Well, it has been a VERY busy Spring, and now finally, summer! I am sorry I so praised the rain in my last piece to my brethren of the Eastern Seaboard. I had no idea the gods followed my blog!
Anyway, I have been very busy the past few months, that all prevented me from getting a new blog up. I was busy doing a number of Sebastian things, and referring to my title, busy being a "flamer." I was cast in my first play, Terence McNally's "The Ritz." I played a chubby chaser, something I am not. I was in my second play, "The Women," an all-,ale, all-drag staged reading of the play. I played a little girl; something I might be. The former production closed after mismanagement and insanity. That is all I will say in regards to that. While the second one was met with much success...at least among the audience and my ego.
I have also been quite the urban gardener. There are a plethora of tomato plants on the unfinished roof deck, at least 6 containers on the stoop. I even recall France with two types of Lavender (probably Lavande, it's cousin), a dalia, begonias, and a pot with geraniums, trimmed with white Impatience. The trash-picked wall planter I found two years ago now hangs above the address plate outside and window boxes are ready to be installed on the windows. I have an herb garden in the alleyway. Thanks to a friend's mother all of these herbs and tomatoes were given to me because the woman had simply purchased too many!
I also turned 30. I think of this as being a VERY gay activity because 30 to gay men means a great deal! Now we have to try extra hard to get men in their 40s to buy us drinks. So far I have been assertive...very much more than usual! There is actually a picture of me on websites geared towards gay men in their 40s. It reveals unto them I am not 24, and it's Clinique and lots of olive oil that has made my skin so youthful.
This turning 30 also caused me to quit smoking. I am on the patch. It sucks. I still want cigarettes, but far less frequently. Yes, some of you cynics may be shocked I quit (Shiva the Destroyer you know who you are) & pissed at me. They try to tell me as a writer I must smoke in front of my MacBook. But I can't! I hate being dependent on something like that at this age. I have made it 30 years making crazy, sometimes ill-thought, yet almost always rewarding decisions, and smoking cigarettes to me was the worst of these. I really don't like what it does to teeth. I wondered why I would bleach my teeth, or try to, and it would not look any different...the smoking of course! The other reason is that a very witty, very cute, very sexy, very smart guy told me it was gross, and unsexy. I threw the cigarettes in the next trash can on Locust St., & he went and got them laughing. So I started the patch the following Sunday.
Yet, it worked. Never tell me I am not sexy, that implies so much to small, vulnerable Sebby. (Now...if only they made a patch for wine, haha!)
I also broke up with my boyfriend. Now, ye cynics, I know David lives in France. I knew it was long distance. However, it was a relationship. We spoke almost every day via gchat with camera. I broke up with him because well, I don't think he had a concrete concept of what my moving to France would entail.
In terms of gay remedies for sad events...I changed the ticket to one bound for Miami. If there is a place all gays go to when they want nothing but eye candy, mohitos, and lunch on Lincoln Road it is Miami. I normally say NYC...but the Northeastern Seaboard has SOOO betrayed me this year in terms of rain, that I will not honor it by visiting its unnamed capitol for one minute this summer!
Not for all the blonde heiresses on the Eastern Seaboard, thank you very much Uncle Dwight.
What else? Oh...I finally bought curtains for my room, or bought a rod and clips in order to use a piece of fabric I love. This is nice. Both because I can walk around naked and that the neighbors can walk around freely on their deck...clothed, not worrying about me naked. Sex...if it should happen in there is also well-shielded.
Speaking of windows and sex...oh well, never mind.
So, in sum, thus far it has been a TRULY gay-ass summer! It has been GAYER that CHRISTMAS! Then...it happened! I was walking home from Lady Lauren O'Quigley's home; she is not an heiress, just a peer. To supplement her small income from her estate in Bellmar she stars in the ongoing telenovella "Los Amores Perros de Lauren." Well, I was walking home. I was happy that night. I was a little giddy over someone cute, the patch, the pot, the red wine, the gay function of helping Lady Lauren decorate her new abode, thinking about Miami, happy Lady Lauren noticed the gym "is working," going home to my new bedding (thank you Metro Source, I love my new bedding via your pay check), my curtains, my dog, the porn I had added to my favorites on x-tube, how much fun gay pride had been a few days before, and well...just how lovely life is, how wonderful, supportive, my family and friends are to me. How, even though I don't have it all figured out yet I do after a fashion...namely, that I keep going. Despite set backs. Despite the fact half this country - well, hopefully less - doesn't think I should be allowed to get registered at Bed, Bath, & Beyond I will make myself into everything I want to be!
Then...wearing the shirt and shorts I could not wear a few weeks ago I stopped briefly to look at my family-church. It does not count to me, really. I am a happy Atheist-Episcopalian but knowing my ancestor helped build it over 100 yrs ago made me smile. My pause was brief, only a moment. Then as I began to walk again I heard it. I didn't know where it came from. I heard it before I looked west, to my right, to see the white van that it came from.
The guy in the van shouted, "You're a fuckin' flamer you faggot? You know that!" I was shocked. Not how you might think though. My first thought was, "What the fuck is this? 1995? if he had called me a pillow biter, an ass pirate, a disco-dancin-cake-eatin-friend of Dorothy a la Cluelsess & Christian it couldn't have been more fucking vintage. I stood there. The car whizzed by and then I kept walking.
I picked up my pace. I walked home as if I had left Sugar on the front step or the stove or shower on. I was not really afraid they would come back, but it was my mother who called me when Matthew Shepard died...so, yeah, I was a little afraid they might have come back. But I was really just shocked. How could me matter to someone so much? I mean...those of you that know me know I do not lie about my ego. So, yes, I want me to matter to those of you I love, trust, entertain, kiss, write to, understand, but why should I matter to a stranger? Why should the fact I sleep and fall in love exclusively with men bother someone I don't know from Adam?
Granted...I think sex is hysterical. If I am not horny I, generally, when thinking of sex find it funny that I ended up thinking that having sex with men is perfectly normal. It is perfectly ironic, in that of course as the only bastard child of a schizophrenic adopted by his grandparents born deaf in the left ear unable to swim I would end up gay. It is terrific irony...it makes me giggle more than I care to admit! If I would one day wake up ugly (and egoless) I would be no less shocked.
Oddly enough, I do not think the man was calling me a flamer, or a faggot because I am homosexual. I was wearing a long-sleeved tee from the museum, an abstract painting on my chest, a pair of jean shorts, and black, low chucks. My hair is abnormally long and fell across my eye because of the humidity that was about to break into rain and...it did render me quite feminine. But no; he called me a flamer because in his mind that is the lowest form of a male. He doesn't care about the ethical, societal, or even religious ramifications of sex between men. To him that, all of what we find sacred about our intimate lives, our gay identities, means nothing. So, if he believes that is nothing, noting important, and that is what I am built on it does not matter what he or anyone says to me.
Therefore, his calling me what he did does not have any impact on my outlook, or self-image. Instead it makes me realize I must continue to be who I am, act like I wish, befriend whom I befriend, and do so knowing it doesn't matter what anyone calls me. If he doesn't believe in my core, how can he insult me?
Included is a picture of the baby tomatoes currently ripening on the roof. I think next year I am going to build beds on large plastic sheets (to protect the roof) and skip the idea of a deck, just a little sitting area.
Yeah, I'm a flamer. In fact, I am even going to grow pansies.
