And It Was Said

According to Mustardseed, I was the "belle of the ball".

Oh, and I was. What followed (the last chance, the last choice of the evening) may have been erroneous... of all the suitors, spinning about, thrashing to the bass driven cacophony in that coloured light interior, I perhaps chose the one least appropriate... but in all fairness, I was drunk. Drunk on the drink; and a little bit on attention.

My resolution to be a whore has not been working out as well as I had initially hoped. What started off as a good idea has failed to materialize in a workable form. I don't think I'm built for it. Not really. I never have been. I've tried it before. Pre-serial monogamy (four years running) I had had aspirations to slut it up all over town, take my gay genes out for a spin (as it were); and that never happened either.

Oh, I've had my flings. I've tossed it, turned it, and thrown it over a pole, but never to the extent that I had envisioned. As a gay man, my list (The List) is remarkably short... though by straight standards, I'm definitely a slut. Several times over.

Mind you, I'm still not even close to the Urban Cowboy's score, which he has notched on his headboard,

worked in,

and he's as straight as an arrow. "Man-whore" we call him -- and he is. A couple of years ago his score (if we're speaking of numbers), just for the year, was over 100. I went out to a club with him one night, for some retro-skank-fest, sleazing it up in black T-shirts blazoned with metal bands and too-cool-to-live slogans, and he did (DID) three girls in the time between entering the door and exiting.

He had better in and out privileges than most people enjoy.

So I guess it comes down to the fact that I'm a poor excuse for a 'ho.... I'm not emotionally equipped for it. Really not.

I have built my personal life (post-high school, post-trauma) on intimate relationships, the same ones that give me so much trouble, but also the same ones that make everything so virbant and real. Contrary to popular belief, ever man (woman... womin) is an island; but it is because of that, yelling at each other across the water, describing our beaches and our jungles to one another, that we fall in love; that we can say things like:

"Fuck, man! I had just the same problem with the monkeys and the titanium bananas as you! Who would have thought that we could have drifted so close together? What are the chances?"

What are the chances indeed?

I get close to people. It's what I'm good at. I fall in love constantly. Plutonically. I have such crazy care and support around me that I often wonder who's life I'm living. All that I've done to deserve it is do my best to be as honest and fair and as un-crazy as I can... and I see the rewards for it every day.

I am not a Don Juan. I do not love as compulsively and passionately as that... and that is the problem with me attempting it: the willy-nilly bedding of strangers; the empty appropriation of another's body. Certain ways of making love are completely, utterly, selfish. Nothing makes me feel more alone than sticking parts of myself into the wet, squishy spaces of someone else, all the while having no idea where your headed. Traveling blind and having so little idea of what to appreciate.

Physical beauty itself is a bizarre enough concept. Culturally specific, non-translatable; aesthetics develop almost like an independent organism. The rhyme or reason to them are such:

appearances reference resonances that are cultural, and locally based. Today, in this first-world "global village" we see aesthetics being white-washed -- homogenized -- into a median standard of beauty that becomes rather boring (and at the same time masquerades as universal), but the planet remains a wholly diverse and multiplicitous patchwork of physical forms that observers find desirable because they mean something to the observer.

Fatness in Eastern Europe used to mean affluence. Affluence was desirable. It became desirable to have a fat wife; the connotation was showy. Fatness became beautiful....

Although loaded with associations, beauty is cultural, not universal; and it is empty.

All that Beauty believes in, is herself.


Attempting to make intimate connections with people with whom you have no personal resonance is empty as well. Sleeping with someone without anything to rely upon besides beauty just affirms your self as a selfish bastard, any pleasure or status you derive from it self-congratulatory.

I'm not made to be a man-whore.

I tried it again last night. It was made possible by being the "belle of the ball", as I previously mentioned. Dancing at 5ive with Mustardseed. We do know how to dance; and we know how to get into trouble. As my fine, fairy-friend got twirled by the gay boys on the dance floor, I was gyrating very naughtily with a few gents... and that went on for a while. The attention itself is attractive. I was beset with options. All of them were beautiful.

The choice, in the end, was immaterial.

And we did go home (to my home); and we did make out (to my music); and we did.

And now I am writing this blog.


And it was said, by John Berger, in his novel about the Don Juan, G.:

To morality there are no mysteries. That is why there are no moral facts, only moral judgments. Moral judgments require continuity and predisposes. A new, profoundly surprising fact cannot be accommodated by morality. It can be ignored or uppressed; but when once its existence has been recognized, its inexplicablility makes it impervious to any immediate moral judgment.

I have not made a judgment on last night's affairs, but I have made a new resolution:

predictable or not, events must transpire according to a certain standard. Not moral, but personal. Slut is not the goal. Maniacal travesty, either. Personal accountability is the target. Not wasting away because of lack is the destination.

I will have more to reference (the next time I take to bed) than beauty.