Mission Accomplished! #62

Fagtoush

Japan or Morrocco? Middle Eastern. So I'm dialing the Casa Blanca Cafe and snackily dreaming of cous-cous and falafel and lamb schwarma when the line is answered by a young sounding man with a soft voice.
"Restaurant." And then genius hits me. I'll order me and my boyfriend's dinner with an outrageous Cockney accent!
"Good day kind sah! Uy'd lyke tah ahdah deenah puhleez." My boyfriend visibly cringed and turned his back to me while looking over his vast CD collection.
"Uh, what you want?" The take-out man obviously thought he was talking to a real Brit!
"Uy'd lyke tah stayt awf weeth ah lurvely sahlad. May ay hav the Fattoush." (Fattoush is a Lebanese salad, good for hot weather.)
"Uh. What?"
"Fattoush... Fattoush. Eets a deeelightful sahlad!"
"Where, I don't see it."
"Eet's awhn yuah deenah meenu, Fattoush. Eet's a sahlad."
"Salad? We got carrot salad and cucumber salad."
My patience with the take-out man and my impecible dialect had both worn thin. "No, you definately have Fattoush. It's a dinner salad, it's right here in your menu under salads. Fattoush, Fattoush. F, A, T, T--"
"Dude, I don't know what you're talking about. We got cucumber and carrot salad."
"Fattoush, it's right here...." I browsed the menu.
With bloodshot eyes, I was looking at the sushi menu.
"Did I call a sushi restaurant?"
"Yes. Sushi, what do you want dude?" I bid him a good day and redialed the Casa Blanca Cafe. Suffice to say I did not implement my flawless Cockney accent.

I've Faced Worse Before

I'd rub my eyes if I could. I'd cry if I could. I'd tear at my hair. I'd slap my cheeks. I'd pinch my nose. I'd do them all if only I could. But I can't. This morning my face fell off.

I'm not sure how my face (and scalp and ears) ended up a grisly puddle slumped in the bottom of my bathroom sink. How do any of life's mysteries happen? One day you're in the mood for a latte and instead you order a cappuccino. Mysterious. Today my face slid off of my skull.

Perhaps it was my Jergen's face wash? I bet it was expired. I've had that shit forever. My stylist Enrique gave it to me in October as part of a beauty care package. Maybe its all the stress I've been under lately. I've heard of people getting bald patches when things get hectic at work. But none of them have skulls for heads...

The noise was sickening. Sssllllluuuuuhhhhpop! The pop at the end was so crisp. Like a suction cup coming undone. And then - I looked down and there I was staring back at me. My left jaw still covered in shaving cream, my right so baby smooth and newly shaved. Wow, my eyes are really pretty. I stared back into the mirror. My throat ended in a tidy little nub and from there the pale vertebrae of my upper spine attached neatly to the blanched bones of my lower skull. My little black eye sockets stared back at me. Wow, my eye sockets are really huge.

My jaw chattered open and closed as I talked. Without lips my disembodied ... disemfaced? ... voice floated from an unknown source. I didn't have a tongue anymore either. I poked at my face sitting slumped in the sink with the end of my toothbrush but didn't see my tongue among the red lips and horribly blubberly looking jowls. I thought how disappointed my boyfriend Bryce would be now that I have no tongue. He so enjoys French kissing...

My second alarm beeped from my bedroom and I realized my face-off had set me terribly behind for work. How am I going to explain this to my co-workers? Expired facial creme? Stress? Rugby? YES! Rugby! I blame everything on my rugby participation. The rugby excuse helped explain last month's black eye.

Suddenly I missed my black eye. I missed my eyes.

After carefully choosing my nicest shirt and tie (I didn't want to show up to work with no face and a slouchy outfit), I took to the streets. My empty eye sockets scanned from side to side as a nun and three young Hispanic boys walked past me. I closed my eyes. No, I didn't. I. . . well it's weird. I swear it felt like I was closing my eyes, but . . . yeah, no eyelids. Anyways, I waited to hear their laughter, or screams, but nothing came.

Two strapping men on motorcycles idled by the curb. My little skull turned and smiled directly at them. The larger of the two, a glowering bruiser with a handlebar moustache replied, "Nice fucking tie nine-to-five!" His buddy laughed something about a noose and I saw a look of confusion on my skull in the reflection of his giant, mirrored sunglasses. I ran.

I ran to the subway station. With no muscle to support them, my teeth clattered together with each heavy step. People ignored me the entire way. Why was I in such a panic? Why did I care that people didn't notice my handicap? It didn't take two eyes to see that I had NO FUCKING FACE?! I was living proof of that fact!

I miss crying. I hid my grim visage behind a newspaper and quietly shuddered as my head went through the motions of crying, but without the tears and puffiness. Euripides wrote "Often a noble face hides filthy ways." Now my filthy ways were exposed to everyone around me! And worse of all, noone really noticed.

Snow Blown

The sun began to set and an orange glow reflected from everything covered by the shell of last night's snowfall.

I stood at the lip of the subway exit and cringed. Delicate and fluffy, miniscule snowflakes gently floated to a perfect landing among the trampled, turbulent drift stretched out before me. The beauty was deceptive. I took one step into the powdery mass and fell. Within three seconds half of my body was soaking wet and freezing cold. I can't walk straight on a sunny day, let alone one where every perilous, frictionless step results in sloshed boots and unattractive dripping pants cuffs. These are the prices we pay to live in the greatest city on the Earth; well New York is great nine months of the year.

I used to love the snow; fake snow that is.


Shaking one of many of my auntie Mary's collectible snow globes, I'd delight in the white flaked, frenzied blizzard across a tiny, encapsulated, underwater city. I was a six year old God, and the teensy, plastic mailman or the merry Santa's sleigh had no choice but to feel my wicked, wintry wrath. The comfort of these benign figures was my whim.

However, as their only true savior, I also played the gentle deity. Following each turbulent maelstrom there always came a casual, happy lull as those glittery flakes dusted the German village or southern plantation depicted beneath the shiny, curved glass. I'd stare as the flakes fell onto the rooftops, stuffing my face with holiday cookies and virgin eggnog.

The only time we ever visited my auntie Mary's was for her annual Christmas party. She had way too many cats to justify any form of casual visit otherwise.

Recovering from my fall in the snow, I didn't believe any such benevolent God existed in control of our weather. His whims are capricious ones, and He seems to challenge my daily life with unsympathetic weather, ice and cold.

But a new snugglepuss has emboldened me to brave the harsh realities of this wintery mix in anticipation of the soft fantasies of a cotton- downed tangle. And so, last night, I cautiously stepped from the bowels of that train, and took a tentative step into the snow and quickly, awkwardly, to my knees.

It's amazing how the promise of a simple kiss can entice someone to step outside of their usual comfort zone; to tread down what may become a slippery slope. I stood myself back up. As if defiant, the wind took a frenzied gale and the snow violently blasted behind me.

And so I trekked with my hat held against my head and my spend-the-night bag clutched at my side. The wind hissed as freezing kisses dissed my cheeks. And still I trudged, knowing that across those few city blocks awaited a young man in a warm bedroom, contently staring out his window into the suddenly howling snow.

I furiously shook the glass dome and sat it down. One of my auntie's pesky cats mewed and begged for a bite of cookie. I shooed it off the bureau top and noticed the tiny figure of a young man poised walking into the falling snow of the amber cityscape, now a bluster of swirling snowflakes. He marched towards the direction of a miniscule brownstone in which sat a solitary man; this man was smiling and looking out his window towards the powdery street below. I too smiled. Strangely entranced, I quietly watched the snow fall while the bundled figure made his statuary pace from winter’s embrace and towards his friend’s arms.

White Lobster

It’s hard being a cow in a world of cattle. Everywhere signs tell me where to shop and what to watch. I hear commercials in my sleep. My only recourse is static, until NPR turns itself on promptly at 5:30 am and world events and folk music invade my early morning slumber.

On the subway it’s more urban static until a man plays a harmonica and everyone gives him ugly looks, yet no one tells him to stop. A grown man sits obscenely with a little girl on his lap. Her prematurely long legs dangle into my personal space. Noone tells her to move. He eyes me with the eyes of a predator. She looks like she’s drugged. I notice everyone looks drugged. The harmonica man says we are a cattle train and pulls a little riff through his instrument. I take offense until I give him the benefit of the doubt and glumly agree.

Moo…

This morning, even my chocolate chip muffin is victim to my neighbor’s incessant, continuous whining. Every three seconds my phone rings and I repeat myself, over and over and over.

Poor chocolate chip muffin; I locate its ears and promptly nibble them away.

My cubicle is my thatched hut, even though I know at any moment it can be burned to the ground and my privacy, my solitude can be taken away from me. I have my books arranged and my postcards neatly posted. My deaf, chocolate chip muffin looks at me with sad, Hershey brown eyes.

The little man with the harmonica had buggy eyes. As he played, his eyes bulged from their sockets. I glance at my eyes in the amber window. They are illuminated every three seconds as an orange streak of light flashes outside. I too appear drugged.

I decided to be proactive, or perhaps I was angry. I wanted to say something to the harmonica man, just as I want to say something to my cubicle mate about her whining. Though by saying something am I buying into society’s unspoken quietness rule, or stepping out of the mold and breaking the silence – yet only to, ironically, silence a creative individual? I talked myself out of it and stood in silence until the train stopped and the cattle stampeded off the cramped train. National Public Harmonica playing behind me.

Its 6:00 a.m. and NPR reports of a far away Central American village where men with nets pray for the White Lobster to wash ashore so their peasant families will be rich. The White Lobster is their name for bundles of cocaine which fall off drug boats during covert shipping between South America and Mexico. Every morning the competing village men silently wade into the waters and quietly pray a taped, albino bundle will wash into their nets. It never happens but to find one means you can sell it back to the drug lords, adult men with drugged, little girls. To find it means never again casting a net, riding the subway or answering the phone. All I’d need is a warm hut, a hammock and my muffin.

I turn the radio off and lay in true silence, dreaming of being a rich peasant someday.

Election Misdirection

Today our proud nation elects our 44th President. Or the fat people in the middle states will re-elect Bush and yours truly will be writing this column from a gay internment camp within, oh I’d say, two years, (‘cause four more years equals no more queers).

I’m truly unnerved regarding today’s election. I’ve swallowed three nerve pills and I fear I’m not much more for consciousness. In my fleeting moments of lucidity I will attempt to prove there’s so much more teetering on the results of the election not only for gays, like me, but for all of America, like you.

The French (and by way of the world): Cheese, fashion, little dogs, the guillotine and Jean-Pierre Jeunet. The French have given us so much.

It’s time we repaid our debt. And you think they’re snooty now? Just wait until Bush is re-elected. But it’s not only them. The entire world hates Bush! Everyone from Austria to Zimbabwe hates him. We have to think global and act local here people.

Gayest Neil’s College Fund: Every year I send dozens of aspiring queer, youth web columnists to junior colleges across America as part of my college fund: W.R.I.T.E.F.A.G.G.O.T.W.R.I.T.E. (Whatever, Reach Inside, Type Everything Frightening And Gay, Get Over-Traumatized When Remembering Incidents, Terrorize Exes). With Bush in power I won’t have the resources to continue this program which to date has resulted in six dorm room overdoses and three suicides. Hey, writing is the stuff of darkness, mister! It’s not for the weak-willed.

No more Reality TV: Yes Middle America. If you vote for Bush you’ll lose your reality television. You’ll never know what happens when you put assholes together in a condo and watch them sit and yell at each other. You’ll never know which girl married which guy after making out with him in the hot tub that night they all got drunk for the camera. You’ll never know which aspiring model/actress ate the goat’s brains for money. You’ll never know what happened when the sassy black mom was forced to live with the preppy white family and for God’s sake you’ll never see Paris Hilton interacting with rednecks ever, ever again. (There that should up Kerry’s numbers by at least 2%).

Dirty Orange Jumpsuits with No Heads: We don’t need anymore of them. But more and more will pop up, err slump over, if you vote for Bush. Go ahead and give into terrorism. It’s ok. Kerry will get us out of Iraq and we can build a giant wall around our country and be safe from the men with swords and planes.

Bill Clinton: The future Secretary General of the United Nations, William Jefferson Clinton, needs Kerry in office to become Mr. Secretary General. To be president of the world you gotta have the president of the world’s strongest nation in your corner. Unfortunately Bush doesn’t like ole Bubba too much. So vote for Kerry so we can see more of Bill Clinton.

Unicorns: These mythic beasts, who only eat from the hands of a young virgin girl, don’t support George Bush. Bush’s radical, anti-environment agenda has put America’s Unicorn population again on the endangered species list. The Republican’s would argue that Bush’s teenage abstinence programs have created more virgins to protect and cherish these kind creatures, but in truth these unwitting girls are simple pawns in Cheney’s black market Unicorn horn trade. If you love Unicorns, vote for Kerry.

Barbituates: Ambien and Nyquil is an interesting cocktail. Perhaps when this is all over I’ll sleep better without the aid of my pharmacist. Goodnight and happy Election 2004…

Rehab Rehashed

The spring of 1996 ended my vampyre poetry phase when I tried to take my own life. My roommate pulled back the velvet drapes concealing the coffin I slept in to find me unconscious, my lifeless eyes rolled back in my head. Blood smeared from my bottom lip, but he knew that was the stage blood I wore at the time. My arm hung to the floor pointing to my ankh and an empty jar of Rose Hips C 1000 Vitamin C Tablets.

I attempted suicide with a dietary supplement.

Slapping me awake, Clay drug me to the bathroom where my Vitamin C plea for help found a home in the toilet. For an entire week my pee smelled like tangerines.

Throughout the end of the semester, guidance counselors quizzed me with questions like, “When you get sad, what color do you see?”

“What one word best describes Neil?”

“Take this doll and show me where the bad man touched you.”

My answers were sand, shoehorn and holding the doll I beat it against the table shouting, “Little boys who play with dolls get the cage. Little boys who play with dolls get the cage!”

That summer Mother and Father enrolled me into Camp Alive! A summer camp for drug-addicts and the psychologically disturbed. Located in the beautiful Appalachian Mountains, Camp Alive! featured absolutely nothing. No pool. No sports. No badminton. No crafts. Nothing.

Campers were assigned to 10x10 white square rooms with one small window near the ceiling and a black iron door. Occasionally a counselor would check in on our sedation. Outside my window, a single asphalt strip ran the length of the building. The giant trees of the Appalachian trail were kept separate by a 15 foot razor wire fence.

The communal showers were under the constant watch of Andrew, a disgusting fat man with a greasy moustache. His voyeurism ended when Charlita, a 25 year old pre-op transsexual shived him with a spork. The guard wasn’t seriously injured, but Charlita was tossed into the padded room for a week. The Padded Room was a sign of status.

I remember on the first day we were given name tags. Each person’s psychosis or addiction was labeled in italics beneath each name. Eventually everyone became known by their first name with their surname being their illness. I was Neil Suicide. Charlita was there for attempted suicide also. Well, I’m terribly social and an “in” presented itself, so I said hello. Our conversation wound it’s way to our suicides.

“Mine was pill popping. I was pretty touch and go there. But luckily, I guess, I made it. You?”

She rotated her caramel colored arms to reveal thirteen various pink and red scars, all of different ages, running across her skin. I pointed out that thirteen was an odd number. Shouldn’t she cut both arms, each attempt? Charlita shrugged her shoulders and told me she also suffers from motivation problems. We found some fruit punch and became fast friends.

But now my best friend at Camp Alive! was locked away in the padded room. I sat alone at my dining hall table, glumly sporking my chili when Bobby Marijuana delivered a message.

“Hey, uhmmm, yeah, that drag queen dude, uhmm…ah shit, oh yeah… He wants you to go to the padded room dude. I think?” I gave bobby my crackers and stole my way to the Padded Room.

Charlita wanted revenge and she had the perfect plan. She told me to find all the gay and lesbian students. We were going to stage a protest in conjunction with Charlita’s release in five days! The protest would coincide with Gay Pride, the last Sunday of June!

Well apparently “gay” isn’t considered a mental illness at Camp Alive!. I only found two homosexual campers, a rail thin lipstick lesbian named Lisa Anorexia (Her Camp Alive! name was so poetic yet so tragic) and Zuni Heroin. He was a tiny Asian with a shaved head who wore swimming goggles everywhere. He had a sinister, dangerous look in his eyes.

Zuni never said a word, only nodded yes. So on the day of Charlita’s release the three of us waited on the black asphalt strip. Charlita emerged from the building, resplendent in her defiance. She stepped away from the counselors and declared,

“Ladies, gentlemen, counselors and fellows of Camp Alive! We, the gay and lesbian campers hereby declare today Gay Pride. We shall express our GAY Pride by marching on the black top and no one shall stop us! To take away our right to self expression is to defeat our expression or something” Mercy, I honestly don’t remember everything she said. That bitch could go on and on and on.

The four of us began marching along the black strip between the east side of the dorms and the fenced woodlands. I expected a mob of counselors in riot gear to tackle us. I expected sirens and a month in the padded room. But instead the counselors just chuckled, watching us.

“What do you do when you protest and noone cares?” I nervously asked Charlita.

“You continue protesting…”

So we marched the length of the asphalt. Passing the Padded Room, Jennie Turrets barked obscenities at us, but otherwise nothing happened. A crowd gathered as the day rolled on. Carmine and Tony Gambler both placing bets on who’d drop first. It was little Lisa Anorexia. I kept telling her she looked like she’d gained some weight, to keep her marching, but it was no good. The counselors rushed orange juice and carrots to her when she collapsed going into hour three.

Back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth.

For the first few hours we chanted aggressive queer slogans, “We’re here, we’re queer, we’re coming for your children!” But as the day drew on, the protest became silent, only punctuated by Jennie’s occasional “fuck, shit, cock fucker!” Eventually the campers returned to their rooms. Zuni Heroin left as the sun set, still silent, only glaring at us from behind his plexiglass headwear.

Charlita and I continued to march. Exhausted and dehydrated we refused to let the counselors not stop us from expressing our Gay Pride in defiance of Charlita’s physical assault. Finally it was 10 o’clock. Andrew with the greasy moustache ordered us to go inside and Charlita stopped marching, smug in her victory.

“I knew this would happen. You are always trying to steal our rights to express our sexuality!” She slowly walked by him, her last image of defiance a righteous middle finger in his chubby, sweaty face.

The remainder of the summer, Charlita Suicide and I were inseparable. On the final week we traded mailing addresses and promised to be pen-pals. She lived in Michigan and I was returning to Manhattan. I wrote her a letter as soon as I got home and in two weeks it was returned to me with a bad addres.

I never heard from Charlita Suicide ever again.

Locks of Love

Enrique, my stylist, has a severe cocaine problem. I know because he constantly tweaks and rubs his nose. Also, he disappears to the bathroom every five seconds, leaving me there exposed in his torture chair with (God-forbid) my mid-coif melon exposed to the world.

I honestly do not know why I spend thousands of dollars on hair styling, scalp massage, eyebrow waxing, coloring and organic avocuava facials only so this little Puerto Rican princess can snort my cash up his goddamned nose!

You’re asking what’s avocuava, aren’t you? Well, one afternoon, little Enrique comes flitting back to the chair as chatty as a chihuahua, “Oh Meester Gayest Neil. In my island country of Puerto Rico my grand mami-Gorda teach me a wahnderful facial scrup made from exotic guava and wahnderful avocado. You like to try, si?”

“Stop snorting and start scrubbing!” I declared. That little Mexican mixed an amazing facial scrub. What? Puerto Rico? Oh, for fuck’s sake. Brown is Black is White is Red. Puerto Rico? Mexico? Canada? Holland? China? We’re all global citizens. We’re the world’s children. Back to my story, I asked Enrique what he calls his facial scrub and he replied, “This is my Mami Gorda’s Guava and Avocado Facial Scrub.”

I CAN’T FIT A CHIMICHANGA IN MY MOUTH... MUCH LESS THAT!

“You’ll never sell it with a name that long, my dear. You need something catchy. You need something fresh. Let’s see. I GOT IT! Avocuava. Call it Avocuava Facial Scrub.”

“But Meester Gayest Neil? What of me grand-Mami Gorda?”

“You love her but drop her, Enrique. Your scrub needs something nouveau, something the hipsters will snag right up. And slap ‘organic’ on that name! Organic sells.”

And right there, Enrique’s Organic Avocuava Facial Scrub was born. Bless little Enrique’s heart. The little fucker cannot say the word avocuava, but he sells the shit out of it.

Enough discussion of Enrique’s business acumen. This morning he still hadn’t returned from the bathroom.

“Enrique!” I screamed once, twice, three times and finally he comes spinning into the room. And he’s been crying.

“Oh Meester Gayest Neil. I do not know English to say theese.” He begins crying again. “But my dear seester and my in-law brother and my bambino nephew Enrique Junior were in a cahr crash and have died!!” At this point Enrique collapsed into a heap on the floor.

I didn’t know what to do. My haircut wasn’t finished. Should I get up? Should I say something? Well, he continued to wail on the floor and after what must have been ten minutes of this awkwardness, I finally left the chair, took the plastic sheet off and moved towards poor, sobbing Enrique.

His face was contorted in an expression of grief, anger and bewilderment. I carefully reached out to him. His shaking hand stretched towards mine.

“Enrique, you didn’t finish my hair, but I’ll pay you anyways. And here’s an extra something.” I slipped him cash for my haircut and stood. He dropped the money and convulsed, wailing louder than before.

“Now don’t you get used to those big tips!” I joked, but he only cried more profusely. I quietly showed myself out and, a newspaper over my head, made my way to the nearest Great Clips where a barbarian maiden with the nametag “Jackie” mangled my head and nearly cut my ear off. The entire time, I couldn’t get Enrique out of my mind.

On the walk home, I held my head high. I imagined Enrique’s pain. I related on some level as my shorn locks were much like Enrique’s dead family. I too had experienced loss. What if his sister had spent a little more time pounding homemade tortillas or little Enrique Junior had spent a little more time writing back to his Christian Children’s Fund sponsor here in America? Fate too crippled my stylist, which in turn sent me to Great Clips. Who knows what happened to “Jackie”.

It’s the butterfly effect. Ah…maybe butterflect? Fectutter?

Regardless, Enrique Santiago Martinez is in my thoughts tonight. This afternoon, when I returned to my 2800-square foot loft in Chelsea, I opened the salon window. It was magic hour; the golden sunlight was shining in a beautiful shaft cutting through a cloud.

I drew my hand back through my shorn scalp, brought it in front of me and blew towards the sunshine. A shimmering cloud of miniscule shaved hairs sparkled like pixies, floated and danced to the street below. I squinted into the light. I saw Enrique’s family.

And they were safe.