In Which We Investigate Boston

 

I went to Boston last week for a short vacation.  I know the last time I left San Francisco I swore I would never leave again, but that was a lie, one I tell every time I venture out of the city limits.  Diane von Austinburg was attending a conference there and I had never been, so I decided to meet up with her and see what the old place had to offer. 

It's pretty.

I had sort of an unexamined bias that had pegged Boston as gray and drab.  Totally untrue and I apologize for my misconception.  It's green and lush and filled with the most charming red brick architecture. Also the food was delicious. 

mrpeenee tucks into some really tasty seafood. 

I stayed at a nice, but snooty hotel, the Fairmont.  It was a great deal more pleased with itself than it actually deserved to be.  In my misguided youth, I worked at a lot of hotels in a variety of roles so I have an insider's idea of how things should work. Considering how much of their marketing bleats about their top-notch service, the Fairmont really could have come across with better. I don't want workers to grovel, but I do expect an expensive and very self-satisfied hotel to have waiters who show up at my table on time and for the hostess not to be wearing scuffies.

The decor leaned heavily towards Edwardian Robber Barons who felt drag queens were just a little too restrained. 

I think the high point was a massage I got because I hadn't been able to sleep and I was physically fried. I tracked down a massage joint not too far from the hotel and a) it was excellent and b) I realized when I rolled up that I had stumbled onto the gay neighborhood.  Apparently I have a homing instinct like a queer pigeon.

Oddly enough, this trip exposed me to an army of well-meaning natives who all referred to San Francisco as either "Frisco" or worse, "San Fran" and California as "Cali". If you are tempted to do either, please do not.  I cannot describe the rage that induces in those of us lucky enough to live here.  Maybe if you feel the urge to blurt out "I love San Fran" just bite down really hard on your tongue lest somebody from Cali does it for you. 

Also I paid extra for access to a lounge at the airport on the way home and it turned out to be very reminiscent of the free breakfasts cheap motels offer.  That is not a good thing. 

You know what is a good thing? Naked guys. 

The meaty charms of Brock Magnus

Also, there were way too many toilets involved, which substituted air dryers for decent paper towels.

My flight on JetBlue had seats which TURNED INTO FLAT BEDS. That is absolutely the only way to travel.  The only thing that could have improved it would've been this boy in the bed with me.

pussylicious

 

The superior buttchops of multi-alias Pavel Novotny, aka Jakub Moltin, Jann, Brad, Jan Dvorak, Max Orloff,  etc., etc.

In Which Our Grade is Retroed

The idiotic superstition that the planet Mercury, being in something called retrograde which results in all kinds of misfortune on earth, is just an optical illusion where it appears to move backwards in the sky. I usually have no patience for bullshit of this particular flavor, but on days like this, I am willing to consider it.  After all, I don't understand how a planet can look like it's running around backwards just because, you know, science any more than I understand how people can actually believe that it makes their life fuck up, so what the hell.

But mrpeenee, what brings the collision of superstition and science up today? Obviously, it's the fact that Mercury is fucking with me. Again.

Things started out apparently calmly enough.  I had errands, an appointment with my new doctor, and I wanted coffee, so I had to leave the apartment. And that's when all hell broke loose.  Isn't it always? My cat Toby insists on bolting out of the door whenever I'm trying to leave. He thinks of it as running away from home, I think of it as him being a dickhead. He trots down the hall and then lays down and demands that I come pick him up and carry him back. It's adorable except it's also annoying as the dickens. I obediently went down and was toting him back when a construction worker exited one of the apartments near me. Toby took the opportunity to FREAK THE FUCK OUT. Obviously it was time to flee for his life and his solution was to dig his claws into my hand as he tried to jump down. I screamed like an enthusiastic little girl and dropped Toby. So I was shrieking and Toby was flailing, and the construction guy was doing both. If I had bled any more, I would have needed a transfusion.

My totally cool Day of the Dead Band-Aid. It makes being wounded almost worth it.

I limped off to get coffee with my bandaged hand as a kind of trophy to how I suffer, silently, like a martyr. Then I had to go get some document scanned to send to my tax guy. UPS has a store down the street from me which offers scanning, easy breezy peazy, right? Except the fat guy in line in front of me could not figure out how to fill in a mailing label and wound up taking so long I had to abandon ship in order to make my doctor appointment on time. When I left, he was complaining about why they used the word "recipient" on the label.

So my new doctor belongs to One Medical, part of Amazon's drive to control every aspect of modern life. I was just there for a check up and to line up a new main provider. Instead, the receptionist claimed they had sent me an email that she was out on medical leave and I would need another doctor. Because I have a new resolution not to flip out unnecessarily, even though that is my one true talent, I did not explain that "I sent you an email" is such a feeble excuse, I refuse to acknowledge it any longer. I have been retired for 15 years and even I stopped using it years before I escaped work. I just made a new appointment for a couple of weeks from now. We'll see how many doctors I go through in that time.

But then Mercury seemed to get his head out of its ass. I went to a different place to scan my documents and the cutest boy in the world, friendly and sweet, helped me. He obviously felt sorry for my feeble old ass and very politely pretended to ignore my lascivious ogling. His hair was like thick silk. I just wanted him to lay his head on my lap and let me pet it for a while. Also, I got an excellent iced mocha across the street from there in a place I have been ignoring for years because they take too long to make coffee. How was I to know it was worth it?

Finally I took a robo taxi, one of San Francisco's driverless cabs, home. Here's a pro tip for when these become common in your future life: because there is no driver, if you're having a bad day and you get in one, you can just scream as much as you like. Take my word for it..

Boys who could make me scream:

Peekaboo.

Runnin' around.

Next to godliness, baby.

Cowboy beef.

My cat Toby is lying next to me with his butt encroaching on the keyboard and his tail flailing at me.

My typing is never great, but Toby is making it even worse than usual.

Toby wins. I'm signing off.

In Which We Are Back Again

Once again, I have successfully escaped from Texas. I suppose it's a good idea both to stay in practice and to remind myself I still can do it. There is so much about the old place that just makes me crazy with irritation but also stirs a reluctant fondness at the same time. I suppose that can be true of every place, I'm just most familiar with the Texas flavor. 

I went to Houston to visit my brother Ed who has been living with Parkinson's disease for several years.  The last few months have been very difficult for him; it's common for Parkinson's sufferers to develop psychosis and Ed had a rough patch of it  This spring he has struggled with hallucinations and memory gaps. It was hard seeing him like this, he would have moments when it would be obvious he would sort of lose traction mentally in the middle of a conversation.  I'm glad I went to see him, I'm just sorry it was such a sad visit.

In related travel news, I had the best guacamole I've ever had while I was hanging out with Diane in Austin. Making it even better was the fact that we got it at a new restaurant called Tzintzantzun.  My hand to god.

One of the many best things about San Francisco is that no matter where you travel, you get to come back here when you return. I like Texas and I love California, the problem is air travel between them.  Yuck.  We sat in a fully loaded plane at the gate for more than an hour waiting for the fog in San Francisco to lift.  It's traditional when that happens to get home and tell your friends about it and they ask "What fog? It's been sunny all day here." Also, United lost my bag, fortunately they found it several hours later and brought it to me.  Thank you United, I would have hated to have lost all those dirty clothes. 

I am never leaving San Francisco again. 

Boys for whom I would leave San Francisco:

Every time I've run across this picture of this boy and his stunning buttcheeks, I'd save it to share with you, naughty pusses.

This young man looked suspiciously familiar, have I featured him in the Nekkid Guys segment recently? Do you care? Also turns out his name is Marcus Bailette, in case you were wondering.

More superior butt shots.

Selfie, daddy edition.

There is a present for you down in the basement.

Love a lout.

In Which We Gel

How do you get gelatin? Originally, it was just the boiled down remains of slaughtering, horns and hooves and fish heads, all the crap nobody wanted to eat.  It was the scrap of scraps.  It rendered out a squishy, fairly clear glop.  Some misguided chef somewhere realized you could suspend more edible bits in it and, voila, in a marketing masterpiece, they called it aspic and somehow it became fancy.  No excessively fancy Victorian or Edwardian dinner was complete without it.  It was not sweet particularly, but was often part of the fish or meat course. Food scientists discovered an easier way to make it, they added sweeteners and fruit flavor and what did they have? They had jello, baby. 

That brings us up to the madness of the post-World War II era.  Homemakers of the time were wild for any product that made the drudgery of domestic life easier.  Canned food, frozen food, and anything labeled "instant" was a big hit.  Jello fit right in plus it had the added panache of aspic's reputation as gourmet grub.  Bridge clubs everywhere were swept up in a frenzy for it.  "The girls" couldn't get enough; a luncheon consisting of coffee, cigarettes, gin, jello, and gossip was guaranteed to get you through another week of your loveless marriage and those fucking kids.  

Hearkening back to its roots as a medium in which you could suspend all manner of random crap, recipes proliferated claiming to be "salads" since that implied health and slenderizing. One of the most popular of those so-called salads was for Ambrosia, which was a mixture of jello, whipped cream, canned fruit cocktail, and the always disgusting dried coconut.  

As a baby gay in the mid-60s, how mrpeenee longed for Ambrosia without coconut.  Dried coconut, in mrpeenee's unshakable opinion, is unfit for human consumption.  I would just as soon chow down on a piece of shag carpeting.  mrpeenee's mother (mapeenee) absolutely refused to consider this very minor modification.  "Coconut is in the recipe," she would state adamantly.  A recipe in her world was something that might as well have been etched in stone.  Looking back I can only sympathize with the poor dear.  She had four kids and a husband whose only contribution to housework was to open yet another bottle of cheap scotch. Her life was not easy breezy.

But that was then, and now it's a new day, a day in which mrpeenee is fully capable of making his own damn jello, anyway that I want to.  The internet was only too happy to provide me with thousands of recipes for ambrosia.  I landed on one called Orange Fluff which expanded its madness to include Cool Whip, miniature marshmallows, and vanilla instant pudding in the mix.  I have now made it twice and it is just as delicious as I dreamed all those many years ago in the suburban swamps which formed me. 

I know this kind of cooking (or "cooking".  The preparation only calls for boiling water and stirring) is often sneered at, but I am here to vouch that it is tasty in the extreme.  It may not be Julia Childs, but neither am I.  What it is is a product of those mid-century women's magazines just as much as I am.  Here's to you ladies. 

Boys for whom I would firm up: 

That's what I need to help me in the kitchen.

Boeuf al a mode

Just a simple boy wondering where the fuck his underwear is.

Wheeee

There are some men for whom clothes are not only overrated, they are almost a crime.

Exhibit A

The strain of trying to think.  Don't bother sweetie, it's not what you were meant for.

In Which We Are Mystified

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In Which We Have a Nice Day

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