “cruelty.” This card, which I have drawn many times in the past, deals with the tendency to judge, be hard on or put myself down. “This symbol represents the mind that actively wounds the self through thought... the spirit weeps in the background, wondering why you are being so hard on yourself.” It is suggested that this cruelty is directed primarily toward two areas of my life, relationships and career, and that in the next nine days, weeks, years, or months, I will make a conscious effort to release this tendency. It is true, I am hard on myself in these areas. It is also true that I am making positive progress in this regard.
    Present:  Major Arcana, The Lovers. This symbol “represents the universal principle of the art and craft of relationship.” It reminds us that what is needed in any relationship is “child-like innocence, curiosity and playfulness, loyalty and commitment, and the gift of spaciousness - the allowing of space for contemplation, introspection and the need for being alone.” I think what this card is saying to me is that when it comes to both my work relationships (which I was mistakenly overanalyzing last issue) and my love relationship , I need to let go and be more playful, less fearful (in both cases, the fear of loss was in my mind).
    This card also talks about the “journey of the twins,”, the integration of the dark and light sides of ones personality. In this Tabloid I talked about some things that  I consider to be my dark side, or rather my hidden side. Perhaps in doing so I am integrating and embracing my the whole of my personality, or at least presenting a more honest representation of it. The text quotes the I-Ching hexagram of Break-through: “...we should not combat our own faults directly. As long as we wrestle with them, they continue to be victorious. Finally, the best way to combat evil is to make energetic progress in the good.”
    Another aspect of this card deals with the concept of success, which is something I discussed at the end of my check-in. “..on this symbol, we have the formula for success, in relationships or in creative projects or in our profession. ...In order to be successful in anything, we must do things step-by-step, not push or hold back; we must be open and flexible and resilient; we must follow our heart and what has meaning; we must stay in our honesty and integrity and not abandon ourselves; we must communicate effectively, with artful timing and prepared content; and in all relationships, we must give consistent energy.”
    This card is also related to the Devil, or Pan, card, which reminds us that “taking things too seriously takes us off balance... through humor and stability we are able to manifest objectivity in the mind, victory in the spirit, and success in the external world and in our relationships through our actions and our behavior.”
    Future:  Knight of Cups, “mastery of emotional loyalty and commitment:” This card is encouraging for me because I have a tendency to occasionally hold back and be somewhat guarded. “Of all the Knights in the deck, this is the only one which is not helmeted: a symbol of openness, trust, and the willingness to be seen, the very qualities which are necessary in order to be spontaneous, outreaching, and unguarded. ...The Knight of Cups is rising out of the emotional waters above the peacock (illustrated on the card), which represents love that has moved beyond ego and vanity and offers unconditional love that is spiritually healing and uplifting.” If I were to achieve this level of spiritual progress, then I really would be successful.

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 Upcoming events, links and contacts:
    Past issues of The Love’s Supreme Desire Tabloid as well as other Radical Faerie publications can be found at (http://www.eskimo.com/~davidk/faeries/pubs.htm).
    (7/99): Click a button and somewhere in the world a hungry person gets a meal to eat at no cost to you.  The food is paid for by corporate sponsors in exchange for advertising. Visit the site and pass the word. http://www.thehungersite.com, submitted by MJ Broadbent Design, New York, NY
    (7/99): Take Back KPFA! http://www.sonomacountyfreepress.org/kpfa/kpfaindx.html
    (7/99): Z Net, a community of people concerned about social change. http://www.zmag.org/weluser.htm
    (7/99): Surrealism server: http://pharmdec.wustl.edu/juju/surr/surrealism.html
    (7/99): If you're ever in Sevilla, Spain, check out this new store belonging to the brother of my friend Guido Cruz: MUNDO LATINO. T-Shirts and caps exclusively designed by Aldo Cruz. Not your average tourist T! Great prices, too! It's in the Arenal neighborhood (between the Cathedral and the river). Almirantazgo Street nº8, Store # 2. Hours: 10-2:30 / 4:30-9pm Mon-Sat. In the future, the store will also be open Sundays and holidays.
    (7/99): Support progressive causes by hooking up with Working Assets. Charge cards, long distance, internet access, activist connections, etc. http://www.wald.com/home.cfm
    (7/99): Internet guide to the United States Congress: http://www.voxpop.org/classic/index.morph
    (7/99): People For the American Way: http://www.pfaw.org/activist/
    (7/99): ongoing open call for artists of all AGES & mediums, performers, musicians,
drag queens and dj's etc...with an alternative, outsider, queer edge. MEMBER OF CAPITOL HILLS 1ST SAT ART WALK, ARTS ORBIT FOR MORE INFO CALL OR E-MAIL AEON GALLERY
(206)323-8896 aeongallery@hotmail.com 12TH @PIKE SEATTLE, WA CURATED BY OTTO EROTIC
    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, so it doesn’t look like you’re SCREAMING (unless you want to look as though you’re screaming, then OK, DO IT ALL CAPS, WHAT DO I CARE?). If you format your text all caps, then I’d have to RETYPE the whole thing to get it down into upper and lower case, which is something that I am TOO DAMN LAZY AND SHIFTLESS TO DO. Please carefully edit your text. As you caNn seE I hav enough truble trying to edDit my ownE.