It's the chocolate, it is the chocolate on the tooth

One time I dated this guy who lived in Brooklyn, beyond most pales ca. 1989. His best friend had a neat party trick: He could imitate Cocteau Twins. Elizabeth Fraser's mesmerizing nonsense baby talk, which is still currency in these parts.

I first heard Cocteau Twins at Life Cafe of the terrible Mexican and undeniable cool in 1986. It was late for me to come to them, but I immediately bought cassettes at Tower Records and caught up on Avenue B. Treasure. The Pink Opaque. Pearly Dew Drops. Pandora.

And she is innocent! She is the Spangle Maker!

Relief

Relief

The extra-innings pitcher

has just the look of

traintrack houses

in Knoxville

Of early-evening Asheville parties

on a porch slung over the river

as heavy slanting sunshine

combusts into night

Mouth dipping at both ends

hair dripping from his cap

words spit like fastballs between

pulls of smoke and slugs of beer

Nine scattered round

the old Amana, the oilcan table

the game on the radio

from Pittsburgh or Atlanta

Five of us rolling up

with fresh lines of sunburn

tracing yesterday’s crew cuts

beer cans glancing off our shins

Rollie Fingers all wound up

glaring down at Lonnie, swearing

get your ass up to the store, still

hours away from the serious threats

Tilting back the crackled street

tall trees waving to the left

hedges swaying to the right

gas station dead ahead

Just supplies, Lon says squarely

as the screen door jangles

into filthy fans and flypaper

red Coke cooler, candy rack

Hughie winks at Len as

Sam bags Schlitz and Salems

pork rinds and Red Hots, relays

to Ken who doesn’t talk barely

Riverside the white clouds

scud across the sky as

smoke rushes down throats

and beer foams from the can

Clouds swirling

smoke curling

fenders knocking

mouths dripping at both ends

And then with a shout branching

bumping roots slapping

branches brushing gnats

pumping bends panting

Finally breaking through

to scour hands at the spigot

sliding only slightly late into home

beside the corner cupboard

Nannie bows her head and says

Dear Lord, thank you for bringing

all of us together here, and what

on earth has happened to your ear?

Well, most days you were happy

at the Oak Ridge Country Club

in the nicest house in Bluefield

atop the sledding hill

But what a relief

to follow strangers into woods

to stand in shadows listening

to everything alive

Pretty Pretty

Pretty is such a loaded word when you are a boy. But I'd go back there in a second.

In the '70s, I did get mistaken for a girl, though my mom has always said my friend Charlie was prettier than me. Pat was "cute." It was an era of androgyny without our really knowing it. Center-parted hair and beads around the neck, and no one's face was fully formed. We all had very shiny long brown hair.

I rather lurched into viability.

There weren't graded paths to it.














This is a candid shot of two hungover people in a dive bar in New Haven some time in the eighties.

Folks commented on my looks, my perceived Midwestern skin. (Whatever it is, it ain't from Ohio. I will cop to Kentucky.) I got told to model so many times that it actually became irritating (because I was too short, so couldn't make a dime), I got asked who cut my hair on Wisconsin Avenue, I got voted best looking in an unofficial poll of the class of 1984, I got photographed by a famous photographer on 57th Street (I threw away my copy because I looked too damn pretty), I got talked to at telephone booths, harassed on the subway, I got cruised by JFK Jr. at the Citibank on Christopher Street, I got followed like a girl.

I got interviewed for a documentary on what it was like to be good looking. They asked me if it had presented advantages.

And I said, "Not enough."

If They Don't, Use a Match

 
1997-2002

Robert's Apartment:16 Jane Street between Greenwich Avenue and West 4^th Street/Eighth Avenue, Buzzer #19 outside, Buzzer #3D inside; Apartment 3D, fourth floor from lobby on right side of building

Linens: Bed linens and towels are in the front closet, closest to bathroom.There is space for your clothes in this closet, also a little hanging space in the main room closet. The laundry bag is in the main room closet.  There are more sheets and pillow cases in the bag if you need them. Take laundry around the corner on Eighth Avenue between Jane and Horatio Streets (right side). Drop it off and they do the laundry. 

Gas and Electric: The oven burners light automatically (if they don't, you can use a match). If you vacuum, you must turn off the air conditioner or you risk blowing a fuse.

Phone: The phone number, as you know, is 212-255-2268. To check voicemail at home, dial 366-5055, enter the password 57868, follow instructions. To check voicemail from outside, dial 366-5055, enter #212-255-2268, enter the password 57868, follow instructions.

Internet: To access the internet, turn on the computer. After it has completely booted up, double-click on the “Shortcut to bway.net” icon. Click on the “connect” button. It will dial up automatically. Then double-click on the “Internet Explorer” icon. You will have an online screen.

Stereo and TV: For the stereo, such as it is, hit the JVC amplifier button on the upper left side. Put a CD in the portable CD player and hit the play button. The volume control is on the upper right side. For the TV, use the “Electronics” remote ― the one that isn’t the Sony or Panasonic remote.  This changes the channel.  To adjust the volume, use the Sony remote. To use the VCR, use the Panasonic remote.

Bicycle: The tires need air.  You can fill them at the corner of Sixth Avenue and 15^th Street bicycle shop.  There is no lock ― I just use it for recreation (hah).

Stronger Than Pride

 

I won't pretend that I intend to stop living.

You look back at what you were playing on your boom box and some of it seems more decent than the rest. I was pretty keen on Sade, despite my cool intentions, on Avenue B and then on 10th Street at Seventh Avenue.  That apartment with the skylights and the smell of saltwater, that peculiar place at the center of not-desirable New York City.  There was a crackhouse in the garage across the street (before it became a Gourmet Garage).  There was a homeless lady who lived in an INDENTATION.  There was an old-school gay guy charging too much as a barber downstairs, cowboy boots and dyed blonde hair. There was a lampshade shop that I just cannot explain.

Julius was on the corner, Three Lives across the street, acclaimed authors and porn stars winking at me with abandon as they raced by.

Everyone on deadline.

I'd go up to the roof with Cammie, Lisa, Dirk and tricks. For Sade, tar-beach sunbathing and Pimm's. This was a big song that summer, me running hard downtown to the WTC and riding a steamy subway uptown to Cafe Luxembourg. Somewhere along the way I developed a crush on this guy, Mark, who was enamored of my Bohemian (cough cough) way of life.  He would drop by the bar and, as you do, enroll at Columbia.

I still really really love you
love is stronger than pride

Hotel Motel Holiday Inn

I stayed here once, rather unhappy, but the view was truly stellar

I have always been a fool for hotels. Hotels in the abstract, hotels as an idea of an exciting life, hotels just to be away, the anonymity of random Ritz-Carltons in Pasadena and the gravity of the iconic Ritz on the Place Vendôme.  These are all places that figure large in my memory:

The Waldorf, where we were expelled onto a December sidewalk in our pajamas, Nixon coming. Wrapped in furs by Waldorf women and captured on the eleven-o'clock news.

The Boar's Head Inn, site of the annual Barr Kid Pro-Am Diving Competition in a cloistered swimming pool.

Carr's in Gatlinburg with the ever-present temptation to sneak into an elaborate lagoon-style pool next door, featuring a slide through a tunnel in a stage-set rocky cliff.

The Hotel de Nevers Luxembourg, where I lived the entire summer of 1984 for $7 a night, plus an additional 8 FF ($1) to prends une douche, washing my clothes with Woolite in a small sink until I met Agnès,whose mother insisted on doing my laundry in Velizy. Now that's a fun true sentence. Here is another: She ironed my Brooks Brothers boxer shorts. And people say the French aren't friendly...

Chateau Marmont, where I went for business within a week of my father's death, ordered room service club sandwiches and slept extensively. My room was at the back, facing the hill, and was oh so quiet. When I hear the word "peaceful" I always think of the Chateau Marmont.

In the era of the boutique hotel, roughly 1998 to today, I've stayed in a converted office building on the Passeig de Gràcia, a converted water tower in Cologne, a converted something-or-other in East Berlin, a windowless room like a train car in Rome, a nearly windowless room with a whole lotta Phillipe Starck fabric in Paris, One Aldwych in London with the incredibly loud, ostensibly ecological plumbing, and that nice little Hotel Indigo in Asheville with the fantastic view of the mountains and the Grove Park Inn, calling to me like a siren.

Tomorrow I start a new gig writing for Kimpton Hotels, and can't help but feel that my whole life has led me here, to this moment of punching pillows, sniffing soaps and fumbling for fresh ways to communicate the buzzing nature of a well conceived lobby.

I can't wait to dive in.

Purple Noon: Damn It, Matthew!

Just last week I made a lot of people who were not predisposed to love it watch The Talented Mr. Ripley.  Eventually they were rapt, because it is such a very good old-fashioned movie, in all its unsubtlety.

The chief asset of the film and the story as constructed is simple:  Tom Ripley is gay.

That's not strikingly clear in the Patricia Highsmith novel and is only tantalizing in (the brilliant in its own way) Purple Noon.  But here Tom is gay and the story is so much the better for it. You'd assume that Anthony Minghella (doing his best work) and Matt Damon (doing his best work) worked it out together.  But maybe not.

Damon's on a run that seems aimed at proving his ostensible liberal middle class Boston boy personality is a charm offensive shielding dumbass jock attitudes about race and sexuality circa 2015.

#gaylimebathingsuit