Party Outa Bounds

Darlings, sorry, don’t bother mummy right now, I’m getting ready for the big do over on Fabulon Sunday evening.  Didn’t you get the invitation?  DARLING.  I’m sure it was just an oversight, you know how ditzy Thombeau can be.  Poor old thing has probably been living on whippets all week getting ready for this.  Sweetie, yes, a virtual party.

 

I’ll be dialing in from the comfort of my luxurious boudoir.

I’ve asked houseboy Allegra Galliano to help with snacks.

 We’ll see you there.

Throwing Up a Storm

Our dear sistah in New Orleans, Cow Queen, sent us a wonderful new cookbook “Cooking Up a Storm.” It’s a collection put together by the New Orleans newspaper in response to Hurricane Katrina stricken readers who had lost recipes clipped out of the paper over the years. It’s a very clever idea; I think all cooks have a stack of clippings that they would hate to lose. I have a binder filled with them, some of them decades old that I’ve never made, but fully intend to one day, and others that I turn to time after time.

So we were leafing through the book and ran across a cocktail called The Bushwacker. Composed of ice cream and run and liqueurs, it sounded most enticing and it was. R Man and Urban Street Pirate and I ran up a blender full and then kept sending Pirate into the kitchen for another round. We finally stopped after four. The recipe had included a gay little caveat “Be careful, they go down easy!” How very true. Unfortunately, in my case, they also came up, perhaps not easily, but certainly spectacularly.

I threw up everything but my toenails. I was heaving things I had consumed during the Clinton administration. I puked things from another dimension, like a bad Star Trek episode.

Oh dear.

I mentioned in my earlier post about drinking Cosmos with the boys that I had gotten tipsy after one potent cocktail. Now it appears that not only can I not hold my liquor, I can’t even hold it down.

Fine, fine. I don’t care. If you want me, I’ll be right over here, back on the wagon, attempting to memorize the Ladies’ Temperance League’s Oath.

And Now, For My Next Number...

I was busy in the kitchen tonight, whipping up a rather fabulous coleslaw (which reminds me of the time I was making this while my father was visiting and absentmindedly made the dressing with balsamic vinegar instead of the apple cider vinegar I had wanted.  I tasted it and sure enough, it didn't have the bright astringency I wanted.  As I poured it down the sink I mentioned to my father that it tasted "cloudy."   He looked at me aghast, clearly wondering if some tragic mutation had occurred while my mother was pregnant with me since such a freak of nature as I couldn't have possibly sprung from his loins.  He couldn't have been more baffled if I had been speaking Urdu.  I also now realize I couldn't have come up with a more gay, gay, gay anecdote if I had tried long and hard.  Anyway.)

So I was trying to chop cabbage and peel carrots and Saki, the adorable and evil kitty would not stay off the counter, which inspired a little tune I call "Cat Stew."

Cat Stew

sung to the tune of 'Tonight' from West Side Story:

Cat Stew!

Cat Stew!

I'm gonna make cat stew!

I'm gonna make cat stew out of you.

Repeat until cat gets disgusted and leaves or boyfriend comes in and demands to know what the hell all that racket is. 

Crimes of Muscato

While perusing our darling Muscato’s latest entry over at Café Muscato, an astonishing video of the sluttiest belly dancer I’ve ever run across*, my boss dropped by my desk. Seeing my stunned, slack-jawed look, he immediately demanded to watch it, too. Thank god I have a boss who’s as easily amused as I am. Thank god also that my well established reputation as a big poof saved me from any accusation of prurience for being drawn in by what appears to be Karen Black in a polyester slip seducing an old man on a toilet. Does that make you want to click on over to the actual video, or what?

*Actually, this is one of the very few belly dancing videos I’ve ever seen, and all the others are thanks to Muscato. Or rather, Muscato’s fault. But you know what I mean.

In Which mrpeenee Spills His Guts

Muscato revealed all kinds of dirt over at Café Muscato and then solicited volunteers to likewise spill.  Of course I did, immediately.  

Here’s the rules, below is his probing, insightful, Inquiring-Minds-Want-to-Know interview.  It’s just like being on the cover of Tiger Beat.  

Rules: You have to link back to the original post and also to your Interviewer’s post and include the following:

Want to be part of it? Follow these instructions:
1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me."
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

Muscato asks:
1. Now that you've had a few months to think about it, do you feel that marriage has changed your relationship to the fetching R Man?

I wish I could say it has, since I think positive testimony would help build the case for striking down Prop 8 and allow gay people to marry. You know “R. and P. of San Francisco say their marriage has transformed their previously meaningless existence into a joyous one with a soundtrack by Martha and the Vandellas.” But, in fact, we’d already been together so long, the marriage thing hasn’t really affected us profoundly. I still refer to him as my partner or boyfriend (“husband.” Ick.) I still love him madly, he still puts up with me. Same old, same old.

That said, I think marriage is a right important enough to fight for, one without which we remain second class citizens. I don’t want to be domestically partnered and hope that some obscure law that I had never heard of and which only applies to married people will wind up biting me in the ass.

2. We share a passion for the heavenly Miss Barbara Pym and for the goings-on in those deceptively quiet havens of intrigue, Riseholme and Tilling. Describe a situation in your life that comes closest to approximating a situation in one of the Pym or Lucia novels. Extra credit if you do both!

My job so very frequently consists of attending boring meetings. I use Mildred from Pym’s Excellent Women as my role model, speaking in quiet, terribly well-bred tones and hiding my opinions about the douchebag colleagues I’m being force to deal with. I’m not making this up, I really do think “What Would Mildred Do?” and then use that as my guide, and I do that often.

I’m simply not devious enough to be either Lucia or Mapp. Alas. Although I would kill for Mallards House.

3. I'm extremely lucky, in that the BF, Mr. Muscato, and the BFF, Miss Rheba, adore each other (to the point that I sometimes feel a third wheel). Tell us more about how R Man and Diane von Austinberg get along. What's the dish? Does he have a BFF of his own?

Wait, I thought this was supposed to be about ME. Oh all right, R Man and Diane: I, too, am terribly lucky, they like each other very much, but then everyone likes Diane, it’s so unfair. She’s smart and charming and sweet, a great cook, and she thinks I’m a genius. It’s like she’s cheating. The two of them can hang together quietly, not bothering me, while I’m doing important stuff like, you know, stuff. They would happily hang together even more except I monopolize Diane’s time while she’s visiting us.R Man BFs would be his boss, the terribly stylish Anne, and sweet, sweet Urban Street Pirate. I adore both of them, which is a good thing, cause Urban Street Pirate is going to be a really successful artiste and Anne could beat me up and then I would cry.4. What are your best and worst ever finds while thrifting?

Considering how often I’ve bitterly emphasized that I never have any luck thrifting without Diane’s guiding light, it’s amazing that my greatest success in the world of other people’s crap was a score without her, all on my very own. A pair of fabulous mid-century slipper chairs, very sleek and low with ebony trim and ivory embroidered upholstery, shredded by some previous bad cat. $28 per chair at the Salvation Army. Score!My worst? There are so very many, purchases made in the heat of the junk moment and repented at leisure. Currently, the title is probably held by a brown brocade sport coat with a sun faded stripe down one arm that R Man refuses to allow me to wear in public.

5. You live in a place widely deemed by its denizens the greatest (most beautiful, most cultured, most diverse, etc., etc.) city in the world. What drives you batshit crazy about San Francisco?

Having escaped the swampy, white-trashy hell hole of my youth, I’m constantly thrilled to be here. That said, what is with the Mexican food here? A city originally founded by the Spanish and then owned by Mexico and still inhabited by a huge population of Mexican and Central American emigrants or their descendents and the food is consistently glop. There isn’t a Mexican restaurant in Texas that couldn’t kick all of their butts and then ask if you want extra salsa with that. I’m not bitter. OF COURSE NOT, but I am planning on spending my birthday in Austin with Diane and hitting La Fonda San Miguel where I will eat handmade tortillas and get all teary-eyed.

Mind? What Mind?

Several years ago, I tore my hamstring doing stretches the wrong way. Since then, it's taken almost nothing to re-injure it. I'm just like that, fragile, doncha know. SO of course in doing stretches now, I'm vigilant about keeping the proper form and always paying attention to what I'm doing. Except when I'm not.

Like today.

There I was, lying on my back, pulling my leg into an unnatural position and instead of focusing on that, I was wondering why I had had a sex dream about Wally from Leave it to Beaver last night. I think if I were struggling to find and image that defines sexlessness, it would be Tony Dow. And yet, apparently, the dank recesses of my subconscious has a freak on for the Beav's brother. Hmm. Also, this just in: while looking for an image of Wally, I stumbled upon a whole subculture of my gay brothers who dream of doing the nasty with him. Proving once again, "A pot for every lid."

Then somehow the image of that dream led to my brooding about guys who have a fetish for people with Down Syndrome. I suppose if you feel that people who have Down Syndrome deserve to be treated the same as all the rest of us hapless schmoes (and I do) then you have to assume they have the same right to be sexually objectified as the short guys with round butts I'm so fond of. And yet, it seems sort of creepy.

And then, of course, that brought to mind my previous post about cosmopolitans, which reminded me about one of my favorite episodes of Sex and the City, where Sam is blowing the UPS guy and Carrie walks in on them. The UPS guy was played by Nick Scotti, whose main talent seems to have been an ability to fill out a delivery man uniform and be humpy while doing it.

Which then reminded me that reliable reports about the FedEx guy for our office. who I had considered totally do-able, is no great shakes with his clothes off. How tragically disappointing. And that, naturlement, caused a little day dream about one of my favorite porn stars from back in the day, Jake Taylor, and his magnum opus "In and Out Express."

And then I felt an all-too-familiar twinge in the back of my leg and realized I had screwed up my hamstring again. But in a new spot! Hooray, an exciting new injury!

I have got to start paying attention.

Adieu, Motherfuckers

The trouble with working for a federal agency is the weird relationship we have to have with the political world. The agency I toil at is an important dumping ground for hacks who have done some favor for more important hacks and now need to be rewarded. Have you ever heard of the Plum Book? It’s a listing of all the political appointments available in the federal government, appointments being different from civil service jobs like mine, where you have to compete for the job and then actually perform some function rather than just show up at the office. Currently the Plum Books lists more than 7,000 positions. My agency holds the dubious distinction of having one of the highest number of appointed positions in the government.

Each time the administration changes, all the appointments lapse and a new round of hacks is ushered in. Even as I write this, I’m avoiding an internet presentation of the current Bushy doofuses (or doofai, who knows) bidding all of us a fond farewell and reminding us what a fabulous job they’ve done doing, uhm, you know, whatever it is they do. Ruining the economy? Despoiling the environment? Alienating the entire world?

I can’t watch this. Just go, you fuck ups, just go. Get the hell out. Please, please let the door hit you on the ass on the way out.

Let me be clear, I am not so naïve that I think the new bunch will be bringing in all rainbows and lollipops, but these morons leaving now have been so hostile to what we as an agency are supposed to be doing, to our “mission” that just seeing the backs of them makes me feel cheerier. I’m going to go have a super burrito with extra salsa to celebrate.

Paging Samantha Jones

Mrpeenee is not a drinker. Mrpeenee used to be a fairly serious guzzler. Mrpeenee was, on occasion, a Big Mess. Mrpeenee will now revert to the much more user friendly first person pronoun.

My father is a drunk. Not a mean or abusive one, just a soggy Scotch sponge. One evening 28 years ago, shortly after moving to New Orleans, I was sitting on the curb in a tequila induced haze when I realized I was turning into my father. Since that was not really a goal I wanted to pursue, I stopped drinking. Right there, right then. I didn’t struggle with it, I didn’t have relapses, I just quit. One of the finest services a parent can ever provide is as a role model. Or a warning.

So now, all these decades later, I’ve realized I don’t have to be him. I can actually have a drink without following it up with so many that I turn into a sloppy muddle. Case in point: Tuesday evening, I met up with the Urban Street Pirate and R Man after work for cocktails at Moby Dick’s, an almost stylish bar in the Castro. Don’t judge, it’s next door to where we were headed for dinner.

I boldly ordered a Cosmopolitan. Yes, it’s true. I drink like the girl in your 9th grade class who listened obsessively to the cast recording of Cats, could never get a date, and ordered drinks based on the fact they’re so Sex and the City and they’re pretty.

One drink, after which I insisted we go on to dinner rather than sticking around to get blotto. I have an absolute will of iron. Plus I was already tipsy off one damn Cosmo. Hmm. I started out worried I’d turn into my father the lush and wound up as a girl-drink lightweight. Maybe that’s progress, I’ll take it.

We're Having a Heat Wave

Gosh golly guys, I know it’s inane to discuss the weather, but today is worthy of note. It warmed up over the weekend until now it’s the most spectacularly beautiful day imaginable. It almost makes up for being Monday. The sky is pale and clear, the air is cool and the sun is warm, it’s like the perfect California winter weather. You expect orange trees to sprout from the gutter and the ATMs to emit Beach Boy songs.

I started out this morning wearing a leather coat over a cashmere sweater and each time I’ve left the building I’ve gone down a layer. By the time I went to the gym at lunch, I was in a tee shirt (a nice red tee shirt, for those of you keeping track of these things) and it was ideally comfortable. I expect to soon be wandering down Market Street in nothing but my underwear. I take comfort in the fact that they are my good black 2(x)ist ones. Besides, it's San Francisco, surely I won’t be the only one. I’ll probably be part of parade before I get two blocks.

neely o'hara vs helen lawson

Did I ever tell you about the time I ran into Thombeau in a bar in Boston?

Annals of Modern Houseboy Keeping

Of course, houseboy Telesphorus Benignine is wild for the car he got for Christmas. He is just so cute making all his little vroom, vroom noises. He's called it the Mystery Sausage Wagon. I don't know why.

Therapeutic Kindness

It turns out the yard work won after all. I woke up Monday morning feeling like I had been in a rough fight and had lost. Parts of my body that weren’t even supposed to move were creaking and the parts that should have been moving refused to. You need an imitation of Quasimodo in the old folk’s home? I got it ready for you.

Obviously, the only recourse was a night at the spa. Off to the glorious Kabuki Springs for a round of steam, hot baths and a shiatsu massage. It was truly heaven and I am a better man today for it.

Did I mention the steam room? Did I mention the gentleman therein who so strongly resembled a sleazy Santa Claus (do you know what Santa looks like naked? Do you want to know? No, I didn’t think you did.) and who was touching himself? Fiddling with the string section, so to speak. Maybe he had simply stumbled on a way to insure himself plenty of personal space; if so, it was working. Even in a crowded steam room he pretty much had a bench all to himself. I was reminded of the Hefty Hideaway’s Fatgirl Fashion Tips number one rule: do not draw attention to your flaws.

Much, much more appealing was the lithe beauty doing yoga in the hot tub. I’m a big fan of cute guys and graceful stretchy poses are one of my favorite was to appreciate them. So much better than nasty Saint Nick.

Being all warmed up and relaxed, I turned myself over to Armand, master of the Shiatsu, for a fabulous pummeling. Armand’s a very sweet-faced guy whom you would never suspect of packing Mighty Thumbs O’ Steel, but he does. A fabulous, fabulous massage.

And then, on the way home, I was longing for pizza at Escape From New York, but knew how impossible parking in the heart of the Castro late in the evening would be. And yet, lo, there right in front, a big ass spot calling to me, promising thin crusts and sun dried tomatoes with feta.


What could have been better? Well, as Muscato would point out, a naked John Abraham massaging me in the hot tub as I was eating pizza.


But you can’t have everything.

Gardening as Self Abuse

Gardening has a completely undeserved reputation as a genteel past-time, something frail spinster ladies can potter around in. What a bunch of well rotted steer manure. I've just emerged from an afternoon wrestling a tiny portion of our yard into submission and if I'm frail, it's not because I started that way, but because the yard very nearly triumphed. My back hurts, my knees ache, my hands are a wreck; I look, as Dottie Parker once claimed, like something from the Fall of the House of Usher.I blame the yard, not my own feebleness. Our little patch of heaven is a steep, rocky side of the canyon behind us; most of our neighbors ignore anything beyond the patios, leaving the rest of the outdoor space to the acacias and the coyotes. Oh but not me, nosirree, I’m up there fighting the good fight against invasive blackberries and trying to talk the quince bush into not dying.

Our friend Tim just gave me several gardening books, a genre of writing which has the same relation to my landscaping that pornography does to sex. These books always discuss the importance of establishing a landscape plan, of considering the color values of your plantings, of carefully choosing the correct specimens for your particular environment. Oh, please.My plan consists of poking around with a pick axe until I find a big enough spot between all the rocks to stick in whatever possibly doomed greenery I’ve dragged up there; the colors are whatever I snag in the half-off clearance section of the nursery; and the choice is solely the plant’s: live or die.

Plus this time of the year is a gardener’s least favorite. Everything looks sort of shaggy and uninspiring and all the tasks at hand are just dreary maintenance. It’s the time for long term leaps of faith like putting in tiny seeds hoping that in six months they’ll be lush bunches of sweet peas.

But I have faith. The solstice is behind us and we’re heading into the beauty of early spring when the ceanothus blooms and I can find out if the morning glory seeds I accidentally dropped are going to surprise me and come up. Stranger things have happened, certainly in my garden.

This Concludes the Holiday Portion of Our Program

R Man and I have been wallowing in leisure during the holidays. My office was pretty dead since Christmas week and I was feeling poorly, so I took off for the last week and a half, except for one Monday when I foolishly went in, realized I felt like hell and turned tail to return home. Since then we have encouraged each other to call in and just laze about, slackers in our jammies, looking forward to dealing with nothing more demanding than a decision on where to go to lunch.

But now the party’s over and we’re back to work on Monday. I was looking at the last couple of weeks as practicing for when we can actually retire. I think I can handle it. In the meantime, if you need me, I’ll be trying to figure out how to construct a bunk bed in my cubicle.

New Years Lunch

Lawd, honey, lawd. A great Southern tradition is black eye peas and cabbage for dinner on New Year's Day, so we had a lunch party yesterday featuring those fart inducing classics, plus glazed ham, jalapeno cornbread muffins, sweet potatoes and a carrot cake. I made cole slaw for the cabbage part and our friend Bill showed up with a trifle featuring candied clementines, very fancy, so we didn't eat the carrot cake, which is now calling to me from the refrigerator. It was a menu that both of my grannies would have approved of and as I tucked into it, I gave up silent thanks to the old girls for inculcating a love of po' white delicacies in me.

Mmm. I gotta go, I have a carrot cake with my name on it to deal with.