Bamboo and Wood

Dream a “little” dream? Hardly. In my dreams size is definitely an issue. I’ve been dreaming about the male member lately. Specifically disembodied penises and symbolically the castration of my own malehood via the cutting of “wood” and hair, ala Samson and Delilah. And yes, I was the Samson in the dream.

Let’s talk about the specifics and then we can move on to the symbolic.

So I dreamed I owned a new device – a little white box similar to my Macintosh Performa’s 1200 baud modem from 1994. It was identical in shape, a small flat rectangle, color, a creamy pearl, and sound, it buzzed and beeped when connected.

The one difference? Along the top was a round circle covered in serrated white rubber. That and by request a giant penis would pop out of it and wiggle about my desk. Creamy pearl, indeed!

So there I was in my dream. Chatting online with a complete stranger and I ask something like, can I see it? It being you know what. I watch him via a video bubble as he takes his little white box, gently places his thingie into it and shocked and pleased as it emerges on my desk.

I swear I didn’t do a thing with it.

But I was wowed by the technology! I totally remember laughing and thinking, “What will those internet guys think up next?” I may have even called my friends.

I had forgotten this dream until Aaron posted an opinion regarding the observed disconnect between the actual/physical persona of bloggers or online-folk versus the presented/meta persona of the same.

Let’s just say it’s been my experience that an 11 online is usually a 6 in the real world. So there is indeed a disconnect between the wanting the sex online versus the actual getting it. Which leads me to (apparently) my dream’s solution, a penis via your modem.

Whatever. Dreams mean a lot of things.

Let’s go to the symbolism of my bald head suddenly sprouting bamboo shoots. Dream number two involved me sunbathing and discovering bamboo had grown from my bald, stubbly noggin.

And it looked fierce! The bamboo was pliable, so I could bend it and shape it into different styles. The slender leaves were like a botanical, feathered fan.

I was totally working a Farrah, if Farrah had been a Pokemon.

Certainly all wood things come to pass eventually. And sure enough, my second dream’s bamboo-doo began to molt and I was left with thorny bamboo shards sticking out of the back and sides of my bald, bald, bald head.

It was very punk and very menacing, but I needed to have them removed. I had work the next morning. So who else than Liz, the fiercest girlfriend ever of Jenn at MoufaisBad? Noone else.

Liz (always with nicely colored and coifed hair of her own) pulled out her leatherman tool accessory and right there on the beach began to painfully prune my head. It was so weird.

And then – when all was said and done and I was sitting in the sand and carved remains of my once lovely wooden hair, I looked in the mirror and…

The bloody bamboo stumps had sprouted fine corn silk. And it hung about my head like a golden halo. I shook my head and ran my fingers through it. I looked like Prince Valiant! I was so pleased.

I didn't question why I had a mirror at the beach. But I soon discovered my hair was fake. It was a wig. Liz laughed because she put a trashy wig on my head when I wasn't looking. Not that I mind wearing a trashy wig on occassion.

I love dreams.

Bangers and Mash

Because I don't have enough to do, I've started a three month memoir.

Introducing, Bingham Blogged.

How I Met Your Grandfather...

Gather round. I’m gonna tell you little 'uns how I met Paw-Paw Bryce.

I remember that charming smile. Forty years ago this Sunday, Bryce was smiling and standing with our friend Dustin near the stairwell at the Eagle. That was a leather bar in New York City before it was burned to the ground in the Queer Riots of 2023.

Back then I rarely went out on Sunday nights, but the promise of an entire Monday settled at home in celebration of our deceased Commander in Chiefs waylayed my typical draconian resolve versus getting shit-faced at the weekend’s end. Also February 2005's Grandpop Neil was a swaggering flirt fresh off a freshman season of gay rugby with a beefy body and a lusty libido to match. And my buddy Lee, an incorrigible boozehound, convinced me to go. Can’t thank him enough.

So there your Paw-Paw was, this smiling lumberjack. He looked like a Viking, but a soft and cuddly Viking. He wore a neatly trimmed beard and had a twinkle in his blue eyes. Even against the seedy red light of the Eagle those eyes stood out, and again, that darling smile.

And next to him was Dustin. Damn it! At the time I was passively avoiding Dustin. Here’s a little context. As I mentioned winter of 2005 found Gayest Neil in a particularly confident and lusty frame of mind.

And three weeks prior to this fateful President's Day Weekend I had made out with a friend Bryan from Seattle (and I think Dustin was there among the bar crowd? I’m not sure.) and the weekend prior to this I had drunkenly... uhmmm… how do I put this delicately… sort of tickled Dustin and his then boyfriend J while we all stumbled around the East Village to the Phoenix (also burned to the ground during the Riots of 2023).

And now (forty years ago) here was Dustin, and most of those boys who’d been out with us that night a week ago! And Dustin was with a beautiful man who I'd never seen out and who I was again lusting after!

My shameful pinky twittered nonetheless in anticipation. Bad pinky! There’d be no jubilant pokey. I was embarrassed of my manual misdeeds. You see, absent from the Eagle was none other than Dustin’s suddenly ex-boyfriend of last week. I had found out from Lee that Dustin and his boyfriend broke up the very night of my infamous fiddling fiasco.

And because my ego knows no bound, I was certain the entire break-up was my fault! Therefore I had to avoid Dustin (and the sexy stranger) at all costs. Dustin’s a wiry polecat. Probably fast and likely fights dirty! But oooooh, he’s with such a handsome guy with a charming smile. Are they dating?

I berated myself, “Neil, you can’t break up this guy’s date again!”

I hadn’t known Dustin for more than two weeks. Interfering with his love life again would be so very impolite. My only recourse would be a night of aggressive avoidance and longing stares at the back of Bryce’s dirty blond head while I pocketed my dirty brown finger in shame, shame, shame.

And as we pounded pints of watery, stale beer, I opened up my secrets to Lee. The story of the tipsy ticklin’ and the rueful regret upon hearing Dustin’s break-up. I also had to scoot Lee and I away as I spied Dustin and the mystery-macho-Viking-sexy-cub -boy heading our way, yet again!

I will admit. My nerves did fall to my confidence at one point. Faced with Dustin and Bryce coming my way I did stammer a meek hello in their direction. Unfortunately they, to my drunken interpretation, laughed off my attempt at social interaction and brutally ignored me. Later I’d find out they’d simply did not see me. Also, Bryce and Dustin are always laughing, as I’ve come to happily discover. Unfortunately, this miscommunication only served to push me further into the shadows of an already shadowy establishment in retreat of last week’s misbehavior. I felt as though everyone knew.

Now I was the one being fingered!

So here they were on their way again! This was nearly the sixth such time I’d made Lee vamoose from a prime cruising spot and he was none too pleased. Also, I’d run out of floors to flee to. We were on the third level, to descend would lead me back to the land of lesser displays of Levis and leather. And the roof was closed!

Lee was fed up. He stood his ground and offered a friendly hello to Dustin and then forcibly introduced Bryce to me and me to Bryce. We shook hands. I shivered and swooned. Then I found out Dustin and Bryce were simply friends and not on a date to the Eagle. I also found out my pornographic presdigitation was not the cause of Dustin and J's break up! Happiness! I wasted no time.

I kissed him. We made out the rest of the night. At some point I remember coming up for air as my rugby friend Crazy Jeff said howdy. He had met Bryce prior. I thought he was moving in on my catch (Jeff had a history of rooster-blocking) and I quickly dispatched him with a terse “Go away.” I need to stop doing that to my friends…

And Bryce and I continued to kiss and smooch and canoodle. It was wonderful. We stumbled out of the bar and pretty much started dating right there in the taxi. I think we may have bought some personal itens in the little store at the Eagle too. Pretty romantic stuff, eh?

Mother Mayhem

My mother held a variety of jobs when my brother and I were younger. She was a kindergarten librarian. Hmm. It never occurred to me, but how extensive a library does a kindergarten have? She was a payroll accountant for a general contracting office. Her commute to and from work was nearly three hours and she traveled with a huge sum of cash. Because of this fact she carried with her a .38 snubnose revolver loaded with hollow point bullets. I remember an older gentleman explaining to me how the hollow point bullets would result in the back of someone's head exploding. But only should she shoot the assailant in the face. Luckily she never had to shoot anyone, face or otherwise.

Of all her jobs, the one I held the most feeling for was my mother's years as an instructor for behavior-disordered middleschoolers.

I'm not sure what instructing was ever accomplished. All I remember of the job was her descriptions of how she spent the entire day wresting angry teenagers. Boys and girls, ages twelve to fifteen. All day long she wrestled kids who the system had forgotten, most of them residents of the Harpst Home Orphanage or mentally challenged kids.

It never struck me as odd. I saw it as an aspect of my mom's particular class room setting. These kids acted up in class, but instead of a pink slip, they got a headlock from my five foot four, one hundred and twenty pound mother.

I visited my mom's class once or twice. I remember how much darker the behavior-disorder's class was than the "regular" classrooms. Heavy drapes hid the sun. Everyone seemed to sit around and glower.

I secretly hoped one of them would go into a rage. Perhaps if I moved suddenly a beast-child would startle and my mom would be prompted to toss out a muthaload of mayhem. Alas, no. The kids (older than I was at the time) were totally polite and nothing happened.

And these were big-ass sixth graders! Some of them probably belonged in high school. At home, nursing a bruised leg or wrist, she'd talk about the physical aspects of her teaching job, and Andy and I would sit, a little concern buried inside, but ok with it. I thought it was kind of cool too. My mom could kick some ass.

Today, I wonder how much of the pain she hid from her young boys. Did the other instructors view her as the "rasslin" teacher? Was this the only thing available to a young, single mother with two sons to feed? I still wonder if she was ever hurt - like really hurt when those six foot tall men/boys went wild and started tossing books and pencils... and fists. Maybe I'll ask her about it someday.

Somebody Left the Pizza Out in the Snow

Have I forever sullied the memory of a fabulous night out with a fabulous bunch of dandies? The blarg crawl of the blizzard of 2006 ended for me (and my smoochy) in a boozed-up argument that stemmed completely, utterly, from the theft of Bryce’s coat. No other reason really.

That’s how anger works. Especially when paired (impaired?) with beer, Makers, Jack Daniels and a shot of something very nasty that I drank from a test tube given to me by a tiny man wearing only underwear. It feeds on itself. (The anger not the underwear clad runt.) Makes itself bigger. Lashes out at the wrong targets.

Why did we let our anger at a nameless thief erupt onto each other? I don’t know why. But it kept going. Accusations of I can’t handle my liquor. Accusations of him drinking too much.

I threw our standard after-hours pepperoni pizzas into the snow for crying out loud! Pepperoni Pizza! Wasted!

I guess it’s easy to jest now. It seemed a fairly dramatic and necessary statement at the time. Regardless of the blizzard-like conditions, the night was such a nice snowfall. But no matter how pure the snow, once you toss your pizza into it, there’s no going back to that pure, tomato free, snow.

I’m still a bit dumbfounded. Bryce had his warm feather coat stolen on the worst snowy night of the year! Totally sucks. The coat was a bargain when he found it at a moving sale up on Park Avenue. Geox was the brand. They have those athletic shoes that “breath”. The coat was on sale for nearly 200%.

But what is a coat compared to the memory of a night? We agreed we can always have another coat. We’ll never have that moment again. We’ll never have that very night of drunken silliness with all those fun, interesting people.

And I asked Bryce to consider the person so desperate to steal his Geox coat. Consider that he (or she) may not even own a coat, whereas we have more at home. Consider the lost coat an act of charity on his part. An act of benevolence. A sacrifice to the blizzard of 2006.

Regardless we’re never going to Chi-Chiz again. Shady, sketchy-ass bar. Ahh… there’s that accusatory anger again. It was the bar’s fault his coat got stolen! Feels good. But it’s a futile emotion.

No anger. No vengeance. And not a loss in the grand scheme of things really. I can buy him another coat.

I’ve been in a fairly dismal mood the past few days.

No matter the cold, windy weather, anger will try to flare up over and over. The crowded train ride home we sat in sullen moods. We glared occasionally. We pouted. I punched the wall at the West 4th street station. Why?

I don’t know. Seemed like the thing to do. But doing so made Bryce more mad at me.
Thus the initial anger latched onto a different provoking cause. I also yelled “Just go away!” or something horribly asinine at a fellow blogger who stopped on the street to check in on us. Probably to find out why we were so upset. Maybe even to tell us our coat was found.

I’ve already traded apologetic emails with him and all is well that can be. But that encounter has colored his impression of me now, lingering should we meet face-to-face again...

And those insecurities roll in. Did other bloggers see us fighting in public? Did we make a drunken spectacle of ourselves? Do people think we’re an unstable couple? I know Foxy does. Hah. We heart Foxy. (P.S. his b’day party is Friday night at GYM bar. Let’s meet up again to welcome our littlest plushy to thirty!)

Speaking of face-to-face’s, I met some highly entertaining people Saturday night. Can’t right now, but soon will dish up impressions and links for all my newest dandies (and one dandiette). And I look forward to another night with them all.

The anger was justifiable. The targets and subsequent revival of the anger wasn’t. Calming mantra for the next blarg hop: “Less squabble. More pizza.”

How could a couple this cute (tipsy) possibly fight? Happy Valentine's Day everyone.

The Ouroboros

Let’s get a little a metaphysical, shall we? Sit down. Turn on some soothing music and consider your life in cycles, as I do.

However, let’s not consider the traditional 365 day calendar. Everyone’s cycles are different. Instead let’s think of phases in our lives where there are uncanny similarities, both good and, unfortunately, bad. Consider loves found and lost, consider heartbreak. Consider happiness. Think of periods of mental success, personal deadlines met, periods of inactivity. Line up those similarities. Try to find moments in your life where the spiritual world has had great impact on your physical existence.

Now let’s move away from the world of spirit and take our journey into the physical plane, the world of man. Those aching feet from standing in line at the grocery store. The physical pleasures of carnal contact. The city smells and sounds. The harsh rumbling of the subway or the soft caress of a feather pillow or a lover’s furry chest. Consider your material belongings, keep sakes and such. Things you’ve lost or found. Again make general dates and look for periods where the material world’s impact on the spiritual world are profound and obvious.

Both of these worlds, while vastly different and separate, are connected via the great serpent, the ouroboros.

The ouroboros has several meanings interwoven into it and appears in forms across every major Earth religion. Foremost is the early Alchemical symbolism of the serpent biting, devouring, eating its own tail. This symbolizes the cyclic Nature of the Universe, creation out of destruction, Life out of Death, the Law of Conservation of Matter and Energy. The snake is often symbolized with a black half representing the Material world (the Night, Earth, and the destructive force of nature, yin) and the Spiritual world (the Day, Heaven, the generative, creative force, yang). Typically the ouroborous devours itself at the nadir of the cycle, in the most powerful point of the Material plane.

I picked up a book at Strand recently regarding Buddhism. I won’t speak of my internal discoveries beyond this: the practice of repetition. Much like the ouroborous, eating itself through eternity, (the constant cycles of our lives), and repetition plays a contemplative and important role in both our physical and material lives, both halves of the whole cycle.

For instance, make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Now, make fifty. Make one hundred. With each slice of bread contemplate the imperfections of the toasted edges. How creamy is the peanut butter with each spread. See how the jelly delicately forms to the peanut butter. The repetitions of the material world, the tasks our physical bodies undertake, are part of the cyclic nature of the universe. Through such Material repetition we come closer to Spritual enlightenment. Now someone come help me eat these damn PB&J’s!

I’ve come to the close of a full cycle in my own life. The realization of it came to me this morning as I walked through my old (and new) neighborhood in Clinton Hill. For the first time since moving, a wave of nostalgia washed over me, good (I remembered the initial excitement I felt being alone in New York for the first time) and bad (my terrible mugging – actual physical mugging, not my typical grandstanding). I sat on the train and didn’t read. I simply sat and contemplated these memories. Here I am, very much in love, very much happy; very much safe. Periods of destruction are behind me and a creative apex is ahead. This is the same euphoria I felt upon moving here four years ago.

In the physical plane I’m home in the exact neighborhood that fate wove into my tapestry years ago, gratefully bound with friends and family and infused with optimism ready to effuse from every pore. Both of my halves feel in balance. And goodness, don’t get me started about how I love balance. Too late. I will discuss Libra just a tiny bit, because it neatly ties up my thoughts on the form of the ourorborous.

Libra’s symbol is the Egyptian sigil of the setting sun. The setting sun was chosen as the scales are a tool of judgment of the past. The setting sun often denotes death and a passage from the material world into the world of the spiritual.

Side note: When the Egyptian dead stood before Ma’at, goddess of Justice, Truth and Order, they had to weigh their heart (the spiritual) against the weight of a feather (the material) or risk it being eaten by Ammut, the Devourer of the Dead, who was part crocodile, lion and hippo. So Ammut isn’t quite a snake devouring itself, but from dragons to alligators to snakes, world mythologies include a variety of reptilian beasts devouring aspects of Material, Spiritual or both planes.

Damn Gayest Neil, I had three cycles since I started reading this! I know. I know! So in summary, imagine the setting sun falling into the horizon over a lake. The sun is casting a reflection on the water creating a perfect circle. The upper half is the Sky, the mental, the creative. The lower half is the Earth, the material, the destructive.

Everyone has a place along the wheel. Where are you?

Oh Britney!

Maw Spears enjoys a spin with little Cheetus. Will she ever learn?

Stonewall Riot

Joe.My.God has arranged what promises to be a pub-parade of daisy-chained darlings dropping mutual kudos for each other's blogs in the high hopes of a coveted link among the meta-maze of blogging Bettys here in New York City.

Or maybe it'll just be a bunch of drunks stumbling down Christopher street.

Regardless, Joe.My.God is organizing an old school bar crawl along the street where all this gay rights stuff began! A hysterical historical aimed to strengthen the bonds between NYC's gay bloggers. Atleast for one night before all that bondage is revealed online come Sunday afternoon.

Check it out and see you Saturday!

Sushi Assumption

Jason DeWitt knows more about gays than even most gays do. Not more than my own personal vast knowledge, mind you, but certainly much more than even you can fathom of your very own lifestyle, kind reader. And as much as such acumen should presumeably put this scholar-of-sass in my good graces, no such friendship exists.

For one, Jason DeWitt uses his knowledge for evil. He writes for a horrid magazine (name witheld) designed to coax heterosexuals from their stylistic coccoon transforming them into metrosexual butterflies. He's also a Chelsea real estate maven, known for charming drooling dandies with his "str8-boi" allure. Ick!

Secondly, Jason claims to be the love child of his gay father (who raised him) and Joyce DeWitt from television's Three's Company. At the age of sixteen he legally changed his last name to DeWitt in honor of the mother he's never met.

And lastly, Jason himself is heterosexual! Not that there is anything wrong with that...

It is here that I am presented in bold-faced font a quirky quandry regarding the recent infatuation of my onetime arch-nemisis Michaud, who is now declaring his heterosexuality (and even dating an actual woman), versus my confirmed disklike of Jason DeWitt, longtime heterosexual and boorish expert on gays and our secrets, a pansy-Prometheus bringing "flame" to the unwashed straight men of New York.

And the most pathetic thing is how so totally over the entire metrosexual craze is. Everyone knows it. Even the "Fab Five" know it. Six months ago I ran into Jai Rodriguez at a theatre gala honoring Broadway's Animal Actors. I jeered at Jai, "Your show is a fraud and you suck worse than Carson's plastic surgery!" The young man broke down into tears and fled the reception just as A Tribute to Toto began.

Where was I? Oh, so today I was anticipating sushi at Chelsea's hottest new raw fish bar, Sushi: Wow-Wow-Wow, when in sashays none other than Jason DeWitt, with a neatly coifed, metrosexual friend. The lunch line at Sushi:Wow-Wow-Wow forms a horseshoe and as I was ahead of him, I waited to exchange civilities once we were standing closer together in queue.

No such pleasantries would be forthcoming as Jason made the grossest generalization of gay people that ever I've heard him utter or read him written... something like that.

In his typical know-it-all manner, he says loudly to his friend, "...so the guy says that his life partner was supposed to get paid, then he'd be able to afford the broker's fee. You see. He said life partner, so that means he's gay."

Jason's friend nodded solemnly at his sage wisdom. Jason continued, "But then this guy calls back and says that his life partner stole his checkbook and then he calls again to say his life partner kicked him out of their apartment!"

He paused before tossing in the punchline, "If you ask me this guy needs to kick his meth habit!" Then he and his buddy shared a straight-boy belly laugh and began looking at the menu.

Meth habit? How dare that moron make such a disgusting generalization. Just because his real estate applicant is a gay man does not automatically mean he has a meth habit! It's outrageous! I couldn't even look Jason in the eye. I couldn't even stand in line. I was trembling with outrage! My Sushi: Wow-Wow-Wow! turned into Sushi: Growl-Growl-Growl!

Worry not my cherished friends. I have been practicing wonderful deep breathing excercises and within one hour (and six bourbons) I found the centered calm Mr. Presumptious had robbed me of. But I couldn't stop thinking of the gall with which Jason so nonchalantly offered that all gay men have crystal meth habits. This led me to think of my own crystal meth habit

Actually, if I had a tooth for each of my gay friends struggling with their own meth addictions I'd grin like a Chelsea Cheshire Cat. Sadly, I have no teeth as "meth mouth" crumbled my chompers into gnarly little stumps months ago.

It makes no difference! I may have no teeth. Perhaps I haven't slept in eight days. And there is the delicate subject of the two apartments (laboratories) I've burned to the ground, but that don't mean you have any right to grossly generalize me or my kind! Were Jason's applicant Hispanic would he so freely boast, "He's poor cause he's sending all the money home to Mexico! Har-Har!"

Were the applicant African-American, "Needs to stop buying scratch-offs and invest in some flood insurance! Har-Har!"

No! He'd say none of those things because they are crass, indecent declarations. Oh Jason DeWitt, tremble in your "bear-chic" boots. You have attracted the ire of Gayest Neil, and trust me, this dandy has alot of waking time to plot your demise. I'm talking alot of waking time!

Fermez le Bush!

Last night’s State of the Union address proved to be another anticlimactic showing of American political pageantry.

Would things be different had Kerry won?

I remember the fall of 2004 as an electric collection of months. All of early 2004, in fact, held a sense of potential transformation. This potential for change felt tangible. As though by campaigning and going to rallies we the people of the United States could influence our government and create a regime turnover. I could practically shape it with my very hands. The feeling was euphoric. There may have also been some narcotics involved.

Sitting in Fink’s tiny Brooklyn apartment, developing stories for his website Fink Tank 3000 and jokes for my on-again-off-again web-comic "Mission Accomplished!"; I can’t help but smile remembering how much fun we used to have.

And then that horrible night in November of 2004. Solemnly picking at chicken wings and nursing a warm 40 ounce Bud Light as the televised map of my country blinked more and more red, as though it were bleeding to death. Fink held on to the hope that Ohio would go blue. I quietly put on my shoes and slumped home to New Jersey. I haven't really invested much of my attention in politics since that night.

Some say a dandy shouldn’t have a nose for politics. There are so many better things a true dandy should shove up his snout. After last evening's deplorable diatribe of the state of our crumbling union, my friends, we can’t afford not to understand what is going on in this country.

Do not fret however. I am not turning into a political website. I am, however, taking a brief moment to introduce you to a few websites that I browsed during those euphoric days in 2004 before the country stayed the course with a madman at the helm.

Fink Tank 3000 – My dear friend Fink’s website. Read it everyday. His current project “The Fink Tank 30” are candid interviews with 30 Democrats running for crucial elections in 2006. They may well trump a seated Republican. Exciting stuff.

There’s also a post listing the treacherous Democrats who voted for closure against Judge Alito, putting him in the Supreme Court and thusly ending a woman’s right for choice. Included are their contact information. Call them. Email them.

Boozhy is quite dandy and has a terrific sense of humor regarding the state of our nation. And he also has the Colin Ferrell video posted on his site.

There are the liberal webmags Slate and Salon. And the much perused Daily Kos. All three excellent sources of the opinions I want to hear...

Hmm…

Perhaps I need to council Fink for others. As I said, this dandy’s nose hasn’t been engrossed in politics as of late. Anyone have any suggestions?