In Which We Voyage

 

Sunday afternoon, Diane von Austinburg and I will hurl ourselves into the sky and hopefully land in Paris the next morning.  Woohoo.  I'm looking forward to our trip very much, we'll also be dropping in on Venice for a few days.  I haven't been to Europe in more than 30 years, but my previous trips to Paris were very successful and got all the obligatory destinations out of the way so now I can concentrate on my favorite Parisian activity which is simply wandering around aimlessly.

Or possibly just holing up in my hotel room since the weather forecast calls for Gallic gray skies and chilly rain.  As sort of a bon voyage from San Francisco, the weather here has flipped from gorgeous sunny spring back to drizzly winter; I feel like I'm rehearsing for my vacation.

We do have a couple of plans, the one I'm looking forward to the most is an exhibit of work by my favorite artist in the world, Mark Rothko.  It's the largest show of his stuff ever mounted and I only found out about it after I had already arranged the trip.  We get there the day before the show closes, it was meant to be.

Rothko

I also arranged for massages in both Paris and Venice.  Experience has taught me that being trapped in an airplane results in my creaky old carcass needing some assistance straightening up.  The website for the spa in Venice was very straightforward and I got the reservation with no problem.  The Parisian one, naturalment, was considerably more difficult; I'm still not 100% sure I have a reservation.  I'm sure it'll be fine.

"I'm sure it will be fine" pretty much sums up my attitude for this whole trip; I've done fuck all research for where to go and what to do.  We'll be in Paris and Venice.  It's going to be wonderful.  So adieu bitches, the boulevards and the canals are calling me.

Fellow travelers:

Pretty much the only things I've even sort of arranged are dinners.  Because, Paris and Venice.  Duh.

Bryce Evans, a prime example of English beef.

Daniele Montana, Italian humpiness.

I couldn't find any French pussy, so let's just pretend this anonymous beauty is one.

Ooh la la la lah.

OK, that exhausts all of my European smut awareness.

I take it back, here we have Liam Jolley, who I believe is British.

In Which We Go to Church

First let me emphasize, I WAS NOT EAVESDROPPING.  I was at Peet's, the best cafe in the world, and a couple of elderly queers sitting behind me were discussing how to get more kids to come to church in very clarion tones. What was I supposed to do, stick my fingres in my ears?  I was immediately not on their side.  If the youth of today are not interested in what you're selling, maybe, I don't know, stop harassing them?

They had a number of plans, or maybe just concepts, the most effective sounding of which was to utilize peer pressure.  I'm not editorializing, they used that specific phrase.  Did they think these kids are unaware of religion?  That they could explain "Jesus died for your sins blah blah blah" and the kids would fall in line?  "Sure count me in.  And tell Father Rafferty the next time he puts his hand down my pants I'm going to charge him 20 bucks."

There were numerous details hashed out so they were still sitting there when I got up and left and I got a good look at them.  For one thing, one of the elderly queers was an old lady with a deep voice, so oops.  Her fellow conspirator was a plump elf with one of those beards that doesn't go down far enough past his jawbone to be convincing.  He was the one who pronounced the word "teenager" a little too enthusiastically.

My relation with church going is not nearly as traumatic as that of some gay men (or what these kids they were plotting against are probably in for.) My family was vaguely southern Baptists; one of my aunts told me when my father's mother decided the family needed to have a religion, she just looked around to see what flavor to pick and landed on the Baptists.

Southern Baptist is one of the most conservative of American Protestant sects.  They take the prohibition against false idols very seriously to the point where they have no stained glass, no statues, no icons, nothing to look at when you're a board little kid and the guy at the front is droning on and on.  I had no idea what was going on, my entire religious education consisted of "Shut up and sit down." Unlike other religions, Baptist do not have communion every week, but occasionally, for no reason I understood, the church would break out stale crackers and grape juice, because Baptist forbid drinking alcohol. I thought we were just having snacks.

Eventually, when I was about 11, I got baptized.  Everybody else my age was doing it, even Blake Lively, so I figured whathehell and signed up for it. Baptists do not baptize babies, you have to go through some indoctrination before they let you into their pyramid scheme.  There was a big tub behind the altar, big enough for the preacher and me both to stand in.  He asked if I took the lord for my savior and I answered somewhere between "yeah sure" and "I guess so" which seemed good enough for him so he grabbed me and shoved me under the water.

Growing up on the Gulf Coast I had spent plenty of time in swimming pools with hooligans who dunked me and this was just as pleasant.  My mother said I came up spluttering with my eyes huge.  Well duh.  Didn't you see that guy try to drown me?  That preacher went on to become the mayor of the nasty little town I grew up in and I vaguely remember later some scandal involving him like all good Southern Baptists eventually indulge in.

The only other thing I really remember from my churchly days was my grandmother taking me to a revival.  Revivals are when some traveling preacher would set up a big tent and preach and carry on.  The church I was familiar with was blandly suburban, pretty much no different from all the other Protestants in town, but these guys were the real deal.  They were one small step away from snake handlers and speaking in tongues.  I was astonished by it all.  It was at night and there were bright bare bulbs strung overhead and seating was just boards on top of milk crates.  I have never been to a carny side show, but whenever I read about them the image of that evening comes vividly to mind.

Anyway, my little brother died and my grandmother attempted to console my mother by telling her Jesus loved him so much, he took him "home" which sounds like pedophilia to me, but whatever.  The whole thing went over with my mother about as well as you would expect and that was pretty much the end of mrpeenee and the Baptists.  It was okay with me, they didn't have those snacks nearly often enough and they weren't really that good anyway.

Guys worth worshiping:

Hallelujah.

The blonde hotness of David Cihacek.

Jesus wannabe.

Kurt Beckman, and proud of it.

Liam Jolley, for whom I would get on my knees to worship in a heartbeat.

I like your hat, but those socks and sandals have got to go.

I have decided to start my own church, Our Lady of Perpetual Big Wieners.

In Which Nursepeenee Considers Rectal Thermometers for Everyone

I am surrounded by the diseased and the sickly.  Everyone I speak to these days has some emergency room trip or doctor visit or just puny ass malady to recount. It is only my saintly disposition that keeps me from running in the opposite direction and sealing my front door against them.

Diane von Austinburg, as I mentioned last week, face planted outside of theater and busted her forehead open.  She then spent several hours in a "minor ER" (which I don't understand, in my mind it's either an emergency room or it's not.) Anyway, she got stitched up and sent me a very dramatic picture of her great big old black eye which I am not sharing because of my great love for her.

I did offer to send one of my groovy Day of the Dead bandaids, but she declined, which indicates head trauma to me, but whatever.  She also kept mentioning to the ER guys and to subsequent doctor visits that her arm hurt, but everyone's sort of brushed that off in favor of the busted open head wound.  Finally, they discovered she had a minor fracture of her elbow.  She now swears that she will be all better by the time it's time for us to wing off to Europe.

Next let us turn our attention to poor little Secret Agent Fred.  Fred has been through it with his bladder cancer.  His chemo has given him anemia which left him flattened with exhaustion, but recently he got a blood transfusion and that helped immensely.  Helped so much that last night we actually went out for drinks and dinner.  Woo hoo, like two big city fancy poofs.  We were talking about his life with the big c and he mentioned that except for 2 months in the fall of 2022 and then a couple of months this past winter, he has been on chemotherapy non-stop for the last 2 years.  Oy.

And our Chaturbate buddy Brainiac was knocked on his ass by COVID at the end of February which then morphed into a sinus infection leaving him snotty and sick. Poor thing.  He has enough on his plate running a feral cat colony in his backyard.  Thoughts and prayers, baby.

Lastly, speaking of Chaturbate, everybody's favorite model, Mikey, has been dealing with some weird pinched nerve neck ache for weeks.  His chiropractor is only able to deliver short-term relief and recently assured him "Oh well that's just what happens with your neck." The fuck you say.

It just makes me appreciate how little I deserve my robust good health.  Whenever I have to break in a new doctor, the chats we have as kind of a intake always turn towards all the sexually transmitted miscellaney I have collected over the years.  Their eyes tend to get an alarmed look in them as the list grows sort of significantly long.  And yet, here I am sound as a sound horse.  Go figure.

Healthy dudes:

I have a real weakness for pretty blue-eyed blondes.

Although I wouldn't say no to a chunk of dark beefcake.

The weather here abouts has turned absolutely balmy, if not warm enough for al fresco showers.

 

Buttchops of the world.

All the world loves a big ol' veiny dick.

I hate being out on boats, but if I had to be at sea, a well appointed cabin with a well appointed cabin boy would be appreciated.

This week is all about ass, ass, ass.

The end.

In Which We Consider Photographic Proof

 

Our dear friend Bobby claims that I only write this blog in order to complain.  To prove what nonsense that is, let me point out that it was a lovely day this afternoon and the cherry trees in the Castro are already starting to bloom.

I spent the afternoon organizing old printed photos, by which I mean I would pick pictures up out of one stack and put them in another and do absolutely nothing about them.  I have a rough estimate that I probably have about 3, 000 photos. I never ever go back and look at them, but I decided I'm going to try and cull out the really dead wood and make some room in the closet that the boxes they live in are currently occupying.

I hired an organizer to come in on Wednesday and look through all these stacks and piles of so many much younger mrpeenees.  My direction to the organizer is simple: pitch all the pictures that have no people in them. 

My beloved R Man and my sainted mother shared one common trait, they were terrible photographers.  Both demanded that the subject freeze and stand perfectly still while they tried to push the shutter button.  Inevitably the result was a crooked blur that they swore was a picture.  R Man dealt with his photography limitation by taking pictures of mostly landscapes because mountains don't move.  Thus about easily a third of those 3,000 are just random mountains and forests and streets. When I look back at them, all I see are images that I already remember.  So those 50, 60 shots of the hotel in Glacier Park in 1988? Out.  Actual pictures of friends and relatives, many of whom have moved on to the other side of the grass, those I'll keep.

Here's a few that I've already run into and decided to put in the keep pile.

A tiny little mrpeenee, circa 1956, with my father, I think in Galveston.  What strikes me most about this, aside from how absolutely adorable I was, is how very dark my father was.  He had beautiful olive skin that never burned and would tan in the time it took him to cross a street.  Did he pass that gene down to me?  Hell no.

Speaking of adorable. 

A teenaged mrpeenee, with more hair than brains, and my baby niece Amber, apparently fresh from some vampire festival.

Dear god.  mrpeenee and my good friend Keith, on whom I had SUCH a crush.  We were visiting my family at a small town near Austin famous for its charming little river, we would spend the day floating down it in inner tubes.  We also spent the day smoking excessive amounts of pot, hence our sort of dazed expressions.  Man, he was cute.

While we are on the subject of cute, here we have our dear, dear friend Magda (left) and oh so adorable R Man.  We had some guy build a couple of cabinets for his kitchen and then Magda helped by painting them.  Since it he didn't want to get paint on his clothes, he just took them off.  My the life we had in New Orleans.

More pictures:

Quinn Christopher Jaxon and all his big meat

Buttchops.

Beach time is coming.  Do you have your bikini ready?

I wish I knew his name.

More anonymous beef