In Which We Wander

Diane von Austinburg and I both remarked at times on this trip to Paris and London how very easy it has been.  And it truly was, right up to the point when it wasn't. The last day of our trip, we left the hotel with plenty of time, I fumbled through check-in, said goodbye to Diane, who was on a separate flight, and settled into the very fancy first class lounge, because I am a fancy boy.  It was all very nice, quiet and well appointed. 

The problem was it was just a little too comfortable.  After I found my fabulously cozy chair and started reading a very interesting book I had saved for this very purpose, I sort of lost track of time.  Actually "sort of" is an understatement; I completely lost track of time.  That's what reading will do to you.  When I finally looked up I realized I was in real trouble.  I had to scramble out of the rarified atmosphere of first class and down through a train ride to another terminal where I found the gate had closed at 2:55.  The time was 2:58.  Oops.

So then I had to drag myself off to customer service (everybody's favorite department) with my tail between my legs and admit that I had missed my flight for no better reason than that I am an idiot.  The lady at the desk was very nice and refrained from passing along to the ticketing agent the insight I had shared about my absolute lack of mental ability, and got me a ticket for the next day.  And how much did that cost you, mrpeenee?  Let us not dwell on such sordid details and just file that under the heading of A Lot.

Diane had mentioned that Terminal 5 of Heathrow Airport is the largest freestanding building in Great Britain, and I am here to confirm that, having dragged myself across every square fucking inch of that fucking building.  Of course the gate where I missed my flight was on the other side of the airport from where I needed to go to rebook my ticket which was then back across from where I needed to go to be "escorted out" since having gone through security I couldn't just wander off into the wild world. Heathrow airport is actually a very large shopping mall with various airport functions scattered in hither and yon.  All the directions I got for where I needed to go were couched in terms of consumerist landmarks, "Customer services is next to Starbucks," "Have a seat across from Chanel and we'll call your name." By the time I had crossed and recrossed the whole damn place my feet hurt, I was sweaty, and all too glad to collapse in the Heathrow Sheraton.  I can recommend their spaghetti bolognese.

The next day I went back through the whole thrilling adventure of getting through the airport and actually boarding the plane.  The only rough patch was the gate where three different flights were boarding simultaneously and a riot seemed imminent.  It was the most chaotic scene in an airport I've ever witnessed, and I've flown Southwest out of New Orleans when everyone, the ticket agents, the crew, the passengers, everybody, was drunk.

But I got home, hooray, and the cats are very glad to see me.  Toby has spent most of the last 24 hours standing on my head to celebrate.  I know every time I leave on a trip when I get back I announce firmly, "I am never leaving San Francisco again," but this time for sure.

There's no place like home, and no guys like naked guys:

How I could have used some of this as I was crying myself to sleep in the Heathrow Sheraton.

It all turned into a very long day of Not Getting Home.

Plus I had to then admit my shame to everyone, Diane, my friends taking care of the cats, the staff at the airport and hotel, that I missed my flight because I wasn't paying attention.

At least the British Airways guys were professionally polite, my "friends" were exactly as supportive as you would expect.  They all laughed.

It makes me realize there is no future in human friends; it's all AI from now on for me.

You think traveling in first class would remove you from the hoi polloi, but I am here to tell you there is no escape.  That mob at the gate I had to fight my way through was the hoi-est polloi you can imagine.

One of the things I'm reminded of whenever I travel is that people smell bad.

Also, I don't know how we managed to travel without phones, back in the dark ages.

In which we get lost

 

As I was struggling to button up my pants last night, I thought "I need to ease up on the old calories," after which I promptly went out for a lavish dinner. I blame those damn croissants; it's all French weight, Paris pounds.  Yes, Diane von Austinburg and I are once again in Gay Paree.

So what's up with this trip to a center of civilization and culture? What have I done while visiting one of the great cities of the world?  I have eaten.  Eaten and eaten and eaten, such delicious foods.  We visited a couple of museums and parks just to give me some plausible deniability that all I did here is stuff my greedy face.  Even when we went to the museums, the cafes there were an important part of the experience.  At the Institute of the Arab World for instance, I had a delicious exotic lunch of a green salad with olives and feta and watermelon in it.  I would like to imply I'm just doing this to keep my strength up, but actually I'm just a pig when it comes to good food.

Last night we had dinner at a joint called the Beef Bar.  That's not a translation, that's it's actual name.  Man, was it a gorgeous room, all Art Nouveau tile

Of course it's not all lavish lunches and dinners, there are also tasty breakfasts to consider.  Come with me as we go out for a little morning pick me up. 

The cafe half a block from the hotel called the Saint Regis.  

Diane and I went out to see Notre Dame and Saint Chappelle yesterday.  Our hotel is only a couple of blocks from there, so we strolled over, la la la, only to be confronted by an enormous line waiting to get in.  It looked like a goddamn Mardi Gras parade.  I would have thought it was a well-behaved mob except everybody was facing in the same direction.  I could tell Diane knew I was immediately ready to flee since I have no patience for standing in line and I also realized once I finally got through the line I would have to be stuck inside with all the people who had formerly been in front of me.  She suggested instead that we try Saint Chappelle and come back to Notre Dame later.  I agreed, we headed over there and guess what we found?  ANOTHER ENORMOUS LINE.  That was when I abandoned my dear friend and came back to the hotel. 

In my defense, I have seen both of them more than once and while I think they're beautiful and interesting and important, I'm just not willing to be herded along with a few hundred strangers.  Diane later told me the line for Saint Chappelle was so slow she eventually gave up on it, but then was able to get into Notre Dame pretty easily and liked it.  So she got to see an important monument to Western Civilization and I got to have more coffee.  It was a win-win. 

We are headed off shortly for the train to London via the tunnel under the English channel.  I'm looking forward to London, and the train ride, but I always am sorry to bid adieu to Paris.  And especially to the shower in this hotel.  Adieu, Mon douche, adieu.

In Which We Consider the Rules

There are rules I live by, and these are not the usual old hippie hash like "be grateful" or "live in the moment."  Mine lean more towards "don't get caught" or "clean underwear is always a good idea."  But that's sort of the big picture rules, there are also ones that guide me in my day-to-day.  Like how being on time is just not natural and possibly bad luck, or how important having a bag of Pepperidge Farm cookies on hand at all times is.

I realize some of my rules are simply my tendency towards OCD rearing its ugly head.  For instance, when I go to bed, I prefer to sleep on my right side, but I always start out lying on my left. Always. That's the rule.  I have become particularly aware of this since my cat Toby moved in with me.  Toby insists on sleeping with me, or rather, ON me, but only while I am on my left side.  That is his rule.

These bedtime shenanigans follow a very prescribed pattern.  After I settle down on my left side, Toby climbs aboard and curls up a thwart my arms with an air of "well it's about time." We then have an ongoing tussle of him trying to lick my face and me threatening death and dismemberment if he doesn't knock it off.  He seems convinced I would be better off with a cheek that smells like cat food. 

We only get past that point when he decides it's time to climb up on the pillow and press his ribs against my nose.  This is the part of the evening we call Let's Suffocate peenee.  It is also the part when I decide it's time to escape and I roll over on my right.  As soon as I do, Toby abandons my pillow and moves down to the foot of the bed.  Because that is the rule.

Naked guys who rule:

Radio Free Dick

The mirror has two dicks.

Big watch you got there.

Cause everybody likes sailors, especially naked ones.

Just some nude dude.

Everybody with an animal winds up struggling over bedspace.

In Which We Are Stumped

 

Every time I feel like I am getting a handle on the website I am creating for Super Agent Fred's art, I suddenly have my ass handed to me.  These setbacks lead to a dance my people call One Fucking Step Forward, Two Fucking Steps Back, Fall Down On Your Face, ChaChaCha.

This all started when Super Agent Fred died, the inconsiderate little pea brain.  And now that I think about it that in itself was a pretty serious setback.  His death meant that SOMEBODY had to deal with all of his art.  How did that somebody turn out to be me?  I'm not sure, I wasn't paying attention, but I suspect it was mostly because of my tendency towards OCD.  But even the most serious OCD can only do so much in the face of ongoing delays.

Let's just consider these complications in order, shall we?  The very first setback was moving all the art pieces over here to my apartment.   As I was wrestling them across town, my initial estimate of how many there are was somewhere around 100.  I have since come to realize that was laughably low.  I keep revising the total upwards, currently I'm guessing there are about 400 pieces.  In case you have trouble with math like I do, the technical term for 400 is A Lot.

Once it was all over here, the collection (which consists of paintings on canvas, drawings on heavy paper, collages, big pieces, little pieces, lotsa pieces) was pretty much a mountain filling up my guest room.  I made a couple of half-hearted passes at tidying it all up, but it remained an overwhelming heap looming there.  That was in late September and I concentrated on ignoring it.

My idea was that I would take pictures of each piece, post them on a website here on blogger.com, and then advertise that site on places like Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace as "Free Art" and hopefully recycle all this art out into the wide world.  I still think it's a good idea, but executing it turned out to be held up by setback number 2, and this is a big one, the fact that I am a lazy slug.

Weeks went by with me putting off the very first step which was taking those pictures.  When I finally realized I would never become the kind of go-getter who would take all those photos, I decided to hire someone.  Setback number three then was finding a photographer and setting up a photo session.  You can read all about that here, but the TLDR version is that once I contacted him, boom, he was over here and finished the job in just a few hours.  Thank God somebody is on top of things. 

So I created the blog and loaded the pictures on to it, a task that only took a few minutes, but which I was able to stretch out over several more weeks, and which we should think of as setbacks number four and five.

And that's where we have currently run aground.  Now that all the pieces are up on the blog, I am labeling each one with its measurements, a description ("ink and acrylic on heavy stock" for instance,) and reference number, so when people clamor for their own masterpiece I will know which one they're talking about.

Setback number 6 turned out to be that when I finally set to putting together those labels, I discovered my "organizational system" of dumping all the pieces into heaps around the room didn't lend itself to tracking down each one of them when I needed to find it to measure and describe it.  So I spent an afternoon actually grouping the works into categories that I could lay my hands on when I needed them.  

It was during this uncharacteristic burst of organizing that I ran across the latest setback, number 7, which was that apparently, the photographer did not photograph all the pieces.  In his defense, I don't think he deliberately skipped some, more likely, the shambles he had to master simply meant that there were some he wound up overlooking.  So now I need to get him back over here to finish. 

I know, I know, I know, you're thinking "mrpeenee, just get on with it," and I will.  But every time one of these reversals rears up and smacks me in the face, I am so overwhelmed, I just take to my bed.  Defeated, I slink out of the guest room, lie down with Toby curled up next to me and his little head on my shoulder (so fucking SWEET) and comfort myself by looking at porn.  Because I always have energy for smut.  Procrastination is one of my overwhelming problems, but I'm trying to bear in mind that I have actually made progress, just not very much and not very quickly. But like I said, one fucking step forward . . . .

Guys I would not put off: 

I'm digging that wallpaper

Get in the car, loser.

What a sweet boy.

Hot tubs with that much foam in them are a bad sign.  Too much DNA running loose in there.

A naked, humpy reader.  What could be more appealing?

This picture confuses me, he's washing next to a scaffold, amidst a rock garden?  Not that that would stop me, but still, what?

That kind of oar is called a scull and I think using them looks so elegant.  Especially if you have an ass like that.

Speaking of asses.

Nick Tyler, in all his meatiness.

And speaking of meatiness.

In Which Our Quietude is Shattered

 

For the most part, I have always been fairly neutral about motorcycles.  I will admit they look cool, sort of, and are an effective prop for gay porn.  

Aside from that, I could take them or leave them.  No hard feelings, you guys go your way and I'll go mine was what I would have thought about them if I had thought about them at all.  All that changed once I moved into this apartment on San Francisco's enormous main drag.  Traffic and its accompanying noise is just part of big city life.  Six lanes of traffic right outside my bedroom window?  Oh well.  Think how easy it is to get an Uber.   A firehouse half a block away just means fire trucks roaring by with sirens blaring at all times of the day and night because people are so inconsiderate about when they burn their house down.

But I will never become accustomed to the racket of motorcycles, the bane of my existence.  It is hard enough sleeping with two cats who have staked out their territories in bed right where I want to sleep (I cannot understand how an animal less than a tenth of my size can take up twice the space I do.  Move over dammit), but then I have to contend with the thunderous roar of somebody's hog rumbling up the street to god knows where.  There I will be, tucked in my bed, in the sweet twilight of not quite awake, forced into a z formation by the cats when suddenly, VAROOM, some queer accountant making up for his lost youth and his inadequate penis revs his engine and scares me awake.  I swear when that happens, I actually levitate slightly up off the surface of the bed. 

Ever since early fall, the streets here have been flooded by gangs of dirt bike riders, the only thing noisier and worse than a regular motorcycle since dirt bikes sound very much like a blender with its volume cranked up to 11.  Any holiday or long weekend is guaranteed to see some biker group on a run come thundering past my building, but those bikers tend to coordinate their invasions with cops.  The dirt bike dirt bags on the other hand revel in their outlaw status (dirt bikes are not street legal here) and since they're much more nimble than the cops, there's not much the police can do.  As usual, I am not 100% on John Law's side, but I would like to have my snoozing only impaired by a couple of insolent kitties, if that's not too much to ask. 

Insolent nude guys: 

Daylight Savings Time begins (or ends, I'm never sure which) this weekend.

It's just one more sign that we have turned the calendar corner and are headed for summer.

I am pretty sure I have featured this guy sort of recently, but, as usual, I don't care.

The Boys of Summer and their adorable buttchops.

I certainly do appreciate a well-filled speedo.

I was going to ask if you can spot this week's AI, but it is pretty obvious.

Daniel Montoya and his superior ass.

In Which We Act Our Age

 Okay, so I will be 70 years old next month. Seventy. Seven tee.  How is that possible?  This was not part of my plan, but is creeping decrepitude really part of anybody's plan?  Winston Churchill left office the day I was born, a bit of trivia which sounds like ancient history these days.  I am exactly as old as Disneyland and McDonald's.  Eisenhower was president and I'm sure there are plenty of Americans now who have never heard of him.  Baby boomers are generally defined as having been born between 1945 and 1965 which puts me smack dab in the middle of that demographic bulge.  The plague years of the AIDS crisis, Y2K, Elton John's wandering hairline: I've seen it all.

This is most certainly not going to be one of those tirades people make about how "I still feel young inside" because I don't.  I am old and I am okay with that.  I used to be fearless (foolishly so) and with a great deal more energy; now I am stodgy, cynical, and oh-so cranky.  I refuse to apologize for any of it, I have earned it all.  If I choose to be irritated by The Youth of Today (and the vantage point of my advanced years allows me to realize The Youth of Today are always irritating, regardless of what day today is) that is my privilege. 

Social media is littered with tales of my contemporaries who foolishly try to emulate the actors in commercials from all sorts of snake oil selling that "age is just a state of mind" bullshit.  Denial is not going to protect you from being old.  Age is your back hurting and all the cartilage in your joints shot to hell and the energy level of an unwound clock and trying to take up hang gliding is not going to change that.  I genuinely have a friend who will get up before dawn to go cross country skiing and I think "What the fuck is wrong with you?  Just calm down, bitch."  And then I have to go lay down because his example exhausts me.  You can struggle against the tide all you want, but when you have to fill in your birth date online and you need to scroll and scroll down through the years to get to yours, it just reminds you, there is no fighting the march of time.

Youth in all its taut-skinned glory:

Nekkid guys this week will all be "vintage" which is code for "old".  Seen here, the beautiful buttchops of Tom LeDuc.

Tim Kramer, who exemplified the Big Dick, Dumb Looks phenotype so dear to the hearts of many.

The beefy glory of Brett Mycles.

Of course, I can't wander down nude memory land without bumping into Colt Studios, Kyle Jessup. 

The superior ass stylings of Billy Herrington, also courtesy Colt Studios.

Steve Cort is an long time favorite around here, and he cranked out smutty pictures by the thousand, but it's hard to find any good ones of him online these days.

Ed Dinakos, prime beef.

Vintage always brings with it hairy dudes, in this case, Al Parker, on the left, Steve Taylor, Parker's real life boyfriend in the middle (little piggy that reportedly he was), and the charming Will Seagers, right.

Lastly, one of my favorite pictures from back in the day, Aiden Shaw, by Pierre et Gilles.