Sakarama, the San Francisco Treat

But mrpeenee, our fans beg, what of Saki, The Adorable and Evil Cat? Oh, you know, the yoozh. Adorable and evil. We keep a water spray bottle on the kitchen counter to squirt him when he insists on jumping up there. As R Man points out, if a cat could roll his eyes in exasperation at our perverse thick headedness, Saki would. Obviously we just will not get with the program, his program.

He seems to be slightly less aggressive and more affectionate, yay. He also has become bored with all the games we usually play with him, except for the classic Chase the String. If any of you have suggestions, I'd be glad to hear them. The only one that comes to my mind is Put Him in a Box and Ship Him to Hell when he's being just too feisty.

In the morning when I'm getting dressed, I sing Scissor Sisters to him in a loud, exaggerated Southern accent. He seems to dig it, looking at me with an intense concentration. "Ya gotta tie yo fuzzy up wit a big red bow"

You Say Dore Alley, I Say Bore Alley

The only downside to the quiet, contented life I lead is a lack of blog fodder. As our friend the UrbanStreetPirate will tell you, our weekends almost inevitably comprise lunch at Chow, errands at Walgreens on Castro street, groceries at the Rainbow, and then a nap. I know it seems a shame to live in the middle of such vibrancy as San Francisco and yet lead the life of a spinster in a Barbara Pym novel, but I like it.

Two of the many fascinating sounding opportunities we ignore are the annual Dore Alley and Folsom Street fairs. Both of them have a long-standing reputation as libertine bacchanals; sexual outlaw festivals. This poster helps show the image it has locally.

The reality? Wall to wall crowds

and gnarly naked guys who really should know better.

We call it the Curse of Viagra.

To be fair there is actually some humpiness there, running wild.

This is after all, San Francisco. But since the fair is on Sunday, you can see a very tasty preview wandering around the Castro on the Saturday afternoon before, sort of warming up. And without the crush of stinky humanity. Although we also saw one of our sisters in gnarliness sitting buck naked on a bench on 18th Street. As I pointed out to R Man in my prissiest tone "Other people have to sit on the bench, too, you know."

The whole thing is mainly just another street fair with S&M booths interspersed with the crappy stained glass "art" and the fajita stands. Can I just say this about fajita stands? I despise them. As a passionate fan of good Mexican food, I can't understand how these abominations even exist. There's a clear distinction between grilled meat and charred gristle and these guys fall way down on the wrong end of the scale. Sort of the like the elderly naked bucks.

Well Stick a Candle in My Ear and Blow Me Out

Yesterday was the anniversary of my blog, Happy Birthday little blog! I only started this because I wanted to join in the snark festival of commenting on Fabulon but once I got going, I found out I liked it. I had always wanted to be a writer but been held back by a) a lack of talent and b) a reluctance to deal with publishers. Blogging totally eliminates b). I don't have to look for anyone's permission or approval, all I have to do is post pictures of semi-naked muscley boys and I'm a star.

What I hadn't counted on was making connections here. Honestly, I hadn't counted on anyone actually reading this, period, so to have people respond to what I write is still thrilling to me. When R Man went in the hospital for heart surgery, the support I got from you guys was the most important comfort I had; I still appreciate it. In an odd way, I feel like many of the people I know solely through their comments here and their own blogs are friends. So happy b-day to us all, love ya, mean it.

Dr. mrpeenee is in

Saturday night, I stepped on a piece of glass. Tiny, tiny, tiny, so tiny I couldn't even see it, but I could sure as hell feel it and every day since then it got a little more uncomfortable. Finally, last night I soaked my foot in hot salt water, took a sterilized needle and... uh, got the sliver out. OK, that's all the thinly veiled gross details I'm going to indulge in; my real point is not specs about homemade exploratory surgery, but rather how amazing it is to me that removing it immediately made everything better. La la la lah lah de dah. No after effects, no transition, just, boom, all over.

Years ago, I never would have done this, I am such a pussy Ladyboy wimp about ouchies. I would have limped around hoping that wishful thinking and voodoo would make the glass fall out, but in the years that I've been struggling with my garden here in the land of the encroaching berry vine, I have by necessity become an adept at removing stickers and this was just more of the same. Maybe I'll start Botoxing myself like Pats did in Ab Fab.

Forever Young

I am once again working late. I do this a lot. The training program here is my baby and making sure the evening classes go ok is my responsibility and yadda, yadda, yadda. What concerns me more are the Youth of Today. We have three unpaid interns in our office and two of them are here tonight, as they are on so many other nights. Let's review the salient points, shall we? It's a lovely summer evening in San Francisco, they're young and they are spending this time in a fluorescent office with a cranky ole queen who wishes they would just go home so he could turn up the New Order pop tunes on his computer. These children are wasting prime scalawag time when they could be out experimenting with who knows what substances; voluminous, exotic cocktails; and alternative sexualities, but no, they sit around here typing and grunting. Wait, maybe that's me. Still, they're here. Go home, I want to say, go out and get laid. Do you think that complete lack of crow's feet is going to last forever? WRONG. Why, when I was their age...oh never mind.

Sunday in the Park with Frostbite

We wandered over to the neighborhood next to Golden Gate Park today for lunch, a very tasty burrito at a taqueria we had never been to, yay for our bold explorer blood, and then continued meandering into the park. I wanted to buy two posters I had seen at the bookstore in the aboretum and we love that part of the park very much. If you have any interest in gardening, or just looking at pretty flowers, it's mecca. The arboretum has the most lushly landscaped beds, filled with really interesting specimens from areas that share the mediterranean climate with San Francisco, a climate which today was gray and cold. I know it's July; I was wearing my summer coat. Certainly, having sprung from the Gulf Coast, I sympathize with those of you sweltering right now. You'll have to trust me when I say I was eyeing the lady bundled up in scarf and gloves with envy.

While in the park, we stumbled on the always charming Golden Gate Park Band. A very traditional small brass and woodwind group, they play each Sunday in beautiful Neo-classical band shell, always presenting an eclectic program of show tunes and operetta and Sousa marches. It's odd to think how often we see them without ever planning on it. I played tuba (badly) in school and have a great fondness for the cheesy, slightly out of tune shows they produce.

Here's the posters I bought. They're going in the bold pink bathroom.

I Have No Shame

Why do I blog? So that I can drag out the most humiliating admissions of my life to be shared with you, my dear friends. Case in point: I am looking forward to seeing the movie Mamma Mia. I know, I know, shocking considering the exquisite refinement I ususally exhibit, but true. I have no idea why. Abba's music has always seemed sort of equivalent to Peep's marshmallow chickies, something that's amusing to consider, but not to consume. Still, when the opening chords of Dancing Queen swell up in the theater this weekend, I will be there. If this photo of Christine Baranski in a teal feather pinafore is not enough to explain why, nothing I can say ever would.

Let's watch movies

A documentary about Leigh Bowery. 88 minutes long. You know you want it.

My Mouth is Moving, I Must be Working

I had to go make a little speech to a bunch of IRS agents this afternoon about what my agency does or outreach efforts to the business community or intra-agency collaboration or fashion tips or something or the other, who knows? I never write out presentations, I just get up and start talking and hope for the best. At some point, inevitably, a part of me will think "I wonder what I'm saying?" But you know, you just keep rolling and when they clap you can go home.

Hello, my name is mrpeenee and I'd like to thank you for asking me here today....

You know who I think is dreamy?


Dwayne Johnson


Vin Diesel


Hugh Jackman

compare and contrast.

The Wonderful World of Crap

I spent my lunch at a thrift store in the Mission. I wasn’t looking for anything special and even if I had stumbled on something fabulous, I don’t know how I would have dealt with it since I had to come straight back to the office. Mostly I was just went to poke around there; I find browsing in junk stores very soothing.

Plus, today was apparently High Style Toozday at Thrift Town. The store very thoughtfully provides a tester station for people to try out electrical appliances before they buy. Usually it’s being utilized to see how loud the clock radios will crank out the classic rock station, but one time I saw a young man plug in a toaster which immediately started emitting an impressive cloud of smoke. He stood there with a look of real concentration, as if trying to decide if five bucks was a good price for a fire hazard.

Today, a middle aged gent with coarse thick hair styled in something between a mullet and an homage to Farrah Fawcett’s glory days was testing a blow dryer. He was parked there with his eyes closed, his chin tilted back, rocking his head from side to side in the stream of hot air, channeling some Wella Balsam commercial from thirty years ago. I tiptoed past him.

Then on the way out, I was trapped behind a tiny elderly Lady absolutely decked out. Sure, she was wearing sweat pants, but they were some shiny, iridescent material the color of grape bubble gum. They were so sparkly I wanted to touch them, but restrained myself. And on the other end, she had on the exact same wig Eva Gabor made so memorable as both Lisa Douglas in Green Acres and as the genesis for the Eva Gabor Wig Collection, god’s gift to down-market drag queens everywhere. I especially liked the fact it was at least two sizes too big and perched on her wee little head like a hat. I take it as a matter of faith she snagged it at some previous thrifting expedition. I just hope it was on Senior Citizen’s discount day.

Daze Gone By

Shortly after I started blogging, I casually, foolishly, posted an entry about the number of men I’d had sex with. I had thought the number was fairly normal for a gay man of my vintage. According to the responses I received I was either badly mistaken or my audience was composed of nuns. Bearing in mind that number (which I still hold is not that astonishing. I’m just friendly.) one might assume I am one of those gay men who has a trail of ex-boyfriends behind me. Nope. R Man is sui generis, my one and only. Many of our friends would point to R Man’s astonishing level of forbearance with me as the reason; I prefer to think that I’m choosy.

The closest thing to an exe I ever had was some guy in college, right after I came out. Let’s call him X. I was determined to have a boyfriend, he had thick blonde hair and was willing to take his clothes off with me, therefore I figured he was the one. Or that he would do. I was very young. One day he wandered back off to Houston and that was the end, or at least as much of the end as there could be for something that never even really existed.

Many, many years later, at a party, I was talking with friends of friends who were visiting here from Houston. I mentioned X’s name and amazingly, they knew him. “Oh, he’s crazy,” one of them said. “Yeah, he was wild, there’s no telling with him…” I answered, but the friend corrected me. “No, honey, you don’t understand. He’s crazy. Like insane.”

It turned out he had had “an episode,” been wildly inappropriate in pubic, lost his business and home and wound up in the bug house.

Fast forward even more years and I was at work, moderating a class for HIV entrepreneurs, and who pops up in front of me? X, of course. No longer blonde, no longer cute, but possibly still crazy. Certainly his conversation was not what one normally deals with in a business class. He informed me at length of the Houston dog pound’s practice of feeding the corpses of dogs to alligators in the bayou that flows through the center of town. Hmm.

I stood there trying on one hand to extricate myself so I could get back to running the goddam class and on the other hand thinking “This could have been my life. Coming home at night to a crazy guy who has theories about alligator fodder.” Just one more reason why I give thanks every day for R Man, a sweet, sensible, smart, lovely man who is not crazy. Pretty much.

D.v.A.

Diane von Austinberg and I are already planning her visit here in September. Actually, "planning" may be a wee exageration. We're trading emails about going to the beach and various thift stores. This is one of the reasons I adore her so, I asked if the Salvation Army store on Sutter had already closed the last time she was here. Her reply:

"Yes, that's when you discovered it had closed. We went there all ready to knock down the homeless people in our search for good junk and were met with nothing but a locked door and empty windows. And hadn't that weird little churchy shop closed as well (not the foofy one but the one around the corner from it that was on two levels and had no room to manuever. You know: the one where I bought the sweater with the cum on it and wowed you.)? I wonder if there's good thrifting in Marin. . . ."

You can't count on finding friends like that, and you have to treasure the ones you have.

Everything Counts in Large Amounts

Not to harp on the same topic, but twice today I've felt like an old man. A skeezy old man. Skeeze 1) I was getting my regular breakfast at Peet's, turned around from the counter with apple danish in hand and came face to face with one of the most spectacularly beautiful men I've ever seen. Thick muscles, think lips, thick hair, oh, you know, the usual perfection. I stopped in my tracks, my jaw dropped, it's possible I gasped. I also realized as I was standing there gaping that I was blocking his progress to the cash register. I only hope he's so accustomed to stunning passersby with his good looks that he didn't notice.

Skeeze 2) I'm organizing several filming segments for a content aggregator web site and a new cameraman showed up just now, apparently taking time off from his other job as a Professional Beauty. Curly black hair, skin Lancome can only dream of approximating and the adorable face of a Renaissance putti. I had to talk to him at length about the video and forced myself not to stare at the nipples poking through his shirt. Eventually I had to cut it short and flee before I started drooling.

It's the burden of living in San Francisco. I suppose the subway going home tonight will be filled with porn stars.

Old mrpeenee

R Man's work exposes him to the many wonders of nursing home life, insights about which he passes on to me, including tips about Wander Guards. Here's what the Azalea Trail Nursing Home in Grand Saline, Texas has to say about them

"Residents who are still very mobile and at risk of wandering out of the facility alone, but who would not be safe if they did so, wear a lightweight signaling device on their wrist or ankle. Whenever one of the residents is about to leave the facility, the staff is notified by an audible sound and thus able to assist the person."

I have heard before that the Inuit people put their old folks out on ice floes once they can no longer pull their weight around the igloo and I think I might just prefer that to setting off alarms at the Azalea Trail as I try to sneak out.

And this is not mere flippancy. My family tends towards either dying early of white trash type diseases (which I seem to have avoided) or being long lived and crazy. Oh dear. My goal is to emulate my great-aunt Lucille. A gold digger in her youth, she snagged a much older rich guy, had no kids, and spent most of her adult life comfortably as a rich widow. I don't particularly want any of that, I'm not interested in trading R Man for a widowhood, no matter how comfortable, but at the end she lapsed into cheerful insanity, in merry good spirits and totally oblivious to the world around her. That's the part I want. I don't care if I'm crazy, I just don't want to know about it.

Boom

Things come and go, but there is one constant in life: every Fourth of July in San Francisco, the fog will blow in sometime in the afternoon and by the time the municipal fireworks start up on the beach on the north side of town, visibility will be so poor the roman candles and such will be mere diffuse glows up in the mist and the booms will be muffled. Never the less, every year, thousand of people will clog the street of the Marina trying to get a good seat for a show that provides the excitement of listening to static.

R Man and I are, of course, too sensible for such a waste of time. We have discovered instead that the lip of canyon we live in makes a bluff just above our house from which you have an excellent, fog-free view down into the Outer Mission, Bernal Heights, Bayview and other unfashionable neighborhoods near here. While these hoods may not be stylish, they are filled with miscreants who celebrate Independence Day by setting off their own illegal fireworks. While of course I decry such antinomian behavior, I love standing up on the bluff watching the little brilliant displays erupting spontaneously down below.

St. Nina

There is no other singer who inspires my schizy devotion like Nina Simone. I love her, except those times when I can't stand her, and the two sensations can battle back and forth in the space of a single song. I know her extravagant stylings are part of her charm to many of her admirers, but I like her much more when she's at her most restrained rather than that weird yodeling and growling she indulges in.

Is that just me?

It's Comcastic

The evil Comcast cable company was supposed to come install the fabled High Definition yesterday so I was stuck here all afternoon and evening, waiting and waiting, like some chubby teenage girl stood up for the prom. They have a chat function on their website. It would appear the death threats they got on their customer support phone line weren't appreciated. I wrote at 8:00 PM some pathetic whimper like "Where r u" and the lying bitch on the other end swore the installer would be here any minute. Two hours later I wrote again and this time they admited they had just been jerking me around. Or words to that effect. Could this possibly have anything to do with the monopoly they enjoy?

Anyway, we're back on the schedule for next Tuesday, probably under the heading of "Sucker." I hope they're enjoying their laughs now; as soon as I get my good voodoo doll up and running, they'll be sorry.