Miscellaneous Romance

Dancing Over The Void

2008-08-08T20:34:00.000-07:00

Sharing thoughts about a new film tonight, and I hope it won't seem tedious. I know, I know . . . mine is not a film blog. But I'm entranced and delighted and I want to stop people on the streets and share the good word about this remarkable story about passion, to shepherd my brothers and sisters away from their sad lacking of Man on Wire. All of my random thoughts are floating away from a central iconic image from this film: I even dreamt last night of green hillocks in France marked off with cables, the hillocks giving way to a grassy, rock-strewn path lining a wide brook. As I walked along the brook, I imagined myself slipping but I never hit the water. I knew, though, that what I imagined was both a fall to grace and a fall into the void.

Man on Wire

A film by James Marsh
2008 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Winner, World Cinema/Documentary,
and Audience Award, World Cinema/Documentary

http://www.manonwire.com/

Wire-walker Philippe Petit, an expatriate Frenchman-in-New York, is high-strung, even when he's not tripping the light-line fantastic. His expressions are intense, but his movements are never jerky. He is a disciplined athlete, an Atlas among his cadre of street performers. He is focused, though he prefers "tenacious"--no problem with English as a second language here. His screen personality is a mélange of poetry and showmanship. He talks like an anarchist, motivated by breaking rules. He dares gravity to pull him netherwards: he is a fool, tricking us (and himself) into thinking that gravity won't take him for a ride. He is also a philosopher.

Petit's most famous lark on a wire was six years in the making. On 7 August 1974, while the finishing touches were still being put on the World Trade Center complex in New York, Petit and his crew strung a tightrope between the twin towers and Petit made history by dancing on air. The gathering crowd in the streets below held its collective breath for three quarters of an hour while Petit performed and played a comical game of keepaway from the policemen who had also gathered on the top of each building to arrest him.

Petit's famous stunt was 34 years ago and his story is by now a tightly told one. For Man on Wire, director James Marsh draws on a stash of home movies and then spins out more of the tale with period stills, contemporary interviews, and cleverly-staged reenactments. Oddly, Marsh does not contextualize this film with the destruction of the twin towers, though the prospect of a dramatic plummet hangs over this film in a surreal, psychic echo.

Marsh seems to be more interested in what Petit's existential romp meant to those who helped him pull it off, and so Marsh turns the lens on Petit's friends and sundry recruits. The poignance of their lingering awe and sense of loss is hard to bear. Petit's girlfriend Annie Allix and his co-conspirator, Jean-Louis Blondeau, both knew that they were as likely to be enabling suicide as success, and watching a loved one gleefully dance with mortality certainly took its toll. And though they may not have lost Petit to the void, they lost him, nonetheless, because celebrity corrupts immediately and absolutely.

Now a late-50-something artist-in-residence at St John the Divine Cathedral, Petit relishes the new wave of attention to his dramatic pas de deux with gravity. And though Marsh might hold that the devastation of the twin towers is outside the realm of Petit's story, Petit disagrees and freely discusses his opinions on the subject: "I think they should be rebuilt exactly the same, or maybe even a little bit higher—as a rebellion against doom."

WILL THAT FIT IN A BROWN PAPER BAG?

2008-07-07T18:52:00.000-07:00

I don't even want to list all of the different dictionaries I have on my shelf. They snuck up on me over the years. One at a time, they'd just show up and stake out a few square inches of real estate among my unorganized collections. Maybe they came to hang out just for a weekend and ended up staying a while. Ça m'est égal. Pretty soon, I'm a slut for reference books--and what's more, I'm a dame that's got no regrets.

My latest find is oddly both electronic (hallelujah-- no dusting!) and low-tech. No more than a list of words on a screen with page-turning arrows. Ah, but the words, the words. For lexophiliacs, this website is more porny than porn. It'll help you tell the difference between amour fou and amor sui. Between fly-jockey and flying saucer. And might puzzle some of us with such way-back phrases as "punishing the harlequin." Oh, you'll try to act cool. But soon enough, you'll be jotting a phrase or two and finding poetry in "benrus queen."

Few dictionaries compel a page-turning frenzy like www.sex-lexis.com. Read it. Add tags to your porn collection. Feel all worldly.

Ms Romance, a.k.a. the amorist, says: "When in doubt, look it up!"

Evocative Plates (title cred to Beast)

2008-06-09T00:15:00.000-07:00

This record keeps skipping on the part where everyone is raving about how sexy food is—hell, even literary grande dame Margaret Atwood likens recipe books to porn. (What happens in her kitchen stays in her kitchen, apparently.)

I don’t often get to enjoy leisurely meals with friends. In fact, it’s all too common for me to dine al desko morning, noon, and night: most of these are unsexy, cold-cream-on-your-face kinds of meals. And yes I realize how L7 that sounds. If it’s too sad, skip to the next paragraph and just be glad it’s not you.

Last night, one of my favorite riot grrrrrls in the whole world threw open a dollhouse-sized window of opportunity to share a cheese-and-wine outing. I gleefully squeezed through the bars of my workaholic cage to join her.

Once we’d made our choices, the waiter—looking for all the world, disconcertingly, like a young and way-too-eager-to-please version of Hugh Laurie—brought us the cheese course.

The food before me, ‘le plat,’ comme on dit, was summer itself, to my mind.

Who says there isn’t time travel? Because I’m telling you truly that when I bit into the perfectly textured French bread, piled high with bleu cheese and grape halves, I was transported to the age 16.

No sommelier can convince me that the rush I felt was all about the perfect pairing of two kinds of controlled mold.

Anyway, who cares about what strange chemistry was happening on my tongue? I was awash in flirty teenage glances, blustery cycling trips between the forest and the sea, and in not giving a fuck about what my teachers thought of my drinking and smoking and shaving boys’ legs. In short, I was enjoying the kind of experience that made me the mole on the belly of an exquisite whore. I am happily not the same person I was at the age of 16, and I wouldn’t want to go back to my past and relive it any more than memory permits, but I’m fortunate to still be enjoying such pleasure in my life, such good friends and good meals.

So join me in a toast and lemme get back to work, willya?

--Misc. Romance says “vite, vite, vite—santé!”

Poser. (Catching up: 10 January 2008)

2008-06-08T23:55:00.001-07:00

Some are born to geekdom, some have it foisted upon them. Still others have to work at it.

BACK IN THE DAY

I should’ve been a shoo-in for geekdom. I had a mathematician for a father—a mathematician who worked at NASA, no less, a place where slide rules ruled because they actually put people in space and lobbed astronauts over to the moon and back. I also have the odd distinction of the Star Trek premier being my first memory. It all should have come so naturally, right, given both of those points of entry to the geek oeuvre? But looking back on pictures of my one appearance at any science fiction fan convention, or “con” in the vernacular, I’m the only one not in costume, which might suggest to the outsider that my heart wasn’t in it.

(Fun fact: in those days I looked like the love child of Siouxie Sioux and that chick Maya from Space: 1999 without even trying, so I arguably fit in pretty well without the costume.)

In truth, from the start, I was all heart and no gooey geek center. I had to work for geek cred. Hard. I was so sure I could pass eventually. For a while, I sought out friends who were all “hit points” this and “elven armor” that. I took math courses for fun, though I almost flunked out of calculus one quarter and had to put some serious sweat equity into recovering my geek poise. I tried to hone my chess skills enough to play in the club, but I faced a hard truth that has eroded only slightly over the years: I will never be any more than a recreational user of chess, able to snort a bishop here and there, but never, ever will I rob a convenience store to pay chess club dues.

I was a geek wannabe in a world of geeks. I was, in short, a poser. And everyone knew it.

I had to make a clean break, for a while, with my aspirations to geekability.

In college I pronounced that I would stop caring about numbers and start caring about (1) nuclear annihilation, (2) punk rock, and (3) getting laid (no matter what he tells you, Prince did not come up with the concept of “party like it’s 1999” all by himself).

The story of why I cared about nuclear apocalypse is an interesting one, but that’s not why we’re here today.

I gravitated to punk because it let me explore anger in a (mostly) culturally-appropriate way—and I was angry as hell. One of the sources of my angst was because I was such an eff’n outcast that I didn’t even fit in with geeks.

Why ‘punk’ and not mere vandalism and other criminal frippery? You should know by now: punk’s higher level of comfort for gender bending, of course. You see, as progressive as some of the geek subculture could be, glam hadn’t really gilded the geek world yet—it would be more than a decade before Star Trek narratives would incorporate hermaphrodism. Finding a home with skanky boys, bois, grrrrls, and girlyboys, gave me sweet satisfaction because another part of my soul was finally sated. My new life also gave me delusions of superiority over the geeks who I thought had jilted me.

Q: So in college, what did I do, besides shave my head and nuzzle up to as many mohawks as possible?

A: Well, I settled on academic study of girly geekdom, beginning with studying the research and inventions of Hypatia, Shi Dun, Dorotea Bucca, Maria Sybilla Merian, and Marie Curie. I examined pedagogical gender studies that uncovered the vastly different treatment of boys and girls in science and math classes. Forget “girls gone wild”—think more “girls gone invisible!” Dear readers, I must say this last did not come as a surprise.

HUG A GEEK TODAY

These days, geekiness is in, even for girls.

Unfortunately, the cornerstone of geek nature, intelligence, isn’t in vogue. Witness the ridiculous and easily disproven assertion that smart = elitist. We’re in the midst of an anti-science backlash, neck-deep in politicians who cynically exploit scientific uncertainty so that public policy continues to serve powerful, wealthy polluters.

In his book Happiness, Richard Layard reminds us that societies need goals aimed at improving lives even if sometimes their purposes and payoffs are a matter of debate. “Society cannot flourish without some sense of shared purpose,” he writes.

Well, hell, yes. Public service: not just for everyone else anymore.

In Europe, science cafés are social clubs that have become quite the phenom. (Not sure what kind of victory this is. Imagine anything involving a pub in Europe not being compulsively embraced. You can’t, can you?)

Perhaps American science cafés could help us hip up science and find laudable public enterprises to tie our fortunes to. Combine science café with intellidating and you’ve got yourself a new American classic.

My inner geeklette seems willing still to put her hand up, go to the chalkboard, and take a stab at answering the burning question of the moment. For that I must be off to the pub.

--Misc. Romance says sharpen your pencils.

Catching up: 27 December 2007

2008-06-07T10:19:00.000-07:00

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.

MY NEWEST BUMPERSTICKER: KEEP ME WEIRD

2007-09-27T21:40:00.000-07:00

DISAPPEARING ACTS

Well, the twentysomething punked-out girl and boy who were taking tickets at the Psychic TV concert ended up being the highlight of the night. I kissed them both. Tenderly. Fervently. They took the (admittedly mild) kink like pros.

That show was more than a month ago now and I’m still thinking that Alice Genese is the sexiest bassist around. Wow. Being in the front row and dancing with Alice all night? Good times.

Unlike my other front row experience for the month.

Went to the Eddie Izzard work in progress show in Scottsdale—his first appearance in Arizona—and was underwhelmed. Don’t get me wrong: I’m a big fan of his comedy, and not just because of the TG linkup that used to be part of his material. He’s well-spoken on and off stage, and his brain is seemingly in overdrive, which I totally dig. (Eddie, I love you. Call me.)

BUT, he had very little new material, and except for two brief and laser-sharp segments on war and evolution (Spartan women giving birth, and “monkey-monkey-monkey-you”), his show felt slapdash and incredibly premature, even for a work in progress. It’ll be interesting to see how the show shapes up over time, though: part of the whole reason I went is precisely because I wanted a glimpse of the artistic process* at work because yes, I will go see the tour when it launches next year.

*I know it sounds twee, but how often do you get to see an artist do that? When was the last time you went to an art gallery, saw an artist preparing a canvas or mixing the paints on her palette, and then went to the show to view the final product? I for one am precisely the kind of nerd who finds that shite fascinating. Sue me.

RINGING MY BELLS

Hot date next week. Late dinner and coffee. V-e-e-e-r-y civilized.

Not sure what's in store here. It's a first date, and virtual-to-flesh is sometimes a bumpy ride.

“Andres”* is a pre-op MTF transsexual who digs GGs (joy!) and, like me, isn't afraid to get sweaty climbing mountains -- or to risk breaking her nails during vigorous picnic playtime with the dog. So she says, and I have no reason yet to doubt her truthiness.

*Not sure why this name came to mind in my quest to protect the presumably innocent. L7 reference anyone?

HIP-HIP

Well, the Matthew Shephard Act passed in the Senate, my friends and les abonnés. A big victory for queer rights, IF it can get through the House and then survive the big blustery veto threat by the Man-Who-Would-Be-King in the White House. Of course, there’s something to be said for focusing on preventing someone from beating the shit out of someone else till they’re dead just because they’re different (black, queer, accordion-loving), but I still think it’s a good thing to be able to ensure that we acknowledge when crimes are related to intolerance and hate.

While we’re on the subject of neo-nazis, I’m looking forward to the release of the film This is England. Don’t miss it when it comes around: it seems an incredibly moving portrayal of how hate can so comfortably fill a void when it’s the only thing that feels like love in your life.

--Misc. Romance says “only connect.”

Bullied and bolloxed

2007-08-10T23:09:00.000-07:00

So Scottsdale, AZ, Mayor Mary Manross is meeting with some leaders in Arizona's TG community on Wednesday 15 August. The reason? Some face-saving.

You see, a very established and not-at-all-hip music club on her turf threw out transgender patrons over a fracas about bathroom etiquette. (One of the transgender women happens to be a City of Scottsdale employee. Ouch.) Please note: there will be no spoilers here. I'm boycotting the club that did this, as should all GLBT-friendly folk. Get details at www.azcentral.com (search transgender).

It seems our intrepid MTFs were shaking things up in this nightclub just by existing--and by flaunting their full bladders. The nerve of them! They were, newspaper reports say, upsetting the women and throwing the men into tizzies by . . . wait for it . . . using the restrooms. Being accommodating types, the transgender women switched from using the men's room to the women's room (or was it the other way around?) and back again when they were asked to by the bar's owner.

Trouble was, the uptight drunks at this dive kept complaining no matter where these Inconvenient Patrons tried to relieve themselves. Hell, I'd have peed on the walls and then hit the road waving a one-fingered salute, but these folks were--there's no other word for it--genteel. To make matters even more humiliating, there was a fair amount of bullying and picture-taking by those respectively threatened and titillated by the experience of sharing space at the bar with blokes in dresses. Eventually, the club's owner decided to ban transgender people altogether, using the logic that he didn't want to alienate other patrons, and he couldn't afford to build a TG-only bathroom, the only solution on the table so far.

Shiver-me-fucking-timbers, what about the more obvious solution? One that's already working at another Scottsdale lounge, AZ88? Simply have two bathrooms (private stalls in each) that are marked S/HE. No 'separate but equal' attitude there! Everyone's happy, all patrons can have a little private time when they need to, and no one cares who is adjusting their stockings or combing their beards at the sink next to them. Clearly, AZ88 is a lounge for grown-ups.
**NOTE/CORRECTION: APPARENTLY, THE CLUB IN QUESTION ALREADY HAS SINGLE USE RESTROOMS. WHICH BEGS THE QUESTION: HOW IN THE HELL DID THIS GET SO BOLLOXED UP IN THE FIRST PLACE?

Let's hope Mayor Manross will take the time to consider all of the options before meeting with transgender community leaders: she needs to use this meeting to do more than just apply some heavy make-up over her city's black eye.

There is now a complaint before the Arizona Attorney General's office against the club owner who has decided it's okay to ban an entire class of people from his establishment. Stay tuned for updates as the case proceeds.

B.Y.O.S.

2007-08-05T00:23:00.000-07:00

It's time for me to make a respectful request of all trannies whose target gender wears fishnet stockings. Boys, I'm talking to you.

Please bring your own fishnets on the first date.

As the Elvis Costello song goes, "Don't you know the facts of life, boy, don't you know what these things cost?"

I'm happy to buy you a drink. Thrilled to kiss your painted, claret lips. I'd love to run my hands up your skirt. But no, for our first date, you can't borrow mine and yes you should bring -- better yet, wear -- your own knickers, stockings, and bras.

Let's leave rummaging through my closet for our second date, shall we?

XO

"Queer, There, and Everywhere"

2007-08-04T22:36:00.000-07:00

All great conversations used to start with a drink in one hand and a laugh on the lips.

Cheers.

I had a lot to think about tonight as I sat drinking a crazy-ass key lime martini at the corner queer bar tonight. I was -- de rigueur -- off at a table to myself, drinking, reading a newspaper, and making small talk with the touchyfeelygirlyboy waiter. He was very concerned that I have a good time and gave me a peck on the cheek to prove it. Did he think I was a cross-dresser? Was he just filled with sister-love? Did I really project an aura of yearning for inappropriate professional contact? Would condoms come with the drink if I ordered a second round? What was his cut-off football jersey all about?

He was lovely, to be fair, and genuinely friendly. He liked stroking my arms as he checked in on my "table" -- that is, on me. I was, as I already said, sitting alone.

I didn't even have other empty chairs at my table. The party next to me had snagged the two bar stools that were keeping me company. Stools that suggested--cleverly, falsely--that friends of mine would be joining me soon. Invisible friends.

The reason my stools were poached? One table over sat an attractive lesbian with cropped blond hair and a soft-butch-athletic build that I couldn't help lingering over. It was *her* birthday, and she had more friends at the bar that night than she could talk to at one time. No holding court in that place, given the music volume: the largest number of friends who could hear what she yelled at any given moment was four. Her gang kept shifting and sorting so that they could hang out in her orbit, within earshot, flitting and cooing and scuffling their way around her all the livelong, neon night.

Their jollies didn't overtake my thoughts completely.

What was really on my mind tonight was an old argument I've been having with one of my very oldest friends. He -- a full-fledged outandabout gay man -- thinks that I'm not really queer. Even though the most crushing crush of my life was on a woman. In spite of the fact that the first erotic experience I ever had was shaving a boy's legs in preparation for him donning girls' underwear. Discounting, apparently, the years of service I put in as a faghag. And he seems also to be brushing aside the fact that my life has from time to time been all about chasing 'Hermaphrodite.'

Sheesh, what does it take?

True, it seems as though girls like me (omnisexual, with a particular bent for transgendered people) really don't have a place at the table, except in the electric blue soaked impressionistic world of David Bowie. But I'm here. I've got my own table. I've got a stool I can park my curvy ass on. I've got a fancy drink. And I'm thinking that even those of us in the world's 'miscellaneous' category deserve a little queer love.

Let me call you sweetheart

2007-04-23T18:34:00.000-07:00

Until April of this year, I had no real sense that I was considered 'Miscellaneous.'

You could say that I came of age in a simpler, more quaint time. When "Tales of the City" was required reading. When a girl could go out to a gay bar and find a great orgy to attend (and even partake in, should she be so inclined). When boys were girls and girls were boys.

You know, the 80s.

But a recent -- ahem -- adventure into the strange underbelly of internet dating led to a rude awakening. My postings kept getting deleted from Craigslist. I mean, talk about give me a complex: what in the world is so 'out there' that it gets rejected from Craigs list?! Have you seen the penis photos?! Who are these Craigs list police and WTF are they shooting up?

You see, apparently, even though I'm a woman who actually is seeking either a woman or a transgendered person (FTM or MTF, ça m'est égal), my postings to both the woman-seeking-woman and woman-seeking-man listings were rejected. The only place where my ads didn't get deleted were the 'Misc.' category. Hence the name for this new blog and my new life as Misc. Romance. Or Ms. Romance, to you.

Nice to meetcha.