The beautiful spring has clouded over a bit, but this is okay because living on the top floor means the sound of rain on the roof is more beautiful than anywhere than perhaps the sound of it falling on the surface of a pond, or lake. Another nice thing about spring is the pace of the blooming. A month ago it was these small purple clusters of what seem like miniature tulips, followed by daffodil and tulip, followed by lilac, then by rhododendron, and now azalea. The leaves on the trees get broader by the day, and the smell of flowers and fresh water is everywhere.
Nekropolis
Underground just now the monsters do not sleep. A thirty year lapse in our time has passed since they have walked among us, but recently a document of light and celluloid was examined beneath the Sony Center in Berlin that shows them at home in a kind of subterranean Hell, soaked in the richest colors, made even more so by the darkness that frames those colors.
If I call their home a Hell, know that it is only so for those of us, the living, who cannot survive the strength of our own obsessions. At home the Vampires discuss sex and feminism in parlors hung with the fine paintings they collect, Frankenstein ruminates over the constellations, Witches and Warlocks meditate calmly or practice spells. The formality and order with which they conduct their lives is indeed elegant, lending to our own a light where we, coated in the dust and rubble of wars and greed, appear shabby at best.
As they live beneath us, at times our own political disturbances will reverberate into the chambers of the Damned. In this text, document, film….whatever it may be called, a Vampire and a drunken actor are seen discussing the nature and existence of the Devil. The time is 1970, a time in our world of intense political upheaval. Though even in Hell no one has seen the Devil, they wonder; could it be Nixon, Mick Jagger, Kenneth Anger, or some other world leader? The Vampire is inquisitive to say the least, she cannot shut up, and the drunken actor keeps pushing a bottle of scotch to her lips, as if to tell her that such a line of questioning is only relevant to mortals.
At times, when not talking amongst themselves, the Monsters address us directly, sharing with us details of their sexuality, or frustrations with the misunderstandings between Mortals and Monsters. One fine, young monster speaks to us about the desire to be loved, the need to be wanted, another time the same female Vampire who was seen discussing the Devil tells us of the frustration of her sex life with her husband.
There is mention of a time of the slaughter of monsters, and one gets the sense that the entirety of this document comes from this, that they are telling us that we have not won, that they are alive and well, and share with us things that make us all more or less “human”. The difference between their world and ours is one of beauty and sophistication. Indeed, the damned are cool. And gorgeous. I want to fuck the dead.
May Day.
As the weather was so warm, I thought I would take a walk before the sun went down, to the park by Susanne’s. I sat on a bench under a lilac tree, and a few men passed me by. I was wearing headphones and listening to Violent Onson Geisha, thinking that noise may have nothing left to say to us, much like painting. I was not really feeling very sexy, but thought to take a stroll to the part of the park where the guys are that is more secluded, because it was not so dark yet, and I thought I would open myself to that space as a place to cruise at night, little by little. After the first turn in the path, there was a young guy, maybe 22 with lovely, thick brows, an amazing mouth, wearing a knit skull cap, and a long sleeve, white Tee shirt, and those kind of pants that are not shorts and not pants, rising as they do just above the ankle. There was something about him that looked familiar in that he resembled, or had the look of a Latino Hip-Hop guy from California. Anyway, it was more cat and mouse than I would have preferred. Maybe it’s a feeling of middle age, but I usually think the young guys just want their cocks sucked, which because I was not really looking for sex thought a bit too much work, so I left him. A few paces later, I rubbed my dick to see how horny I was, and indeed the flow of blood had shifted since I last took a pulse there. I went back too where he stood, and he approached, one hand wedged in his underwear. We began what could have started things going, but this guy came riding up on a bike and my friend booked like it was his boyfriend. I did not know if this was a sign that he just took the opportunity to leave, as he could have changed his mind, so I walked away, rather than follow him. About five minutes later, he passed below me, and I noticed he stopped to see if I was coming, so I went down the hill into the clearing. He dropped to his knees and ran his mouth over my pants, kneading my dick, then rose up, under my shirt, licking me all the way up to my nipples, then crossed my chest and licked my armpits. He was great at it, or rather pursued his own interest the way I like it, not a lot of biting and twisting, but instead a smooth, and even soft running of his whole mouth over my body. He backed up off me, and I went down on him, unzipping his pants to find a cock perfect for my mouth in width and length. He was cut, and had thick, heavy balls, even in shape and size, and a shaft and head forged by some master ironsmith, it was so linear and hard. Wanting more tongue, I stood up and we kissed, rubbing our crotches together, he sucked my nipples again, this time I ran my mouth over his neck and ears. By this time we had taken most of our clothes off, and I had his ass in my hand. It was so full and round, covered by a soft coat of hair, where the cheeks curved under to his asshole. I pushed my finger against his hole, the rest of my hand filled with his ass, as I sucked and licked his chest. As I began getting my finger up his ass, he shot a thick load onto the leaves at our feet, and I took his tongue into my mouth. At this point I wondered if I even wanted to come, as the sex thing was not really what I wanted to begin with, but to just look at that cock for a few more moments was the deciding factor. I jerked off looking at his naked body, and said thank you, rather than Danke to see if he was American. He said nothing, put on his clothes and left in a hurry, which may have been because for the first time I noticed we had a crowd around us.
Watching Static
Televised images contain compact and focused information that instills and reinforces dominant social codes and values, whether in the form of advertising, the contexts created for the daily news, or in melodramas made for TV. The space between broadcast channels is often where a new potential is discovered in examining the relationships built between the image and the viewer. The moment of decomposition in the saturation of images is a moment of intoxication in possibility.
terrorism as media pornography
celebration of the secret, and a replacement of the Public with a universal Private
provide a glimpse of sub social, sub cultural areas of secrecy that do thrive in public
Anonymous
Rode my bike to the Tiergarten and passed a rather thickset guy, also riding his bike. We made eye contact but kept riding in opposite directions. In the meantime I passed a handsome African guy sitting on a bench, but whose face looked in total concentration in some inner world, so I kept riding, but parked the bike nearby to see if I would notice him coming out of his trance to cruise somebody, which would mean he was fair game. An older, German guy passed me and stopped after a few steps to simply stare at me. I think there should be a certain amount of glancing, and sizing up of a person and a situation, but a several minute stare is a bit much to endure, so I got up to see if anything had changed with The Thinker. Turns out he had moved into the bushes, as I could see his legs and those of someone else, also that they were jerking off. I rode past and saw the guy on the bicycle again, this time we really checked each other out. He seemed perhaps Greek or Spanish, and appeared to have at one time broken his nose. He was a certain body type I like, about two years outside of having been very muscular, in a way, the bodybuilder sits half an inch under a layer of fat, but is still there. I noticed he rode his bike into the bushes, so I followed. Around the bend he stood, his adequate, but ultimately unmemorable cock in his hands, stroking it. As I approached him, he raised up his shirt to play with a nipple. His hands were large and tanned. When I got up next to him, he simply shoved me down to my knees, so I sucked him for a bit, then wanted to see if I would want to suck his ass by licking under his balls, finding out how clean he would be. I’m not a neat freak that way, but have had some rather unpleasant experiences, so it is better to check first. Anyway, he loved that I was licking under his nutsack, and jerked off vigorously. To my surprise he gently moved my head back and shot a load all over my beard, mouth, eyes and shirt. He was the kind that really sprays in a linear spurt, a rapid and thin cum. He zipped up, tossed me a Kleenex and rode his bike away. I jerked off on the spot with the little taste of cum that had hit my lips.
What is Liberalism?
A space that eliminates discourse by a useful dictionary of identities. Thus we have a liberal censorship, a liberal silence, to keep left issues visible, but not challenged. With a recent memory of the effectiveness in which the Rodney King riots were suppressed as a reminder of the complete triumph over 60’s-70’s radicalism, and a youth without a subculture, a placid culture of Tolerance presides.
Lady’s Room
Lying on the grass next to my bike with the Walkman playing Keith Hudson, I was about to close my eyes when a guy caught my eye. He was shaved headed, and had that sort of “queer” look that used to be sexy, but has since become a purchasable signifier of what type of gay one is. However I may have issues with the gays, I feel like a disgusting hypocrite sometimes, or an old school sexist, or even a pervert in that I think the gays are good only to have sex with, and this gay was pretty sexy. I closed my eyes, however, and continued to be surprised by Mr. Hudson’s amazing talents as a producer. Some minutes later, I woke to the sexy gay laying next to me. Without talking, he actually put his hand on my leg. I pulled him close to me and felt him up. We started getting too hot to be seen on the open field in such a position. This is when we tried to talk. I speak no German, he hardly spoke German, and no English, only Turkish and a little Spanish. Telepathically, we agreed to ride my bike to a quieter place. At first he drove, and I sat on the little rack, running my hands all over his ass, and up his back. Then we switched, and finally pulled over at a restroom and went to the stall. Standing on either side of the toilette we kissed and removed our clothes. I leaned back and he began sucking me off. As it was good, and I did not want to come yet, I raised him up, taking his chin in my hands, and sliding my finger in his mouth. This time I sucked him. He had a thick, but average length cock that was fun to take all the way to his dark, and nicely kept bush. This sort of mutual thing went on for awhile till he turned around and offered me his ass. I ran my palms over its curves, and wet a finger to fuck him with. He was nice and firm, with a sort of velvet growth of hair around his hole, which I played with as well. At this point someone came in. In fact two, and it turns out we were in the girl’s room. I have learned lessons from how this sort of thing can kill a mood, so I took the opportunity to cum. Seeing me cum, he shot a wad on the toilette seat. We dressed and waited for the women to finish and went outside where they were waiting with their boyfriends. Whatever. We laughed and parted after he wrote his name and number down in my notebook. His name is Bahri.
I thought two things today that amused me. The first is that a male lion is a Man-Pussy, the second was the name, Patsy Decline. (I conceived of Decline as in a decline of altitude, as she really did fall to pieces)
Book Release
We were the first to show up, and stood in the rain while some guy unlocked the door of the bookstore and let us in. They had moved tables and covered the shelves for the party and had set up one table where they would serve Champaign, and display the book that being released just now was the occasion to celebrate. Susanne and I sat on the couch, and talked with Daniel. Soon the two rooms of the store were totally packed, upstairs and downstairs. The scene was fun, being primarily a crowd mixed between the publisher’s folks, the sort of “radical” left, intellectual people and folks from the Berlin film scene. But this was all made more interesting by the odd folks out; artists, writers, transgendered and a gang of young faggots, who were a bit star struck by us, I must admit, which was also fun. They would glance at us a lot, whisper and giggle. I know from Marc they had seen us on TV, and more likely than not had seen Susanne in Raspberry Reich. Wilhelm showed up, and it is always nice to see him, he is so happy that the young people are into his film, just back from Greece where he showed two programs. He spoke animatedly about generations of anti-capitalist folks, how they arrive at their conclusions in wholly different ways, but somehow find each other. Stephanie surprised me when she told me she just had voided from her life all of her possessions, save books and films, put it all out on the street, to start over with a big, empty apartment. Susanne heard this, and gave her on the spot her beautiful, vintage, snakeskin purse as the first thing to start over with. I was introduced to this poet, who I knew was once a part of a film collective, and rather than talk about poetry, which I would have found truly awkward, I tried to steer it to her memories of those days when she was in a film collective. What struck me as great is she said the whole thing started because a group of friends had all read, or discovered some new theory, which they all were so excited about, they began making films almost instantly, to test and practice this theory, even touring to many countries in the process. Ran into Claudia again, whom I met at an opening a few weeks back. She was great, really sort of strange. I remember her saying how she was so into gender politics because she said, passing 40, one just gets physically sick of being one’s self, and rather than see an imperative to become another gender, for her the impulse was just to get rid of the old self. She then went on to talk about being Iraqi-European, and how she never could think of being anything other than herself. So, she was full of funny contradictions that in a way, all refused identity. After this, she told me I looked Black. So, she was weird and it was delightful to see her again. Left with Susanne around midnight, as the drunker one gets at these things, the more unintelligible everything is, given the language differences.
Anon.
At the park I saw a bit of action, a group of about six guys stood around a couple who were fucking. What was interesting about it was that invisible line that makes the circle in such situations. It is like an energy field that people are sort of afraid of. They stood around, discreetly watching, not even their cocks out, save one. He was an older, Indian or Pakistani guy, and was working his stuff with all his might, inching closer, bit by bit, transgressing the circle, which was brave because the couple fucking were young hipsters, not usually open to the likes of the elderly. It took him about fifteen minutes, but eventually he was right next to them, running his hand not used for masturbating, through the guy’s hair who was getting fucked. I really was touched by the scene, but preferred to watch from a distance in part because of the tableau it made, also so as to not be part of that circle.
Sicilian
Just now there are these clusters of soft, cottony seeds which float down from the trees in such quantity as to really look as if it is snowing, making things seem in slow motion, and giving body and mass to the scented spring air. Giuseppe, as I later found out was his name, walked into the clearing in the woods where I sat watching the air in motion. He had with him two dogs. I had seen him before, months ago, and found him too handsome to approach, but made sure he knew I was interested. We sat on the stone steps, talking for about two hours. As it turns out, we both are sort of trapped in our native tongues, so this conversation had to flip around spasmodically with whatever we knew in German or Spanish, as a way of patching the gaps between Italian and English. He had a goatee, rather full and unfashionable that made him sexier. Full head of hair, evenly salted and peppered, and seemed a bit “punk”. We talked about how it is weird that all us immigrants end up meeting in these public sex areas. He felt in a way, the Germans could sense us and avoided us. The whole time we were talking, one of his dogs kept starting fights with other dogs that families or couples would be walking. Never once did this seem to bother him. At one point this older woman seemed to stop, incredulously, and looked at us like she insisted on an intervention. We just kept talking, she had to back up the stairs and descend again through the bushes with her dog. I kept watching his face, or parts of it as we talked, his nose, his lips, his eyes. Unfortunately, I had to leave the park to go to a meeting at Susanne’s.
Samuel Delany;
“Yet, in all cases a dismal, gray, and unresponsive ground is the incomprehensible template against which they occur, not throwing them into relief so much as providing a necessary obscurity to their outlines, making them bearable, even possible, (making them hard or impossible for we who indulge in them to speak of them in any terms save the sexual, even as they are, in their actuality, wholly social), in a world that largely denies they exist”.
Just now the horrible dreariness of the last two days has broken. The clouds are breaking up into huge, tumbling affairs, and the sun passes its gaze across the red, tile rooftops of the buildings I can see out the window.
Dames
The strangest thing is that the racism is gratuitous within the space of the film. It could very well present a kind of all white utopia, void of all color, and work perfectly well. (of course, the absence itself of black people is in itself a statement ignored just now). But to have this one, long shot of the Sleeping Negro was simply mean spirited. It has no other function as far as I could tell. What it does say however, about a white paradise eerily precedes the slaughter of millions in Europe, and comes within some people’s then living memory of a slaughter in America of the Natives that was not yet named Genocide. The traffic of racism through images in this widow of peace between wars.
The Busby Berkeley dance numbers at the end were nightmarish and hallucinatory, spectacular and breathtaking. A camera moving through the spread legs of scores of women, their smiling faces raised between the legs was one of the most erotic and yes, pornographic things I ever have seen in a moving image, rivaled in perversity some thirty years later by the auto-erotic photos of Molinier fucking himself with his special, dildo pumps. The best number was the hanging laundry scene, with the washer ladies smelling the underwear of their men as they hang them to dry.
Friend of a Friend
I usually go to the park at night just to listen to my Walkman and enjoy the night sky. One bench I like to sit on is nestled right next to the wall of the massive fountain dedicated to the brother’s Grimm. From where I sit, I can look up to see the stars tangled and shimmering in the stone antlers of a statue deer. Having played the CD, and finished a tall becks, I decided to wander into the sex area. It always is weird to me, seeing the faces emerge from total darkness, as if the air itself had rearranged its structure to manifest the illusion of men. They vanish as fast as they appear. Rather disoriented from the sight of so many phantoms, I decided to linger a bit in an area more lit by the light from the street. A guy walked past me, very sharp features in his face, particularly his jaw and chin. His mouth was gorgeous and full, with rich and dark lips, and he had the most beautiful head of dark curls. I thought he was French; he was probably Spanish, Italian or Portugese, with the name, Alessandro. We began a deep kissing, and then he suggested we go somewhere else. I followed him across the fountain’s courtyard to a more secluded area. A lot more kissing lead to our removing of clothes, which is always a turn on for me, to be naked, or near naked, outside, and at night. We took turns sucking, and though he had rather smallish balls and dick, he was fun to play with because of his passion. He suggested we take turns coming on each other, and knelt down so I could spray his face and neck with cum. I wiped it all over his chest, then got down so he could splash me. I stood and we kissed again, our faces still wet with cold semen that I smeared into his beard stubble with my mouth. We walked partly home together, leaving each other by the Ubahn outside my house.
Arsenal
I hope to sit next to Jon Heys at the film tonight. Sadly, Zazie will not be there, as she is still in Paris. Last week, sitting between the two of them was hilarious. They both talk during the film, to themselves, each other, or me. They sing as well, and lean forward to tell me in my ear, but not whispering, about how this number or that related to a show or some art thing that happened in the 60’s or 70’s. In the lobby, Zazie had me in tears as she squeezed her tits, and said if she were in a plane, she would sow her hormones across the world so everything would be pink and glittering. John started to sing a song, stopped, cleared his throat and said, “For you darling, I will have to go an octave lower” and sang, but Zazie interrupted, correcting him on the melody. Then she said, “If you like, you can hear my version on my CD. It’s horrible, the worst” we all broke up laughing.
Even through the music playing in my ears I could hear the clanking and squeaking of my shoddy bicycle working away. I love the lyrics to some of those old songs;
Aim for the body rare you see it on the TV
The worst thing in 1954 was the bikini
See the girl on the TV dressed in a bikini
She doesn’t think so but she’s dressed for the h-bomb
I found that essence rare is what I live for
I knew I’d get what I asked for….
Then;
No man I don’t feel alone
Take my home wherever I roam…..
I got no soul this is it this is it
I’m ready to flip this is it this is it….
No rules no remorse….
Come on let’s wake the living dead
Free your soul free your soul…..
Leni Riefenstal as Busby Berkeley
I rode passed the Reichstag, through the tourists, passed the open, green area where I remember seeing the amazing formations of Nazis in propaganda films when I was young, and I wondered just how much I was conscious of the lyrics of songs from my early 20’s, of how these songs were in fact an education, one that informed me in the use of the song, of Capital, Philosophy. This education came complete with copious amounts of booze and powders, and my hands often smelled that intoxicating smell of lubricant and ass, which I would leave on as long as I could. I liked having a guy’s smell on me from a morning of fucking. I did absorb these songs, I did take these lessons seriously. Eventually the drugs and booze sort of blurred the lessons, but some of us recover, partially.
Drunk needs coffee for afternoon sleep
I stopped halfway through the park, and sat on a bench to continue reading Delany. A guy walked passed me, and I felt him staring, so rather than invite him, I kept up the reading façade until he passed, when I then could continue to actually read. I know these places are used for sex, but as Marc said, “I like being there” even if it is not for sex. The guy returned, this time sitting next to me. I always sort of hate and admire these people who can see someone is doing something like reading, or listening to music, but still insist on a conversation. I told him of my language capacity, he sighed and leaned back, telling me that it was crazy, that he knows this is not the way to do things, but saw me and thought he would ask if I minded kissing a stranger. I laughed and told him I was reading a book about him at the moment, “the Madman”. He told me he spent the night breaking up with his boyfriend, drinking too much, and would I mind if he slept on my lap awhile. I told him for just awhile, and he snugly laid his head in my lap, and asked me to read to him. I told him he was crazy, to shut up and go to sleep. I could feel a hard on forming in my pants, and hoped he would not grope around, as I did not find him attractive at all. This is not because he was not cute, indeed he was, but it was from the information I left out in this account, that he owned a coffee shop, was too hung over to open it, and called in the family’s employee to do it for him. A fucking bourgeois gay! But the fact he reeked of alchohol and was so forward, and a bit of a ruin made me like him enough to let him sleep on my lap. I read all about shit eating and poetry for a while, then woke him up. He asked for five more minutes, I responded negatively, tousled his hair, kissed him on the forehead and rode off.
Delany
Finished “the Madman”. Delany is really amazing. The relationships in this book are true to the complexity relationships have in life. Laid bare, carefully articulated, the space for moralizing is seriously impeded. A feat in this book, sopping as it is with piss, shit and cum, not to mention the long passages written a language that is both graphic sexually and loaded with racist verbiage.
42nd Street
The movie was lackluster. Fred and Ginger are cute, but it is nearly impossible for me to see the glamour or wonder in such simplistic fantasies. And I am rarely susceptible to virtuosity in any art form. The only interesting way to read this film is through its relationship to racism, then read racism’s relationship to the Great Depression. Fred Astair in black face is really ridiculous, but at once interesting and disappointing is that the moment he begins to smear his face with makeup is just after he kisses Ginger for the first time. I say it’s interesting because we see him apply the makeup, not just perform wearing it, but it is disappointing in that the makeup somehow signifies a borrowed sexual vigor, the age old face of racism as sexual envy. It is hard for me to see through time and imagine what these films meant to a public during the Great Depression. On one hand, was this the beginning of the cult of celebrity? The art deco glamour, the style and wealth must have seemed incredible then. Would the audience identify with the characters as they “worked their way up”, or would they sit in awe and envy of the Movie Stars, Fred and Ginger, living in Hollywood, making movies and money? Whatever, the paradise depicted on the Silver Screen reinforced what Zazie had said about her own use of black face in our project last fall; that even Paradise demands an underclass. I understand Marc’s seminar that accompanies these films has become a war zone.
Day of the Living Dead
I had just passed the area where last year there was a tangle of small trees and bushes where men cruised right off the main path through the park. Earlier this spring I noticed the Park Authority had cut it all back by pruning the underbrush, and I thought that the area would grow back to it’s proportions within the space of a month or two. Looking at it now, I realized this hope was naïve, and that the altering of it was solely to eradicate cruising. I noticed that older men walked through it anyway, as if they were unaware that they were visible, and imagined that invisibility wears off with age, or that by rendering their surrounding landscape invisible the inhabitants materialize. It occurred to me that if one spends one’s whole life invisible, the way that one walks through public space seems from the outside as a form of senility, dementia or madness. I parked the bike, rolled a cigarette and watched them tracing the paths of their desire as if they were zombies.
As I watched them, I remembered recently walking into the cruising grounds near Susanne’s, and how when I approached the stone steps that marked the entrance into the thickets, two couple, males and females, plus one extra man, sat on the steps, not talking amongst themselves as you would expect from a group a friends spending time in a lovely park. Rather, they sat on the steps, not speaking, and stared at me as I descended into the bramble. I could feel their gaze on my back as I entered, and it struck me that the situation seemed as if it were a neighborhood group reclaiming the park for themselves, for their families, like they had a meeting over cranberry muffins and tea about what action they could take to “make the park safe”, and I realized that what I was experiencing was a sort of non-violent fag bashing. Then I recalled how a series of information booths and music was set up near the other cruising ground in the park, and that Marc had told me of how on the radio a group of activists were broadcasting from there an action to renovate the fountain that marks the space, and called for the city to fence it in during the evening.
These sorts of actions, combined with the clear-cutting of the other cruising areas, in turn lead me further back into time to remember the slow, but steady war on public sex that the city of San Francisco had waged, and won, primarily at the city’s west end, near the ocean, and the hill of Buena Vista park, first gutting the entire areas of their lovely forests, meadows and clearings, then replanting them in the style of those very controlled gardens, where everything that is planted is low to the ground, so everything is easily surveyed, with neat, little rows of flower beds, often organized by color, so the effect is that one senses total control, over the natural life and the public life. It would not surprise me to see leashes on the squirrels, or the birds chained to the branches. When I watched this happen, over the ten years it took in San Francisco, it struck me that whatever power structures were in place would actually be happy to destroy entire landscapes and eco-systems, to live in an empty and hostile place, if only to be rid of what eludes their control and what they cannot see.
So I continued to watch the Zombies, and thought that one action could be finding the addresses of anyone working for the Park Bureau, and sneaking into their yards, and fucking cut everything down at night, while they sleep; every flower, tree, bush, even upturn their lawns. When they would awake, all the Zombies would be standing around the house, shovels in hand, covered in sweat and dirt, and without smiles, they would have their cocks out, masturbating.
Just about then Piero walked towards me. At first it had not occurred to me that he was meeting Daniel, and I was surprised and happy he would be out cruising. I kept that thought to myself, and we talked about the clearing of the area. Piero then told me that the Tribe had migrated to an area close to the Arsenal, and that during the day, particularly around lunch, and after work, the area up there had become prime, grazing fields. He then mentioned he was about to meet Daniel (which was slightly disappointing, not that I would find it unpleasant to see him, but that Piero was not out being a tramp). We met up with Daniel in about an hour and the three of us sat on the grass for a while. I made a note to check out the new place at a later date.
Fassbinder
Watched “Fox and his Friends” with Marc. I saw this in my early 20’s. Probably my first “gay couple” movie. What I did not remember, or really even ever considered is Fassbinder’s talent at the look of the frame. Each shot was magnificent in the set, the colors, and the composition of the frame. He really takes no prisoners. The film was like a two-hour catastrophe, each minute just as painful to watch as the next. 1974. Stunning to have this critique of gay culture come at the height of alleged liberation. He paints it as anything but that, with the protagonist doomed emotionally and physically to the whims and desires of an upper class to which he does not belong, and relationships themselves doomed to cycles of use value. At any rate, Fassbinder laid out to see what was to become the truth of the construction we know as Gayness—a system of exclusion and oppression that mimics, admires, and ultimately adopts the very structures that once oppressed it. He does not lament the exclusion, but the real sacrifice of human beings to power. The only cheerful moment for me was the end sequence, where two children come across the dead Fox, and are seen for a long time going through his belongings, turning him over, stealing his watch and money. Maybe I was just glad he was finally dead, or perhaps I just liked the thought of someone finding $8000 in cash on a dead body.
Bobbing, Weaving and Breathing
With the Walkman on, and riding back from the Tiergarten, I began first dancing on my bike, then singing as well. Weaving in and out of the tourists it was quite fun. A while later, I was feeling an oppression, or sadness that was indefinable, and with a heave of breath, gestured out as if pushing away the feeling, like this act was my gift to the world. I thought that I might do nothing else in life but with a sigh, expel this sadness.
Art Space
Looked at the work of Tom Burr, and thought that perhaps his success in the art world lies in the fact that he abstracts sexuality. It is there, but not as sexuality. It is the idea behind how he deals with space. His structures strike me as dead. He does not examine living space, but presents the art world with an autopsy of queer space, that sort of western criticism or study that dates back to the Renaissance, natural history, medical sciences….the Age of Reason bullshit. Because I like thinking about space, I thought his work interesting. At this writing however, I wonder if he is not the same thing as the explorer sent into Africa, or the New World to bring back specimens to the foot of the Queen, who has a vested interest in all things Dead.
Refugee
On the path above the cruising area there are some strays, like myself. I walked past one guy, rather thin, full head of black hair slicked back in a king of 1930’s style, nice lips, medium length black leather jacket. I caught his eye and kept walking. For about ten minutes we did this dance, at times I was close enough to him to see he had names tattooed on his hands. I sat on a ledge and as he passed, I pulled my cock out, hard, for him to see. He, in turn, showed me his. Nice length and width, and he tugged at it with his tattooed hands. Eventually he sat next to me and we talked. He moved here from Bosnia, has a daughter, and together they live with his brother. He asked if I had a place we could go to. The whole time we were playing with our cocks, I told him it would be nice to play somewhere in the park, but he felt uncomfortable with so many families out walking. My place is not really made for bringing folks home, so after a rather pleasant time, we went separate ways.
Auslander
Got my VISA today, and can stay here for another year, working officially as a musician/composer. I am going to miss going to that building, in a way. The filth of the waiting rooms and halls lit by a dismal light, peopled with folks from anywhere around the globe, but mostly Turkish or African, combined with this sort of aimless movement, and endless waiting reminds me of porn arcades. This, coupled with the fact it is a government building, generally with citizens from less well off countries seeking asylum, Visas, permits, gets me kind of aroused. I want them to get something from this country, like I want all the immigrants in California to have the whole fucking State, every stupid grape, orange, pistachio, and win the lottery while they are at it. Last time I was here I saw the guy cleaning the restroom. He was an older German. I liked the smell of the detergent, and thought I would peek into the stalls to see if there was any action, or evidence of it. All I saw was a crude drawing of a cock, no other inscription. I like thinking that people who just scrawl one word, like “Pussy” into wet cement, or draw one image such as this are so overcome by the thought of their desire that no other words are necessary. This drawing here may have remained without further elucidation because it’s creator was at a loss for the German word for “suck”. Anyway, I sat on the toilet for a bit, listening to the old guy finish up, and imagined that I could work there, doing just that. I imagined that he hated foreigners, having to scrape their shit daily, but that I could do my work early, then offer myself sexually to whoever happened to come in. Or, people could get a number, men and women, and visit me one after another. I could eat her out, lick his butt, suck off a group of teenagers, whatever, and everyone would be happy. I’d have a job, people would feel welcomed to Germany, and the other office workers would be happy that life around them seemed so pleasant.
Anon
The other night I saw this compact, but solid looking guy servicing someone in a dark corner of the bushes. I thought it best to sort of keep moving, so I wandered around past the fountain. A few minutes later he passed me and we both checked each other out. We walked together into some trees and began making out. He was so nice feeling, lightly muscled, and really just as much a top as a bottom, which I love, so we kept going down on each other between kissing. He turned around to face the tree so I could fuck him, instead I licked his ass, and stuck a finger up his hole while I jerked off. We both came at the same time, so we walked out of the park together. I walked him halfway home. He told me his name was Don, and that he was from Thailand. He is here studying, he said a full set of degrees from his own country would not land him any substantial job there, that most folks who make a good living were educated in the West.
Bene
Aesthetics—the values of Hip culture on the surface of the frame. Paramount is the contemporary. Examples; In Salome there are two Christs, one a vampire, the other fails at crucifying himself to a neon cross. In Capricci an artist and a poet get into a fight, the studio is hung with the soviet hammer and cycle. As the fight escalates, they have weapons that are a hammer and a cycle. Paintings are slashed with the very items depicted on them. Later, we see the revolutionary artist has taken to painting nothing but huge self-portraits. Comments on 68.
Alevi
Mainly a rural, mountain sect at first. Splintered from mainstream Shiites over an issue regarding a particular saint. Early on they were referred to as “candle blowers”, a term that came from the fact that they integrated women into prayer, meals, and work. Applying the usual sexual envy to a despised minority, it was said that after evening meals they would blow out the candles and orgies would commence. With modernization, the Alevis moved into the cities for work, and retaining a cultural integrity they experienced a continuing discrimination. Because of this, as well as from the 20th century’s wars and upheavals, the Alevis from Turkey moved into Germany, acquiring capital and education to open businesses upon returning to their homeland. Add to a cultural bigotry a class difference and the abyss widened.
By the 1980’s Alevi life had lost much of it’s religious nature and had taken on Marxist characteristics. Alevi visibility became manifest in Turkish intellectual and artistic life. Popular culture remained opposed to Alevi culture, and a series of legal and vigilante repressive measures were employed against them. In 1993 a group of Alevi activists and intellectuals met at a hotel in Sivas. Though the alleged target was a particular writer, a number of those in attendance were burned alive by a Sunni mob. A bystander had rescued one of them, when his identity was discovered to be the writer; the crowd blessed him with serious injuries.
I have seen two signs of Alevi presence here in Berlin. One is a mural depicting a DJ in the manner of Social Realism, He wears what looks like a Mao Cap, and has headphones on, beneath him are the Turkish words for “Alevi Renaissance” The other, more interesting example was seen while I was walking down a street, absently looking at the signs and shops. Above one shop ware letters that once had been painted clearly and brightly, but now were barely visible, faded to just a trace, but you could make out the words, “Heretika Islamiya Kurdish”. Alevi populations are heavy among the Kurdish, and prior to migration into settled communities in cities, the Alevis were largely nomadic, moving about the highlands of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Armenia. The storefront seemed to function as a community center, and would appear to be a relic from a former time, save the presence of two, lone old men sitting on chairs, not speaking. I thought it interesting a group would self identify as heretical, a term usually applied from the outside, and laden with judgment.
My interest in the Alevis came from a CD of Muhlis Akarsu, who I learned was among those burned alive at Sivas. In pursuing what little I now know, I also came across reference to genocide of Greeks and Armenians at the hands of the Turks in the early 20th century, and wonder if there is any connection to the Alevis there. Also interesting is that now Syria is governed by a variety of Alevis, who are a minority there. Perhaps out of self-preservation, will to power, and revenge, they have fashioned a dictatorship there. Also with the Kurds having been granted the majority to govern the new Iraq, perhaps a similar phenomenon will happen there, hostility between The Kurds on one hand and the Shiites/Sunnis on the other, hostility necessary to the interests of the United States.
Anon
At the Volkspark, by the fountain, a young Turk sat on my bench. Following each other in a very difficult attempt to communicate, I gathered that he was looking for money. I really had not enough to pay for sex. He sighed and suggested we go to the pay toilet to have sex anyway. The booth was out of order, so we walked to an out of the way children’s playground and sat on a bench there, in a dark little corner. He unzipped his pants and pulled out his cock. Going down on him I noticed his nuts were totally symmetrical, firm and round as small apples. His dick smelled of latex and shit, so I got back up and sat next to him on the bench. Some other guy approached us and the two of them exchanged hostile words. The man stood and stared, as if to fight, and my friend simply turned his head to my chest and fell asleep. The other guy left, and I sat there looking at the stars through the trees, feeling my friend’s rhythm as he breathed. After some time I woke him up, gave him train fare and walked home.
Absence of an authentic folk under totalitarian situations (including the economic), and the replacement of an inauthentic folk by a constructed ideal of folk (music, dance, customs). Why does the construction of the inauthentic figure so prominently, for example in former soviet propaganda, in the post-romantic nationalism of Bartok, the Blues Revival of the 1960’s in America, and now with the proliferation of “World Music”? The very notion of authenticity banishes what is real. Where have your folks gone?
Baby Evaporates
I had heard it was to be the end of a stretch of extremely warm evenings, so I headed out to the park just after the sun went down. I sat on a bench and listened to some music for a while before heading into the thickets. Once in, I saw that the little, narrow paths overgrown with honeysuckle were lined with not the usual guy here or there, but was indeed like L.A. traffic at rush hour. I would step aside if I saw a few guys coming towards me to let them pass, and instead the few guys would be a stream of men lasting more than a minute to pass. There were a couple of guys who would stare and follow me for quite some time, and also a couple of guys that I was curious about. I wanted to see what they were up to without stalking them, but my stalkers ended up making me ditch the scene for another rest at the fountain.
I headed back in, now it was darker. The patterns of light from the streetlamps through the leaves was beautifully disorienting, with light hitting my cornea as I followed a bend in the path, making my pupils dilate rapidly to adjust, only to have swirls of light and shapes dance on the earth of the path. Sometimes what appeared to be a leg of a man partially hidden in a bush would prove to be just a trick of light. Seemingly in every corner large enough to accommodate such activity, an orgy would be happening, sometimes with the backs of those observing forming a tight shell, like a turtle which made little moaning sounds, or sighs. One person would leave, and I could become part of the shell. At one location, three guys sat against the fence while others fucked their faces. One guy on the ground got up to get fucked, I stayed long enough to hear his breath change as he was penetrated, and moved on. Sometimes I stay only for sex, and if it is not forthcoming I leave, other times I stay for conversation, or the peace of the evening sky, but now I was being sort of whipped up into accumulating images, snatches of sex acts, little sounds, a sort of pornography in fragments, but which is also open to participation. The charge in such an environment is the risk of undergoing this fragmentation.
My stalkers were a little more behaved, they gave me a little space to move in and make my own decisions. Most of the guys there were really strapping fellows, bulky, swaggering and rugged, not the slender, blond, Nazi type, so I was really getting horny. In on of the pockets of bushes that form a kind of room, I came across another two guys going at it. One leaned against his bicycle, the other had his pants down, and had the smoothest, narrow butt pointed out. One of the guys I was interested in was watching them, his cock out, and the head of it he began rubbing over the cute butt. His strategy for inclusion was excellent; rather than foist himself on a pair already coupling, he just would jerk off, watching, but close enough to join in should there be some subtle gesture of welcoming. When they did not object to his proximity is when he began rubbing his cock on the little guy’s ass, but seemed to be there just as much to pleasure that guy with only that, lest the little guy ask for more. That alone seemed enough, and I was fascinated by this wordless negotiation. I thought I would take my baby’s lead, and stood near him, jerking off. I never really have done the orgy scenes from the periphery. Usually, I have found myself lost in some guy, and looked up to see what a scene had gathered, so I was learning by watching a behavior I found respectful. As my baby did not mind me being there, and into him, not just into the couple, but with acknowledgement that he was into the couple, he began to watch me, looking at my face, my cock, but those little gestures that say, “more” were still absent, and I realized that sometimes where desire is absent, you must create desire, become desirable. I paced my behavior with his as it related to the couple, and when the inexplicable moment came I grabbed his cock and received no resistance, in fact he stopped playing with himself and let me stroke it for him. The little guy with the ass turned around, facing us, so the guy on the bike could fuck him.
At this point it was clear that through a careful, and respectful series of gestures, glances and caresses that we now were a group, together. With each of us looking at each other’s faces and feeling each other’s bodies, a trust was built, as was desire. I looked around and quite a group had assembled, and I wondered how this would snowball, or splinter into micro orgies, fed by each other. Just as I was thinking this, and marveling at the beauty of this type of socialization, of how fragile an intimacy was built, and now even could expand my two stalkers arrived, one from each side of the path. They both rushed in on the four of us, grabbing cocks, trying to suck, to kiss. The four of us zipped up, put on our shirts, and went our separate ways. What was built on next to nothing was seemingly evaporated, and disappeared.
Sway
I recall watching a tree when I was a child, and thinking that the motion of each branch and every leaf was not because of the wind, but was the movement of the tree from it’s own volition. Just now I look out the window at the tops of the trees across the street and watch them sway. Today the last few of those cottony seeds drop from the heights of trees, the sway of them as they fall mimics the movement of the trees. I watched them drop into the pond, landing on the surface of the water, looking like flecks of dust on a green mirror.
Afternoon School Special
The first time I saw him I was sitting on a bench. About 50 years old, but really very handsome and in fine shape, he had a neatly trimmed mustache that had just a little gray in it. He sat on the bench next to mine, and mentioned something to me regarding cigarettes. I offered him one and he suggested we trade. So I smoked one of his. After small talk about different tobacco, filtered versus hand rolled, he asked me where I was from. I told him California, and he sat up straight, and urgently told me to tell anyone who asked that I was from Great Britain, especially if they were Arab, as he was. He told me that there were people he knew who would cut my throat in my sleep if they found out I was American. I told him that it was not likely that I would find myself actually sleeping with these people, and he had to laugh. I told him that my own bed was comfortable enough. Soon we were talking about America. He had lived there for a few years and liked it well enough, but found the Americans stupid. As an example, he told an anecdote about going to a bar, and all the people he met were so dumb that they actually believed him when he said that in his country everyone travels on camels. I asked where he was from and he said Iraq, but that this was before Desert Storm, and no Americans gave a shit about anything Arab. We shifted the conversation to Islam, in part because I wanted to let him know at least this American was not so dumb, and also to ask a few questions regarding specific differences in sects. He was Shiite, and had moved because of persecution under Sadaam, and indeed he was surprised to learn I did know a thing or two of his religion. We started laughing, thinking of our encounter as an inspirational TV movie; One American, One Iraqi, countries at war, on a park bench in Germany they solve the misunderstandings of their culture.
The next time I saw him it was very near that bench, but we were walking opposite directions and both stopped under a tree because of a huge downpour. He did not seem to remember me, or our conversation, and for a moment I doubted it was him. I silently studied his face, and really it was him. Watching his face, I noticed he was staring at my crotch, which responded happily to his visual caresses. The rain would not stop, and soon our little refuge was no longer viable. I motioned without speaking to a thicker area of foliage, and walked under the low branches, and pulled out my hard on. He got down and put it in his mouth. I moved his face up towards me by the chin, because his hat made his face all but out of view. With a better view of him I watched him work at it, his eyes closed, and I wiped the rain drops from his brow. I was hoping he would want reciprocation, but he didn’t, and when I came he swallowed it. I zipped up and left.
Hallelujah!
The film is a long wandering, the kind of plot that it seems could only be a possibility in the early days of cinema, before genres had become solidified into concrete forms. I suppose in these days the making of a film was much more free, resulting in features that contained structural elements, or aesthetics that that would be seen maybe 30 years later, and then in experimental films. The story follows a man who heads a family of sharecroppers through a series of events, and a woman who seduces him outside of this family life into a series of misadventures, both trajectories laced with simple moralisms. Earlier in the week, before watching the film, we were discussing sharecroppers as the beginnings of a black middle class, and this discussion provided me with a way in which to view the film.
At the start of the film a scenario is established of a joyful family life. The family sings in the field as they work, and at the end of the day they each list the luxury items they would like purchased with the money from the cotton sales. Later in the evening their relationships in the context of family are established in a suite of scenes with amazing performances surrounding eating, an impromptu wedding, and bedtime rituals. It is the next day that in another city, on the banks of a river, the family man is tempted by a light-skinned singer/dancer/prostitute into gambling away the year’s proceeds. In the resulting melee that surrounds his anger, he accidentally kills his brother, who had come looking for him. The woman and the con man are shown splitting the spoils.
Back at home, with all the money gone, a funeral for the brother is held while outside in a conversation with a family elder, the Family Man finds a way out of his grief and guilt by discovering the Lord, which in turn leads the family out of poverty into a well dressed, well behaved traveling religious group. One shot shows one of the women stopping the children from a more “backwards” tap dancing with a glance, at which they return to proper hymn singing. None of the ramifications, or implications of this change in economic status is studied, it is only is depicted. One assumes that with the Lord’s forgiveness not only critical thought is abolished, but this erasure is accompanied by economic reward. The Lord will pay you not to think.
While traveling through a new town, the family, in particular the Family Man is accosted by the light-skinned floozy and the con man. In a crowd they heckle him for his hypocrisy. In public, in danger of exposure, he becomes violent with the woman. She returns to continue harassing him the next day at a revival by the river. One by one, the crowd becomes converted to the Lord, the woman alone stands crying, and her outsider status magnified. Begging forgiveness, but also in a sway of sexual/religious ecstasy she, too converts. What follows is his abandoning of his family and his profession for a life of temporary work, followed by his new woman. A scene is shown that establishes just how hard he works, which is cut by another scene that shows the woman, tired of this way of living, plotting an escape with her con man/lover. When Family Man returns from work, she sings him to sleep and escapes out the back. He wakes, pursues, and kills them both. Dying in his arms she does not ask forgiveness, which could bring her closer to a middle class audience, but rather simply confesses her fear of hell, of meeting the Lord, and she dies.
Family Man has now killed three people, and goes to work on the chain gang, out on parole later, he sings a happy song and returns to the fold of the family, where he is welcomed happily and the film ends. One of the most interesting ways in which this all unfolds is that anything bad that happens to Family Man can be traced to the floozy, that all damage to the welfare of the family can be seen in this light as class war. The floozy and the con man operate outside a dominant economy, or on the periphery of it, and are depicted as parasitic, whereas the family’s economic well being is seen as reward for their work. The hypocrisy of the family is never examined, and indeed is only visible outside the space of the film. The one example where how the family acts is seen as a construction, rather than a natural reaction, is at the moment when the woman polices the children’s desire to tap dance at the Revival.
The themes of Family and Work as the key to both happiness and security dominate the movie, with the Floozy and the Con man providing counterpoint, or illustrating a thing that would destroy that happiness and security. I was hoping that this movie would be slowly revealed to be the Floozy’s conscious sabotage of bourgeois values, becoming then a film specifically about class. Instead, the film was a fascinating example of the solidification of dominant class structures as utilized by Hollywood through a movie released in 1929.
So Happy
I forgot to mention that yesterday also was so wonderful for the following reasons;
Finished a short film which I really like
Susanne returned from Zürich
Met Marc, Daniel, Piero and Douglas, walked and checked out monuments and buildings
Saw the movie at the Arsenal
Zazie, John Heys, and Douglas came to the film
Had a beer with M,D, and S!
I was so excited when I got home about what a great day it was, that even after 1 am, I had to go for a walk to tire myself out.
Out on the Town excerpts;
1. American films are like sledge-hammers telling you what to think at every frame
2. I can’t read Proust, it’s perfect
3. I think we are headed into very dark times
4. Two things I hate; one is Religion, the other is Love
5. I look on the bus, at the street, who is next to me…this is my Proust
6. America would simply sink into the sea if it weren’t for Africa
7. Sorry, my English is not so good looking
8. These ARE very dark times
I forgot the Snow Sex
Torn jeans/long johns/worn, leather coat/French Arab/shaved head//late 30’s/run my mouth over his stubbled chin/open clothes to front of bodies for contact and warmth/mutual groping/licking/sucking/clothes removed/completely naked in the snow (except boots)/my forearm between his leg, trying to lift him as he comes/climax/part.
Assembly International
In the club room under the main cinema was where everyone gathered. The building itself is a wonder of 60’s architecture, and adorned in that style of glamour. The clubroom had a low ceiling, richly paneled walls, in a modernist style, interesting glass room dividers, and mod furniture. We showed up when a film was playing. Over 150 people were there, and the event had just started. Instead of watching the film, I took advantage of the fact that everyone else was so I could scan the room, see who was there, and look for new, cute, radical types. It was the usual suspects, and my amorous glances rested on tried and true favorites. It was nice to be there with M & D, it felt like old, club days.
I ignored the film, except for when this American idiot DJ was talking about how he had moved beyond acceptance and into tolerance in terms of what he sought in alternative communities, ignoring that both discourses operate on the terms of what allegedly oppresses those communities, a debate of strategies that amounts to what kind of dog house should we live in. After the film was a “performance” that consisted of a film without sound, in front of which two women read the aims of the Assembly. The aims touched on topics that really interest me; non-representational politics, being outside identity, porousness and fluidity of temporary communities. Years ago, I thought of how one could do political work outside Identity, and had come to the conclusion that such a work would indeed have to be temporary communities, but for the work to remain non-situative, would have to be done secretly. The notion then, of presenting a “we” at a “congress” seemed destined to become directly at home, neatly in Identity Politics. Another way in which I have not necessarily moved away from these ideas, but have troubles reconciling with political action is the extent in which this talk of alternative communities outside identity is often discussed among the same type of people like myself; disenfranchised and privileged white people.
To counter my suspicions was a video interview with Beatriz Preciado, whom I found totally captivating. She had all these ideas underlying what she described as personal experience in terms of practical application of experimental politics. She described using drugs not recreationally, but as practical experiment, in differences of milligrams, the use of hormones not to become another gender, but to experiment with becoming, itself. Her speech was simple, articulate and precise, emphasizing the application of theory. She talked of these experiments in terms of a non-metaphysical witchcraft, and the use of such practices to create small holes in reality, then stressing the importance of smallness, as large holes are so swiftly occupied by the institutional. What most interested me about her is that her practices were done on herself, as a way of navigating a new way of being. I thought that such a subjective political action was something that at once took risks, moved forward, and avoided the dreary pitfalls of leftist theory.
The next woman explained that her text was meant to be read in complete darkness, and that we should not feel bad if we do not understand parts of it. She lost me there, on both points. First off, I can see a performance happening in the dark if it is something aimed a total experience that moves in several imaginative and associative directions, but what simply reading a text does, with no other sound, is claim importance to the words and ideas themselves. It is in a way regressive, towards an author, and not a gift of speculation to an audience. Secondly, the implication that an audience would feel bad for not understanding a lecture, rather than feel angry, or that the author should perhaps feel bad for poor communication skills struck me as a height of arrogance.
I knew from the program that William and Stefan were going to perform, and that performances of the latter of the two are of the most dreadful, offensively childish pulp of New Age bullshit I have ever seen, though immaculately performed. I got what I needed from Beatriz, and enduring a 40 minute harangue was what made my mind up to exit. I walked out of the space, it was ten o’clock, and the sky was an amazing affair of shapes and colors as the sun shined it’s last on the clouds above.
Beastly
Around one bend in the path was a clearing that sat at the foot of a hill overgrown with trees. Through the leaves I saw just parts of one body caressing another. As the wind moved, new parts of the coupling were visible, a hand here, the side if an ass there. I got super hard watching this sort of nature-porno, and decided to move on. Around another bend was a handsome guy and a German Shepard. I wanted to take by hard cock out of my pants and bring it to the dog’s mouth, and imagined the dog licking my pre-cum rather disinterestedly, and then that I would look at the guy and let him finish me off.
Silver Rumor
Despite my wish that it be clear and warm, I have to say that the degrees and depths of silvers and grays that make up the sky, while contrasting with greens equally varied around me, is astonishing. Through this gray and green, I am thinking of how news of the world reaches me like rumor, of how the notion of truth becomes an abstraction when you cannot read a language. The colors subdued by lack of sunlight seem to build a relationship with an understanding that obscures clarity.
Rebound
Looking for a shop to print an image for me, I walked past a building and a young and shorter guy came out. I made eye contact, and as he appeared ready to speak, I took the headphones off. I asked how he was doing, he gave an unconvincing sign he was fine. My look caught him at this, and he confessed that he had just discovered a good friend and his boyfriend were having an affair. He looked about to cry, so I asked him what he was doing just now, and that I was walking to the park to have sex, and he was welcome along. I suggested we walk through the cemetery and he admitted he had never been in one, his parents back home having warned him about ghosts. I told him it is quite nice, and shorter, and we began out. On the way, he told me some of the details, and I offered what advice I could give, in between this we spoke of trivialities like flea markets, or work.
In the park, I did not know if he wanted to have sex with me or not, so I just walked alongside. In the bushes, he stopped and turned towards me. I took hold of his waist and pulled him towards me, and kissed his neck, his ears and brow. He rubbed my jeans, undid my belt and took my cock out when we noticed we were in the middle of the path. We walked to a little niche, took our clothes off, and explored each other. He was quite muscular, but thin, and had a nice pattern on straight, black hair that ran from his crotch up to his chest, thinning out to a line in between. We traded off head, I stood up and fucked him between his thighs as he jerked off. I turned him around and rubbed my cock between his cheeks. As there were tons of guys gathering, I felt uncomfortable fucking him, as he seemed a bit shy, so I worked a finger up his ass, and we faced each other, jerking off, trading hand jobs, and I liked our cocks hitting while we stroked. I had not had an orgasm for a few days, so there was lots of cum from me. When he saw it get all smeared in his pubic hair, he put my dick back between his thighs and came all over my chest. I asked him which way he was heading and walked him to the park’s edge. We hugged, I told him that I hoped he could figure out all his feelings regarding his boyfriend soon, and I walked home.
The End of Blackface
Harry Belafonte was originally approached as the lead. He turned it down. Sidney Poitier later signed on, though reluctantly. Dinah Shore and Pearl Bailey also were reluctant to do the movie. Only Sammy Davis Jr. was signed up with no extra urging. The time was 1959, which is telling in regards to the cast’s hesitancy to sign on for a movie depicting a singing, dancing Negro just out of slavery, which stood in sharp contrast to a self representation of black folks that had begun to emerge in direct relationship to the Civil Rights movement. In this light we can see the film as a conservative and nostalgic move by white folks at the beginning of a very tumultuous period for race relations in America. Indeed, the movie was written first as a novel by a white southerner, later adapted to stage as a play, and finally a musical before this film was made. Important as it was a vehicle for black performers as a theatre piece and a film, the fact that it was voice given to black people by whites both in terms of spoken word and music, Porgy and Bess could be viewed as a total sublimation of blackface, as there is no better make-up than black skin.
Black Pools
The path was barely visible, due to the absence of a moon in the sky, and the branches of honeysuckle tumbling in from both sides. I would stop and listen to the water falling from the trees, as it had just rained heavily an hour earlier, which also made with the heat a thin fog that diffused the little light coming in from outside the park. As I moved along the path’s twists and turns, I noticed perfectly still pools of black, like polished obsidian, that reflected nothing. I thought it interesting that these puddles were even visible at all, as no light reflected off them, as if the black itself was a projection from beneath the earth.
Dry Hump
I passed him laying in a meadow, extremely handsome, over six feet tall, muscular and thin. I tried to tell if he was giving anything away by his posture, and decided to sit a nice distance from him, but close enough so he could see me watch him, but would be uncertain for sure if it was him that I watched. For some time I got nothing, and moved my hand down to my crotch to provoke him. It worked. He started rubbing his cock through his pants. I got up and moved my things closer to him, taking this as a sign of interest. He got up and moved away, and settled across the meadow from me once more, but close enough that I could see he was watching me. He then put on his shoes, got up once more, and walked right past me to piss in the bushes behind me. I watched him piss, it was a huge stream, and lasted quite a while. When he was done I waited to see if he was going to stay there or not, and when he did, I walked into the bushes to him. He immediately put his rather large cock away, pulled me close, turned me around abruptly, held my hands together with one of his very strong hands while the other pulled my shorts off. He parted my ass, kind of lifting me, and started the motions of fucking my ass, his pants still on, and zipped up while he pushed against me. When I tried to unzip his pants he held my arms back again, and I noticed he had several gold bracelets and a wedding ring. He murmured something in French as he came, and held me tighter. As he did not have to put his pants back on, he just walked away without saying anything.
Substance Abuse
Exploring a segment of the labyrinth that I usually avoid due to its proximity to the sidewalk, a saw a man about 40 years old, completely naked from head to toe. He looked Latin, was slightly out of shape, completely shaved, and had a plastic cup at his feet. He leaned against a tree and from the cup scooped handfuls of a white substance, which he splashed and smeared on his chest and cock, while masturbating. The whiteness of the substance was such that it looked chemical, like paint, or glue. These spaces I have been writing about do create their own rules that grow out of familiarity and degree of use. Seldom do you see a person there to perform their own fetish, usually these spaces use a different social template, perhaps a more “normal” one; mutual kissing, fucking or sucking. In this way these spaces reduce external hierarchies, but do often build their own. Coming across this man was a bit jarring at first because of this, but delightful in that this manifestation of desire was welcomed. No one jeered him, nor was there any attempt to police his behavior. In fact, he drew quite an appreciative crowd. By presenting us with his desire, he challenged our own hierarchies, and expanded the diversity of expressions of desire.
Two Euro Suck
Initially I had domiciled under a rhododendron with a hunky African. It was an easy enough courtship, a few glances, a few tugs and strokes at swollen tumescence’s under canvas trousers and, BOOM, you have a happy home. Having happily coupled, I moved to a meadow and read for a while, and soon was in the woods scouting out another Life Partner. It is true, we do go back to the scene of the crime, and approaching my rhododendron home I noticed a man who I realized had watched my previous romance. He smiled and tugged at his crotch, which is a way of tugging on my heart. I sat next to him on a bench, charmed by his slightly crossed left eye, and the thin peels of skin coming from his chapped lips. He mentioned something to me in German, and I responded by asking him if he spoke English. “10 euro”, he says, while outlining the length of the cock in his gray corduroys. I asked him if I could see it. He took out a flaccid, average cock. I pulled from my pocket a two-euro coin, and asked if that would suffice. He stood up, and walked into the bushes. I followed him, he held out his hand for the money, and I put my mouth around his soft meat, which got rock solid in a matter of minutes. The only way I could tell he came was by the slightest tangy flavor in my mouth, as he most likely had a few other suitors during the day. While I came, he walked behind me to wash his cock with swamp water. I felt sorry for the next guy, thinking that while I could only possibly get a throat infection, a new person would get that and dysentery.
Post Script
There was some late sunlight across the courtyard on the roof of the building. I watched the naked branches of the tree move in the wind, wondering when I would start to see the first leaves unfold. Though it was very cold, I had been inside all day and decided to ride my bike to the park before cooking dinner.
There was some late sunlight across the courtyard on the roof of the building. I watched the naked branches of the tree move in the wind, wondering when I would start to see the first leaves unfold. Though it was very cold, I had been inside all day and decided to ride my bike to the park before cooking dinner.
It was very bright and crisp once I reached the higher ground of the park with perhaps an hour of sunlight left. I swerved the bike onto the path that lead to the cruising area, finding an expected emptiness, it was just too cold outside, and the starkness of the woods left not much cover for folks who would in the summer be packed in there having sex.
I stopped to roll a cigarette, got off my bike and smoked. After a few minutes I noticed a guy smoking a joint, beer in hand and watching over a field. After a few pulls on his weed he began walking away when he noticed me and came towards me, smiling. I forgot what we first started speaking of, but when I asked him what he did here in Berlin, he told me he was suffering from depression and was not working, but going for walks, watching people and gathering his strength, which was pretty much my situation.
We spoke for quite some time as the fading sun cast its final light deep into the woods. We spoke of depression, not searching for sympathy, but very practically, how we could tell when it was coming on, possible reasons why, which lead the conversation to life experiences, and both ending up here in Berlin. When the sun had gone we both were shivering, exchanged numbers and a heartfelt embrace before parting. His name was Daniel.
So we go on more than a year since we began. This time the subjects may be a bit more varied, as in some areas life is richer and more diverse, whereas in other things scarcity is more present than before. Once again, as before, the spring has clouded over, the sky clumsy with giant, tumbling beings of silver, white and black. Now at sunset I watch the otherwise bland colored brick chimneys glow deep and luminous in the light that seems to somehow grow brighter as it fades.
Now I have a Time Machine outside my window. It sways in the wind, fills the air with soft sound, birds keep it trim by removing damaged or dead parts, and bees rest, hovering in it’s shade when rain falls.
It was mentioned to me by a Marc that my fixation on the Natural may be the result of making experimental films. This was meant as a playful jibe at a comment I had made in admiration of a tree. I thought it was funny, but it triggered a series of thoughts that stayed with me for the next day. I thought of the term, “Formal” in describing a certain type of experimental work, which in turn led me to think of the study of the variety of Forms in nature. Geometry of leaves, petals, the slopes of rolling hills. I had read in an interview with an Iranian film maker that he believed the history of Western film can be traced to it’s origins in painting, and Eastern could likewise be traced to a lineage of poetry. On my bicycle I thought how I always have envied painters. Though I really do not know for sure what is meant by Formal, I remembered what impressed me greatly when seeing Paul’s work in progress was the reduced scale of the working copy which not filling the entire screen, and surrounded by black, the natural looked artificial, like a painting. I liked the natural presented this way, as if it gave a certain truth in art; this is not Real. I have since put many things these reduced size boxes of moving images. Mostly Ghosts.
The rewarding year with difficult choices. I feel it. It is heavy and soft at once. Three years of hard work, not much money, and an estrangement from things that is at times acute, other times it forms something more ephemeral, like air…I feel some very special things drifting away from me, like music. My reason for making it in the first place was that after my first two attempts at making a film were a disaster, I turned to music to save me. I began them both as an experiment in Being in the world, a social being, a way to exist in time with others, outside of words. I did not give film the chance it deserved. Music paid off. I found myself in a very wonderful community of a wide variety of musicians and composers who I eventually moved from. What began as community is now reduced to making movies and music as a solitary thing.
When I feel cornered, or helpless, I often have to find my way out by jumping headfirst into what I fear the most. If I was losing music, and movies were solitary I had to get them with people again, thus I would be among people again. Wilhelm had a book release party and invited his friends to perform. I had not once in over ten years of performing music played solo. Nor had I ever improvised live to a film. I knew Wilhelm and I had a shared love for Thelonious Monk, so I made a short video with footage of Monk and played live to it. Wilhelm is always saying to “show yourself”, and I thought by doing so I would be a step closer to reclaiming three loves; Music, Film and People. I am closer again to the world.
Dearest Paul sent me a nice note on Nature and Image;
Pointing to a tree as if to say, 'See, this is possible. We can do this too'. Brakage of course knew this, Jarman too, and most enthusiasts who found themselves on an optical printer, suddenly drunk with the knowledge of how to change time's constant rate. I remember my first hand processed super 8 experiments, where I crammed rolls of film into tiny tins and then tinted them in golds and violets. The image barely hanging on, dark shifting shapes on blasted bleached out light strips. Lots of these were pictures of nature, swinging plastic flowers, plastic and non- plastic palms. And water. My early obsession with it and the way it conspires with light to deceive the eyes.
The other half of the footage was of people. But the portraits I found fell short. To show someone's face meant nothing. It added little to looking at their face without a camera at all, and served only as a record of a moment. Where the nature sequences made something that had the richness of an image, the frames of people’s faces were only stills of blankness in lines. It was up to us, looking back on the reels, to decide how to respond. Emotionally?
With this blankness? How could that be possible?
Except for one shot, a group of strikers shot from a distance. Here, as a group, the flattening of purpose surpassed the inadequacies of my early silent filming. But yet this flattening of purpose was immediately apparent as the sticky fly trap of abstracting the individual and the group, the Leni Riefenstal mode, flocks of hats and flags united in purpose. Foamy mouthed Fascism.
Maybe this was why our first feature shows the back of the main character's head for the first 15 minutes. In some ways it was an attempt to work through this image blankness, to place a person in an image. Holding back on the face, not having the face ever speak, then drowning the viewer with the loveliness of the image and the horror of history.
These experiments are ongoing. These days it is the residue of memories in broken down fairgrounds I am piecing together, while the faces speak directly to us. Somewhere between the recording of the record and the polishing of nature as it is whittled away.
A big wet sloppy one to you
XXX
Pablo
Austria Tour, sept-oct. 2006
From my window in the pension I can see a broad expanse of mountains rising steeply from their base to the crest. There really is no valley to speak of. The town we are staying rests between the slopes of two of these mountains, with the homes more scatted and the streets thinning in number as the slopes steepen. The town’s center forms a sort of circle, the structures most cluttered around a central square. It is a neat and clean place, and one notices not entirely Austrian. There is an immigrant population of Turks, Asians and Africans. This question of immigration must be quite frightening to these people who are now subjected overt racist propaganda printed on posters all over the countryside as elections near. I could not help but think of the Jews of Europe feeling the noose tighten as the Nazis gained power and territory. They read the same writing on the same walls. It is an optimistic thought that perhaps these posters are only made by, and supported by a small minority who seek power, but history often dashes such hopes and slaughters often smolder for years in the hearts of “good” people.
It is incredibly beautiful here, and the autumn present in the scent and light and sound. The forests are still mostly green, but everywhere dusted with the golds and reds that will consume them in the coming weeks. Range after range of these mountains have held intact the customs and dialects that can be traced back hundreds of years, with small communities living in semi-seclusion from the rest of the world. Our driver gave us a brief description of the histories of some of the places we will be traveling to. A not so distant one involves the shifting borders of Eastern European countries throughout the 20th century. We were told of regions that are in custom and habit Austrian, but where all the folks have Slovenian surnames because at one time that area was indeed another country, and the mass killing of those people who found themselves on the wrong side of a shifting border left the only remaining traces of them in part of a name. Bands of Roma
came and were driven out or killed, as is well chronicled the Jews of Europe exterminated. All this violence in this pastoral beauty.
Susanne pointed out what logic and sense then, that the Viennese Actionists emerged from this place. “to destroy this”, she said while looking at these amazing forms of earth as we drove further and further into it. I imagine then the 1960’s with Austria facing one side to the West, open to the changes happening around the world, the East backed right up to the Iron Curtain, the beginnings of the mass dissemination of cultural rubbish we now name Globalization, and a landscape locked in secrets of violence, and then such a visceral art movement makes complete sense.
More recently worldwide upheavals and economic necessity moves populations around the world. The former colonial superpowers, the very ones responsible for so much devastation wrought upon the world’s less powerful now deal with the influx of people from the very places damaged the most; South and Central America, Asia, Africa…..these people, refugees they have come to be called face increasing hostilities in the places they have fled to, and often face death or persecution if they were to return to where they came from. It is as the World is asking them to please stop moving long enough so we can kill them properly.
Outside the bar one night an African guy motioned me over. It is a movement that usually repels me, used as it is by people in positions of authority, establishing a alpha/omega dog thing. On the street if it is not a cop who uses this method, it is usually then the criminal, often a drug dealer or prostitute. Given the language difference I decided I could just play ignorant tourist if things seemed like they would not go well. Victor, he told me his name was, and he complimented me on my looks, and told me he would love to give me head. I followed him to a nearby park, and we settled into a climbing structure in the children’s area, laying next to each other and we kissed and pulled out our cocks. He masturbated while he sucked me off, and I offered him my underwear to wipe his own cum off his dripping fist. He offered to walk me back part way to my hotel, and along the river we walked, the moonlight gleaming and streaking across the rushing surface of water. He told me how hard it was to live in a country that wanted him out, that he was on a refugee status, and in Austria that meant you are not allowed to enter the workforce. His own country was too dangerous for him to return to, and that there was a small Nigerian community that was here which would vilify him if they knew he was gay. He was 22, and I asked him what he did best, or liked to do the most. He told me he was a great disco dancer. I wondered what it would be like to be 22, love dancing, be backed into a lovely mountain town that wanted you gone, and basically have no imaginable future. I noticed days earlier there was an immigrant awareness group that handed out a paper they published, and asked Victor if he knew about them.
So I believe today is Thanksgiving, here a gray chill is in the air, much like I remember this holiday from childhood. I woke up and put coal in the furnace and made an espresso and now listen to some great music John sent me yesterday. This holiday more than others always was nice for me because of its simplicity. The goal was always just to be in the company of friends and family for laughter and sharing a good meal. Also because it never had a center act like opening gifts or baskets of sweets, the time spent preparing the meal and eating was the focus...several hours of just being in each other’s company. From an early age, and not just because of this holiday, but reinforced by this ritual of Company, I learned the joy of wasting Time, the pleasure of feeling the hours pass. Sometimes Time can feel like an enemy but in reality it is no such thing. It is the house we inhabit, it stood before us and will stand when we are gone for others to inhabit. We decorate our house with our acts and our memories. If this holiday also signifies in its mythology the beginnings of our country then we owe it to justice to remember that slaughter of natives that took place over one hundred years that was not yet named Holocaust or Genocide, and to work for a Time where anyone would be welcome at our table, as our family and in our company. Here in my small apartment I look at the tree outside my window move so slightly in the breeze. The leaves are now gone, leaving bunches of dry seedpods, which rain down like helicopters. It will be a long time to live with the absence of the beautiful coat of leaves that usually adorns this magnificent tree, and I will walk around today with the thought of absence. Who and what have vanished, and also who and what has never left and never will? I know when one has loved something or someone that never disappears. An inventory of these precious things could indeed take us to grief, or even rage, but that precious thing remains in this, at its source, and that is our Company. The living and the dead, we live through each other.
The days have passed recently taking my bicycle out between rather heavy rainstorms. Having the Nico song that was written by Jackson Brown in my head as the soundtrack to these excursions is nice. I have concluded that being cool is not passed on by fucking. Just look at Jackson, then look at Nico. Guess who wins the cool contest. In fact, it adds to her cool factor that she fucked him when he was just nineteen. I’ll give the dork a break. It is a nice song. I cannot figure out the cruising rules in my neighborhood. On the corner is a park where definitely guys go to cruise. There is a restroom there with two rooms. One for pissing the other for shitting. In the piss room the guys stand facing a wall. I imagine they just jerk off onto the floor. In the shit room there are always three to five young guys just standing outside the toilets. I walk in and they all just stop talking and look at me. I do not know if it is prostitution, and I should pick one and head into a stall, or if I am expected to go to a stall and one of them will approach me. I would just ask, but the atmosphere is very sex heavy, male and macho, so it makes starting a conversation difficult. Outside the restrooms there are little squares of trash strewn rose gardens with benches on each side of the square, all facing each other. Here I see older men, not the elderly, but say 35-45 sit and watch who goes in and out of the restroom. I never see them leave to follow someone in, but know they are cruising because I have seen them in other parks, in the sex areas. Another example is the larger park a little further off where one guy maybe twenty cruised me in the bushes but I realized soon he only wanted to watch me jerk off while he hid behind a tree. He let me see everything but his rod, which he kept hidden behind the tree as he worked it out. I obliged him. Okay, that one was not so confusing, just a little disappointing, and took some time to figure out just what he wanted without scaring him off. Then there is the supermarket, where the guys are really cruisy, but I am at a loss as to how to work it in a supermarket. Maybe I was raised by wolves and can only have sex easily in parks. Nana told me guys also use the Ubahn. The platforms are where the guys offer the service of fucking, the market above is reserved for Gay Dating. Seen plenty of hotties, but no cruising so far.
My reading again brings me back to Alchemists and spies. Currently I take walks through the gardens of British Royalty and have dinner with spies from the 16th century where we discuss philosophy. What a gas!
The idea of an unfinished film returns. The notes of a director or cinematographer are found, and some rough footage. The footage could be seen as a love story, then turns into biography, then a ghost story or political intrigue. The footage is presented as it is, with no editing or tricks. The gaps between what is seen are put together by the viewer. Perhaps a scholar doing research has found the material, and his notes serve the purpose of keeping this tale open rather than explaining everything. He wonders if there were two cameramen, based on the style of footage. He searches in vain for actors, crew or director, and has theories of the purpose of this film. Nothing is resolved, everything is open.
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