Get Jiggy Wid It

I've been more distracted than usual lately because I stumbled on a web site that allows you to create and solve your own jigsaw puzzles.  It's caused me to not only dig back through all my masterpieces stored on iPhoto, but to actually scan in older pictures as well.  I've found putting the puzzle together forces me to dwell more thoroughly on the picture than just flipping through a stack of them.  Like Georgia O'Keeffe said "to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.”   I had to Google that quote, I certainly couldn't remember it accurately.  For that matter, spelling her last name threw me.

So anyway, I've been "publishing" these puzzles so I could solve them (I found out later you don't have to make them public.  Like I care) and now other people are working them.  Doesn't that seem odd?  Like volunteering to watch other people's vacation slides?

You know what the most popular one is?

mrpeenee and R Man walking down Dauphine Street in the French Quarter some long gone Southern Decadence.  What?  These guys have never seen a man in lady's underwear?

And while prowling through all these vanished days with R Man is plenty poignant, there's also lots of regret about wardrobes that have evolved into the past tense.  "Man, I loved that tee shirt" comes up frequently.

I take as a given the cause of all their demises were grease drips down the front that no laundering would ever get out.  I'm a slob.  But my jigsaw working is really improving.

This Just In

Yes, I am a cranky old man

And I am not paying $350 for a goddam pair of jeans.

On the other hand, isn't this guy adorable?

Secret Agent Fred and I went out for drinks tonight and I had a "Gaupo" which turns out to be basically a margarita made with grapefruit juice.  Tasty.  I might be a tiny bit loaded.

Gaultier on File

Darlings, being, as I am, of the Glamorous Life I felt I had to go take in the exhibit at the dreadful de Young Museum here titled The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk.  I hoped to be interested, but not much more since the de Young has mounted shows that would have embarrassed the AV club at a small high school.  In fact, it was astonishing and thrilling.  There were several mannequins with their faces projected onto them that were eerily lifelike, including the one who seemed to actually be making eye contact with you.

And the dresses!  Girleene!  What fabulous creations, with astonishing details like lace made from sharkskin and a metal bustiere or a leopard skin created from thousands of tiny, tiny beads.  Gorgeously  beautiful, feminine, gauzy gowns with slyly witty references about fetish wear tucked in.  Mermaid dresses.  Lace bell bottoms for particular men.  A lovely linen man's suit printed on the back with a life size photo of naked male muscles and appliqued with the butt of a pair of cutoff levis and a red hanky in the pocket.  We called it the Mullet Suit, business in the front and party in the back.

My only cavil was that it would have been even more wonderful to actually see some of the more trailing, swishy gowns paraded down the catwalk by a woman with hips narrower than her cheekbones, the way the were meant to be.  You could tell what gorgeous motion they were built to display.

And, of course, Madonna.

I am IM

Those of us of a certain age will remember, probably with a fond snicker, International Male, purveyor of the finest in rentboy sleazewear. IM came to my wandering thoughts tonight thanks to Infomaniac’s horrifying salute to middle age delusions here. Much like normadesmond’s comment, I initially thought MJ was implying the photo was actually of TJB . It seemed unlikely, but I’m easily convinced, so I was willing to go along with it, but I did think to myself, I thought, “Girl needs to ease up on them late night runs to Denny’s.”

Anyway, once my mental train had left the station steaming towards International Male, it was but a short Googe to discover that they have, like so many of us, faded lately. Their sad little web presence shows them to be pedaling the same schmata any other down-market Abercrombie and Fitch clone is. And by the way, when did straight boys start dressing like urban queers? Am I the only one concerned by this?

Poor International Male, to have lost its marketing focus just when everybody, straight, gay, questioning, lost, whatever, started dressing like pole dancers from the wrong side of West Hollywood.

International Male, circa 1984, their glory days:

Oh, wait, no it’s not, it’s Dolce Gabbana. My mistake. See what I mean?

The Mall. Dear God. The Mall.

What do I have in common with my heterosexual brethren? Aside from the fact we all like to stick our wieners in somebody's mouth? We all hate shopping. Hate, hate, hate it. In any form or fashion hate it. Not just Christmas - any time. I have mentioned, have not I, how thrilled I was to discover you can buy clothes at Costco. I would never venture beyond there and Walgreen's if I could help it. But Christmas rears its ugly head and I'm faced by my two problems: I love to give presents and I love to get them. I don't particularly care what's in them, I just thrill to the big, unopened pile of them, the mystery, the possibility of them.

So, that finds me this afternoon in Bloomingdale's, the nadir of a man's shopping experience. All I wanted was some shirts for R Man, but no, that's asking too much. I picked over racks of crappy, really expensive schmata that couldn't have announced more clearly its origin in slave labor sweatshops if it had a logo consisting of shackles and whip. All of it trying so very hard to be so very hip and failing miserably and all of it apparently targeted towards skateboarding suburban boys with mommy's credit card. And why on earth would that market be in Bloomingdale's? Even I, in my failing decripitude, could find a hipper store than that without breaking a sweat. The whole place seems to be shrieking "Weren't the 80s a bitchin' decade?" Well yes, but time to move on, darling, move on. And so I did, fleeing to the mall outside and running straight into a lounge area filled with middle aged guys parked there by their wives. I'm sure their glazed, bitter expressions mirrored my own. For an instant I was sorry not to have been straight, so I could have sent the little Missus off handling the shopping while I sat glumly thinking about porn. But then I remembered, you know, vaginas and all that. I decided it isn't worth it.

So here is the statement that truly reveals the depths of my stodgienss: "Thank god for the Docker's store." Well, it's better than Walgreen's.

Ugly Hats. Loaded Santas. Tis the Season.

Truly, I have no vanity. When one's best feature is in one's pants, being concerned about fashion seems like too much trouble. Even so, when I discovered my new winter hat (in a hardware store, natch) this afternoon, I was a teensy bit disconcerted by its aggressive dorkiness. It looks rather like a cloche which has been left out in the rain more than once; it emphasizes every flaw in my long bony face like a neon arrow; its color is most likely described as Hairball Gray. And yet, I adore it. Mostly because it fits, which is not something I come across frequently in what little hat shopping I indulge in. I have a big head (not in the sense of being stuck up, remember, the only deadly vice I skip is vanity) but in the sense that I have a great big skull; one assumes it must be all the super duper brain matter lodged therein. Knit caps, on the other hand are designed for the daintily empty pinheads of all the geisha boys one sees around here. Plus, this particular one is warm and covers my ears, which are always icy. R Man can pretend not to know me when we'e on the street together, I don't care as long as my ears aren't numb.

And then, right after I snagged my hat and was walking down Castro admiring my startling reflection in every window, we ran into Santarchy, a flipped out parade and party of miscreants tarted up as old Saint Nick. Old Saint Nick on a bender, but still.... About a couple hundred Santies and every one of them tripping like a million screaming monkeys. We passed one small group that was either fighting or trying to wrestle one of their number up off the sidewalk. Hard to tell. A good time was being had by all.

I do love San Francisco.

Present Tense

You know the most insurmountable part about being a slob? It's the fact that I don't care. When I was four years old, my basic costume was a tee-shirt, a pair of jeans and tennis shoes (in the south, they are universally referred to as "tennie shoes.") Fifty years later and my preferred outfit is the same, only the sizes have changed. That's why R Man will buy me presents that try to make me dress myself more like an adult, perhaps an adult who has a responsible job with a federal agency and occasionally has to look like he can actually button a shirt.

For my birthday, he came across with three lovely shirts, two subtle stripes and one very severely plain white linen that would make Lawrence of Arabia swoon, it's so cool. I should mention I do have dress up clothes I wear to work, but I am so deficient at shopping, they comprise a very limited pool. I'm sure my coworkers can tell the day of the week by the shirt I come in wearing. The slate blue with small black checks? Must be Thursday. So three shirts is no small gain.

Also, in birthday news, we have a quince miracle. Quinces are tough ass flowering shrubs with flowers that look like cherry blossoms on steroids. I planted one (called a Texas Scarlet in honor of my heritage) years ago even though I had heard they don't like to bloom where winters are warm. Places like, oh, San Francisco. Never the less, I persevered and was rewarded with a scraggly bunch of twigs with vicious thorns and no blooms. But lo, this, year, ON MY BIRTHDAY, I looked out and there was the most beautiful quince blossom any queen could ask for. What could be sweeter? Short of a Brazilian porn star, I mean.

Sparkle Neely, Sparkle

mrpeenee actually does not come from a family of drag queens, although rhinestones do show up a lot as familial mementoes. Case in point: tonight when we go to dinner, I will be wearing on my cuffs the links that were part of my father's rhinestone stud set from when he was young and, apparently, the terror of South Texas.

The idea that my father, who displays the suave finish of Jed Clampett, even had a stud set is amazing. That they were composed of rhinestones is like stumbling across Sarah Palin's past as a pole dancer.

I've had them for years and never worn them (well, how often has the need for stud set come up in your life? There's no need to struggle for double entendre here, I provide them for you.) I had to scavenge a stone from one of the shirt front studs to replace one in the cufflinks lost in who knows what madcap evening of long ago. I've rinsed them in vinegar to shine them up (come to mrpeenee for household tips for drag queens) and am looking forward to being the hit of our dinner table.

Lambskin

Earlier this year, I was grief struck over the smash-and-grab of my leather coat from the backseat of our car. Bastards. But all that moaning and gnashing is behind me now, I've moved on and to prove it, I bought a new coat today.

Although I wouldn't say I was a better person for my loss, I would say I have a nicer jacket. I still miss how the old one was conformed to my crooked shape, but I'm sure this one will be too, some day.

Ties that Bind

I was reading in the Wall Street Journal yesterday that the trade association that represents manufacturers of men’s ties is closing because so few men are still wearing ties. The story quoted a Gallup poll showing only 6% of men wore ties everyday to work. I myself finally stopped wearing them sometime in the last couple of years, after close to thirty years of knotting my neck every day to go to work, no matter how schmucky the job. Waiter, desk clerk, professional-whatever-it-is-I-am all had one thing in common: ties. And now that I’ve stopped wearing them I don’t want everyone else to run free, too. My Liberty is only precious in direct correlation to how much everyone else has to suffer. Waiter, a round of schadenfreude, please.

Over the years of neck bondage, R Man has loaded me up with a wardrobe of beautiful, beautiful ties. They are, after all the only pretty fabrics a man not of the tranny persuasion gets to wear. Sulfur yellow ties from the early 80’s, cobalt blue to go with black suits, psycho-delic paisley in hot pink and orange, I’m set. I just don’t wear them.

And then this morning on the subway I saw a tiny earnest young man struggling grimly to knot one. It was a monster, wide as something from the Jimmy Carter administration and that stiff ribbed silk that makes a big honkin knot but that’s murder to work with. I watched in condescending sympathy, since I long since mastered both the four-in-hand and the windsor (full and half) knots to the point where I could knock them off in the dark while carrying on a conversation and this guy seemed to really be having a hard time of it. My sympathy turned to amazement when he got up and it turned out to be a wee little lesbian doing boy accountant drag. I don’t know if that counts towards the 6% or not.

Inside mrpeenee's Closet

It unsettles me whenever I realize I retain some vestige of straight boy-ness. I adore decorating, have firm opinions about women's shoes and have no gag reflex whatsoever - gay, gay, gay. And yet, because I sprang from a world of heterosexuals (rather like being raised by wolves) I still have some trace of that culture. Specifically, I maintain a passionate hatred of clothes shopping that would rival that of the most committed breeder boy. The entire process irks me and is why I have a wardrobe that can only be described as skeletal; it looks like an Amish farmer imitating an IRS agent. I have one pair of black leather shoes to wear to work, a pair of Converse tennis shoes for all the rest of the time and a pair of nice leather shoes I wear to funerals, and you had better be a pretty good dead friend for me to break them out. I had one belt I wore every single day until R Man gave me a new one for my birthday and took the old one away. All my shirts and pants come from Costco, I was beyond delighted to find out I could buy khaki pants and a five pound tub of salted cashews in the same place. The fact that they do not allow you to try on the merchandise is fine with me. Dealing with dressing rooms is one of the aspects of clothes shopping I like least; that and dealing with salesmen. I never feel as frumpy as I do when confronted with some clerk who probably makes a great deal less money than me and yet looks like I should be parking his car for him. All this means I have plenty of room in my closet, which is good considering how much room my porn collection takes up.

That's why I'm fascinated with haz-mat bunny suits, those fabulous one piece costumes worn by workers scrubbing down Three Mile Island. I'd love to get away with having one as my daily ensemble. I always like footie jammies and these just take the concept to a higher plane.

Spring's New Look

Going downstairs to stir the beans, I passed a mirror (rarely a good idea) and realized that I was wearing my favorite ratty old flannel jammie pants, which are a homely maroon plaid, and the brown and green striped shirt I wore to work this morning. Fortunately, I did not wear the ratty plaid pants to work, but it was probably a near miss. The ensemble is very striking, but not in a good way. It's not that I have no taste (well, maybe it is) but rather that I just don't care. However, I do know that were the house to catch on fire, I would think long and hard before I would run outside in this costume.

CSI: Parking Garage

We parked in the garage of the new condos next door to R Man's building and returned this evening to find the rear window busted out. Blammo! I have to point out that in all my many years of living in high-crime, big city environs, this is the first time I've been the victim. It was just my turn I guess. So many times my old friends Magda and Cow Queen and I would be walking through the French Quarter and notice the glittering remains of somebody's passenger window. "Look," we would exclaim in our most Susan Hayward-ish voices, "Die-ya-munds in the guttah." Well, I'm not laughing now.

Much worse than the busted out window, which we're going to replace tomorrow, was the theft of my black leather jacket from the back seat. The bastard! The dear, dear Diane von Austinberg spotted that coat for me in a really pokey little junk store, never worn and only $80. I wore it until every crease reflected a matching wrinkle somewhere in my own hide. The bond between a gay boy and his leather coat is not an inconsiderable one and I'm going to miss it. The idea that some cracked out ho is wearing MY COAT down on Sixth Street right now... ooh, it makes me want to spit. Fortunately, I am too much of a lady, but still, first George Bush and then daylight savings time and now this. It's almost too much.

That's Succor, not Sucker

O happy day. The Our Lady of Prompt Succor tee shirt has finally arrived and I'm giddy with clothing delight. Not only is there the smirky low humor aspect of wearing a shirt that proclaims Our Lady of Prompt Succor (so appropriate for me, always a lady whose succor knows no limitations) but also the unexpected bonus of the illustration.

When I ordered the shirt I saw there was some little drawing above the school's name, but I assumed it was some stupid bull dog. Imagine my thrill to discover it is Our Lady her very self, rendered as a flying, scrappy nun. I think of her as Sister Euphemia, the Fightin' Nun Now with Super Powers! Ready to kick the ass of Sectarian Evil Doers and Masturbators! As R Man pointed out, if your school team is called the Succors, you really need a tough mascot and what better than a dykey Mary, Mother o' Jebus? I only wish I had a big enough chest to do justice to the wonder of it all, but you work with what you got.

OLPS

When R Man and I were living la vie homosexual in New Orleans, we did so half a block from the Ursulines convent, an historic structure that included the former chapel of Our Lady of Prompt Succor. Of course, this seemed wholly appropriate to me since I too had been known by similar names. I was never able to snag a t-shirt with that title, but now, I’ve found it here . I’m getting mine in orange, cause it’s sassy.

Wardrobe Malfunction

I am wearing today the outfit I always wear. A t-shirt, jeans with no embarrassingly obvious stains and converse tennis shoes. I realize this is the same fashion choice I have been making pretty much daily since I stopped wearing diapers. (Please, no cracks from the peanut gallery about when that was. You know perfectly well what I mean. Bitches.) I’m just glad I belong to a generation and a city where professional, responsible adults can get away with looking like their job description includes the phrase “Delivers newspapers in timely fashion.” Occasionally, and under duress, I have to dress like a real grownup. A beautiful black DKNY suit, a heavily laundered white shirt, and one of the many dazzling ties R Man buys me each Christmas and I look like a new man. It’s no more authentic than when I did drag for Southern Decadence in New Orleans by slipping into a black lace Merry Widow and t-strap pumps, it just lets me fit in better with the bankers from Wells Fargo. Of course, some of them would be very impressed with a sassy little Merry Widow, and jealous, to boot, but that's another story.

Psychic Boyfriends Network

R Man and I have the luxury of having separate rooms to dress in each morning, which is great, but today it lead to my coming out and discovering that we were both wearing pink, oxford cloth, button down shirts and medium brown khaki pants. I informed him we could not go out of the house looking like we belonged to an odd religious cult that had elevated the Land’s End catalogue to an icon, but he refused to see the logic of my point. He’s like that sometimes. Most times, in fact. I had to go change my shirt.

Things like this just happen a lot when you’ve been together as long as we have. We met 26 years ago in the back room of a really sleazy, but beloved bar in New Orleans and now we finish each other’s sentences. It happens. I adore him, he’s my best friend, but I still think he should change his shirt when I tell him to.

I gotta go