Catching up: 27 December 2007

NOT THIS CLOSE TO HALLOWEEN

It must be said: much as I love the TG aesthetic, I can live without the wigs.

Wigs SHOUT drag to me. My days as a makeup artist gave me quite a taste for sequin-strewn drag culture—bitchy, million-decibal, one-upping, sexy-sexy-sexy, theatre-on-steroids, show-girl culture. But nothing replaces the real thing. Especially in the heat of passion, when only pinching at real skin or pulling a tangled fistful of locks will do.


I SECOND THAT SLOW-MOTION

Andres and I had such a nice, slow-burn time. It became an interesting dance for a while. Well, interesting to me because it was novel: I liked not being clouded by chemicals. She’s certainly like no one I’d met in a long time, both temperamentally and physically. A beautiful Persian shemale, Andres is totally happy as a pre-op MTF transgendered person. She’s only been transitioned for a few years, but she has her own style, is comfortable in her gorgeous skin, and is totally at ease presenting as a women. Andres also speaks several languages. Why has no one ever listed Farsi as an aphrodisiac? A tragic oversight by the language police.

A champion college athlete, and a dedicated athlete still, Andres doesn’t smoke (not too surprising) or drink alcohol, so food and sex—she winks when she says this—are her only vices. I like it when she winks. And laughs. She eats healthy, but she eats real food (hallelujah) and occasionally even orders desserts. Has a bit of a sweet-tooth, my girlyboy.

Due to her travel schedule and the inconvenience of my needing to keep my day-job, we could never get beyond sharing the occasional very nice meal. (And—let’s face it, this is what “spark” is for—we never really craved each other.)

Biggest thrill for us? Occasionally scandalizing stodgy, gawking retirees who would stare, whisper or openly jaw-drop as their brains tried to wrap around the whole issue of a guy dressed as a girl who’s with a girl. The fact that it’s actually none of their business and that we would not normally foist our lifestyle or our clever conversation on anyone is completely lost on them. When the zombie-people would just stare at us, I had to fight the words trying to fly out of my brain, gumball-like: “Hey grandma, you’re gonna drop those teeth with all that obvious rudeness.” I mostly kept my spunk to myself because Andres didn’t like to be directly confrontational or more accurately she didn’t like to stand up for herself. Once, though, when seated next to some freaked-out heterofascists, Andres decided to go for a little passive-aggressive fun and laid it on a bit thick for grandma and grandpa by loudly foisting our lifestyle onto their earshot (subject: Phoenix’s mild-child ranking in the world of Fetish Ball). But we never made a move toward other thrills. Goodbye to Andres, it seems.


THIS IS (NOT) ENGLAND

You’re not always going to see continuity in posts, but I couldn’t let a chance go by to follow up on this film because it did not get a wide release and you’re not likely to hear about it except from the likes of cranky cinephiles such as yours truly.

Shane Meadows has written and directed a masterpiece. I guess, since it’s memoir, that means he once lived a masterpiece.

This is England is a disturbing but surprisingly affirming story, too. The composition and editing and costuming and performances and dialogue and authenticity are all perfect. I could have done without the one lame audience member who, during the festival q & a, waxed incredibly stupid about how he’d never been to England but once read one book about Thatcherite England and “gathered that there was once such a problem with the welfare state,” and came away wondering wasn’t it stupid for societies to make people lazy and shiftless on principle.

Yo, buddy, England had a very complicated reaction to World War II, which lingered on there for much longer than anywhere else, due to the devastation of London, jobs migrating abroad, food rationing well into the 1950s, and the reverse colonial migration they began experiencing in waves. People are racist and stupid everywhere, unfortunately, regardless of whether their government offers health care and financial assistance to poor people. Several people at the screening (yay, Lefty Hollywood Types) shouted him back under the rock he crawled from.

A friend who attended the festival with me noted that the National Front neo-fascists in the film were eerily like the Arizona Minutemen – vigilantes who apparently are hell-bent on hating hating hating people who clean hotels and pick lettuce (if they’re brown, that is). England’s National Front would do well in modern day America, which is a sobering thought that, because it crossed my mind, is now crossing yours.

--Misc. Romance has no humble opinions: they are all grand.