Legacy

I live in downtown San Francisco where I constantly contend with scores of tourists deriding the homeless as a pollutant for an "otherwise beautiful city." 
I hear, "It's a a shame (we) can't do something about the homeless."

I was born in San Jose, CA in 1973 and adopted a year later.  My biological parents met as a result of the aftermath that ensued in the wake of shuttering the

(Agnew) asylum in San Jose. Because the circumstances surrounding the origins of my very existence occurred in the trickle down effect of deinstitutionalization, I have always felt a kinship and empathy for the scores of individuals making up the said population. My bio mother was a schizophrenic ward of CA state who had been released after the gavel fell on the Lanterman, Petris and Short Act. With newfound freedoms that included the right to forego medication, she fostered an on-again, off-again relationship with an itinerant romantic that resulted in my birth and acquiescence to foster care and adoption. I grew up in a hermetically sealed, homogenous bubble of suburban safety separated by the literal and figurative bridge and tunnel factor. Today, I live a block from the Powell BART station in San Francisco, a microcosmic combo of mall shoppers and mentally ill meandering among one another without mixing.

 One of the few times I was able to spend with my bio mother before she died 9 years ago happened to be Mother's Day. As we wandered around the Civic Center plaza, I was amazed at the way she interacted with the people I would have hurriedly passed by or viewed as a pox. She was relating on a peer level with a subset I had seen sitting on the sidelines in the shadow of statues covered in seagull shit. This was her element as

vicereine to the vice-ridden. Although the physical surroundings were familiar, I was finally able to view them without the filter of fear and fortune previously fogging my lens. Considered from where she was sitting, the scene seemed less simplistic.

The disparity between her reality and the one that I was raised with came into full focus the next day when I learned she had died. At her memorial service the following week, I met her (my) extended family and was able to gain a better sense of the tragedy her mental illness and its wreckage had invoked. An 8x10 b&w glossy of a would be cinema siren akin to Sophia Loren or Elizabeth Taylor was situated on the altar. "That's when she was normal," said her brother. Her family simply didn't know how to handle the person they saw her dissolve into as her schizophrenia took hold. "We had a terrible time with her," he said, as he recounted an Eisenhower era European trip taken at the behest of their Sicilian immigrant mother that failed to produce a change in her behavior. "Behind the gates of Agnew (asylum), at least she would be safe," he said. And we'd be safe from her. That's really what we thought."

Rowland Hussey Macy and Mistletoe

I

I have been seeing these ho-ho-homo suits show up all over the Yuletide gay this holiday season as I wander as a waiter in a winter wonder whirl ...or twirl. If they didn't scream "I came in a box from Macy's", I would totally wear something like this but ironic attire is only cool if it's quirky and not so readily available to every hot Toddy, Tom, and Bob deigning to twinkle like tinsel on the Tannenbaum. A stuffed stocking is quite satisfactory if worn correctly but these polyester knits may show mistletoe like camels wandering the desert for 40 days and 40 nights until men wise up or the advent of Lent or am I mixing metaphors like Kris Kringle King of the Jews or whatsismame left a lump of coal for Chris Miss? It's been debated among warring factions for years that coal in your clog was a blessing for the poor and frigid or was it simply a misinterpreted bad joke lost on the heathens that heaven-sent like the duplicitous virgin-whore Merry/Mary and Mame was blamed for not knowing the procedure for a cash sale while slumming as a seasonal shop-girl at Rowland Hussey Macy and Company. Or was it Veronica Hannakuh huh? Seven days of Advent or 12 days of lords a leapin milking maids drunk on nog dancing their sugar plums off like fairies on these fag suits? Take away the sins of the world and have mercy on... Joseph and the amazing Technicolor dream beau hunk in the coat of many happy returns. As seen here.

Call me a Cock-Blocker

Call me a cock-blocker-     Who's the bitch in this dogfight?

Call me a cock-blocker. Bring it.  I don't care.   I can rant and rave with all the high falutin' moral grandstanding I can muster, but in the end, I know the truth stems from the fact that this is about cock-blocking.

I have a girl-friend that lives across the hall from me with enough qualifying attributes to consider her my fag-hag.   She is a corpulent co-ed of 30 with barely more than a handful of punches on her dance card.    The first time I became aware of her happened the night I moved into our building over three years ago.  As I was unpacking boxes, I heard a series of gut-wrenching screams and the meanest epithets and personal insults ever wielded so openly into the atmosphere for everyone to hear.  I could tell it was a domestic squabble that was turning into a possible felony manslaughter based on the flurry of fuck-yous and below-the-belt kicks in the gut I could discern from just behind my door as they filtered down the hallway.  Words like "fat-bitch" and the like filled out the crux theme that the girl seemed to shrug off,  but then one day, the familiar screaming intensified and grew deeper.  The flying insults  became more personal as they revealed vulnerabilities about the girl's parents.  Trina, the girl across the hall had been adopted as a baby like me. I discovered this after a night we bonded together sharing stories of our own childhoods growing up with this deep-seated common theme shaping our development.  When her abuser screamed, "You don't even have a real mother," all of the pot-shots he volleyed at her weight were nothing compared to the effect this attack had on her identity as was revealed through her barely discernible phrases muffled through tears that turned to sobs I could only hear through her door if I opened my own.
It wasn't long after that incident that her boyfriend didn't wake up on Monday morning.   He was discovered by maintenance during a routine inspection with the exterminator.  Word spread fast throughout the building that he had committed suicide but he hadn't exhibited any of the dramatic showmanship that usually prefaced his previous suicide attempts. This death was simply the effect of  a lethal combination of his usual drunkenness and one too many units of black-tar heroin he occasionally chipped at when he could find someone to administer it for him. He wasn't experienced enough with the latter to learn how to hit himself.  Poor dumb-bastard and Good riddance were the sentiments expressed after his demise.  No one shed a tear.

I grew closer to my neighbor Trina after her boyfriend was dead.  I have been in similar situations putting up with abusive sociopaths because I subconsciously thought I didn't deserve anyone better or maybe it was because a large portion of my sociopaths were self-described straight guys stuffing the caveat that they were fucking and maintaining a relationship with me as anathema to their heterosexuality which they occasionally held on to for dear life.  This always manifested in them bringing a girl around which I was wont to put a stop to by frightening the girl off with high-drama faggot fits of  jealous rage that sometimes resulted in physical abuse when my boyfriend/prize-stud-dick beat the hell out of me for thwarting their chances to get some pussy".   It made me sick to my stomach with the desperation I'm sure Natalie Wood conveyed in Splendor in the Grass as she castigated her mother for offering to "call the boy".

I wasn't relating to the subject matter she spoke of about not being spoiled because I had been "spoiled" again and again as fags whose favorite pastime is to fuck tend to be.  It was the emotion and desperation I identified with. The fact that she was willing to do something desperate, i.e commit suicide over a boy was an emotion I had entertained countless times.
I gave up having feelings for men I used for sex long ago because I had spent years traversing the trail back and forth from the ER to the psych ward in one self-mutilating, destructive act of desperation I railed against myself to stem the tide of pain and betrayal I felt from the parade of men I never heard from again after a night in my boudoir, bathhouse, bed or bushes in the park.

Trina lives less than two steps away from my front door. I can lean over without leaving my place and rap on her door which I do regularly whenever I need her to come over or invite her for dish and gossip about my failed or latest conquests.   I never intended her to be a potential threat or competition because we are different species.    A casting breakdown of her character if this were a film would read, "early 30s,  corpulent to plus-size (by misogynistic standards of beauty that are rife in the world's standards)  I'm not taking a stance or saying anything about the injustice for women this entails who don't fit the skinny bitchy standard Stepford model of sex appeal favored by the majority of consumer advertising campaigns but it is the reality, whether we like it or not.  My issue is that these trashy, prison trade hard-core conflicted fags with whom I'm acquainted will always go for the nearest younger albeit female simply because she lives within the  closest proximity of my front door.  I don't share my tricks and certainly not with a girl. I like girls in the sense that  when I am with them, I identify as a girl. I take part in all of the conversation oriented dish sessions and beauty regimes that many of them share with my set of past times.  When they cross the line from sympathetic and willing ear to becoming a willing target of the misguided motives of my castoffs trying to salvage their perceived heterosexuality by hopping into the nearest vaginal hole they can find minutes after I've hosted them from behind...  the door that it becomes  a problem.
If that makes me a cock-blocker,   I'll go to any lengths.
I should report the situation to the manager of my building and punish  the neighbor who hosted the offender as an overnight for allowing him to use the girl  as a port in the storm.  I don't begrudge Trina for her penchant for penis. I'm a size-queen, cock-crazy faggot whore myself. But she's not going to become a willing receptacle for my leftover castoffs.   It's too close to home.   Judge me if you will. Call me bitchy, rancid and petty.  They were my fag throwaways. She's not going to be their fly-trap simply because she's the trans (as in transitory)

vaginal mess.  

Flanking the Crooner

I don't usually drink but when I saw the Absolut Ruby Red Vodka behind the bar at Martuni's on showtune night, suddenly I found myself flanking the crooner at the keys with tears streaming down my face, belt-mutter-humming Bob Fosse's Nowadays. "You can like the life you're living... you can live the life you like," I had 3 Absolut Ruby Red Vodka martinis straight. Not a good combination when you're a ganymede with lazy wrists clearly working out your bittersweet anguish and swilling the glass for effect like Sylvia Miles. The sweater queen across the piano that I had been noticing all evening had been wearing a shade similar to the ruby red grapefruit on the bottle. Pink, sweater, showtunes, --- wouldn't you know, NOT GAY. I said, "You wanna be for about an hour?" Rejected, I decided to really feel the pain of my expired youth over Sweet Charity's, Anger and Hope and Doubt. What am I all About?" Never allow my type to be around liquor, showtunes and maudlin melodrama in a dimly lit piano bar. It's a recipe for ending up like some little old, taxi dancer crying into a cocktail ---- with man-scara running. That would have been the clincher. Just give me time. That's all I've got, anyway. .

Benefit Brow Bar at Macy’s

$$  Makeup Artists, Hair Removal, Cosmetics & Beauty Supply

170 O'Farrell Street
San Francisco, CA 94101

10/7/2010

I was metrosexual before it was hetero, i.e. I'm gay and good at it.   I have nearly two decades of experience with upkeep under my belt with the larger part of that time spent supine on a backroom chaise in some backwater Vietnamese salon.  Before I discovered the pros at Benefit Brow Bar, I dreaded the torturous tweezing that usually accompanied a second degree burn as my brows were plucked to resemble a transsexual in transition. That may have been cute when I was 22 but I'm 37 and that's  no way to land a husband.  At the BBB, there is no preceding ceremony that involves being led away to some screened off medical bench next to a ficus. I mosied right up to the counter  as casually as if the lack of pretense foreshadowed the easy, breezy  way I was going to spend the next 20 minutes.

With nothing but a glass wall between me and the rest of the world, I couldn't fall back on an old pattern of retreating to the back and regarding myself with the stigma and shame that hasn't been suffered by queens since the trannies took over Turk and Taylor in 1966.    I have been gracing the BBB since its inception and refuse to be browbeaten in secret like some candy ass cosmetics queen.  At BBB, it's okay to be gay and bat my eyelashes at the boyfriends of the girls who are trying out foundations right alongside me at the buffet table, er... sample counter.

At the BBB, I can get my lashes tinted in the same session as my brows with enough time to make me look marvelous but never late for my next appointment. I usually choose blue-black because it looks like "manscara" that renders the boys spellbound without wondering if I am wearing mascara.    Boys don't make passes at guys who paint their lashes, so the brow-tinting service at the BBB is essential.  Sitting in a bar stool amid a hub of activity made me giddy for my glamorous days of yore when I struggled to put the art in artifice  much like Lady Gaga tries so hard to be original, perhaps a bit too much, but I digress.

At Benefit, I could close my eyes and transport myself back to that magical place in my mind when I had to be on the set in 10 minutes and a cast of journeymen fawned over my pores and follicles with their kaboodles and pallettes.

At the BBB in Macy's Union Square,  I could fix my face to set my fortune and it didn't cost one.   I felt so indebted to my little Benefit Brow Betty that I wanted to leave her a tip that she could use to get toasted when she really needed it.  After she tweezed and oiled my orbs in tea-tree, I picked up one of those hand mirrors and was mesmerized.  Not that I'm narcissistic but when you can go from tired to twinkle in under 20 minutes with a tweeze and tint, why not learn how to like yourself again. You can only benefit from the experience. 

Keeping a Secret from the Secret Service... and Kanye West?

When I arrived back at my building yesterday morning around 8:00 AM, there were barricades and policemen blocking the entrance. Fearing the worst, I disregarded the barricades and ignored the cries of protest I heard behind me until the boys in blue blocked me. "I LIVE here. WHAT is going on?" I emphatically demanded with italicized gestures. "It's for the President,: said the bobby,. "OMG, Barack Obama? Wow! Well, do I just meander and mingle with the crowd?. I've been out all night. I just want to shower... The President? Really?"

A fundraiser taking place for the President was due to begin at the Warfield Theater a block from my building.

"I suggest you find something to do for at least the next hour or so," said the bobby.

"Well, if I'm going to be barred from my building, there's no better reason than the President. What an honor this is," I said smiling through sarcasm, About how long is this going to take?..

When they told me to become otherwise occupied for the better part of an hour or maybe more, I was over it.

"But I'm like a yard away from the door. It's like two steps,", I exasperatedly explained to no avail. I morphed back into the crowd of looky-loos and lushes and lamented my plight to the community of regulars I knew from neighboring buildings leaning out of their upstairs windows. "Hey, Michael,... yelled Candy from the West as she held up an orange tabby.

"Hey girl, is that yours? He looks just like Morris the Cat. I'm locked out here because of the President." I yelled.

"Hold on, I'll be right down," Candy said as she retreated from the window to reveal a jewel adornment embellishment left over from the building's grand days of yore in the area's infancy as Paris to the West. (Kanye West?)

I saw her next from a distance through the glass of her lobby's window as she suddenly emerged before me. .

"Ya want somethin from the store? I just got my food stamps., she offered. I followed her into the adjoining store and selected a Gator-ade. "Take two, It's on the government's dime,: she said, "It's a government kind of day.

Candy was clear in her confidence and conviction to rescue me. "What are you, sleeping with the Secret Service or somethin?"

Candy's outcry and second-hand spiel of my sorrow spit back to its source didn't match her clout as it turned out.

As Christians wearing cotton-candy smiles passed out invitations for free coffee I half considered joining them for a split second as an alternative to contending with the cast of trigger happy hopefuls clamoring to catch a glimpse of full frontal POTUS. Suddenly, a voice called my name from above. Leaning out of the 6th floor window, my neighbor Robert reminded me of something else that had happened once on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. But that was the stuff of textbooks.

"Hey Michael, BE AT THE BACK DOOR ON EDDY IN 3 MINUTES. I'LL SNEAK YOU IN,".

Wiki-Leaks has nothin on you. Thanks Robert!!

My satisfied sass virtually slapped the faces of the non-plussed officers as I silently dared them to react. With eyes that said, "Bring it", I blurted, So much for standing sentry staunchly, huh Officers? And keep it a secret from the Secret Service will ya?

I felt like a trick from the track as I skulked in through a side door next to the West Hotel. By the time I was out of the shower, the motorcade had passed and the President was at the Warfield joking about Kanye West for Speaker of the House.    History was made. And the rest is...  

My Sniveling Soliloquy from the University of Spoiled Children

 Twenty two years ago at this time of year, I was sitting pretty as a freshman at USC, the University of Southern California.      My mother and stepfather paid out of pocket for my entire four year college experience.  I had a generous discretionary income at my disposal which I could access by swiping my student ID.
As an undergrad studying  Journalism, my first extra curricular activity took place as a columnist and sometime city writer for the student paper the Daily Trojan.
The following column from September 1993, is an  early stab at my attempt to proffer my opinion for the masses.    My reaction to the sniveling soliloquy I wrote at 20 is only to laugh.  I was a product of my environment and narrow frame of reference as a sheltered suburban brat from Bellevue, WA who grew up with  "everything under the sun."   When newspapers started whispering rumors of downsizing, it affected all facets of the zeitgeist.  Of course. I panicked.

Sistine Comment by Michael Angelo

Longing for Materialism in Age of Thrift     -- September 26, 1993

I don't think I like the 90s. I thought the whole back to basics simplistic lifestyle was going to appeal to me but  now that I'm actually having to practice it, I hate it. Everyone remembers the excessive 80s when money was made to be spent.  The whole era screamed capitalism. Now the powers that be are telling the country that excess is out.  Frankly I don't see why we can't keep just a little of the 80s philosophy in our lives.
The baby boom generation has created a backlash against materialism.  Those people invented excess. Hair styles were big. Cars were big. Cindy Crawford was big.  Now major guilt has set in and the baby boomers are yanking the rug out from one another in a last ditch effort to add substance to their lives.  I grew up happily skipping by the financial aid lines with the knowledge that 80s excess would lead to prosperity and a new fall wardrobe.   Now I am finding myself actually having to stand in the lines and take part in the endless sea of paperwork.  I am becoming familiar with new acronyms such as FAF. ( My parents didn't qualify for financial aid.)    I feel like a fish out of water. All of a sudden at 20 years of age, I am having to learn a whole new vocabulary.   I hear words like downsizing, budget-cuts and economy.  This is a far cry from the words I used in my previous lingo. I used to talk about what I wanted for Christmas.  The sad part is, I am only one an entire generation of people who were bred in the decade of gluttons. The spend doctrine was enforced with these children.  Now everything is changing and it's causing major upheaval in a lot of young lives.  My generation is victim to an abrupt change.  We did not have time to ease gradually into a less is more attitude. It seems that all of a sudden, we are finding ourselves without.    All of a sudden it was Goodbye Cindy. Hello Kate.  Department stores closed. Businesses closed. People started declaring bankruptcy.  Don't get me wrong. I really like the whole retro fashion scene.   The tailored look was getting a little old.  I'm only questioning the new philosophy that seems to be taking over the world.  Money is not there to be spent anymore.   People think they have to save it or it will go away  Get over it, folks. It's money-- if it can be made, it can be spent. Let's hope the attitude changes by the year 2000.  

Diatribe

Written to my friend that  causes me to practice tolerance and compassion for his unbelievably douchebag views and lack of understanding of San Francisco's culture. His country, corn-pone crackpot views on our culture are all the more of a curiosity for what amounts to a crock of BS.
He spouted off simplistically as if life was a Horatio Alger tale.

I replied:
That's not the issue. The protest is in response to cultural genocide taking place as the gay militant activist trope is replaced with a mediocre centrist heteronormative marriage model aiming to be ordinary as middle-spread paunchy pedestrians of America's tiresome majority. What's worse the millennial upstart brats raised on the Internet and devoid of anything beyond the scope of an app have infiltrated San Francisco and transformed what was once the most progressive place in the US to an elitist arm of ethnocentric ick that thinks money and their entitlements gleaned from helicopter parents' incessant and inaccurate assessments of their brat's exalted place in society entitled them to cast aspersions at the less fortunate. It's very short sighted and premature to stand back and declare all the mentally ill marginalized as unworthy of human respect simply because their trajectory in life has prevented them for whatever reason from toiling to tow the line for that goddamn Puritanical Protestant "american" work ethic that you're alluding to as a requirement to be treated with human

dignity. I don't judge others' station in life based on my own classist elitism that still springs forth as my first instinct and reaction when encountering crackheads and bat-shit-crazy harridans bellying up to the bar to hustle a drink from a trick in order to skulk away in the dark corners of the night life on Hyde St to try in desperate vain to find a vein on her hand. Then I realize that's me and I look down at the filthy hand of the shell of a woman huddled in the shadow of an overhead bug lite on the garage door of a storage unit for transients and their lifetime of tangibles and drop a fresh bag of points and alcohol pads at her feet. "Honey, use a fresh needle to get that hit or you'll lose your hand." She looks up with terror and shame in her eyes and I wink. "Practice Harm reduction Honey." Be safe. from what I'm hearing from you, she would be relegated to subhuman status simply because she's not working in the conventional clock watching career field that you take pride in for contributing to cubicle culture . I'm Just playing devils advocate to hopefully let you in on the crisis of culture that exists here. Remember this is the land of fruits nuts and flakes that Ronald Reagan's 1960s act of de-institut-ional-ization unleashed in a deluge as the downtrodden and dim witted descended upon the State with a majority migrating to SF.

I am a product of that which took place because my biological parents met and fostered a relationship as refugees from that act. I have extreme empathy for situations that mirror the ones that led my original parents down the stony end of their tragic lives because its in my DNA. The fact that I was rescued and raised with every material advantage and opportunity to transcend those beginnings has been a source of my own shame and guilt for not conforming to the conventions and customs of someone with a college degree from such a bastion of privilege and overindulgences that I was fortunate enough to take for granted. It is definitely difficult for me to be on the outside looking in as my economic situation prevents me from taking up my rightful place in the consumerist lot of cretins who collect cock rings and spend 3 figures on a shave and haircut at a barber shop with a homophobic front and bro-jobs sucking high balls in the back simply because I'm not taking my place on the totem pole of American upward mobility. But I value my ability to have empathy as more sacred than the asshole I would most assuredly be if my lack of exposure influenced me to pass judgment and feel superior over the " serfs and dirty bums that ought to get a fucking job to prove their worth as humans". ---- It's not that black and white or in this case, as red, white and blue as the Stars and Stripes of the flag waving in the wind of your goddamn state.  California has just as many Mexican immigrants and bombastic gasbags with opinions not worth the shit that defecating cows from both states inspire as wisdom wrapped in blanket statements like the one you originally opened this dialogue with.

Devoted

January 26, 2009

Although I have a significant  network of Facebook friends encompassing a lifetime of shared relationships and acquaintances, I still spend a large amount of time alone by myself with Tippi, my feline friend.

February 19, 2009

Mine, Don't Touch
February 19, 2009 at 7:00pm


I posted the following on a craigslist pet forum expecting sympathetic cat owners to rally by me and take my side with the issue.



Touch not the cat < BFFTippi > 02/19 15:33:51


I agree with a statement I read in the Cat Whisperer that anyone other than the owner shall not groom or brush the cat because it compromises the level of intimacy the owner has established with the cat. I have a friend who tries to brush the cat while petting it profusely and claiming great strides in the amount of affection the cat purportedly gives him. It irks my last nerve and I have forbidden him from brushing or feeding the cat because these tasks should be reserved for the owner. They are special intimate actions that supersede the casual petting of strangers. He argues with me but I hold steadfast.
Am I being overly dramatic or is their value to what I am feeling?

These are the answers I received in response

Wiggelsmom said: "Mine, ...don't touch! "

Petlover 327 said: "sounds like this "cat whisperer" is as dumb as the dog one"

Mom4threepaws said "sounds dramatic and bossy to me"

and Arctidog thought I was kidding----
"Some cats are quite open to loving the whole < family and any member of the family in my opinion can feed and brush the cat, some cats have more open and affectionate personalities than others. my oldest loves everyone and even purrs and wants pets from her vet, she is just loving, so I find it odd that grooming is being looked at so personally.Unless you are kidding????
I bath my moms cat for her and he still loves her more than me as it should be. It doesn't put me up a notch in his book"

All in all it wasn't exactly the response I thought it would garner. I was bitterly surprised and actually quite angry that so many people thought I was just being my spoiled brat, snivelling, only child self. Yes, being raised an only child has caused me to appreciate my possessions and hold on to my own toys since so many kids were always trying to take advantage of them. I had always had the best clothes, the best toys, the most favorite pet. I wasn't about to let the ruffian I had harbored in my bedroom start to appease himself to my cat. I've seen what happens in that regard. One day, my cat will forget who I am and up and run away with this fickle flaky suitor. Just because he plays with her while I am busing typing, he acts like I neglect her. She is all I have and I refuse to let some ratfuck come in and take my place as parent of my baby kitty.



Jennifer Curren This kitty-affection thief is your FRIEND?!

Your kitty is YOUR child, and others should respect your rights and decisions as a parent....
February 19, 2009 at 9:34pm · Like


Michael Thomas Angelo no, he's not a friend. . He 's trade that I should have kicked to the curb last week.
February 19, 2009 at 11:50pm · Like












March 4, 2009
This is my little baby Tippi doing what she loves to do. No box or bag or suitcase is safe from this little feline. She hides and scopes out the world from safety.

April 2, 2009-- That means I wrote this the week of Tippi's 4th birthday.

As everyone who knows me knows, I love my cat Tippi more than I care about myself. I worry myself into fretful fits over her well-being and degree of happiness. There is nothing I want more than to make Tippi the most comfortable and secure and healthy in all that she does to continue to be the most special little bundle of fur and spunky attitude that this world has ever seen.
That is why I have long felt awkward about the type of diet I have been feeding Tippi. Like most American cats who are succumb to the whims of their owners, Tippi is dependent on me for everything. A box of a popular commercial brand of Indoor Formula cat food has been the mainstay of her diet for a spell of time. Something about the lack of variety and boring factor coupled with the high carbohydrate and dry texture just doesn't sit well with me. That would be like me being expected to eat a bowl of Grape Nuts every day for the rest of my life. Or McDonalds fries which although tasty are no more better for me than a bag of potato chips. Am I feeding Tippi the equivalent to a high carb, high grain bowl of junk?

I began to think about where kittens come from. Their ancestral big jungle counterpart came from the land. The apple can't be that far from the tree. Tippi is half human and half wild cat in a little lithe body. She wasn't born in a test-tube or cloned from an artificial hybrid of genes. A couple generations ago, she was stalking the wild for her next meal. She is a born hunter. I can see it from the way she stalks her sources of prey around my apartment. Since we have lived in my current apartment, she has caught two mice and laid both of them on my keyboard as gifts. She knows the best place she can find me. She the genes of Artemis the Huntress in her belly claws but being a contemporary princess in captivity has made her used to the more refined things in life. That is why I am going to take the leap and order her food from the most holistic website I can find. Another member of my online cat care group recommended it. Called Feline' s Pride, the product seems to be made up of the best raw chicken cats can eat. It is shipped frozen in 5 lb boxes and thawed according to use. The site recommends transitioning the cats in to the new raw diet lest they completely reject it. Tippi has rejected more than one brand of better cat food that I have put in front of her. I have tried to eschew popular junk brands from the start of her kittenhood, opting instead to go with a more expensive and therefore better brand based on it's holistic makeup. I am not a fool to believe that the biggest pricetag begets the best quality but I do know that the cheapest box of dry food I can find at my corner store is called Alley Cat which is also the least nutritious and worst tasting of the genre. Hmm, food for thought. I am nervous about taking the leap to this new frontier in food. It may be an expensive mistake if it fails, but I cannot sleep at night knowing that I may be depriving Tippi of the best most optimal nutrition possible for her species. She is all I have and why wouldn't I want to do what's best for her? Especially since I fail to do right by self more often than not. Sometimes I can't stomach myself. Tippi is the most important reason I am alive. Without her, I would have given up along time ago.





-30-


September 22, 2015

It's only been two months since the unthinkable happened. Two months since I was forced to put myTippi down. Two months since I endured the worst, most emotionally crippling and devastating event of my life. Reading my hypervigilant, hysterical obsessions over Tippi's diet is especially troubling in light of what happened. My baby died of colon cancer despite my painstaking efforts to provide her with the most holistic diet possible.

Resting on my Laurels

I've stumbled upon an artistic coterie of individuals who champion creativity, social justice and the art of performance of life's rich pageantry. As a result, I've been hitting up a number of queer open mics around the city.  I need to create new material but in the meantime I'm resting on my laurels by relying on old standbys.  This particular piece has garnered mixed reviews.   It started as a personal journal which I never intended for publication.   Then I figured, what the hell?   

This is me at Smackdab, an open mic in the Castro reading from my article in  DNA magazine    It's not for the faint of heart nor appropriate for every audience.   I'm going to hell.  

My interview at Mutiny Radio

I am so incredibly lucky to have been introduced to the valiant Roman Rimer and the folks at San Francisco's  Mutiny Radio.FM.    Listen to the conversation/interview I had with him talking about the Tenderloin, trannies, techies and the cluelessness of today's youth.


My portion begins around :55 on the counter.


http://podcasts.pcrcollective.org/TheWeeklyReview/TheWeeklyReview-20150807.mp3

Me and Roman Rimer- 

Shear Horror

Fellow Barber charges $85 for a shave and haircut. For that price, a blow-job better be included. For all the put--upon, pretend, poser, wanna-be piss-elegant pretentiousness implied with such a price-point,-! I am peeved as pissed that the authentic OG's on 6th Street that ran the SF Barber College have been run out of the neighborhood so these jcat jackdaws can jerk off the consumer with fake bro'mance overtures. Since I grew up and got over myself, I haven't paid more than $16 for a haircut. No man should.


Flashback--

Bellevue WA circa 1991. I am a teenager wracked with affluenza before there was a name for the term used to describe a sense of entitlement that comes from being raised to want for nothing. There was something ill-fated in the subtext of what I heard bandied about in the adults' scuttlebutt with the terms, "used to the finer things in life".   It was no secret that they were talking about me and the other privileged offspring of my parent's peer group.  They meant to be funny but I was left with a sense of foreboding about the future.

From the ages of 11-17, I mostly had my haircut in a stripmall salon chain called Command Performance. Awash in orange overtones still existing from the autumn harvest decor scheme that proliferated through the 1970s, the place wasn't exactly on the pulse of hot trends coming down the line in the 1980s but for a pre-teen it was still an acceptable place to get a haircut. I considered myself lucky enough for merely avoiding Supercuts. I had overheard words like "chop-shop" and horrific accounts described by a kid in my carpool that seemed too preposterous for me to believe. "They don't even blow dry your hair," he said.

By the time I was well into my teens and halfway through high school, my humble gratitude was replaced with obstinacy and then indignation after feeling insulted over my mother's reluctance to pay for my haircuts what she paid for her own. I had outgrown the declasse Command Performance that reminded me of neighborhood developments I saw littered throughout parts of Bellevue that hadn't kept up with the march of progress. With names like Lake Hills or Chevy Chase, that played on the exclusivity and dream of domestic bliss prevalent in post-war America, the bloom was clearly off the rose by the time I was a kid observing it all from the front seat of my mother's Mercedes. Split level and surrounded by faded beauty bark, they paled in comparison to the sprawling mini-mansions and status symbols I saw in my own neighborhood that wielded prestige based on the star-chitect's or builder's prowess. There was a staleness in the air I attributed to the lack of fresh beauty bark that also served as a litmus test of socioeconomic conditions.

But I digress.


The Fellow Barber marketing campaign is littered with terms like bro and fellow that promise homo social intimacy for the right kind of guy. It's not the kind of place that belongs in the Tenderloin or even Mid-Market which is a trussed up way to say downtown.

The barber shop school on Sixth Street closed its doors as a result of this?

the last days

My life is lacking more than it's worth waking for since my Tippi passed.   I love her more than anyone or anything on this earth, through the universe, in this life and the next.   

Blissful Ignorance

One year ago, I was blissfully unaware and enraptured with the love of my life, Tippi.   

Don't touch the art

Studmuffin

Prince Under the Cherry Moon

Me -- awash in burgundy haze     

Mentage

Beloved Infidel - my Amazon review

In my attempts to learn about F Scott Fitzgerald I came across this book written by his lover Sheilah Graham whom he was involved with during the last years of his life. While his wife Zelda languished in the mental asylum that would lead to her death in a fire, FSF was slipping into an alcoholic stupor that eventually claimed him. This is essentially the life story of Sheilah Graham who was born into poverty on London's East end as Lily Sheil. Had she continued on the trajectory set by her mother's example, she may never have aspired to be more than an illiterate maid. Her looks proved to be her saving grace as her appearance paved the way for her to obtain bigger and better opportunities. Her beauty attracted the attention of more than one well to do gentlemen who vied for her hand in marriage. She opted to reject the offer of an overweight millionaire to marry a financially comfortable military hero and entreprenuer. The marriage lifted her from the poverty stricken path she was born into and saved her from the fate befitting a scullery maid. She was able to pursue a life on the stage while keeping her marriage a secret thinking that it was better for her image if she was presumed to be single. As her showbiz life improved her social standing and put her into touch with glitzy entertainment industry types, she eventually fell into a gossip writing gig that I can best summarize as the poor man's Louella Parsons. Without a writing background and with virtually no education, she resorted to pithy put downs in her column that pissed a lot of people off. During this time, she met FSF at a party on the grounds of the fabled Garden of Allah property that was second home to many Hollywood notables from Marilyn Monroe to Frank Sinatra et al. The adorable bungalows were built on the grounds of what had once been silent screen star Allah Nazimova's private residence during Hollywood's infancy. FSF was living in a rented bungalow while working at MGM where he had been hired to lend his talent to a number of projects, a rewrite of the Gone with the Wind screenplay among them. The Great Gatsby, This Side of Paradise and Tender is the Night had catapulted FSF to global notoriety as the world fawned over him and his wife Zelda. They were portrayed to represent and embody the Jazz Age as their larger than life media personalities overshadowed their soul and knocked them off their pedestal. The pressures of fame and life at the top proved to be too much for FSF and Zelda to sustain as evidenced by her mental unraveling and his failure to transition from bestselling author to the second phase of his career. When he met Sheilah at a cocktail party, he was 40 years old with a wife in an asylum and an estranged teenage daughter away at school. His relationship with Sheilah was the best thing he had going for him but was doomed from the beginning in many ways. His obligations to Zelda prevented him from ever being able to marry Sheilah and legitimatize their union because he had one foot mired in the past at all times. I cringed while reading about FSF's drunken bombastic binges where he would demand special treatment from an unsuspecting waitress or the equivalent, "Don't you know who I am?", he would sway and shout. In a town where you're only as good as your last hit, his fall from the A list had severely affected his Q score. He took on the task of procuring Sheilah's education and transformed her from a back country Cockney lass into a well bred, well read woman of the world. Undertakings such as this were typical of FSF on one spectrum just as he was prone to hold Sheilah at gunpoint on the polar opposite end. He was every inch an alcoholic or inebriate as he depended on the vice as an ill fated coping mechanism to deal with the reality of his fall from glory and failure to navigate a professional niche in a changing creative marketplace. My eyes were glued to the pages as I reacted audibly much to the chagrin of people in my surroundings. I felt as if I had a front row seat at a public lynching. Watching the magic that was FSF end up a hackneyed has been cliche was incredibly painful to witness through Sheilah's engaging words. The film of the same name is an accurate portrayal of the book's chapters that deal with FSF.

Tenderloin becomes "Trend"erloin as Construction Abounds

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByMXa6q_OUnMeFA2aGwzdGUtajhuUEIyemVmQjQ2bUVRTm9z/view?usp=sharing



The Tenderloin is a changin'.     Men in uniform wielding hammers are a common sight in the Tenderloin as the landscape of this formerly queer mecca and notorious naughty nucleus goes under construction to accommodate the burgeoning interlopers.     See what is planned for the parking lot next to the Ambassador Hotel at Mason and Turk. 

 

Born This Way Blog: Tommy

Born This Way Blog: Tommy

I stumbled upon a fun queer blog called Born This Way that asks gay readers to submit pictures of themselves from childhood that show signs of gayness.   I contributed the following.   Tommy is short for my middle name Thomas which my family and friends from childhood still continue to call me.

Tommy, age 2

San Jose, California (1975)

My mother tells me the staff at the Sears portrait studio were so impressed with this photo of me, that they wanted to hang it on their wall in the lobby. 

"What does the T stand for? Is it Tammy?" they said. "No," my mother corrected. "More like Tommy." This was my first reported instance of an occasion that would become a regular theme in my life.

I was 2-years old and people were already doing double-takes while apologizing under their breath for misidentifying my gender. "He’s pretty - for a boy” was the first of the backhanded compliments I was poised to receive as I got older.

As  a kid, it used to bother me that I was often mistaken for a girl, and my easily mortified teenage self suffered accordingly. Because people didn’t quite know how to categorize me by sight, I learned to transcend polarization. 

I understood early that gender was a social construction that was completely malleable. I felt the need to refrain from conforming to the gender biases of popular culture and to create my own. 

If I liked a shirt in the girl’s department and it fit me, I wasn’t stymied by the fact that it buttoned up the opposite side. I learned how to bridge the gap between my yin and yang. 

I trace the early understanding of gender politics I had to this photo.
T was for Tommy but it was also for trans - as in transcending transgender. 

______________________________________________________

Imperial Disaster

Change is very hard for me to handle. I have been weepy and emotional since hearing about what's about to go down when this is demolished.    I can understand why the Irish immigrants who dominated Eureka Valley before the gays took it over and started calling it the Castro reacted with consternation.

They are building condos for the "creative,bike-centric millenials" (I can't say the word millenial) flooding the area.  Snot-nosed kids with attitude and lots of money are coming to mid-Market.

 The original outcry I posted on Facebook has inspired a resounding discussion and stirred people's memories of the venues they've enjoyed there over the years.

Michael Flanagan a , Facebook user, recalls, "Before it was a strip club it was a music venue. In 1981 I saw William S. Burroughs there on the 'You're The Man I Want To Share My Money With' tour (with Laurie Anderson and John Giorno). I also saw the Bush Tetras there back when Laura Kennedy and Pat Place were an item. So it had a little Punk/Beat LGBT history associated with it back in those days as well."


Ever since I helped assemble the  Polk Street oral history project for the SF GLBT Historical Society, I have understood that history exists within our hearts, minds and souls and must be passed on and preserved in order for it to benefit the future generations    My neighborhood of mid- Market is noisy every  day as a hub of construction changes its face.  The buildings that can no longer serve a practical purpose are meeting the wrecking ball.   This is heartbreaking to me but I understand the precious value of real estate and the need we have to maximize any space'e potential. That being said, I won't have to mourn the structure if its soul is preserved through people's stories.  If the anecdotes that have been copping up on Facebook are any indication of the tsunami of memories the razing of Market Street is about to conjure, I have fantasies of reeling them all in for posterity.   This is the only way I can cope with the crumbling cornerstones.

This is the mockup plan that Loewe's originally had in 1969.
It didn't transpire.

I wanted it to be preserved so badly until I learned that the classic architectural details that existed at its origins were destroyed in the 1967 remodel by Loewe’s when they acquired the building from United Artists. The facade on the outside was permanently altered to appease the stripper joint it had been forced to become in 1972 as the Imperial was violated by shifty shysters in shameful depravity as the neighborhood around it was neglected. As of today it’s been slated for demolition because the National Historic Landmark status it was issued in 1986 was classified as an INTRUSION which means it was not only stripped of its dignity but now is losing its crown and promise for eternal protection. The city feels there is nothing left in her worth saving to merit holding the parking space she’s occupied for 102 years. Goodbye Grauman’s Imperial. If it’s haunted, I hope they hang around after the new property is built. All this time, I thought the ugly facade was just hiding the original underneath until it could be removed This news of its pending demise has come as quite a shock to me and I am emotional for it implications about the bigger picture. pardon the pun.



I have always had a sneaking suspicion that my overly sentimental tendency to want to hang on to things past their prime is a result or related to having been adopted. . As a kid, I hoarded Christmas ornaments that my mom was trying to sell at the church bazaar. I didn't want to part with anything that had once been special. Today I learned that a 102 year old movie palace in my neighborhood that has been closed for a couple years since its final degrading act of having turned into a stripper joint 40 years ago when the area went into decline has been slated for demolition. It's been sporting an ugly facade since I that I had always assumed was temporary. I fantasized about the day it would be removed to reveal its former grandeur underneath. I knew it could never be destroyed because it was a National Historic Landmark. That changed quite abruptly today when I found out it was registered as an Intrusion which means everything historically significant that merits preservation was ripped out in 1967 leaving nothing worth saving. ;I've passed by that building every day for 10 years imagining the treasures that must lie behind the gates. I am actually crying and having a very difficult time dealing with the change. As a volunteer tour guide for the city of San Francisco and resident of a neighborhood that's coming out of a 40 year slumber since Twitter and the tech industry discovered its cheap real estate, I've been feeling the pain of these old buildings as their worth is weighed to determine whether they're worth saving. History should be preserved no matter what. I can't let go of these attachments to these old buildings. Shouldn't what's been there have a right to just be there forever? Of course, I know that's preposterous but I can't explain the empathy I've always had for the soul of inanimate objects. It s as if I'm wanting to save their history for the missing part of mine. That has to be it. I have to become okay with the changes because they're happening all around me. I'm crying all of the time as my neighborhood is torn apart. The dilapidated historical treasures held distinction but that will be overlooked by the carpet-baggers coming to capitalize.