New Year!

Street walking cheetah.

Twenty fourteen has definetely been a roller coaster ride to say the least.  My drama-queen, only-child, alcoholic, Scorpio self wants to believe it was the worst year of my life.  That's not exactly true. So I went through a break-up,  boohoo.   I'm not the 1st and certainly not the last person on earth to have such an experience.  I got over it.
     I've always had this knowledge in my mind that love is not available to me.  I don't mean this in a woe-as-me kind of way. What I mean is that as a child, feeling and knowing that I was different from most people I got many clear cut messages from society that who and what I am was wrong.   Things that are unsaid are actually worse and more hurtful than things that are said out loud.  So, as a young gay boy in suburbia there were absolutely no positive role models for me.  There were a few obviously gay clowns that epitomized the hyper-flamboyant type of gay in the media but no one that I wholeheartedly related to.
     Even the most outrageously girly rocks bands like Duran Duran & Motley Crüe turned out to be all hetero. Thier style was just surface it wasn't dictated by sexuality. Then came Boy George and the regular world had never seen anything like that before.  The big question everyone always had was "is that a boy or girl?" Not only did I never question that I always wondered why anyone cared.  I thought he was beautiful but it was too embarrassing for the fruity, gay boy to admit he liked him.
     For these reasonss I never, ever imagined myself in love or with anyone romantically let alone getting married.  I understood that society didn't believe in gay love so I internalized this knowledge and locked it away deep inside myself.  I honestly believed this was true for a long, long time.  I turned 44 in October and my previous relationship was the longest (4.5 years) of my life - by 4 years!!!  It took a lot of deep, discovery and work to dispel my own false beliefs.
     I don't regret any of it.  In fact, I learned so much about myself in that time and we did a lot of amazing things together.  Mainly, I learned that I'm capable of a long-term, romantic relationship. This one wasn't meant to be and I'm not so sure any relationship is meant to be forever.  Forever doesn't exist, nothing lasts forever our time here is fleeting.  Perhaps this last one was practice for something super fabulous that's coming next?  Or, maybe, that was my big long-term relationship for this lifetime?  It doesn't really matter either way, if I stay in the present and don't project some prearranged future onto myself then all is fine and dandy.
      I had some of the best experiences of my life in 2014 as well - thus, contradicting my false drama-queen exaggerations.  I saw friggin Kate Bush, in London! A lifelong dream come true - I have the pictures to prove it.  I saw the David Bowie Is exhibit in Chicago during a trip generously planned by an amazing friend of mine.  I saw the original line-up of Fleetwood Mac.  I attended 2 glorious weddings that were both the sweetest testimonies of love.  I also had 2 fabulous trips to Palm Springs this year also generously planned by another amazing friend who spoiled me rotten.
     The good really does outweigh the bad and if you really look closely the bad isn't even bad at all.  After enough time passes you realize that even the most painful experiences are lessons taught and they are necessary for the next leg of your journey.  Bring it on 2015 - I'm gonna have a fabulous time in you!

Rock-N-Roll With Me

Rob Zombie tour bus, Chicago 2014

A few months ago I woke up to an amazing text from my friend.  He was asking if I'd be willing to fly to Chicago to attend his wife's (also my friend) surprise birthday party.  I mean, you don't have to twist my arm to except an offer like that so I texted back an emphatic YES!! It was also perfect timing because the birthday soiree was taking place the week after I was returning from the Kate Bush show in London.  Just when I was thinking that there couldn't possibly be any other exciting adventures after that doozy - BAM! - another awesome plan in the works to alleviate the come down from Kate Bush.
     There are moments in life when the timing of things all line up and work out perfectly.  It makes up for all those other moments when you just can't seem to make anything work out at all.  Well, this trip to Chicago made up for all those other moments in the biggest and bestest way.  Turns out that a David Bowie exhibit was opening at the MCA that very week that I was flying out there.  The exhibit "David Bowie Is" had traveled all over the world and was only making 1 stop (ONE STOP!!!) in the USA and it just so happens that stop is Chicago.  Fortune was shining it's golden light upon me and melting away all the other dark shit from this tumultuous year!  What could be more amazing than an entire exhibit of everything Bowie, short of a time machine to take me back to 1974 to attend the "Diamond Dogs" tour??
     It was absolute perfection.  My friend Allison and I flew to Chicago on Thursday morning.  We checked into our hotel, took a short nap and then got all gussied up for the birthday bash.  At dinner we all decided that we HAD to go to the Bowie exhibit the next day so we all got up and met in the morning and walked over to the museum and proceeded to be inundated with the magic that is Bowie.  Not only did all that work out so well it also so happened that the Chicago airport was closed on Friday for a full 24 hours due to a fire at the air traffic controller's tower and thousands of flights were cancelled and a jillion people were stranded.  Had our plans been 1 day off we never would have made it on this trip.  For once the gods were laughing WITH us and not AT us.

Outide "David Bowie Is" at the MCA, Chicgao

   After the exhibit we went to lunch then all piled on the tour bus to go to the opening night of Rob Zombie's Great American Nightmare.  We got to have a preview of all the mazes with the lights on and before all the ghouls and goblins had taken their places in the catacombs to scare the living beejeebus outta us.  It was really awesome to actually get to look at the mazes and all the intricate detail that went into designing them and making them so creepy, gross and cool.  Of course, the evening ended with a kick-ass Rob Zombie concert to boot!!  We packed so much into this awesome weekend it was an absolute rock-n-roll extravaganza.
     The next day we went to the airport and even after that crazy, 24 hour debacle our flight was on time and we actually got back to LA without a hitch.  Being surrounded by great friends, great art and rock-and-roll is a sure fire cure for any blues one may be carrying around inside.   I dare you to go to an entire exhibit of David Bowie and not walk away inspired and energized.

    Gentle hearts are counted down

The queue is out of sight and out of sounds

Me, I'm out of breath, but not quite doubting 

I've found a door which lets me out!

     

Moments Of Pleasure

Me outside The Hammersmith for Kate Bush on 9/16/14

There are moments, events in life that are so magical, so special that it seems the stars are actually shining down on you, the moon is actually in the seventh house and that Jupiter has actually aligned with Mars.  These moments make you fully and completely aware that there is something much bigger and more powerful than us mere mortals in charge.  These moments let you look into the face of God (if that's what you wish to call it) and make you truly believe in miracles.  I experienced such a moment on 9/16/14 when I had the privilege of seeing Kate Bush live in London.
     I bought my 1st Kate Bush record in 1985 and ever since that day I have dreamed of seeing her perform.  In fact, there really isn't any other living artist left on my list of  "must-see-before-I-die."  I'd literally seen all of my idols, heros, & icons except for her and, it seemed, like that would never be a possibility. The fact that she decided to do this series of shows after a 35 year absence from the stage is what inspired this blog in the 1st place.  Miraculously, I scored 2 tickets and my friend Linda from NYC excitedly agreed to make the pilgrimage to London with me.  Linda and I have been to many shows together since we met in 1992 and a lot of them inspire awe and envy when I tell people about them.  For instance, Linda got us tickets to see The Dead Can Dance at Town Hall in NYC in 1993 and we had front row center seats - it was pretty incredible.
     We were both so nervous the evening of the show that we arrived at the venue before 6pm and doors didn't even open until 6:15pm.  I mean, who ever arrives at a gig for doors opening?  Well, apparently, a lot of people for this special night because there was already a line out front & we were hardly the people that traveled the furthest. There were so many people from all over the world who like us, flew to London just for this show.  After maneuvering through the throngs at the merch counter we finally made our way to our seats and we both almost cried when we realized we were 2nd row, center. The 2nd best seats we had ever had! I knew the seats were good but what I didn't know is that they extended the stage and in doing so had removed the front 3 rows leaving us in the 2nd row. It was miraculous to say the least and perhaps it was some great reward for waiting 3 decades for that moment!
     When the show started Kate came onto the stage wearing all black, slowly, measuredly marching followed by a procession of singers/performers to the thunderous applause of an immediate full-house standing ovation. When she reached the center of the stage she faced the audience, smiled and outstretched her arms as if she were simultaneously hugging and receiving the love from the audience.  This was the 1st moment the tears started to flow and I'm assuming if I had turned around I wouldn't have seen a dry eye in the house. She was like a magical, lovable, earth-mother, witch and I wanted to leap onto the stage and squeeze her and never let go.  Of course, I'm not that crazy & not at all stalker-y so I stayed put but I practically could have reached out and touched her due to the proximity of our seats.  Thus began one of the most incredible, unique and profoundly, well,  Kate Bush-y performances I have ever seen.
     It would take far too many words to describe the entire show but I will say that not only did it not disappoint, it far surpassed what I had expected. It was music, theater, film, performance, poetry, magic - it was art at its purest and most complete form.  Her voice was incredible - strong, powerful, vulnerable, and chill inducing.  I cried no less than 4 times.  At the expected moments - "Running Up That Hill," & "Cloudbusting," but also during songs that have never before elicited that reaction - "Top Of The City," "Hello Earth" & "Nocturn."  She performed the entire 2nd side of her "Hounds of Love" album which has its own title - "The Ninth Wave."  It's a chilling, spooky, sad & joyous journey into the dark night of the soul and it sounds like theater, like a Greek tragedy set in the delirious mind of a drowning woman, it was always meant to be performed.
     When the interval (that's UK for intermission) started the show could easily have come to a complete end. Already at about 2 hours long had it ended there the entire, mesmerized audience would have gone home feeling fulfilled and complete yet there was still a whole other section coming that was over an hour long! Again, magic!  As if the show weren't enough there was another miraculous moment that took place.  Before the show Linda & I were reminiscing about all the enviable gigs we had been to together and for some reason she told me she'd never seen Annie Lennox live and would love to.  I told her about seeing the Eurythimcs in 1986 and also how I had seen Annie at The Apollo Theater in Harlem in 2003.  I told her about how the night at the Apollo had the most celebrities I had ever seen in attendance at a show and I wondered what other legendary musicians were coming to see Kate Bush?  Linda went to use the restroom and when she was returning to our seats it was obvious by her body language and demeanor that something incredible had happened.  Well, of course, it was Annie Lennox!!!!  She was in line in front of her for the ladies room looking gorgeous, radiant and ageless. The funniest part is that we had much better seats than she did.
     I'm trying my best to carry the beautiful energy and love from that show inside of me and to radiate it back out into the world - it was such an unbelievable experience that I want to hold it near and dear to my heart forever.  I doubt that anything will ever surpass that moment but then again I had no idea a moment like that would ever actually happen in my life.  I know for sure there will be more magic, more moments of pleasure, more music - there will probably be no more Kate Bush shows in store for me though.  When people ask me how the show was I say we went on a pilgrimage to find god and succeeded!

Small World

It's A Small World

I had the incredible experience of making amends to and re-connecting with 2 ex boyfriends this week - both with whom things ended painfully.  The 1st one's heart was crushed by me and with the 2nd one the tables were turned & I was devastated.  It all happened quite by chance, or not if you believe that everything happens the way it's supposed to.  I received a notice that my most recent ex had followed me on Instagram which means that he had to un-follow me 1st.  I sent him a text and asked what that was all about.  He told me he was bummed that I posted a few pics with my new beau  before I had told him I had a new beau.  Also, they used to work together and aren't quite fond of each other.  I had considered telling him but I decided that since he's my ex I don't really owe him any explanations about my current life.  We ended up having a great conversation anyway and he told me that the 1st guy he went on a date with after moving to NYC turned out to also be my ex!
     It was amazing that he choose to share that experience with me because I had thought about the ex ex guy several times over the years and wanted to reach out to him.  We had dated in the summer of 2004 which is when I had decided, for sure, that I was going to move to LA in Jan., 2005.  I thought we were casually seeing each-other but he, apparently, thought it was much more serious.  He was devastated by my moving announcement and we ended things in kind of an ugly way on the streets of the east village one afternoon.  I did really like him but there were other things going on too - I was sober for 4 years and he was on a plethora of prescription drugs that made sleeping with him at night like a horror movie.  He definitely had some demons to battle.
     Now that he was back in my mind I quickly went to my computer, found him on the interweb and sent him an email apologizing for how things ended and for being insensitive with his feelings.  He responded quickly saying it was great to hear from me and also apologized and told me he's been sober now for over a year.  Amazing.  I felt so light and free after clearing the air with him that I decided to do it again with yet another ex.
     I had met this boy, yes boy, at a club in LA that was way too young for me but we hit it off right away.  What I anticipated being a one-night stand ended up lasting for 6 months - 3 of which we spent breaking up and getting back together.  How did that ever happen?  That was NOT me, I never was the guy to go back for more punishment.  I mean, I never tried to hang out at restaurants or bars that I was fired from like some weird ex-employees I have encountered.  Usually, I'm a clean slate kinda guy.  For some reason I was strung out on the boy and couldn't function without him - that was an internal problem with me not him.  I have since realized that what I wanted and expected from him he could not give me because I couldn't even give those things to myself at the time.  A huge symptom of addiction is seeking outside yourself for things to fulfill your insides - drugs, booze, sex, shopping, gambling (basically, all the fun shit!).  It never really works though.
     So, I found the boy on Facebook, added him as a friend and now we, too, are talking via the interweb and, again, it feels amazing to clear the air.  At this point I only have fond memories of both of those guys because I really cared a lot for them.  The painful memories always subside, eventually, unless you have some sort of really deep PTSD that forces you to re-live the same moments over and over again - in that case they still perform lobotomies in Eastern Europe.
     The real lesson to learn here is that people never really go away unless they die and even then they can haunt you from the grave or the recesses of your mind or whatever it is you choose to believe in.  Someone can move to Hong Kong or Brooklyn and be physically out of sight but they still come creeping back into your psyche like that girl form The Ring.  This is why it's essential to not burn bridges and to not harbor resentments - those things only harm us, the person being resented doesn't feel a thing.
     I'm so happy that a seemingly negative moment with my most current ex lead me down this path of healing and closure.  You just never know how or when a message will be delivered to you.  Also, my next blog will be ALL about my experience seeing Kate Bush live next week in London.  If you've been paying attention here then you'll know that the announcement of her live shows is what inspired me to start this blog in the 1st place.  Over the moon I am!!!

Kate Bush

     Today seemed like a good day to start a blog.  It's something I've wanted to do for a while now and after receiving a rather exciting email this morning I thought "today is the day."  Yesterday was a crappy day both figuratively and literally.  I've had an upset stomach all week and I was having a real pity party about my whole life in general - often, I tend to get too inward when I'm not feeling well and I start judging myself harshly.
     After an entire day of feeling hopeless and unaccomplished I woke up to an email from Kate Bush! Well, not actually Kate Bush but an email from her fan site stating that she would be playing a series of shows this summer after a 35 year absence from the stage.  If you are asking yourself right now "who is Kate Bush?" please, I beg of you, PLEASE Google her, download her albums, look on the interweb - educate yourself to this mystical, musical master (http://www.katebush.com)!  After the shock of the news, and the fact that I'm a big enough nerd to be registered on her fan site, wore off I felt a strange feeling of elation and excitement and, well, hope.
     People always say that music saved their lives and I really, truly must concur.  As an awkward and strange, gay child growing up in upstate NY I didn't have much to identify with or look forward to.  Discovering music was like opening a magical Pandora's Box (not the drag queen) and riding on a magic carpet to amazing new places where there were like minded souls - and unicorns, of course!  When you "discover" a new band as a kid you feel like you have found the key to something special that no one else has.  Listening to an album for the 1st time makes you feel like you are the only person who has ever been lucky enough to hear these particular sounds.
     Kate Bush is a strange and magical creature.  She's the strangest kind of strange because she looks pretty normal but, in fact, is kookier that the kookiest.  She's kind of like the Marilyn Munster of music.  I use words like strange and kooky as a reverence because I LOVE the strange, the kooky, and the queer.  She found a way to express outwardly the swirl of kaleidoscopic emotions that I was feeling inside even though I was a far cry from an English, country girl with a seriously musical family.  That's the thing about music, it's universal.  Kate could play a heartbreaking melody on the piano and sing words that caused tears to spill and then switch to a braying donkey howling in possession.  Perfection!
     I even used to perform lip synch numbers of her songs when I was a young drag queen in NYC.  For a while I worked as a waitress at a place called Stingy Lulu's on St. Mark's Place in the East Village.  One time I was performing "Wuthering Heights" (a song Kate wrote at school when she was like 16 or something crazy like that) and I decided to run out the front door of the restaurant onto the icy, winter streets wearing a see-though, flow-y gown.  Right on queue I pressed myself up to the plate glass window from outside just in time to lip the words "Heathcliff, it's me -- Cathy. Come home.  I'm so cold.  Let me in-a-your window." The patrons of the restaurant went wild as I ran back inside, teetering on strappy-stilletos, onto the stage in time to finish the song!
    Some people don't "get" Kate Bush or they feel like she's too much of a girly, emotional singer.  She clearly didn't fit into the punk scene at all - I mean, she trained under Marcel Marceau and is probably the only person ever to make mime not detestable.  That being said her album "Hounds Of Love" is on every single list ever compiled of the best albums of all times.  I would have to say that "Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)" is the most perfect song ever written, or one of them at least.  Personally, her album "The Dreaming" is my favorite because it is, well, the weirdest one.
     The tickets for her upcoming 15 shows in London have not even gone on sale yet.  She does not travel and most likely will never play in the US.  I may not even be lucky enough to score any tickets for those gigs.  The idea that she's playing and the possibility that I may actually see the only living idol of mine left that I have not seen live yet fills me with hope.  Just receiving that email alone gave me the nudge I needed to realize that life is a grand and awesome journey.  Music really does save lives.  It sure saves mine.