Best Gay Erotica Reading

I'm reading at this fabulous series:

Dean Johnson's Reading for Filth: Best Gay Erotica 2008
Wednesday, February 20
8pm

Rapture Cafe & Books
200 Avenue A

The queer reading series exclusively celebrates the publication of BEST GAY EROTICA 2008 with editor and host Emanuel Xavier.

With featured contributors Lee Houck, Taylor Siluwe, Andrew McCarthy, Charlie Vasquez, Tom Cardamore and Sam J. Miller. Books will be available for sale and signing.

Please come out to support queer writers, erotic literature, and independent booksellers.

And me.

Letter from Utah: Part 2 of 12

This post is part 2 in a series of 12. You can download the entire essay by clicking here, or you can read the serial installments as they appear.

Our rental car is a hybrid, the Toyota Prius—it’s quiet, eerily and beautifully quiet, and drives smooth, easy. The guy who fills out the paperwork goes through that seemingly-informal, but ultimately awkward walk around the vehicle with us to determine what flaws the previous renter might have added. The Prius has a video monitor in the dash, which acts as the audio/climate and battery interface. It shows you how much charge the battery has, whether you’re using the engine, or the electric motor. As you drive, green and orange arrows flash in all directions over the tiny mock-up of the car on the screen. I become obsessed with the electric reserve, demanding that it be full at all times—like it’s my cell phone—and I worry that, if it dies, the car will just stop. “Look it’s going up,” I say to Kip. Or “Look, it’s running out.”

“What if it runs out?” I say.

“Then it will just turn into a regular car,” he says.

The rental car guy recommends a Mexican restaurant, The Red Iguana. “Not much on atmosphere, but the food is good. Try the shrimp enchiladas.” I’m not sure if Mexican food is what I want to eat after five hours on an airplane enjoying a ‘group effort’ crossword, but we go anyway. Turns out, it’s a lively, colorful little place (full of atmosphere if you ask me) on the west end of town, and has been named, by everyone you can think of who gives out food awards—Zagat, CitySearch, magazine after magazine—the best Mexican in the entire state. The food is fantastic, the salsa unearthly fresh and flavorful, zapping your mouth in all different directions. Kip has a fresh salmon burrito, and I have a plateful of what I can only describe as Mexican ravioli, tiny pressed dumplings filled with meat and cheese. We eat a mound of guacamole and baskets of housemade tortilla chips. We vow to return there on our way out of town.

We drive north about forty minutes, to Antelope Island, a national park famous for its herd of some 500 bison, introduced there in 1893. The island is surrounded by the Great Salt Lake, which is the leftovers of Lake Bonneville, a giant body of water that covered most of the state millions of years ago. There, we hike out to the edge of the water, take pictures to prove that it exists, and perhaps to prove that we exist, or at least that we existed there. I want taste the water, and I do. It is salty, like the sea, but it is flatter, the flavor is all concentrated in the front of your mouth, on the end of your tongue.

Back in Salt Lake City, the hotel’s website promises “well-appointed guest rooms” and “spectacular views of the city and mountains.” It is only half right, but that’s okay. I don’t care about hotels one way or another—though this trip will challenge that. We nap, thumb through the guidebook, and I trace my finger along the roads in the atlas, which stretch out into the open country, connecting one tiny town to the next—Spanish Fork, East Carbon, Green River, and Moab—our loose plan for the next day.

For dinner we fumble our way through the downtown grid and end up, quite haphazardly, at an Italian restaurant that specializes in family-style dishes. We order the house specialty: pork chops with blueberries, balsamic, red wine and hazelnuts, along with an excellent warm spinach and goat cheese salad. The ridiculous portions arrive—though we have ordered the ‘small’ versions of each—and immediately I become my mother, aghast at the amount of food on the plate. Something shifts inside you as you age—at some point all you can talk about is how absurdly large the portions are, at any restaurant, wherever you are. “Oh, that’s just outrageous,” I hear myself saying. Have I reached this point already?

I eat myself sick and groan all the way back to the hotel.

from Orpheus Lost

Janette Turner Hospital's new novel, Orpheus Lost, is quite stunning. Her global view of the public and private intersection, which she flirted with in Due Preparations for the Plague, is even more in focus here.

Plus, she just writes with such grace and strength and gravity. In this scene, Mishka Bartok, a musician and scholar of the oud, a middle eastern instrument commonly thought as the precursor to the lute, is being interrogated as a suspected terrorist:

"...And now there was Cerberus and the smashed oud. He could feel the splinters, he could feel the broken neck of the oud in spite of his hood, or perhaps it was his own neck, and he watched himself sobbing, curled up like an infant on the floor, naked, with a sack on his head.

Then the oud miraculously reassembled itself, and rose up like a Being of Light and spoke to him, and its wings were like the wings of a great seabird and were as white and blinding as the sun. I am the messenger of the Lord of Music, proclaimed the Radiant Oud. Cerberus has lain meek at my feet and has licked my ankles. I have parted the Red Sea and led captivity captive and my power is so great that none can resist me and I cannot, I cannot be destroyed. Do not weep by the rivers of Babylon, but seize my power.

Then Mishka seized hold of the radint being and wrestled with him and music arose from their struggle and Mishka said I will not let thee go except thou bless me and the oud touched the hollow of Mishka's thigh and Mishka was in very great pain and then he was in the absolute radiant embrace of the sun and the music of the spheres was all around him and he felt no pain at all."

Letter from Utah: Part 1 of 12

In the coming weeks, I'm going to post my ramblings about my vacation in Utah. You can download the entire essay by clicking here, or you can read the serial installments as they appear. This segment is part 1 of 12.

Letter from Utah

It is November. My boyfriend and I are flying to Utah for a week; to hike, to drive, see the earth. “Why there?” everyone says. This is the reaction I get the most—New Yorkers, pressed to find a reason to visit the Beehive State generally fail. I suspect they see it as an arid amalgam of bad food, prohibition and Mormonism, whatever that is. We had plans to go to Paris—in the way that you have plans to go everywhere at some point in your life, “Let’s go there, someday,” you say to each other. But, frankly, the idea was too much—fighting the language, navigating another city, another transit system, ordering food in restaurants. For some reason, the idea of wandering the halls of the Louvre gives me the creeps. I wanted a different kind of trip. I wanted something ambling, something with lots of sky and long stretches of road. I tell everyone who asks, “I need to see the horizon all around me.”

My anxiety—and there is always anxiety—is focused on whether I have the correct equipment. In the weeks before the trip, I become obsessed with specialized gear, reading website reviews, and browsing hiker’s message boards looking for answers, advice, perhaps for warnings. I go to buy shoes. “Light hiking, or just for regular wear?” asks the salesman. “As for clothes,” he continues, “get some layers with good wicking properties.” A list of items tumbles out of his mouth, and I listen, try things on, and come away with nothing. Should I get pants that zip off into shorts? Somehow clothing that transforms appeals to me—that I might be prepared for whatever we encounter. “Oh,” someone says, “start thinking about getting a vehicle that can take the mountains.”

A car runs into our livery cab on the way to the airport; the driver had fallen asleep. Fortunately, no one is hurt. The car is not damaged. We continue on, crisis averted.

Well, I think, there’s one down.

“Group effort, guys,” says the man sitting next to me on the plane. He pulls the Sky Magazine from the seat pocket and begins the crossword, passing the crinkled pages across the seats. “Group effort,” he repeats. I want him to go away. “Hiking? For a week?” He takes in the information, then says to Kip: “You must not be married. Your wife certainly wouldn’t let you go hiking for a week with your buddy.” I wonder if this is the sort of reaction we’ll get all over Utah. I wonder if people will recognize us as lovers. I avoid all questions about what I do for a living. Kip, ever kind, ever even, has to talk briefly about his line of work—children’s toys and television programming. “I build houses,” the guy says, “I take houses that have been converted into multi-family two-bedrooms and convert them back into single family townhomes. You know, luxury living.” New York City is facing a catastrophic affordable housing crisis, and here is this guy, who doesn’t even live in New York—he lives with his family in California and commutes back and forth—housing rich people on the Upper East Side. He keeps talking, manages to say to Kip: “Wow, you must be old.” It occurs to me that he is, in many ways, my exact opposite. I thumb through the seat pocket, to make sure there’s a barf bag.

Open Letters, Vol. 6

Dear Everyone Who Knows Me,

Facebook?

No.

Sincerely,
Lee


Ed: I have since joined Facebook. Oh well.

New Music Ensemble

My current obsession is the new recording of Steve Reich's "Music for 18 Musicians" by Grand Valley State University's New Music Ensemble. This version of Reich's masterpiece is the most beautiful piece of music I have heard in some time--and it's the first time the work has been recorded in 5.1 surround sound....so. CRANK. IT. UP.

Tight, full of space, airy, direct. Overtones on overtones, it's simply glorious. Visit the New Music Ensemble at their website, listen to some excerpts of the work or see the trailer for this remarkable album here.

Fun with iSight

So Long, Golden Globes

I was slightly disappointed to learn that this year's Golden Globes have been canceled--though I am in full support of the writer's strike, and therefore understand. Instead, the awards will be announced via press conference on Sunday night, much like the nominations are announced. This won't be as much fun as the actual Globes telecast, but I'll still watch.

The Golden Globes are the only awards these days that, in some respects, actually seem to matter. More the television awards than the film ones. Many great television shows have been honored with Globes just shy of being canceled, and it let them survive another season or two.

And given the sorry state of Oscar telecasts in recent memory, those boring-ass snoozeathons, the Globes were always the highlight of the award season for me. (Not counting back when John Waters hosted the Independent Spirit Awards.)

Is Meryl Streep nominated for something this year? I want her to win every year, just so she'll make acceptance speeches as brassy, charming, endearing, honest, smart, giving, genuine, and snappy as this one. And, holy shit will you look at that dress!

Letter from Utah (Still in the Works.)

I'm still working on my 'Letter from Utah.' Turns out, it's really difficult. One can only write how beautiful the formations are over and over, before nothing means anything anymore. I'll keep working on it, and post it here when it's done. For now, here's the opening:

My anxiety was focused on whether I had the correct equipment. I become obsessed with specialized gear, reading website reviews, and browsing hiker’s message boards looking for answers, advice, warnings. What kind of shoes? “Light hiking, or just for wear?” asks the salesman. “As for clothes,” he continues, “get layers with good wicking properties.” A list of items tumbles out of his mouth, and I listen, try things on, and come away with nothing. Should I get pants that could zip off into shorts? Will there be hotel rooms? Will everything covered in snow? “Oh,” someone says, “start thinking about getting a vehicle that can take the mountains.”

My boyfriend and I are headed to Utah for a week, to hike, drive, see the earth. A friend emails to ask why. “I need to see the horizon all around me,” I write.

The man sitting next to me on the plane pulls the Sky Magazine from the seat pocket and begins the crossword. “Group effort, guys,” he says. He passes the crinkled pages across the seats. “Group effort,” he repeats. I want him to go away. “Hiking? For a week?” He takes in the information, then says to Kip: “You must not be married. Your wife certainly wouldn’t let you go hiking for a week with your buddy.” I wonder if this is the sort of reaction get all over Utah. Will people recognize us as lovers? I avoid all questions about what I do for a living. Kip, ever kind, ever even, has to talk briefly about children’s toys and television programming. “I build houses,” says Brain-Dead. “I take houses that have been converted into multi-family two-bedrooms and convert them back into single family townhomes. You know, luxury living.” New York City is facing a catastrophic affordable housing crisis, and here is this guy, who doesn’t even live in New York—he lives with his family in California and commutes back and forth—housing rich people on the Upper East Side. He keeps talking. I thumb through the seat pocket, to make sure there’s a barf bag.

Anyone?