Where the Boys Are

An excerpt from my first novel, Yield, will be published in the upcoming anthology Where the Boys Are. Look for it from Cleis Press in late September.

About the book: Many a confident urban gay man in the Castro, West Hollywood, and Chelsea was once a wide-eyed newcomer. Every year thousands of young men arrive in these queer-friendly neighborhoods, seduced by city life and its sexual possibilities. In Where the Boys Are, Richard Labonté collects raunchy memoirs and stories about these newly arrived country boys. Here are stories of first times, initiations, bars, backrooms, dance clubs, and parties, reading (or misreading) the codes — and sometimes teaching those city boys a thing or two.

Pre-order here from Amazon, Powell's, Barnes & Noble, or better yet, run out to your local independent bookstore--the gay one if it still exists--and tell them to order it for you.

Told Ya So

I found this quote in this interview Ani Difranco did with the Santa Cruz Sentinel. I offer it to you as evidence that what I was talking about--the rebirth, the back catalog--in the long Ani post a few days ago, is actually the case:

"My songs of a few years ago have a lot of melancholy and desperation, disillusionment and anger and shame. When I look into my bag of tricks to pick songs for this tour, the ones from three to five years ago are just too bleak.

But you've got to admit, things are looking up. The pendulum swing back to the left has just begun, and everywhere, there's criticism of the current regime. I feel like the atmosphere is very exciting right now. If we can all invest and believe in this change, it's gonna be awesome."

The Body Never Lies, or Why I Could Not Be Seen at the Laundromat in That Moment

For years I've been sending my laundry out, like most New Yorkers. (Okay, maybe like some New Yorkers.) The laundromat on the corner is staffed by four or five different women, each of them with varying levels of English proficiency, but all of them excellent at doing the laundry and making it exactly like I like it. They are lovely people, and without them I would descend into one dark level of stink and ugly that I don't think anyone wants to witness.

I went today to pick up the laundry that I dropped off this morning, only to discover that the woman who had taken my rumpled bag from me this morning was busy stuffing some clothes into a washer at one end of the room. I don't mind, I just wait patiently by her desk until she returns. Then I noticed that someones clothes were rustled in one of those rolling carts, in mid-fold.

They were my clothes!!! The horror!! That yellow t-shirt, the blue one, the new underwear. It was all there. The evidence was staggering.

Now, obviously, I've been passing my clothes to these ladies since 2001. But I guess in the same way people don't want to know where their food comes from, I didn't really want to see my intimates spread out all over the place like that.

It was ridiculous, I realize--but I simply left without her seeing me. What a juvenile, dumb reaction. I'll go back later when they're finished. And when I can look her in the eye without shame and regret.

Ani Difranco Celebrates Brooklyn

Ani Difranco played the Prospect Park bandshell last night, and we were there. A few years ago, she said that the worst part about her job was that she had to go to every single Ani Difranco concert. Not the worst fate I could think of. And as evidenced last night, I think her mood is shifting, her perspective simultaneously fixating and lengthening in scope. She has always loved playing music for people--but I'm feeling something different from her, a relaxed approach, a new sense of trust.

Last year, about this time, I wrote this post about Ani's pregnancy. She would have a baby girl, Petah Lucia, on January 20, 2007. The folks at her label--her benevolent, radical empire--Righteous Babe Records, posted some pics, which you can find here. The baby has, I'm certain, changed her in ways that even Ani won't articulate/share/expose to her public, regardless of how all-loving and reciprocal we (the fans) are. After all, some of you will remember when she released Little Plastic Castle, then her most lukewarmly-reviewed record, married a man, and thus legions of lesbians felt betrayed. Many swore off her for life.

Musically, she is moving away from her earlier song patterns, which longtime fans will recognize as that trademark "rocking" motion she creates in her guitar playing--and shifting instead to open spaces and, frankly, less static jerk-y-ness which characterizes (and makes great) the records from the first half of her career. I wonder, then, if motherhood has given Ani a new sense of freedom? Has it given her a renewed sense of trust in her back catalog? If Madonna can pull-off a Re-Invention Tour, then call last night's Prospect Park show Ms. Difranco's version.

The lesbians who defected? They've returned--in droves. The audiences these days are filled with a broader range of types and sexes (and sexualities,) tattooed or not, in various states of fandom. Ani sells more records now than she ever has--and her label has expanded to include not only Ani's discs and a few others, as it has for many years, but more than a dozen artists of all genres, a new collection of merch not to be outdone by, well, even Madonna, and The Church: a performance venue, label headquarters, and gallery/lounge/artspace, etc. And all of this is, rather can only be, because of the music--which lands upon the fans' ears in CDs, bootlegged MP3s (already I've downloaded this show, which ended about 14 hours ago) and those never-ending tours.

So, the music. (Even me, even this, gets bogged down in Ani's personal life / politics / business acumen. No wonder she is so bored by the media.)

So, really, the music:

The setlist was ripe with old favorites. A plinky, jauntier version of You Had Time, (which will appear on Canon, a two-disc career retrospective out Sept. 11, along with a few other re-worked ditties.) Also, Subdivision, Paradigm, Little Plastic Castle, Overlap, and, perhaps the oddest choice: opening with Done Wrong. But all of it succeeded.

By far, the strongest, most historically amazing number of the evening was Napoleon. She's futzed with the melody a bit, and since she can, quite simply, sing better now than she ever could, she lets it loose, holding the notes longer, then longer--the sound erupting from the stage was so full of--how can this be for a song like this one?--pleasure. I could have stayed in that moment, well, forever.

In Tennessee

I'm exhausted--teetering, as Ms. Difranco says, between tired and really tired--which is why I haven't been able to sit down for good while and write about our trip to Tennessee.

<--- The Chattanooga Choo-Choo.

Kip and I went to visit my folks in Chattanooga for about a week--ostensibly so we could attend their annual 4th of July party, a legendary occasion all its own which draws in somewhere in the range of 150 people, in a low-key, elaborately casual sort of way.

Here is my mother awarding one of the attendees. -->

Yes, there are awards for the most elaborate costume, the most patriotic kid, and other coveted categories. And it's brunch. Read this post for a better run-down.

We also went to visit Dollywood. If gays are called to the four corners of the gay universe, they are New York, San Francisco, Provincetown and Dollywood .

Kip is decidedly easy-going about almost everything, and my parents--stubborn and decidedly parental in certain ways--truly know how to relax and have a good time doing something or nothing. We ate, we ate, and somehow--this is the greatest wonder of human nature--we were later hungry and could eat again: Foster's pound cake, potato salad, mac-n-cheese, biscuits, watermelon, that chicken thing with the chipped beef.

My great aunt Allene, who for the last however many years was a caretaker, until her mother died two years ago, has never been known, as far as I can remember, to be anything other than in perfect, relaxed control of the situation. Lately, she is perpetually on the edge of tears--or slap happy with uncontrollable fits of laughter. For no other reason, it seems, than she is old, exhausted and still running around, for the most part, full-speed ahead. She still mows her lawn, for example. Granted, it's a small Atlanta lawn, but she mows it.

<--- From left: Margaret, my Dad's sister who lives in Southern California, my Dad, me and my Mom.

My parents neighbor, Lola, who is essentially my surrogate grandmother, is becoming a bit slower, beginning to retreat into stories from the past--but then we all do that, so why should it be alarming? She is still sharp. What separates her, I think, from my father's parents is that she is still genuinely interested in other people's lives. How did the Houck's become so distant, so drawn into themselves as to obsess over the tiniest, perhaps-invented notion of what your life was, and is? Nothing comes out of the blue, I want to write--as if to prove that we could have foreseen their slow, strange, co-dependent decline that their marriage has become--but I know that is untrue. I know that sometimes the phone rings and your life is changed.

Dollywood is as I remember it, only with larger crowds. And now that NYC has colored (distorted, enhanced, righted, informed?) my perception of everything, only the people look bizarre. I forget that people don't know how to walk. That is, they don't know where their body is in space. Car culture in non-pedestrian cities is such that your spacial awareness atrophies. Or never develops to begin with. People just swing their arms and stop, turn without warning--bad drivers, if you will.

At Dollywood, we at BBQ sandwiches, heaps of roasted potatoes and cole slaw, chocolate covered potato chips, and later handfuls of red, white and blue Kettle Corn.

<-- We took pics in the photobooth.

We rode the world-ranked and Golden Ticket-winning Thunderhead rollercoaster, which lives up to its promises, or is simply a great ride, if you're not the type--like I am--to have read about it's development, construction and opening, since it was announced. (Geeky Thunderhead stuff can be found here, here and here.)

They've re-vamped Dolly's Chasing Rainbows Museum, where the story of her life and career is told via photos, her awards, and dress after dress after dress. They've also shellacked personal notes passed between Dolly and her personal assistant/longtime partner Judy. (Dolly's a lesbian, by the way. It's not unknown, but people are sometimes shocked to hear. I think the more shocking thing is that a lesbian can't have a career in country music.) It's quiet, respectful way of including Judy--since she must live an otherwise invisible existence.

We returned to New York--it's now been more than a week. It was a lovely trip.

Here we are in the parking lot before our departure -->

This Blog is Rated G

Apparently, my blog is rated G. As the website told me: "This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words: anal (1x)." If I had used the word anal, say--(7x,) or even (49x)--would that have pushed me over into another realm? Because, even though I want readers, I also want to be rated XXX, even though I'm not really interested in writing posts that say anal (49x).

This reminds me of Ani Difranco talking about that maybe-real list of banned songs which supposedly was circulated among Clear Channel radio stations post-9/11. How she kept saying to herself: "Oh man, ban one of my songs!"

So how about this: shit, piss, fart, fuck, pussy, cock, asshole, jack off. Now let's see what I get.

Now we're talkin'!

Have you heard?

Chris: Have you heard about this anal bleaching?

Me: Yes.

Chris: Why do they do that?

Me: So it's not as brown, I guess.

Chris: What if you like it the way it is?

Me: Then you're a pervert.

Open Letters, Vol. 5 - Celebrity Edition

Dear Ben Gibbard,

There is a song that I need you to write. It's perfect for you--it's about inanimate material objects, seemingly inconsequential, that I have to look at occasionally, and that randomly strike me as entirely poetic and rich with metaphor.

I work in one of those buildings in Manhattan where there are a bunch of offices and one or two bathrooms on each floor. Each office has their own set of "men" and "women" keys. In fact, all day long I see people in the hallway with their random, oversize plastic (or other) things which the keys are attached to--a giant ladle, a coat hanger, a chunk of wood--in an attempt to make it impossible to accidentally leave behind.

Here's where I think you will really get interested.

Our keys are simple, banged-up bronze ones, attached to binder clips. The clips have old masking tape on them which "Guys" or "Gals," depending. Every time someone goes to the bathroom, they sit the keys, on their binder clips, back onto this electrical box where the lights switch is. But the keys themselves, they sort of flop over into all these different, but still similar positions. The keys are always having some kind of relationship to each other. And it reminds me, sometimes, of love-making.

Sometimes "Guys" is really excited, and points right at "Gals," in a totally perverted way. "Gals" might be absolutely not pointing back at "Guys" with the same fervor, but looking more coy. Sometimes "Gals" is completely ready for whatever "Guys" wants to give her, but "Guys" is flopped over to one side, completely in ignorance. And sometimes they're pointing right at each other. Their metal teeth touching ever so slightly. Whenever I have to take "Guys" with me to the bathroom, I try to bring him back to "Gals" as quickly as possible.

I took this picture with my cell phone. It's not very good, but you get the idea.


Let me know what you think. I like your records.

Thanks-
Lee