if this is you - Sensitive boyfriend

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
-W.B. Yeats
fantastic
shy
eyes
the autobiography of a male model
missed connection
to
the strawberry blonde man
with
fantastic shy eyes
m4m, 27, downtown/van ness/civic center
I got on the same underground train
as you were on
at around 11pm tonight.
You shyly smiled and I smiled back.
You had glasses, a beard,
grey shoes and a coat.
I wasn’t sure if you
and the guy sitting next to you
were together
but I thought I would say hello
nonetheless.
We smiled at each other
when I got off at Civic Center
and I kicked myself
for not going to the next stop.
If this is you
you’ll probably be able
to describe me
as well.
Ciao
-Anonymous, www.sfbay.craigslist.org/mis/, 3rd of March, 2008
shut the fck up you total dreamboat!
To the strawberry blonde man with the fantastic shy eyes? Shut the fck up, you total dreamboat!
Sadly I’m no strawberry blonde, my eyes are more of the piercing blue variety. One thing, though:
as of yesterday I am the proud owner of the most darling grey shoes you’ve never seen.
But enough about me, I have a proposition for you:
I want to write a book about the dreamiest person I found,
one day, cruising the craigslist missed connections.
Today, that is you.
In no particular order these are the reasons I want to write about you, from your posting:
I guess you’re about my age.
You believe in love at first sight, or at least lust.
You like strawberry blondes with fantastic shy eyes.
You kick yourself occasionally, but not too hard I hope.
I don’t really know why, I just do. I just like your style.
So if you have ever wanted a book written about your infinite hotness, this is your chance. If you accept
you won’t really have to do anything, I will be in San Fran come July and would like to know more
about you.
By the way this isn’t some weird scam or anything, just my weird book. So if you didn’t want people
to know there was a book about you, then no one would have to know. If someone was writing a book
about my hotness, I would scream it from the rooftops. But that’s just me..
Ciao yourself!
xMe
his
reply
here:
part one:
strangers on a train
I believe that one can design oneself to be the way one wants other people to see them.
I believe that is dangerous.
-Print magazine manifesto
the same underground train
Of all the underground trains in all the train stations, why did you have to pick this one?
Of all the missed connections in all the world, why did I have to pick your one?
Why not this one?
missed connection
nice
to see you back at the gym,
muscleman
w4m, concord/ pleasant hill/ martinez
You are just too handsome
for words.
I think I have a liking for men
with shaved heads.
I sure hope you do not think I am freak
for going on craigslist
I have never done this before
but I am so nervous
to talk to you.
You look so intense.
I love when you
flick the weight up
with your knees.
how much
can you
flick up
with your knees?
Winky face.
I feel a whirlwind romance
coming on
(it’s 11 o’clock)
11pm, the most romantic time of the day.
This is the last chance for the true love 7am promised, this morning. Before sleaze o’clock, before the
morning light washes the city clean again.
Dusk should really be at 11pm. In some progressive countries it already is. Certain Nordic ones, for
example. There the star strewn sky falls not one second earlier.
On the subway, where no natural light kisses, it is always 11pm. If you say it is. Adjust your watch. Fall
in love as many times as you want, and then fall in love some more. It’s 11pm, that’s what it’s for.
And if your 11pm train didn’t come tonight, perhaps tomorrow.
This love letter to time was finished at exactly 10:02pm.
the next stop
The next stop? Where is this? The place before first base?
a coat
Don’t you just wish he was wearing a cape?
I just love a man in a cape.
27
Internet age
27
Real age
30 something
Cat age
238
ciao
The amazing thing about Ciao is that it means hello and goodbye.*
You can say a reluctant goodbye to people you wish you were saying hello to. Ciao, no period. Just
s p a c e.
Or a reluctant hello to people you wish you were saying goodbye to. Ciao. Period.
We live or die by a dot. Punctuation, thou cruel mistress!
We must reclaim ciao from the pretentious. The English language has asked for this word. And
‘hellbye’ will not do.
I am going to petition for ciao’s inclusion in the English language.
I will write stern letters to both the Oxford English and Merriam-Webster dictionaries.
I will say the c-word more times than I care to mention.
It will be my life work.
And my gravestone will read the words:
“I wish I didn’t have to say goodbye.”
*I also heard that in Italian there was no word for ‘sex’, other than ‘making love.’
What’s Italian for sucker?
Mr. Merriam-Webster,
I was about to write you a very stern letter saying that the word ‘ciao’ must be included in the next
edition of your publication. It’s one of my favourites. Another one I particularly like is poo-poo. In a
sentence:
I poo-poo any Ciao-free dictionary.
But as I was checking which words Ciao would be breaking up, somewhere between ‘chump’ and
‘cinnamon’, two other favourites, there he was already. Those four little letters.
So I am just writing to say: keep up the good work, you modern day Dr. Johnson.
Sincerely,
PS: Would you like complimentary ciao t shirt? There are two to choose from.
superlatives
Dreamiest.
Most dashing.
Darnedest.
You say all the right things. In this case “Hello.”
Model of refinement. Elegance, himself. Don Juan de... Fine Feelings.
You have a weakness for hobo chic: beards, coats etc.
You have a strong sense of colour and form, one-man Beard Appreciation Society.
You’re one to give compliments to strangers. I’m sure you’re no stranger to receiving them, either.
Flash that disarming smile once more. Make time stand still! Plunge the dagger further into my breast!
Do your worst!
I wouldn’t mind giving up my seat on the subway for you. If I got to sit on your lap, as the consolation
prize.
You are unforgettable, or at least indescribable. Shall we say, you distinguish yourself ? Gentleman of
the night, you punctuate the evening with your entrance and exit. My party did not start until you got
here.
Do not kick yourself, glance wantonly at yourself in the subway polished steel.
You know your way around a modifier. Whereas I have run out of superlatives.
excerpt from
best
new
subway non-fiction,
2008
I got on the same underground train as you were on at around 11pm tonight. You shyly smiled and I
smiled back. You had glasses, a beard, grey shoes and a coat. I wasn’t sure if you and the guy sitting next
to you were together but I thought I would say hello nonetheless.
When you don’t say hello back I pretend to sing that Lionel Ritchie song. “Hello… is it me you’re looking
for?”
Suddenly the train stops and the lights flicker, then go out. I would normally wait patiently but I have
recently acquired the power to see other people’s breath. What makes this even more amazing is that I
see it in the dark. In this way I am like a mosquito who can see the carbon dioxide on your breath, but I
assure you this is the only thing I share with the common mosquito. FYI, your breath is bright yellow.
I walk slowly across the train carriage towards the bubblegum bubble of your breath. It pops then I wait
for another one. I count down four slow footsteps. You instinctively stand up on the third and take off
your glasses, your false beard and your coat. But you leave your grey shoes on. Now you know how it
feels to be one of those carelessly naked men in grey shoes that you always see at the corner store. If
you’ve never seen one of them you’re shopping on the wrong corner, my friend.
I almost kiss you. That is to say I purse my lips tight, a millimeter wide, a millimetre away from your
lips. My breath is blue. And afterwards your breath is sea green, then emerald, then yellow again. Every
time I see yellow, I almost kiss you again. I experiment with variations in colours, but you just whisper
me away each time. A cold blue particle of air might stick on your upper lip, but it will flare and fade.
Around this time we are rudely interrupted by a curious onlooker, the intercom and reality, in that order.
Don’t start anything you can’t finish off, as my mother used to say.
Oh, the indecency of it all!
You put your coat back on. I keep your beard to remind us of our time together.
The lights come on I am standing, trying to look casually bored. You know this kind of thing happens to
me all the time.
We smile at each other when I get off at Civic Center. You have a nice smile. I have a beard.
I’m sending you a swift crotch kick, which is my other superpower, for making such a smooth getaway.
Ciao for now.
x
x
x
x
x
love seat
The eternal question: what is the difference between a sofa and a love seat?
Is it a sofa until stuff-that-dreams-are-made-of sits on it, at which point it becomes a love seat?
Or is it a sofa with room for two?
Is not every train seat, therefore, a love seat? Room for two, no way of sitting together without some
form of feather-light contact. You don’t even notice that you brush against the person next to you. A
silent accord between two strangers who will never meet again. Perhaps the most intimate either of
them will be with anyone that day.
When you sit alone on public transport do you occupy the seat next to you, as well? Or is it available?
Does it depend who’s askin’?
describe me as well
You are well.
Those three little words.
Are you going to describe me as well now, too?
soulgasm
I was thinking about how happy you would be to read this. And how happy it would make me to make
you so happy.
And then it just happened, involuntarily. So natural. It felt different, perhaps more like how women
describe it.
MY soul saw its counterpoint in YOUR soul.
And then my soul just came.
shoes of grey
One thing I’d say about grey shoes is that they keep all the promises black shoes make. They go with
everything. Black shoes actually don’t go with anything. Even if you are putting black on black, they’re
always different shades of black.
I haven’t had my grey shoes for a long but as far as I can tell you never need to shine them. Maybe it
starts grey, but dull grey is an acknowledged colour. Dull black is just dull.
My grandfather had grey shoes. Vinyl, with two zipper instead of laces, so wrong they’re wrong again.
My grandfather died from pneumonia contracted in a daring mid-winter escape from the retirement
home. Is it better to burn out or to fade away? Or to attempt a naked escape from the rest home? I’m not
sure if I made up the naked bit, let’s call it semi-naked for propriety. Modeling a pair of slippers made
from carpet off cuts? A pair of cut-offs made from carpet?
Are you allowed to joke about the misfortunes of your own family? Or is that frowned upon, like
WASPS calling each other ‘WASPAH’?
Four of us were standing over my grandfather. My brother pulled out his old fishing hat and tucked it
into the side of the casket. He did it with the words “this is your fishing hat, Pop”, spoken marcato, as if
unsure how to address the dead, addressing him as if he were hard of hearing or foreign. It’s one way of
understanding the dead, way less creepy than “they’re in the other room.”
The fishing hat my grandfather donned before reaching Valhalla was sky blue with a band of
aquamarine.
My grandmother (not my grandfather’s wife) said grey was, yawn, boring. But that was 1991 and
Metamorphic t shirts that changed colour when you touched them were all we could think about.
At the cutting room edge of fashion until her last, of grey shoes, she’d approve.
I kick myself
Self-kicking just says:
you’re not here to kick me first.
*SIGH*
When we’re together you’ll never have to kick yourself again. XX
talking to strangers
In that great grey shoe of London, I crossed the street and walked past two girls.
I was schlepping an overflowing Harrods shopping bag with me, which would have been fine if there
was anything from Harrods in it.
The girl asked: “Have you been shopping at Harrods?”
I either answered “yes”, “no” or nothing. London, so unapproachable, left me speechless whenever
it approached. Isn’t there a rule about speaking to the Queen; one does not even think about initiating
conversation?
I fake fast reactions when my doctor tests them. Two hours later I realized what I meant to say was
either:
“Yes. I went to buy you a present, but why would I buy you but one!?!” <flirt>
or
“No. Have you been on safari?” <flirt> (She was wearing a Leopard skin stole.)
I have been two hours behind this girl ever since. Our time zones will never meet again. Not even
Chairman Mao can join them together, like he did in China once.
shyness
People are always hot for shy people. If the shy person is hot.
Shyness is a giant ear that will listen to everything I say. And not in a grotesque giant-disembodied-ear
way. Think Kate Moss’ giant ear, elegantly set of by an enormous yet tasteful diamond earring.
Just think of all the things that have passed through Kate Moss’ nose, I mean ear.
The Shy are used to listening to themselves talk about themselves to themselves. Listening about
someone else…
Their hopes,
their dreams,
Their pet, their pet’s project,
…is a nice break.
If the Shy could speak they’d say:
Take my giant ear away from all this! Talk to the giant ear, because the mouth ain’t speaking.
My psychologist was working with a patient who could only socialize if he had drunk a bottle of
methylated spirits. Step one of thirteen: drink a more socially acceptable beverage.
missed connection
to
strawberry blonde man through
fantastic
shy
eyes
m4m, 27, downtown/van ness/civic center
I got on the same underground train as you were on at around 11pm tonight.
I sensed you, your confident beauty. Instinctively I lowered my gaze. I know more about floors, footwear
and poor posture than any other man in the Bay area. I see a strange poetry in the shattered pavement,
held together by red/pink chewing gum... until it turns cancer black. Your grey shoes complement both
colours well. An inspired choice.
Maybe you smiled at me. In the hope you did, I smiled back. As I tried to check you out in the reflection
of the glass, you had glasses, a beard and a coat. Or maybe these features were just emphasized by the
reflection. I wasn’t sure if you and the guy sitting next to you were together; I was at pain to check you
out, let alone debate the probability that you complete each other.
I smiled again as I got off at Civic Center. I kicked myself for being such a coward, this Daniel Johnston
melody haunts me still:
True love will find you in the end.
And how can it recognise you,
Unless you step into the light?
If this is you, you won’t even realize it. Ciao.
if this is you
Things more likely than this being you: most things.
As of 2007, the average birth rate for the whole world is 20.3 per year per 1000 total population, which
for a world population of 6.6 billion comes to 134 million babies per year (Wikipedia).
There were 365 days in 2007, 24 hours per day and 60 minutes per hour so 365 x 24 x 60
= 525600 minutes per year.
In 2007 there were 134 000 000 babies born/year divided by 525 600 minutes/year
= 255 babies born/minute
If there are 255 people born every minute, then at that minute nine months previously at least 510 people were
having sex, I mean making love. Hopefully for more than a minute… if 10% of the world’s population is
gay (a guy at a bar) this number increases to 561, an odd number.
Is this because contestant #561 is at that minute performing an erotically charged mating dance?
Plumage provocatively displayed, posterior enlarged, index finger beckoning wantonly, don’t pretend
you aren’t familiar with it. Or maybe #562 is reaching for a post-coital cigarette and #561, still in the
throes of passion. Maybe #561 just hasn’t been untied yet.
Of these 561 love-makers, approximately none of them met by missed connection. Fact.
I’m always happy to be proved wrong
People find their missed connection all the time, like it’s Paris in the spring time.
This guy’s crazy 4 Christina:
missed connection
cutie
at the
girls rock camp movie
after-party on Friday
m4w
You caught me trying to glance
subtly (unsuccessfully, obviously!)
at you and it made my heart beat faster.
When you walked by,
you could probably hear me gulp
with embarrassing boyishness.
You had sexy chin-length,
thick, dark, disheveled hair;
a Girls Rock sweatshirt;
a knee-length, light skirt with a border;
knee-high brown, shit-kicking boots;
and a name tag that said
‘Christine.’
I wonder what you’re like.
what’s Christina like?
Christina’s taken and gay.
Apparently he was taken and gay too
(commonality is the basis of any strong relationship)
but not as taken as he was by Christine.
other people’s mommies
We were on the train and a mother and her daughter boarded the train.
Promptly seats were given up.
The kid was shy of the other people on the train. The kid was that rare breed, the shy American.
Her mother consoled her saying:
“they’re just other people’s mommies and daddies, and brothers and sisters.”
I wish someone had explained that to me that earlier.
It would have saved a lot of confusion.
missed connection
to
the person (?)
with hair & eyes
m4m/w/io, 27, downtown/van ness/civic center
I got on the same underground train as you were on, tonight.
You shyly smiled at me, I smiled back. You had shoes, or was that one of the other guys today?
I wasn’t sure if you and the guy sitting next to you were together. To be honest he looked familiar.
Maybe it was him and I who were together?
I smiled again as I got off at Civic Center. The guy didn’t come with me. These things happen.
But I kicked myself for not going to the next stop, when a really hot guy flashed past in a car two behind
us.
If this is any of the 150+ guys today, you probably can’t remember every single thing about every single
guy you’ve ever liked either.
Ciao.
PS: Typing is a real turn on for me.
Mr. July
New York City has a competition every year to crown Ms. Subway.
San Francisco had an impromptu Mr. Subway beauty pageant in late June, 2008 at Civic Center station.
There weren’t many people around. It was a very exclusive affair.
Quite unexpectedly, I won the title of Mr. Subway, July 2008. Congratulations me. It could have been
you, if you’d bothered to turn up.
STAND ME, MR. JULY, UP? Who do you think you are?
If my tone is not in keeping with what is expected of a Mr. Subway role model and ambassador, I
apologize. But I am what I am, the frustrated king of this subterrine.
On a lighter note, as Mr. Subway I hope to promote the colour yellow as next season’s hot colour.
Mr. Subway judges’ decision is final.
kiss me, I’m bearded
Do not be shocked dear reader to know I am no sexual innocent. Be not fooled by my modest, floor
length skirts. Nor that I do not dare meet your gaze.
I’ve tied so many cherry stems with my tongue I’ve lost count.
I haven’t made love in a tent, while it was still at the tent shop. (I left that for my brother.)
But I’ve kissed on a beard, if that’s what the occasion called for.
No, it wasn’t my scout master, it was a guy from New York City who was studying the classics at the
University of Cambridge. He had a gay Classical scholar nemesis who had followed him to Cambridge,
a clean cut, Southern gentleman. Meanwhile Alex was a man of the beard. It didn’t quite reach down
to his plaid shirt, of which the sleeves were far too short but the rest of it seemed to fit okay. The shirt
was his sister’s, he said he fit it because she used to be really fat. Fat with short arms. Soon thereafter I
started wearing my sister’s shirt in homage, and it took over a year to realize how ridiculous it looked.
Although my sister did have a fat stage, I don’t think this shirt was from it.
There’s an amusing story in which we accidentally order the biggest jug of margaritas in the world, climaxing with me kissing on his beard, and a less amusing one involving him throwing up in a strangers
bathroom and stealing away in the morning, but who cares.
This is what it felt like. It was like being brushed with a… brush. I always forget to brush my top lip,
so it was great to have someone to brush it for me that night. Alex brushed like a typewriter, brushing
to the end of a line and then swishing back again. Or maybe it was more like when a trained pianist
runs their fingers along the keyboard, someone who knew what they were doing. No. It was more like
a typewriter, slow then brisk.
I was thinking about how it felt, more than anything else.
I’ve also kissed a girl with a very slight, very feminine moustache. She was a hair model. She used to
have it dyed blonde every month. If you wax it, it comes back thicker.
Men and women, we’re not so different.
I don’t know if there’s a term for men who like men with beards. There’s probably no term for men who
like strawberry blonde beards, swish-swishing below fantastic shy eyes.
What a great American Indian name that would be.
Hi. My name is
Man who likes strawberry blonde beards, swish-swishing below fantastic shy eyes.
I have asked around and it is 80% likely that if a man likes a hirsute man, he too will have a beard. My
thinking was that a beard would complement no beard, just because I thought there would be too much
hair. Opposites don’t attract round here.
Gay Pride ‘08
These are gay pride balloons. I saw them on the way to the parade.
The parade itself was officially the worst parade I’ve ever been to. There were like three other people
there, and Cyndi Lauper (as promised) wasn’t one of them.
It was only later that I found out the parade itself was on Sunday, not Saturday.
I was still so angry about Saturday’s anticlimax, that I didn’t drag myself back into town.
Maybe you can’t even drive straight, but I can’t even get the day right for Pride.
subway loveline
Should you ever need to discuss affairs of the heart on the subway, just pick up the phone.
“Ain’t nothing I haven’t heard before, baby.”
fauxmosexuel, c’est moi
I was of a certain age. I was reading a nudie magazine. For the articles. My mother, not known for
knocking, walked in. She demanded to see the cover of the magazine. I think she let me keep it because
there was a girl on it.
I think I can trace my fauxmosexuality to the year 2000. I liked a girl and she liked me, but for one
reason or another (me) it wasn’t going to work out. It was a slow motion train wreck. You could see the
end a long time coming.
There was so much time to contemplate the end that I devised a daring escape plan: I could not be hurt
if she thought I was gay. I declared my new found fauxmosexuality by putting a fifties beefcake on my
bedroom door.
I will be the first one to admit I let my fauxmosexuality get out of control. I dated a girl who was
notorious for only going for gays. She claimed she was a gay man stuck in woman’s body. And what a
body!
My dad dropped into conversation that he would love me *even* if I was gay. This was quite the 180 on
his previous position.
Around this time he alluded to how rugby league players could be tough AND gay. I worked briefly at
a gay art/porn magazine, I fopped off questions around my sexuality with:
Sexual omnivore: I take my pleasures where I can.
And I’m open to the romantic possibilities of man love. But he would have to be something else. A real
heartbreaker.
Swedish massage, for your tongue
I think I went faux because gay seemed like a fun club you get to belong to. That’s why I accepted my
ex-half-wife’s proposition to form that exclusive club.
The only phrases I remember from the Swedish phrase book she gave me are:
Ja har inter heft mens pa… manawder. I haven’t had my period for… sometime.
Modern Dance... it’s the same in any language.
Gay Kloob. Gay Club.
And when you don’t really belong to Club Homosocial, Club Gay sounds fun. The drinks are cheap, the
conversation energetic and the views spectacular.
Another good Swedish turn of phrase is the sleeping fox. It’s when you pretend to be asleep so you don’t
have to talk to your one night stand.
scream it from the cliff tops
My mother lives atop a cliff. The waves at the bottom lap on the friendly neighbourhood nudist beach,
Ladies Bay. She is a one woman action group called Mother Against Nudies. MAN for short. I intercepted
this communiqué from the MAN thought centre:
Dear Mr. Mayor,
I do hope that you personally read it as it is concerning of a previous discussion with you.
Antisocial behaviour continues to be a problem... the Ladies Bay area has recently been
overtaken by nudist men who indulge in inappropriate behaviour. In the past 15 years they
have gradually commandeered the beach. I believe Ladies Bay and adjoining Gentleman’s Bay
feature on gay websites…
One day at a time the waves erode the cliff. The waves want to bring my mother together with the
nudists. When this happens she will be ready. People do change, it may take several thousand millennia
but it does happen.
She refused to go on 60 Minutes to discuss her views. She won’t let me either, because I am pro-nudism,
although not a practising nudist myself. I would just say something like:
“I celebrate natural beauty in all its incarnations!”
where am I, again?
WHY?
missed connection
to
p4m, 27, downtown/van ness/civic center
ol’
fuckin’
terrified eyes
I got on the same underground train as you were on at around 11pm tonight.
You had glasses, a beard, grey shoes and a bullet-proof vest under your coat, which was difficult to
remove as I mentally undressed you.
I wasn’t sure if you and the guy sitting next to you were together or if he was just your personal
bodyguard. Is he the Kevin Costner to your Whitney Houston?
I smiled at you I got off at Civic Center. You gritted your teeth. You sped into the night, I was assaulted.
By myself. It hurt less than your assault on my heart.
If this is you you’ll probably be able to describe me as well. In a police report.
Ciao.
I grew a beard for you!
I became a social pariah for you! Dirty looks at my dirty face, for shame!
You’ve changed. You’re just a different person to the one that I pretended wrote me this very sweet and
touching missive.
Hello you.
What an interesting name you have. Is it French? It’s ‘chaud’ wherever it’s from.
Well, what a nice surprise is was to get your email this morning.
I had fallen into a restless sleep, of strawberry blonde dreams and fantastic shy visions. I wake
up, my fingers still X’d and turn on the computer. And there you are. My grey-shod, smoothtalking friend.
Well I guess it’s not every day that someone wants to write about on your ‘infinite hotness.’ And
who am I to stand in the way of art?
When you come to me I will be waiting for you.
Don’t make me wait forever.
X
It’s not that I won’t be supportive of a partner who needs
some extra attention now and then, it’s just that it must
be a two-way street. One person cannot do all the heavy
lifting in a relationship, no matter how strong. It’s not a
question of putting a limit on how much I am willing to
give. It’s a matter of being with someone who won’t take
advantage of my generosity and who will be generous
in return. Not long ago I had the epiphany that being in
a relationship is not about two people giving 50-50. It’s
about each person giving 100.
-Daniel Nevers, heygayeric.com
things
I won’t be doing,
no more
I was going to walk your name out on the streets of San Francisco. But I didn’t bring any sensible
walking shoes so I would have just looked at you through piss-tinted glasses at the end.
I won’t be tracking you with the cutest bloodhound IN THE WORLD.
And I definitely won’t be dressing up as a Joan Jett mime to mime I hate myself for loving you in the
subway. Because, although my self-loathing is complete, I would have to love you first before that even
made any sense.
bring me the heart of the man
who broke up
with my mother
in the evening
My mother forbids us to break up at night. Lest our former lovers not be able to sleep.
I’m not sure what her position is on ending imaginary relationships during Pride.
a bitter-sweet love-story
About five years ago I picked up the phone at my parents’ house.
A woman with an American accent introduced herself as Pat and asked if my father was Alistair?
Indeed he was but he wasn’t in. Would Pat care to leave a message?
The story goes something like this:
Pat met my father one hot summer night in 1967, in one of the Washingtons.
He then sent her a letter from California. His letter was written with such feverish passion that Pat could
not read the return address. And lucky for me it was so.
Many moons later she found herself in Auckland, New Zealand. And what the hell, she looked him up.
Incidentally she’s happily married now. I’d be happy if my surname wasn’t ‘Bonk’ anymore, too.
She called back later and read the letter back to him. As my mother listened in on the other line. If anyone was breathing heavily, it was probably her.
She flew out at 5 o’clock the next morning, so they never met again.
I almost think it’s better that way, it leaves a little more to the imagination. All they can do is wonder.
you
don’t make me
anymore
feel special,
Dear John,
Maybe you have been feeling a little under-whelmed lately, for no real reason.
I was feeling that way myself, so perhaps now you’ll understand. I guess you’re not the person I thought
you were, that doesn’t mean you’re not a good person, just not a good person for me. Waiting for you
at Civic Center, cold, being asked for a dollar, then a quarter, then a nickel… I just felt… less than
whelmed.
I blame myself. I knew this would be impossible, impractical, inconvenient love, but don’t let it be
under-whelming. Is that all life is finally?
I don’t feel under the whelming anymore because, I’ve met someone else.
Well, to say that I’ve met someone else is misleading. I’ve almost met a girl called Mali. As far as I can
tell she’s perfect, in the way that only the unmet can be. She’s so perfect that her cute-tip for guys is “not
having to be perfect.” Dreamy.
I’m sorry if you don’t want to know how happy I am, but it just beams out of me like I’m the sun. And
she, my Venus, in our celestial dance.
Best,
Me
XO
I take off my t shirt
The train doors shut and I wondered if you aren’t ready to let me go.
This was before the cleaner came and put it in her rubbish sack.
part two:
The autobiography of Malinda. H. Hinesley
(H. is for ‘Hunter.’)
(She should change it to ‘Huntress.’)
(If you ask me.)
Ain’t no party like a buck naked party.
Ain’t no party like a buck naked party.
Ain’t no party like a buck naked party.
Ain’t no party like a buck naked party.
Ain’t no party like a buck naked party.
Ain’t no party like a buck naked party.
Ain’t no party like a buck naked party.
Ain’t no party like a buck naked party.
Ain’t no party like a buck naked party.
Ain’t no party like a buck naked party.
Ain’t no party like a buck naked party.
-a busker in Berkeley
(Lol. This has no real relevance,
it just wouldn’t fit anywhere else.)
American Apparel relationship options
boy + girl
boy + boy + boy / girl + girl + girl
Independent woman.
A triple amputee,
unsure of whether to give the crotch or not,
but not having a whole lot of other options.
girlfriend
wanted
I will pay you $2 a day to go out with me.
But you have to buy your own drinks.
And you have to buy me drinks too.
‘percolate’...
…is one of Mali Hinesley’s favourite words.
‘Mali’ and ‘Hinesley’ are two of my favourite words, and have been percolating around me for a while
now.
I’m going to make cup of Mali Hinesley. Would you like one too?
How many sugars do you take?
Do you want any Mali Hinesley with your sugar?!?!
how not to meet Mali Hinesley
Mali replied to the same craigslist posting that Patrick Pornographer did. So did a woman who wanted
to go ice-skating.
The posting said something like:
Tour Guide Needed
For needy guy from New Zealand.
Extra points if you have a tour bus.
When Patrick Pornographer emailed he said that he almost never cruised for glamour models in the
personal column. How un-Jeffrey-Dahmer-esque.
When Mali replied she said she never did this either. Frequent the personal column that is. She cruises
for glamour models all the time, bow-chik-a-wow-wow.
I believe the Internet is kismet’s favourite medium.
I believe Patrick is my least favourite pornographer.
pornography ruined my life
I decided it would be hilarious to do a glamour shoot. “All good material for the memoir”, I told Patrick
Pornographer, as we walked the stairs to his apartment. And a hundred bucks is still a hundred bucks.
I limbered up before the audition with a few beers. It occurred to me around the second beer that if
Patrick was so inclined, he could easily slip something into my drink. So every time he went to the icebox, I would follow him, naked as a jaybird.
It wasn’t funny. Male sexuality, so very unfunny. Lose your inhibitions, sure, just don’t lose sight of how
ridiculous it all is. The first casualty of (bad) sex is levity. All that thrusting and panting... it’s not like
the future of mankind depends on it.
Some relationship advice: always make your lover laugh in the morning.
I was sitting naked on Patrick Pornographers’s couch, which can’t be hygienic, not laughing. There was
a lull in conversation. My gaze strayed to the TV, which was playing the War in Iraq show. (His gaze
wasn’t going anywhere.)
“Sooo. What do you think of the war in Iraq?”
I think I’m naked and drunk in some pornographer’s house and I need to go home.
I felt objectified. I understood how girls must feel, like, all the time. What else did I think was going to
happen? Was I going to feel glamorous? Would my self-image rise like Lazarus from the dead?
The next day I booked my flight home for the day after that. Which was the day before I was to meet
Mali. I wasn’t sitting next to anyone exciting on the plane home. Not that I remember, anyway.
These aren’t my proud buttocks.
Nor my citrus fruit.
I sometimes wish I’d done the shoot, maybe I could have defined a new genre: anxiety porn. It seems
I’m too late for fruit-bowl porn.
as the poet said...
...of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are ‘it might have been.’
-John Steinbeck
I always thought San Francisco was just a half way point. Half way between where I was running from
and the other place I was running from.
I was always preoccupied in San Francisco with the bad thing that had happened or was about to.
It never really occurred to me that something might be happening in San Francisco. Probably because
nothing did.
One thousand,
maybe less,
little reasons
why Mali
is
a total babe.
In no particular order.
She wore purple jeans, circa 2006, (1) which probably still haven’t made it mainstream. I have thought
about purple jeans a couple of times, but I remember the high school dance when a girl was ostracized
for wearing the same outfit as a cooler girl. No one wears p.j’s like Mali. If you’re interested I will be
discussing my Theory of Assimilation but not Imitation TM in greater detail on page 147.
Her favourite colour is rainbow sparkle fairy princess. (8)
She says she’s almost always happy. (9)
She has a mysterious gap in her life when she was probably “soul-searching.” (11) Around this same
time, 1999-2003, I was “finding myself.” Now I’m losing myself, again. In the words of Clint Eastwood:
“Sometimes you have to lose yourself before you can find anything.”
She is weightless (6), in the way that only West coast Americans can be.
Not only that, she is Very Berkeley. (7)
She’s hilarious. (401)
She works a bookbag over a handbag. (44)
She is unattainable. (Joke. I don’t really go in for the whole I want what I can’t have thing. Normally
when it’s not going to work out I forget them entirely.)
She makes me feel like a natural man. (10)
She studied English and Women’s Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, go Bears. And
English people and Women. (2) (I’ve been studying women all my life. I also did American Studies for
a semester.)
An American ex-girlfriend said that I idealized women, because I told her I generally expected women
to be nicer than men. According to her this made me a misogynist.
I asked a mutual friend a if she thought I was a misogynist. She said no, until I told her that apparently
I idealize women.
It later transpired that my ex-girlfriend’s main reason for calling me a misogynist was that I was a lousy
lay, once. (-1 for me.) In my defence I don’t make love well next to paper thin walls, I’m no exhibitionist.
Maybe I am bad in bed. Until I’ve slept with another man how am I to know?
Habla Espanol. (3)
To break the idealization you just to have to find out something human about someone. But what, then,
if you love someone for their faults?
Apparently the thing Mali “likes least about herself ” is that she can’t speak Spanish as well as she might
like. It’s a pretty minor fault, but then if it’s Mali’s, of course it’s going to be pretty.
I think she is an English teacher in Mexico? The less Spanish she speaks as an English teacher, the more
English her students will learn. (4)
Mali once organized a bra burning. (19) These are my briefs before they were engulfed in flames on the
steps of the Doe Library, at UCB. Fortunately I have another pair, I do not write this sans culotte.
Apparently the original bra burning, at the 1968 Miss World pageant, never happened because the organizers could not get a permit to start a fire in public. Instead bras were just collected to be burned later.
I can’t see a bylaw troubling Mali. (20)
Isn’t it ironic:
Mali doesn’t wear a bra anyway, probably because she keeps burning them. (19) I know this because she
told me that she doesn’t have breasts, just power nipples.
She’s the most beautiful girl I’ve never met. (21) If we’d all look like her, if we rejected beauty myths,
then indeed, down with beauty!
If she was Indian she would be a gardener. (22)
Her credo: Be the change you wish to see in the world. (23)
Mine: Be the change that you wish to see in the world espadrilles.
This summary of a person from random facts about them could be seen as superficial. I don’t believe
you need to plunge the depths, necessarily. I say you should be able to see the deep in the everyday.
When you break up with a someone isn’t it the little things that remind you of them? Like the beer
they used to drink. Not that I remember a specific beer that a girlfriend used to drink, I do remember a
girlfriend who would drink all the beer. But I guess beer generally is too generic to remind me of her.
She has classic Californian style, but she has made it her own. She is Malifornian. (25) I wish they all
could be Malifornia girls. For example, Mali wears jandals all year round. (27) When other people do
that they just look under-dressed.
Mali used to sign her emails off with a “muah!” I never know when to cheek kiss (how un-European) in
real life and I misread this too. I thought it was her diabolical “mu-HA-HA” laugh. (28)
She prefers kisses to hugs. (29)
When she writes, her words are perfectly set apart, each one was like a kiss blown into the air. (46)
She was born in Hawaii. (12)
My affectionate nickname for Mali is The Berkeley Bowl, the name of the local supermarket. A good
nickname can be hot. (33)
She helped make the movie Titanic. (18)
Her eyes can smile. (45)
She appreciates architecture, she’s sensitive to her environment. Which probably means she’s sensitive
generally. (14) I used to say Hell wouldn’t be so bad if you were there with the right people. People
maketh the place. This is an experiment to see if you can go to Heaven (Berkeley, Malifornia), and if it
is still heavenly if the person you wanted to show you around is, alas, somewhere else.
She is the author of the poem Flour Ride-25 and a book about a friendship born in a tree. (972)
She makes me want to be a better person. (45)
She has mystique, je ne sais quoi. (1)
She is part French, the snobby part. (37)
She’s a wino:
Red wine for sleeping
White wine for refreshment
Champagne for everything else, including highfalutin’ (38)
She was off to lunch/ cocktail hour on the beach, last time I heard. (41)
She can tie cherry stems with her mind. (1000)
You will agree in the face of this overwhelming evidence that Mali is a total babe.
If not, if you hadn’t met her as well, you’d understand.
it’s not stalking if the other person likes it
Case in point, the blonde from ABBA married her stalker. I hope, that Mali doesn’t mind.
Disclaimers:
i) I’m not writing about Mali, per se, as an idea of Mali. A Mali of the mind.
I am ghost-writing... about a foxy ghost.
Philosophical question: can you make out with a ghost?
Because apparently ghosts can make out with you.
I had a girlfriend who lived in a haunted house. There were all sorts of strange comings and goings,
flickering lights, stuff like that. The strangest was when her mother was lying in bed and she felt someone lying on top of her. Whoever the ghost was didn’t want to make out with me, when I stayed over. It
just woke me from a siesta once, tapping me urgently on the leg three times. In fairness my girlfriend’s
mother was a known beauty, I could never compete.
ii) I was stalking the fantastic shy eyes guy fair and square but it just didn’t work out. His star
just didn’t shine nearly as brightly as Mali’s. If you’re looking for someone to blame, blame
Mali’s star.
iii) Stalker chic? Not my aesthetic...
ice-picks & I
I spent three weeks in the year 2000 on the side of a mountain in Chile.
If I never see another ice-pick, I’ll die happy. Or if I see an ice-pick in Sharon Stone’s hand just before
I die, ditto.
There is a very romantic story from around this time.
On the descent two members of our party got lost. They had to spend the night on the mountain. This
meant that my tent (who had lost a boy) joined a girl’s tent (who had lost a girl.)
There was a strange electricity about the camp that night. As we drifted off to sleep I murmured that this
charged atmosphere could make men most amorous. I was referring to the couple on the mountain, but
a boy and a girl in our tent that night were married on the 30th August, 2008.
I am writing a book...
...it is about beautiful woman, and I was wondering if I could interview you for it?
(This is the pick-up line of choice of L’École de Séduction, Paris. It demonstrates not only an appreciation
of beauty, but that you’re one of those smouldering literary types.
The other French line:
moi:
moi:
What time is it?
toi:
It’s...
...time for a coffee with me.
shall I compare thee to...
...a lingering perfume?
Laughter floating across the breeze?
A VW Beetle parked on the side of a road?
Every time I saw one I thought of Mali and took a photo. So I’m a car stalker, now? There are about fifty
photos of Beetles. Perhaps I’ll put them all up on my creepy stalker wall, in my creepy stalker garage?
I know Mali used to drive a Beetle because I once offered to relocate it for her. Even though I can’t drive
stick, even though I can’t drive on the right hand side, even though I shouldn’t really be allowed to drive
at all, even though I was only going to be in California for one day around the time she needed her car
relocated.
I’d do anything for love, but I didn’t end up doing that.
things I have made up
Who could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously?
-Hitler
In reality, if some lovesick guy climbs a hooker’s fire escape, they don’t call it Pretty Woman, they call it
3-to-5 for breaking and entering.
-Advicegoddess.com
The more perceptive of you may have realized that I have something of a crush on Mali. But for all I
know she’s some 50 year-old dude, who wants to go ice-skating... naked. I’m aware that my brain has a
habit of making things up. Like one or two other infatuations.
In my thin period, I decided that you can walk into a supermarket and eat anything and no one will stop
you. I usually only ate broken chocolate chip biscuits, figuring that no one would buy them anyway.
That girls that really like music and animals should not be dated. One or the other is fine, but the
combination is explosive. I really like music and animals too. But then I’m probably too emo as well.
That if you give your passport to a French train conductor they won’t make you pay your fare. It was
just slightly weird and would just disrupt the conductor-passenger roleplay. Sometimes it worked. It
depended a lot on if the conductor had a beard or not. Beard = pay. I’m sure passages through the
French countryside would have been much more tranquil if I’d just paid the $3.
That wearing my brother’s boxer shorts brought bad luck. As if running out of clean laundry wasn’t
bad enough.
That glamour modeling would be hilarious. Maybe I’m being too hard on it. I just read over that last
sentence and threw up in my mouth.
That people can be changed easily.
That chemicals were not a little bit bad, or quite bad, but really, really bad. My mother raised us that
way, to be afraid of EVERYTHING. I overheard her warning her grandchildren about the dangers of
pears, last week.
This wasn’t my finest hour. I tried to console a grieving friend with: if one of your parent dies, you
shouldn’t miss them, because they are you. Through the magic of genetics they are inside you. So if you
miss them you should just look inside.
That when you’re dating someone, you’re also dating everyone they’ve ever dated. You’re dating their
expectation of a relationship, with another human.
That cheese cures hangovers. Actually, this was all just an affectation, but I still ate a lot of Camembert
because of it. I heard about a guy on a British submarine who claimed to be part French. He started
wearing Marin shirts, picked up an accent and stopped showering,
That tomatoes cured hangovers. Or that believing they do does. I stand by this one. Kronenborg
definitely causes hangovers.
I was thinking about why I make stuff up. Whenever someone does something totally irrational, I
think it has something to do with comforting yourself. Sweet lil’ lies. I’m going to Wikiatrist emotional
compensation immediately.
It said idealization is an “immature coping mechanism.” It’s better than being delusional but not as
good as being repressed.
Anyway, if you can’t trust yourself and you can’t trust anyone else, who can you trust? Maybe Juria?
reference for Drus Dryden
I have known Drus for eight or nine or ten years. We met at University. I was studying painting and he
was an English major. He was tall, lanky and interesting and he caught my eye. He was wearing a bear
suit when we first hooked up. The next morning he had to borrow some of my clothes. We were a couple
for about ten months and we have been friends for over eight years.
Drus is a very nice person. He is very interested in other people and always has time to talk, email
and engage with his friends. Drus is someone you can call at any time of the day or night to ask or say
anything. He is laid back and is rarely floored (much better than being really flawed -me) or surprised by
anything. All my friends are very fond of Drus. He is very generous. He once bought my friend Libby
a pair of shoes she had casually said she liked when they were out shopping. He bought them for her
the next day.
Sometimes his unpredictable behaviour can be frustrating, but mostly it is entertaining and delightful.
Drus can be a little shy. People admire him for his quirkiness and humour.
Drus is intelligent, funny and good company. He is interested in lots of things. His talents are writing
and thinking up original and creative ideas. He is not so good at turning up on time, being assertive or
dealing with people he doesn’t like. Drus can be impressionable at times.
Drus is romantic and thoughtful. He is extremely loyal, if not always reliable. If he’s not on time, not
doing what you had previously arranged or if you can’t seem to find him, it just means he is caught
up somewhere using that brain of his. He has probably forgotten the material world and is writing or
thinking. Of the material world, Drus enjoys petting dogs, healthy food, good design and good clothes.
He likes attractive women and music.
Julia Holderness
Juria
Juria once laughed so hard that she peed herself.
She was sitting on steps at the time.
if Mali was a car...
(but not a Beetle, because of its stalker associations)
...which car would she be?
trick question
There is a postcard at Bound Together, the Anarchist’s Bookshop in Haigh-Ashbury.
It is of a Fiat billboard from the 80’s. The headline reads:
“If this car was a woman you’d pinch her bottom.”
Spray painted over that:
“If this woman was a car, she’d run you over.”
thank you
For reading this far.
Hello,
I won’t be able to do any of this.
Mon, May 26, 2008 at 4:43 PM
[email protected]
to me
Drus, good to hear from you. I hope to get to see you when you are here. You are always welcome to
come over for some drinks and that photo shoot we never did. Patrick
I broke my leg.
Fri, Jun 6, 2008 at 5:20 PM
[email protected]
to me
Drus, sorry you have lost your bravado for nude modeling. I wish I had had the courage to do a nude
photo shoot when I was your age. If no shoot, maybe you will be inspired to take your clothes off while
having some drinks like our last meeting which was very exciting. Or do a private shoot?
As for your book, I would be honored to have my photo grace the cover. I have thousands of photos of
hundreds of men and you are welcome to any of them where I have a model release. Give me a call
when you get into town. Pat 415-PAT-PORN
It makes me mad because
I really wanted to make it all happen.
Wed, Jun 10, 2008 at 11:39 AM
[email protected]
to me
Drus, I’m sure there are many girls who would do anything you want. None of them would be as
enthusiastic or all inclusive as me. As for photos, I didn’t understand that you are to be in the photo.
That can be done. I suspect I can get a rooftop location somewhere. A rooftop would be a “gorilla shoot”
where we move quickly and get the shoot in before anyone gets upset. I am pleased to say that in San
Francisco it is not illegal to be nude in public. (If there is even a hint of eroticism it can become illegal.)
Let me know when you are in town. Pat
Damnit!,
Sincerely,
I would like to yake this opportunity to say:
Patrick is not a bad person. Just an unprofessional pornographer.
I am talking to myself again
The make-up line
Girls, singular, have got off on asking me if they could apply make up to me. After much peacock protest
I probably let them. It was in this way that I came to have one magenta toe-nail. I used to think of it as
a body clock, it counted down about two or three months.
Anyway it’s the 21st century and I would offer to do Mali’s make up.* I would contemplate her fine
bone structure, flutter my long eyelashes as I looked long at hers. And then, after careful deliberation, I
would pronounce:
“Girl, you don’t need make up. You’re already fab-u-lash!”
Then I would draw her a matching beauty spot to my own, so we could both laugh like Mozarts.
*The woman ahead of me at a liquor store said she was buying a bottle of Champagne for her male
make up artist, winky face.
The store clerk: “Is he a poofy make up artist? Does he want a bow around the bottle?”
If anyone’s thinking of buying this male make-up artist Champagne, the answer is yes.
Another time I was in a liquor store and I complimented a girl on her hair bow. Her friend answered for
her: “She’s a LEZ-BIAN!”
What is it with the Gay Mafia and bows? And liquor stores?
I used to rehearse telephone conversations
I wasn’t going in there unprepared.
These days I rehearse whole relationships. Between an idea of myself and the idea of someone else.
Is it just me or if you email someone you don’t know a bunch of times you start to feel like you do?
Maybe getting to know someone is as much about knowing who you are around them, as it is knowing
who they are around you.
Or maybe I should just get out more, go use an internet café computer, instead of my home one?
how all occasions do inform against me,
and spur my dull romance!
I saw a movie about Hawaii when I was in San Francisco and decided that I should either go to Hawaii
or Mexico.
(Mali lives in Mexico, if I haven’t mentioned that already.)
Draft. Send?
Fri Jun 26, 2008
me to
[email protected]
Subject: YODERTE MARK TWAIN
Dear Mali.
Every time I say: “it is really fcking cold in San Francisco”, which is quite a lot, someone quotes Mark
Twain.
Yesterday someone had the audacity to ask me if I knew who Mark Twain was.
Was he the guy who said that the coldest winter he ever had was summer in San Francisco?
The San Francisco micro-climate is wack. I’m thinking about de-camping to either Mexico or Hawaii.
Is there anywhere you can recommend in Mexico where no one quotes Mark Twain? Preferablemente
alguna parte por donde solo citen Neurda:
And so this letter ends
with no sadness:
my feet are firm upon the earth,
my hand writes this letter on the road,
and in the midst of life I shall be
always
beside the friend, facing the enemy,
with your name on my mouth
and a kiss that never
broke away from yours.
Que sueno-de-barco!
Besos,
missed connection
watching you...
watching me...
watching you
LoL
Heeeeeeeeyyyyy!!!!!
I am the guy in the tree outside your bedroom window.
Looks like you’re reading the missed connections.
Any good ones, other than this one? ;-)
PS: you should get a better password for your wireless...
for the birds
Where I come from we don’t have the expression for the birds. I like it, why hasn’t it crossed the seas to
us? Do we not need it?
My guesstimates for for the birds:
An impossible dream.
A not so impossible dream, but one which shouldn’t be encouraged too much. One which will be equal
parts blessing and curse. More trouble than it’s worth.
A dream, sweet and wonder-filled. But just out of reach. You know you can’t have it but it’s enough to
know that something so lovely coexists in your world. Yes, I think that’s my definition.
For the birds
Adjective
1. (idiomatic) Worthless; pointless
In a sentence: falling for someone you’ll never meet is for the birds (Wiktionary).
Sun, Jul 13, 2008 at 4:29 AM
[email protected]
to me
I almost forgot. I think “for the birds” means for lovebirds or flighty people. Anyway-it’s old fashioned.
Don’t use it.
Just switcheroo:
‘S+M’ with ‘Mali’
& ‘non-romance’ with ‘romance’
-Amy Alkon
Sex Advice Column, SF Weekly
Serena
Dating ghosts is fun, they’re definitely my type. But sometimes I also date my own kind too.
I decided to dip my toe back into the craigslist sea. I put up the same ad as before.
A girl called Serena replied, we exchanged pleasantries.
Tue, Jul 8, 2008 at 11:10 AM
serena
to me
415.573.7716~ text if ya like... altho warn you, think international texting calling is not in my phone deal,
so if u text and don’t get a reply, I apologize! :)
I called it and a guy with a thick Irish accent picked up.
He told me if I ever called again he would break my legs.
My legs are my best feature.
His Latin temperament, his.
Often, we attach our desire to someone or something.
For example, we want a partner. We meet someone and
decide they must be the one. It can be disappointing,
not to mention disillusioning if we find out they are
not. But what if we created a relationship to our desire,
rather than what we want from a particular person? In
relationship to our desire, we can stay true to what we
want. Free of expectations, we give more freedom to
our relationships. In relationship to our desire, we also
create the space inside of us to have it.
-OneTaste tip of the week
and if you can’t have the one you love?
The Drus theory of assimilation. TM
If you like someone, but for instance they live in Mexico and you don’t, why not just assimilate a small
part of them? Then you can see them any time you want.
I don’t mean this in superficial way, like Mali wears purple jeans therefore I wear purple jeans too. Or we
wear marle sweaters and dark track suit pants and hold hands on the way to the supermarket.
I’ve tried on two pairs of purple jeans in the last year, one was too small and the other too big.
Dress your soul in purple jeans. When are purple jeans not just purple jeans? When they’re soul jeans!
My soul’s ass looks great in these!
why do I need anyone, anyway?
Do everyone a favour and need someone else less. Solve your own problems.
I guess everyone just wants to date a silver bullet. Everyone just wants to feel great all the time. If we felt
great all the time we’d get used to it and it would just feel ordinary. Or we’d invent something to think
bad about because great is actually pretty boring.
Either way, this is the answer. BYOB, B.E Y.OUR O.WN BOYFRIEND!
STAY AWAY FROM MY MAN!
If you need someone to hold you and tell you that everything is going to be all right, just hold yourself
tight and whisper the words “sweet nothings” in your ear. Let people look at your strangely. They are
just jealous that their inner boyfriend is not as handsome as yours.
And it’s slightly less weird than a girl I used to know who thought she had a phantom infant stuck inside
her. It was her only explanation for slight roll of ‘chub’ (her word) where she located the infant.
missed connection
you
don’t even know
I exist
Like, literally.
I saw you at Café des Bâteaux-Rêves, reading Sartre, sippin’ on espresso.
You burned your tongue, but not your lips. Leave that to me.
I wouldn’t call it a date,
but I took myself to see this.
I can hardly wait for you.
Valencia & 21st, the Mission, San Francisco, somewhere in CA
BOOM! I got your boyfriend
Me:
I’m not a fauxmosexual at all. It’s just that I’m a dude and you’re a dude and I never realized how into you I was.
My inner boyfriend: It’s ok to feel stupid. Feeling stupid means you’re learning. So although you
feel stupider you are actually much smarter. In fact, you’re now smart enough to go out with me. Let’s go celebrate.
My inner Greek chorus:
Oh you guys!
Me:
All this time ghost fancying, and you were right here... all along.
I want you inside me.
My inner boyfriend: Err...
Me:
You hang up.
My inner boyfriend: Dial tone.
date one, watching the setting sun
Sweet on You
2554 Bancroft Way, Berkeley, CA 94704
The proprietor of Sweet on you is not particularly sweet at all. She’s an adult in a candy shop, in a
recession, that’s one explanation. If that isn’t enough, according to Internet sources Sweet on you has a
sewage problem. She warned me that there was a $1 minimum candy purchase. As it’s the first date and
I want to make a good impression, money is no object.
There are two options for heart shaped confectionery. Either you can get a big chocolate heart or little
heart candies. I’m not one for grand gestures, my theory of love is that it is about the smallest of things.
Someone once told me that all she really wanted was someone who’d do stuff like bring them a cup of
coffee. I think I could handle that.
Sugar coated: The taste (cinnamon? cough syrup?) lingers. That or they just stick to your teeth…
Message: I liked these too much to eat them. Especially EMAIL ME. How modern love.
Unsugar coated: Unmemorable.
The real question was, did I become a sweeter person afterwards? I soon had the opportunity to find out
when soon after my relationship with myself was tested. My wallet was stolen. Then my inner boyfriend
stole my heart dealing with it in the most Californian of ways: he didn’t even sweat. It was either that,
or the sugar high got me through it.
Other people were sweet to me. Later that night I went on a date, with someone else. She paid. And she
didn’t even make me cheat on myself with her for the privilege.
The next day I asked a guy at a shop I’d been at if he’d found a lost wallet and he said:
“Yes. I spent all the money, maxed out the cards and threw the wallet into a bush.”
“It’s too soon, it’s too soon”, I said.
We laughed and laughed.
♥♥♥♥
♥
Do I put out on the first date?
The only thing
I’ll be putting out
is that fire
upon
your heart.
But I can do it in a fireman’s uniform, if that’s a turn-on for you?
date two, make my dream come true
The Chapel of the Chimes
4499 Piedmont Avenue, Oakland, CA94611
When someone suggested that I date myself to the cemetery, I made light of it. I laughed at death!
But when it got recommended a second time, coincidentally as I was complaining to myself that I never
took myself on dates anymore, I relented. The difficult second date increased exponentially in difficulty,
a cemetery date. Was this to be the last resting place of my relationship?
I can honestly say the Chapel of the Chimes is the best cemetery I have ever been on a date to. Nothing
makes you feel alive like a cemetery visit.
High on the western slope, next to the grave of the unknown lover I recited Marvell’s lines:
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Through the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
...before ravaging myself between the headstones.
If you ask me cemeteries are the new observatories.
date three, just you & me (babe)
Berkeley Rose Garden
1200 Euclid Avenue, Berkeley, CA94709
I’m always down for a flirty game of ‘what rose am I?’
There are many to choose:
Sentimental
Mister Lincoln
Angel Face
El Capitan
Olde Romeo
Fragrant Cloud
Bubblebath
Amber Queen
Lucky Lady
Pristine
Outta the blue
Double delight
Then you stand in the garden next to the sign, like the Taboo you are.
This game is less fun if you are from New Zealand and you get typecast as the New Zealand rose every
time.
And if I wasn’t the New Zealand rose? I would make a good White Pet.
date four, I want you more
Poetry Night, Adobe Book Shop
3166 16th Street, San Francisco, CA94103
The best poem was about a guy who worked as a teenager at Dracula’s Castle, a house of horrors on a
pier in California.
There was a fire in the castle, a nice image about the ash falling like bats. Or maybe I made that up. I’m
a bit of a poet myself, you see...
He lost his virginity in the torture chamber of the castle, that was definitely in the poem.
When I caused a mid-poem book avalanche, I wasn’t too embarrassed about shattering my beatnik cool.
I already knew I couldn’t pull off a beard, a beret or a clove cigarette, so it came as no surprise that I
can’t lean à la nonchalance on a bookcase. And I’m fine with it. Honestly, it’s not a big deal. Whilst book
leanability is an admirable quality, it’s not on my List.
I didn’t know poetry readings even existed anymore, I definitely didn’t know they were this good. I have
changed the way I feel about poetry readings.
That is what I look for in a date; open my eyes and I will open my heart.
missed connection
I
saw
you
In the mirror.
Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?
Like on the cover of Missed Connection magazine?
date five, almost rhymes with wife (or the plural, wives)
Shopping for Crocs, Long’s Drugstore
1451 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, CA94702
Unwritten law of modern dating: thou shalt not wear Crocs.
If you’re dating yourself, you can be as Crocosexual as you want!
And yes, they are as comfortable as they say.
But please, take my word for it: the Federal Shoe Advisory says it only takes once...
my other
This isn’t the first time I’ve been involved with myself. I almost married myself once.
I always used to say the best girl would be a girl just like me, but Swedish and with a nose made of sugar.
Sotnös, literally ‘sugar nose’, is the Swedish word for darling.
Then I met such a girl. Not only that, she proposed to me as soon as we met. She asked me what my last
name was, I told her. She told me that she liked it. And wanted it. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
We did lots of little things the same, we both used to chew two pieces of chewing gum instead of one.
Our tooth brushes were indistinguishable. The first time we made love... well, you get the idea.
We moved into a shoebox apartment together and just blew each other apart. There was just too much
of us in the relationship. It didn’t help there was no door to our bathroom. Some relationships just need
bathroom doors.
We used to live near an Ethiopian restaurant. Our hearts would melt when we’d see the Ethiopian
couple sitting in the window table of their own restaurant. So we started sitting in the window for them.
We decided that Ethiopian food was the best food because you felt full in the most delicate way. Like
you’d hardly eaten anything but it was exactly enough. They also had banana beer.
This time dating myself feels like Ethiopian food. Maybe my inner boyfriend is Ethiopian, and that’s
why he can fit in there?
Mon, Nov 19, 2007 at 12:57 PM
emelie
to me
hey i just watched ‘groundhog day’ & you are soo bill murray in that movie.
And she, my Andie MacDowell.
date six, let’s turn some tricks
Erotic Open Mic Night, OneTaste
1074 Folsom Street, San Francisco, CA94103
Insights gleaned from my fellow poets:
i) If you’re a lesbian and your poem is about a ménage-à-trois with a guy and a girl, the guy may
get somewhat lost in the moment.
Your audience may wonder: who be this love-rat, always coming and going?
And can they come back after the part about Thrush is over, too?
ii) It is not recommend that you slip your hand in your pocket as you begin your erotic poem.
iii) “I JUST WANNA FUCK.” You’ve got to warm me up a little, first.
I think this is the only time I’ll ever hear the words:
“I WANT YOUR COCK BETWEEN MY LUNGS.”
Here’s hoping.
missed connection
I’m a
hopeless
romantic
No, really.
I’m useless at this stuff.
date seven, we’re in heaven
The Doe Library
The University of California, Berkeley, CA94720
I spent most of my time at the Doe Library thinking about whether or not a library is a good place to
go on a date. Libraries have that art gallery quality. You drift to and from your date... like a tide drawn
inexorably by the moon. But the main reason was that the silence rule would make any communication
illicit, and so more flirtilicious.
This naturally lead to an internal dialogue about where the best place to make out in the library would
be. On the photocopier? The bronze statue/park bench of Mark Twain?
The Romance language section won. Just a hunch. It’s a coin tranquil, pardon my Romance language,
you could pluck poetry from the shelves to read to each other.
Of course this sort of thing never happens when you’re dating yourself. So I just joined a library tour. I
thought I blended in well. Ah, j’adore the anonymity of universities. Until I found out everyone else on
the tour had known each other for three years and were wondering why anyone else would want to do
a library tour with them. I have known myself only a short time (it is only date seven) and I wondered
too.
At my university everyone used to have a library boy or girl; their library crush. Going to the library was
even a euphemism for sharing intimacies, at one point. There is definitely something about the library, all
those hot nerds. I ended up meeting my library girl, Keryn, about a year after I first saw her. She ended
up asking my friend and I whether if she should dump her boyfriend. He had written a song for her for
her birthday, which she loved. Until she found out he had given his ex-girlfriend an actual present for
her birthday the next week.
“Don’t dump him”, I said. “Return him. Like a book in the library return slot.”
date eight
The Berkeley City Club.
2315 Durant Ave, Berkeley, CA94704
This country club in the city is renowned for it’s Gothic/ Moorish/ Berkeleyish architecture, designed
by Julia Morgan in 1930. Originally it was a club for women, I’m not sure if it still is. It certainly has a
very feminine spirit.
It is a popular wedding venue for people who aren’t dating themselves.
Perhaps I can have my Bar-mitzvah there? Please put my chair down, half-hearted mazeltov.
livin’ la vida yoga (dates 9 ‘till forever)
Yoga Kula
1700 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, CA94720
I frequently dated myself to yoga. Naturally, yoga is where the yoga babes are at.
Yoga starts and ends with a Team Yogi team-talk.
I always felt like the Tim the yogi was speaking to me, singularly. Am I so transparent? Does Tim have
an inner Drus, who gives away all my answers?
Post-yoga Tim started talking about how we’re all the same.
Or how everyone’s connected.
I forget which one it was, either way it’s the same idea.
I didn’t really think about it, I felt it. I mean, we felt it.
I am not alone
Somewhere, someone else is always dating themselves.
missed connection
you!
at
the serving dish shop!
Buying a single serve serving dish.
I would have said “hi” but I was on my way to the bed shop to buy a single bed.
On my way back from the bed shop I stopped into the serving dish shop to get a serving dish
of my own, but it was a limited edition of one.
Let me know if you would ever be interested in going halves on a double dish with me.
trouble in paradise?
We were all dancing to Dancing with myself,
my inner boyfriend,
my inner Malifriend (that minx) and I.
If I looked all over the world
And there’s every type of girl
But your smily eyes
Seem to pass me by
Leave me dancing with myself
I looked inside and they were gone. I don’t know where, and they might not be back for some time.
Oh dancing with myself
Oh dancing with myself
Well there’s nothing to lose
And there’s nothing to prove
I’ll be dancing with myself
DTR: define the relationship
Until I learnt to love myself I was never really loving anybody else.
-Madonna
So how’s my self-love?
We belong together. We’ve been on countless dates since we started going steady. A date-athlon if you
will. Sometimes the dates go for days... if you know what I mean.
I am my own man. I am the boyfriend of me. I may be part man, part sea-horse. But I am not an island.
It is time to use my sea-horse tail to swim back to the main. “If all the girls lived in the sea, what a good
swimmer (I) would be” -my sister, 1986. Not many girls out here, it must be said.
I have dated myself the way that I would like other people to date me. Like a pocket jewel, a rare and
precious ruby or emerald that slips right into your pocket. I think the pocket jewel could really catch on,
a jewel only you know about. Pocket jewels are delicate though, you’ve got to treat them right. I recommend keeping a pocket just for them. And it doesn’t hurt to give them a shine now and then.
And now I want to share my pocket jewel with someone else. Or I can be any other accessory they may
desire. A pair of SmittensTM, the mittens of love? Or this season’s must have: the man necklace. To make
a man necklace, interlace your man’s fingers and dangle him elegantly around your neck.
I am ready to love another again.
part three:
reality nibbles
ever so gently
upon my ear
Why are there only two chapters in your book?
You need more chapters than that.
Two’s not very many chapters.
-my mother, literary critic
I know something about women.
After all I used to live inside one in the late seventies.
-yours truly
ridiculous
A prestigious American university owns one of the world’s largest pornography collections.
Pornography is the practise of watching strangers en déshabille.
The collection belongs to the Interior Design department... porn backdrops showcase bourgeois design
trends of the day. “I read Playboy for the interior design tips.”
Perhaps a lot of life is like that. All its secrets are laid bare to us, but only if we can look past the least
revealing one.
can’t see the male models for the fake tan
When I was 25 someone told me that we are all at our most beautiful aged 18. I always assumed my
beauty stage was just round the corner. It would be along just as soon as my ugly stage was through. I
look back at photos of me when I was 25, I look 12.
I had a beautiful girlfriend (the one with the haunted house.) when I was 26 who refused to look in the
mirror, because she didn’t like what she saw. Weirdly, I had the same issue. We could look at each other,
as long as we didn’t catch our reflections in each other’s eyes. She also couldn’t say the word ‘fart.’ After
much cajoling I at least helped her through that. I wanted to tell her that right now, here with me, was
perhaps the most aesthetically pleasing she would ever be. That she should enjoy it as much as I was.
I probably abbreviated that to “you are sooooooooo pretty!” Should I email her now, or would that be
weird?
Do you think we get slightly less beautiful every day? My brother’s ex-girlfriend saw a picture of our
mother when she was younger and said she couldn’t believe she used to be hot. God, she was awful. The
ex-girlfriend that is, not our beautiful mother.
Do we become slightly more complex every day to make up for it? Like a fine wine?
If I had done the glamour shoot I’d definitely check myself out, from time to time. I’d keep the photos
in my attic, à la Dorian Gray. 100 years from now someone would stumble on them, damn...
Dorian Gray. What a great nom de porn that would have been on the model release.
Draft. Send?
me to
[email protected]
Subject: So human right now
Dear Patrick
There is so much dead skin on my computer keyboard, maybe even more than in your photos.
It’s quite disgusting. Especially the \ key, which I don’t even recall using.
This is me trying to clean the worst ones
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
\=============
\\\]][[[[[‘]]]]]]]]]]]]]====================================xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxzzz
````````````
presento Mali
What’s so funny? The sheep joke?
(What do elephants use for tampons?)
the thing
she likes least about herself
is that
she can’t speak Spanish?
If there is no human failing, we must invent one.
in the early morning
Mali, outside on the verandah of her beachfront bungalow, in the early morning. Far out to sea the sun
winks at her. Her skin tightens in the coolness. Her hair, drawn back, light and sagging.
She should be inside really, but for the purposes of this story she agreed to stay outside, where she woke
up.
She’s breathing, no shit. Can’t you hear it?
She’s breakfasting, a streak of strawberry jam leaks from the corner of her mouth. Imperceptibly, except
to me, the orange juice curdles against the milk.
She has a hangover. Nothing bed-ridding, just a Hangover Lite. She doesn’t even have any H.O. and if she
does it’s quite lady-like. Eyelash flutter.
A half-smoked, lipstick-kissed cigarillo floats aimless in a half empty beer on the table. Only the cigarillo
knows about this because the beer’s a can.
“Huy perdón!”, she says, actually before she farted. Premeditation, that’s farting in the first degree.
“Yup, I’m definitely human”, she thinks out loud, speed-walking to the bathroom.
sour sixteen
I just had a high school flashback.
Someone said that if you had to resist a girl, because that happens all the time when you’re sixteen, that
you should just imagine her taking a dump.
WTF? Am I going to be sixteen forever?
A girl I knew went home with a younger man once. She ended up throwing him out at 2am because he
was being too pornographic.
As she was slamming the door he cried: “It’s hard to be a man!”
I’m so glad this story is about someone else.
the seventeen year old virgin
Our last family trip was to Fiji when I was seventeen. I chart this as the end of my childhood, that or the
dog dying. Or maybe it’s still going. One of the above.
It was the week before the high school prom, in the middle of winter. Shall we say I was a little selfconscious about anyone seeing my virginal alabaster nakedness? Or even knowing there was such a
thing as my virginal alabaster nakedness.
I decided that I could apply fake tan and no one would have to know. Thank you, Fiji holiday
smokescreen.
I’ve never been so happy to be called ugly, as when Dominic Miocevic said that I just wasn’t the type to
apply fake tan.
Anyway it was all in vain; my all over fake tan was my chaste secret that night.
Of course, these days everyone wants to be pearly white. Hawaiian Tropic tan? What is this, 1997?
on missed connections
Missed connections are only about what you wish someone would be...
they’d get me out of these wet clothes and into a dry martini!
...which you wish you could just be yourself.
It’s not a missed connection if they become real. But if you’re lucky their dreamy imaginary quality will
be replaced by a dreamy realistic one.
So what does all this mean for Mali and I? We’re Facebook friends. I’m 46th on her list of friends, a page
one finish. I’m one before Ryan Emmerich, who looks appropriately pissed in his profile picture.
My inner boyfriend is 45th. He is so cute, his email is still:
[email protected]
Maybe Mali and I can’t go for coffee, or call each other at 2am or make each other laugh so that
Champagne comes out our noses. (We were drinking Champagne in that last sentence, it’s not like we
store Champagne in our noses for special occasions.)
But we can still be friends. Friends who haven’t met each other yet, officially.
oh.
After a lot of champagne in Miami at the chandelier after-party with Sofia Coppola with my chandelier
designer bosses I ended up back at the hotel at 3am. I decided to check my emails in the lobby.
The guy on the desk was asleep. Snoring loudly, about three metres away.
Drunk and lonely, in a faraway town and reckless, only a solitary gay man with a beard (www.briankish.
com) hitting on me all night, I started looking at porn.
It was about five minutes before another guy (the security guy who wasn’t asleep?) walked into the lobby,
sat down and smiled.
This is the first time I’ve told this shameful? hilarious? shameful story.
I guess I used the same computer the next day to post the ad on craigslist San Francisco.
Other than the communal computer, may I recommend staying at the Astor next time you’re in Miami?
www.hotelastor.com
I thought about putting this confession in Wingdings.
Who’s going to see it?
But fuck it, it’s just the Internet.
and now
you can say
you’ve seen me
naked
the end
This was written in various states of undress, March - December 2008.