farmville

being on facebook, as everyone on the planet is, i recently added the application that allows me to play "farmville". now i am not a farmer--though i am quite good with plants, as masae, the elderly asian tenant in my building, will tell you. last year she cautiously gave up the planters along the drive to my landscaping skills, and the place has never looked better, thank you very much. i proceeded to pull odd looking plants and i added groundcover, and i transplanted some of the remaining plants to better locations and generally made the planters look as though they made sense.



i got this talent for working with plants from my father, who was also very good working with plants. back when i was growing up in the early 70's, my dad was the one who did the yardwork. in fact, back then that is what dads did! on weekends, they mowed lawns, trimmed hedges, pulled weeds, and then stood with the hose watering the whole place down while shooting the bull with the neighbor dads. very unlike today, where doing yardwork is now considered "manual labor", and everyone just hires a mexican gardener with power equipment. now my dad was mexican, which may have contributed to his gardening talent, but i have to tell you that ethnicity comes with no guarantee! the mexican gardener that our building uses is pretty much just a plant butcher--there is no artistry evident--fortunately he doesn't come near my driveway planters.

anyway, i learned to do yardwork from my dad. he taught me that. it helped that i loved working with plants...i loved watching them grow and respond to care and watering. i loved the balance between having control over nature and allowing nature its rein. plants always surprise you, that's the thing. you can actually have a relationship with plants, which i do to this day.

but i am not a farmer. however, you would not know this by looking at my farm in farmville. in just a few days, i have planted and harvested eggplant, peanuts, wheat, strawberries, squash, and soybeans. i currently have lilacs growing in one patch of ground. i am almost a level 7 farmer. but i must confess, i am not the only one responsible for my farm's prosperous condition. the only reason my crops are growing all the way to harvest is because my neighbors are coming over and fertilizing them (my sister and two of my neices). now, i think that this is the only way to get your plants fertilized, because i have looked in the market and fertilizer is not available to buy! i find this very interesting. what this means is that in order to have a successful farm, you HAVE to have friends as neighbors. if you plan to start your farm in the middle of nowhere and intend to remain isolated, your crops will eventually wither and die. they will die. there will be nobody around to fertilize them.

this is where farmville ceases to be just an internet game.

i read somewhere that someone has called farmville a waste of time. whoever this person is, they are sorely missing the point. by setting the game up so that participants have to rely on the kindness and generousity of our neighbors, the creators have, by accident or by intent, simulated the kind of community culture that our societies lived out for thousands and thousands of years. as i have mentioned in previous posts, up until the industrial revolution, we had to rely on others or we would not have survived. usually, everyone had to contribute to the wellbeing of the whole community. of course, we still have to rely on others to survive, we just don't have to interact with them anymore. farmville encourages community, albeit a digital one, but i will tell you that since my neighbors are family who live far away from me, this feels as close to the real thing as i can get living in los angeles. we visit each others farms, fertilize each others plots, and give each other gifts. we hear about each others progress, and get to share in the spoils of everyone who prospers. lovely.

but there is one hitch.

whenever you visit anyone else's farm, they are never there. there are only the amimals: chickens clucking, ducks quacking, cows mooing, lambs bleeting. but no other farmers. it is eerie--you stop in and everything seems fine, but nobody is there. so what do you do? you fertilize the crops, maybe chase away some foxes, and then leave. later, the owner will come back and notice that you have been there, and they may send you a nice gift. but why isn't anyone ever home when i go to visit???this bothers me, and is the primary flaw in a game that attempts to promote community. i am not sure which is worse: seeing people in reality who i never talk to; or never seeing people in cyberspace who i want to talk to.

i have been told that there are other games that allow more interaction, and you can actually create an avatar, which is both cool and spooky. but in the meantime, i will continue to tend my farm and fertilize my neighbors crops, until i can figure out what my next online adventure will be. in a way, i think i am "trying on" ways of being so that i can match a pleasurable online experience to a real life city. i have already decided that, wherever i go, i want to have a relationship with plants, but in don't want to give up my relationship to people in order to do that. the cows can tend to each other though..

different, but the same

before i continue with my series on dismissal, disregard and disgust, i wanted to write about some thoughts i have been having about differences. while it might seem like i am focusing on words that start with the letter "d", i assure you that this is not my intent. but as i think on it, i will admit that "d" words do carry a certain allure for me. let's face it, there is no way to tiptoe through a word starting with the letter d. and when that word is a descriptor (another d), then it is especially delicious to spit out of the mouth.

but we were going to write about difference, yes?

difference. it is perceived, more than actual (isn't everything?). and yet, as i like to say, "what a day a difference makes". difference is one of the key motivators in changing anything at all--we want something to be different. but here is where we mess it up--because difference is more about changing the inside than changing the outside. you know the old saying: "wherever you go..."

so as i spend time thinking about the places i have been recently and how life would look were i to live there, i have to frequently pull my ass out of the clouds and check what i am looking at to make sure that i am seeing it with my feet on the ground. this is because there are two considerations for me as i decide where i should move to: how different do i want this place to be; and, how different do i want the experience of myself to be?

thinking about the east bay, and even portland to an extent, i have noticed that in both those cities, i was able to recognize myself. the surroundings were not so different that i did not feel, in part, like i could be at home, albeit a smaller, greener home with better coffee. there were still people on cell phones, there were still cars, there was still bad service, sunshine, and bad dance music. but there were also lots of bikes, and helpful people, and bookstores, and people who walked, and lovely rain, and art. these were the differences i noticed. you might argue that all of the things in both lists can be found in los angeles, and you would be right, but what i am talking about is proportion. the proportion of the first list is greater in los angeles, while the reverse seems true in the east bay and portland. the question i have to ask myself is: how different does my potential new home need to be? but then in the same breath i need to also ask: how different do i need to feel there?

the mistake that is often made is assuming that a change in self will accompany a change in place. sometimes this is true. but i did get the feeling that, at least in the east bay, i could sort of "resume" being myself in this different place. i mean, it is still california, and people speak english, and they have whole foods markets and even an ameoba records. i could imagine setting up a cozy apartment much as i have here, and blogging just as i am now. would it be different enough? or would i move there and find, one day, that i have just "changed the wallpaper" in what is otherwise my same life?

i checked out edinburgh, scotland, the other day on the web. my friends from florida, darren and al, live there. they speak english in scotland, but it sounds so different (al says "arse" instead of "ass"--i like it--sounds like he is referring to a pirate's ass). i also know that they have the edinburgh fringe festival there every year, which sounds pretty groovy. all in all, europe as a whole is certainly different, but is it too different? i have been to europe--specifically spain and italy, and as i recall, i still recognized myself in both of those places. hmmm. that gets me thinking. perhaps the change i seek needs to start from within. i have to tell you, i can't believe i am writing that, it sounds so new agey, which is SO not me, but if, as i said earlier, that change is perception, then maybe it is not such a mystical statement--maybe it is a neurological issue. but if that is the case, then what would i change inside? what, in my way of thinking, would i alter? what, in the way i perceive things, would i want to be different?

what?

dismissal, disregard, and disgust, part one

i am coming up on 20 years in los angeles.

20 years.

twenty.

when i think about it, i have been living here longer than i have lived anywhere in my life--at least continuously. i grew up in chula vista, a suburb of san diego, and lived there for 18 years before i went to maryland to spend two years at the naval academy. i came back home after leaving the academy and lived in san diego for another 9 years, so although i have lived in the san diego area for more cumulative years, they do not match the continuous years i have lived in los angeles.

so who cares?

well, i do. the point is that los angeles feels more like home to me than san diego. whenever i go south i feel more like a visitor than a returning son.

when i do my best to think about my life pre-los angeles, that is, my life in san diego, i try to bring up memories of how i experienced people back then. there is a reason for this which i will get to, in my usual fashion, in time. since i moved to los angeles when i was 29, i am referring primarily to my 20's. what i do remember from that time is that i was having a very hard time in relationship, if you could call what i did back then "relationship". i was sad a lot of the time. i will also tell you that i felt kind of invisible, despite the fact that i was a stage performer and a bartender at a popular club. at least i felt invisible when i was not engaged in one of these two activities. i remember that, while i did not feel particularily hostile towards people, i did not exactly trust them either. in fact, i would attribute most of my sense of invisibility to the fact that i did a lot of hiding back then--i think i was trying to stay out of harms way, as it were. this was in opposition to when i was performing or bartending, when i had the defense of the stage or the bar to separate me out from the masses. i just didn't have the experience of being noticed by people unless i was manning a bar or doing a show, and for the most part, that was alright with me, except for the times when i was seeking company, then it wasn't alright with me.

when i think about that time, i have an opportunity to observe what was missing from my experience with people that is present now. as i said, i felt pretty much ignored when i was not "on stage". the difference now, besides not being on stage, is that in addition to being ignored, i am also often dismissed, disregarded, or treated with disgust.

NOW, i can just hear all of you saying "ohforpetessakegivemeabreak!!!!", but hold on for a minute while i break this down for you.

in a city as huge as los angeles, it is a good idea to be somewhat defensive when mucking about. this is because it is likely that out of all the people you run into in the course of the day, you will probably only know less than half of them, if that. often, it is hard to trust those we know, so can you imagine the potential threat from those we don't know? i wish i could say that the strangers i run into here are all friendly and approachable, sane and engaging, courteous and respectful. but sadly, this is so fucking far from the case i just can't tell you. in the nearly 20 years i have been living here, i can report to you that my experience has been that the majority of the folks here are angry, hostile, suspicious, rude, arrogant, and often crazy as loons. now combine ALL of those things, and that is a bad day. granted, not everyone is this way, but a lot of them are. there is a general fury in the air that is evident just in watching passersby or checking out the craigslist rants and raves postings. there is racism, homophobia, mysogyny, and out and out cruelty.

i am not making this up. cities, especially huge cities, breed this. it is in the nature of any society where disconnection is part of the infrastructure, and where the best way to find a community is to join alcoholics anonymous. cities, historically, came about as a result of industry. industry needed lots of people to work, and so apartments and high rises were built to house all these people. despite the advantages, comfort, and ease that industry brought to life, it also unfortunately required that people leave the village culture, move to a place where they knew nobody, sometimes not even their neighbors, and then rely on others, often other strangers, to provide what they needed to live. the problem is that this is counter to our biology, which has evolved to have us wanting to be around our own people most of the time. meaning: there is an inherent instinctive, historical, and biological risk in being surrounded by strangers.

hello, big city.

having patience with berkeley

in the dating world (for those of you who are no longer in it, or perhaps have never been in it), it is a good idea to not come to any conclusions about someone you are seeing too quickly in the process. unless the date is an absolute disaster (and generally you know that within the first 30 minutes so there is still a chance to salvage the evening), it is always a good idea to schedule at least one more meeting before deciding whether or not to pursue the person further. i back up this statement with my own experience with dating, as well as my knowledge about how the attraction and attachment processes work in human beings. i have found that first dates, which for the purposes of this blog are defined as meetings in which sex is NOT the only activity, are most often about determining safety, first, and desirability, second. once we decide (usually within the first 30 minutes--see info on "disaster dates" above) that we are in no danger of being killed and eaten by our date, we can then move on to determining desirability. desirability is related to, but by no means attached to: personality, values, and beliefs. desirability is that elusive quality that belies common activity interests and shared film tastes. it is that quality that is often triggered by the subtlest of physical qualities--the length of eyelashes or the curve of an ankle--despite our possible disinterest in the whole. and yet, unfortunately, desirability's elusive nature means that we often don't become aware of it on the first date. it may be hiding behind awkwardness or shyness, it may be buried under the embarrassment of a dropped appetizer or a booger in the nose, it may be overwhelmed by neediness or sexual arousal. it may just choose to not fucking show itself. and...when that is the case, we will often conclude that, though pleasant, this person does not justify a second meeting.

this, i say to you, is a mistake, and i am advising you to avoid this at all cost.

second dates have a tendency to reveal subtlety and nuance; allowing space to explore the combined effects of personality, looks, and chemistry. it is during the second date that we often notice what was hiding or overshadowed during the first date. in my experience, i have agreed to second dates with guys who have been agreeable, if not outstanding first dates, and have been happily surprised with the discovery that i sort of really like this person.

the same goes, as it were, for cities.



my recent visit to berkeley did not leave me experiencing "love at first sight". i had a hotel in downtown, and i was amazed by the number of homeless teens and mentally ill i had to walk through to get from the bart station to my hotel on bancroft. i thought, could this be berkeley? the city that surrounds a great university? it seemed much more like seattle with the number of homeless on the street. i wondered to myself: how could there be such a concentration of homeless this close to one of the premiere institutions of higher learning in the nation? could they all be just students, and not really homeless people? granted, not all of downtown berkeley was like this--there is an area north on shattuck known as the food district that was quite nice, but i think that i was expecting all of downtown to be more upscale like this area.

during the visit, my best bud and i toured the university grounds and loved the mix of historic and new buildings, landmarks, old tree groves, as well as the shirtless (male) students lounging in the springtime sunshine. but there were so many young folks that i figured that an older guy like me would be pretty invisible here--i was literally overwhelmed by youth.



after two days in berkeley, i came to the conclusion, despite the absolutely fantastic coffee that is available on nearly any block, that i could not live there.

then an odd thing happened. i walked a mile or two away from downtown to an area known as rockridge. it was here that i was meeting my friend zamiera for some coffee (at cole's) to catch up on each other.
she has been living in the area (from los angeles) for a year now, and like me, she is an mft intern getting her hours. well, as i walked the streets further out from the university on my way to the coffee shop, i discovered all kinds of beauty--tree lined residential streets with carefully preserved victorian homes; quaint storefronts, and old movie theaters with marquees advertising a single film.

as i walked these beautiful streets, i realized that this was more the type of setting i had imagined when i thought of berkeley. there were people walking dogs and tons of bike riders, and despite the occasional person who looked at me as though i were going to attack them, i began to enjoy myself and feel glad that i had agreed to meet zamiera here in rockridge instead of downtown. once she arrived, we each ordered a coffee (brewed individually!) and two poached eggs on sourdough toast, and then we talked about her job and her experience in this city; and what she told me is that east bay, like los angeles, is full of money (parts of oakland and the area around my hotel withstanding).


but unlike los angeles, people in east bay spend their money on food, coffee, wine, and cheese, as opposed to cars, clothes, and plastic surgery. wow. i could see it all around me--a dearth of bmws, mercedes, and prada bags. instead i saw lots of bikes, regular clothing, and flat shoes. hmph. i also saw LOTS of restaurants and coffee houses. could it be that in east bay people value quality of life rather than quantity? zamiera confirmed this to be so. i became more interested. this morning in rockridge, and my subsequent walk through the telegraph/temescal area, left me with a changed mind about the living possibilities here for me. the east bay could be the place where i would not be out of place at all as a gay intellectual, a bike rider, and a man of a certain age.

now here's the thing, and it is a big thing. though the east bay may have just jumped over portland, oregon, to the top of my consideration list, that does not guarantee that i would actually be happy there. it is possible that i could be happy, or at least as happy as i am now (pretty happy), in east bay, or in portland, or in austin, or in scotland (thanks darren!), or even in (god forbid) southeast florida (sorry, lara). when it comes to moving, there is really only one way to find out if happiness is to be found in a city: move there. and it is here, readers, that i circle back to the connection with dating, and ultimately (finally!), the point of this whole long post. with moving, and dating, we can get all the information that we can find in order to help us decide about commiting, but even with all the information in the world, we just never know. at some point, we just have to decide, we just have to commit to going there. fortunately we have the ability to change our minds, but before we can change our minds we have to make up our minds. of course, for me it is a lot easier to change my mind about dating someone than it is to change it about moving, but the concept still applies. i could pretty much live anywhere, but i just need to decide on one place. one. and if that second look generates more interest, then the challenge for me is to give it a chance before moving on to the next possibility. the answer is not in berkeley anymore than it is in any one of the men i am dating. the answer lies in who i decide to be in that city/with that person, combined with the interactive affect upon me by said city/person.

east bay, i am glad i took a second look. i'll be seein' ya.

becoming regular

i have the feeling that nobody comes to los angeles because they think they are "regular". i know that i didn't. i came here (in 1991) to be a fucking star. i might have been too, if i had known the business better. i believe i had the talent, and that is just an honest assessment. i certainly spent enough years and money in san diego taking classes in dance, voice, and acting. if i didn't learn something, then i had no right to call myself a performer.

anyway, the point is that i did not think i was regular. nobody in l.a. does, i suspect. it is certainly interesting to me that nearly 20 years later, regular is exactly what i am trying to be...to an extent. i think that maybe i am trying to be regular in the same way that stars are when they show photos of them in In Touch magazine with captions like "they get their own coffee", or "they feed the parking meters". in other words, i am not regular, i am just trying to be. i am too smart to ever be regular. i can say that and not be conceited because my intelligence is something i was born with--not my accomplishment at all. what i have done with it is my accomplishment, but we are not talking about that here. i was just born smart--lucky me. meaning that, since most of the world is, uh, not smart, i have very little chance of fitting in with those regular folks.

so what the hell do i mean by "trying to be regular"? well, what i mean is that i am tired of feeling like i am special. believe me, not regular and special often go together, and that is where the problems usually lie. because if you think that you are special just because you are not regular, then you are guilty of arrogance. and yet the twist is that because i was not regular from a young age, i was then treated like i was special. follow?

the problem is that special does not work very well in the adult world, mostly because nobody gives a shit. but the reason why special really does not work in the adult world is because in reality, nobody is special. it is just a state of mind. we are all, in fact, regular, but with different talents and abilities. this is what i mean when i say i want to become regular.

god, where am i going with this post.

i am looking for a place where i can just feel regular, as in not special. i want this experience because as time goes by, i have been getting closer to regular, and i like it. fuck, i love it. regular is messy, but it is engaged. regular is unpredictable, but it is surprising. regular is uncontrolled, but it is electrifying. in other words, regular is alive. on the other hand, special is isolating. just like los angeles. here, since everyone wants to be special, there is the mixed message going on that we want to be adored but not approached. is that just here? ugh. please, please approach me.

where can i be regular? where, as knucklecrack writes in his blog (i would link if i knew how!), can gay men be regular? i don't think it is here in los angeles, though god knows i try.

i was recently in the miami/ft. lauderdale area for vacation, and i was able to be pretty regular there, but i was also somewhat invisible because i didn't have money or boobs, two things that attract attention, at least in miami. ft. lauderdale seemed different to me, easier to be regular. the guys were regular, you know?

i met a couple of guys while i was in ft. lauderdale, and the nicest things that they said to me was that they would want to date me if i lived there. that was just the nicest thing to say. i don't live there though, and i don't think i could live there. i am not a big fan of mosquitos, though they seem to be crazy about me. but the fact that these guys wanted to date me, well, that made me feel, kind of, well, regular. you know?

no superhero for dad

my dad, circa 1958

my work buddy vone and i went this last week to see kick-ass, the flic about a regular teen kid who dreams of being a superhero, and in this movie he actually makes an attempt to be one. i loved this movie for its moxie and cleverness, and vone and i had an amazing time sitting there drinking our fosters big cans and cheddar cornpop (smuggled into the place inside my backpack--so arrest me!). in the middle of the film, there was a scene where the dad, played by nic cage, gets lit on fire by the bad guys, and his 11 year old daughter, hit girl, a pretty kick ass "super"hero in her own right, has to kill about 20 guys in order to get to her father and attempt to save his life. well, the nutshell is that she does, and also she doesn't. by the time she gets to dad and extinguishes the flames, he is so badly burned that he only has a bit of life left in him. he dies just after he and his kick ass daughter exchange i love yous. he dies, despite the fact that she killed several men three times her age and four times her size and strength. he dies. the point is that, even though the father dies, you can't say that his daughter didn't fight to save him. literally. she fought. 

***

when my father died, there wasn't much fighting that could be done for him. he had cancer in his lungs and in his brain, and the shitty part of it all is that he was so stubborn during his life that by the time he went to the doctors and was diagnosed, he was only given six months to live. i remember that i lived in los angeles at the time, as i do now, and he lived in san diego, where i was raised. and when it came time to put him in a hospice care home, i knew that it would be a matter of days, so i went down to see him. what i saw laying in the bed was not the father i remembered--he was unconscious due to the pain medications--but it was my father nonetheless. the thing that shocked me the most was that, other than pain meds, he was not being administered any other type of medication, nor was he being fed intravenously. in other words, they were just "managing pain", and allowing him to die. i did not understand this. if he was still alive, why weren't they feeding him and medicating him? why would they just allow him to die?

i didn't understand hospice care at the time, and it angered and confused me. i wanted to scream, i wanted to fight, but i didn't. i just curled up on the cot and spent the night with him, waiting, like the hospice workers, for him to die.

he didn't die that night, and i had to go back to los angeles. he died a couple of days later...i believe my brother was in the room with him. what i remember most about that time was my feeling of powerlessness--my utter lack of ability to save my father. i was most definitely not a superhero.

now i realize that real life is not the movies. there was really nothing i could do--not a fucking thing--my father's cancer was days away from killing him, no matter how much medication we were to have pumped into him. and yet i wonder if it makes sense to anyone else that that was not easy for me to accept. the thing is, i don't know if i was ever a superhero with my dad...i wanted to fight for him many times during his life, but was usually just too scared. i loved him, but i just didn't act on that love as strongly as i could have. if i had, if i had acted as strongly as i could have, i would definitely have been a superhero to my father.

***

i cried when, right before he died, hit girl told her father that she loved him--not because she said it to him, but because he heard it. by the time i reached my father at his deathbed, he could no longer hear me. if he could have, i would have said "i love you, dad". in fact, i think i pretty much did say that. but if he could have heard me, i would have added something else. if he could have heard me, i would have also said, "i'm sorry, dad, i'm sorry that i cannot fight for you."

it's a good thing he could not hear me.

my dad, in the 1970's

my concern

My concern is that, possibly, the place I want to move to does not even exist.

As I write that, I realize that I should come to terms with the fact that, possibly, the place I imagine moving to does not, in fact, exist. Maybe this should be the starting place when searching for a new home...

As biology would have it, we are pretty piss poor predictors of our own future happiness. Without going into the details of how I know this to be true (you can do the reading just like I did—ask for my reading list!), I will say that this knowledge makes it imperative that I make any decisions about moving very carefully. This is because, 1) I have a lot of stuff to move (including a piano, fer christ sake!); and 2) I am not young, so moving is not the kooky spontaneous adventure it once was. In other words, when I move, I ain’t coming back, and I doubt I will then move again. Therefore, when I imagine living in a beatific idyllic city with rolling hills, a country store, and a bar where everybody knows my name, I need to also consider that this place will not be Southern California. Meaning, the weather may suck the big one.

I was raised in San Diego. San Diego has the nickname "America's Finest City". Now I don't know if this is just narcissistic posturing or actual research based fact, but I would say that San Diego is pretty darn fine. The finest, tho? Eh! Who's to decide these things? Nevertheless, i am a California boy, tried and true. This means that normal weather, to me, is sunny and 75-80 degrees. This means that bad weather is when you have to take a jacket with you when going out at night. A light jacket. This means that snow is something created only for decorating holiday card pictures. In other words, I am used to living in the best fucking weather in the entire world.

Given that, I must take into consideration the effect of weather in any city I plan to move to. Especially because I am a bicyclist. Rain I can deal with, wind I can kind of deal with, cold and heat I can deal with, but snow is a no go. So that crosses out any city that gets snow on any sort of a regular basis. I know I could just get a car, but I don't want to. Really these car things are not so great. And you don't know what you are missing by being in one all the time. But that is another post for another day.

So far, Portland is at the top of my list for places that I might like to live in. Now I know that Portland gets a lot of rain. Not as much as Seattle, I hear, but a lot compared to Los Angeles. And yet even with all this rain, Portland is considered the Bike City of the country. So I gotta figure that if I can deal with pharmaceutically enhanced, entitled, ADD, impatient, multi-tasking drivers in L.A. without the benefit of bike paths, then I can most probably deal with a little moisture from Mother Nature. And if you have ever ridden a bike in a light rain, then you will understand me when I say that this is not something that you want to avoid. It feels fucking marvelous. Imagine being warmed up from the riding, and contrast that with the cool shock of raindrops, and you will know what I mean (I usually take my shirt off for maximum effect--delicious). I have a feeling that Portlanders know what I am talking about.

But could I give up all this sunshine? Could I?

Could I?

best friends

let's be clear about this--one of the considerations that i think anyone has to consider when relocating is the fact that we will be leaving people. leaving people is never easy, unless, of course, we hate them. but in the case of best friends, that is not the case, if i may be redundant.

my best friend is dave o. i have known dave for over 10 years, or something like that. we both used to be actors here in l.a., and we actually did a couple of plays together. i remember thinking that dave was one of the coolest dudes i had ever known--he had the right hats and the convertible classic car and the sinatra attitude and god damn if he wasn't a pretty decent actor to boot. i remember that we once ran into each other at gay pride (what an oxymoron) one year and i think we were both cruising young guys at the time. so sue me. anyway, i remember telling him that we kept seeing each other, and that we seemed to have similar interests (young guys), and it didn't make sense that we weren't friends. in truth, i think i just wanted to be as cool as he was. cut to now...we are friends...best friends. and when i think about the idea of relocating, i can't do so without remembering that when i leave l.a., i will also be leaving dave o.

that is something to consider.

i have mentioned to dave that it might be a good idea for us to buy a condo together so that we have each other as friends and companions as we move into our "older" years, but if i were to move, that would negate that plan. but to stay in l.a.? a dilemma for sure. dave is not the only reason that i would stay in l.a.--we do really have the best weather in the entire world, but you already know that. beyond that though, weather is something i can give up. best friends are not. gotta think about this in any moving plan i make. i would not want to lose dave. we don't get best friends too often.

but...

melani, whom i have known for 25 years, is also a best friend. not like dave, because she lives in connecticut, but a best friend nonetheless, and melani and i have not lived in the same city for 15 years. and yet we are still best friends. is that something i would settle for with dave? dunno.

the beginning of the end

when i wrote the title to this post, i thought, "oh good god, what a way to start a blog site". but despite the downward tone of the title, please do not be deceived. in this case, and perhaps only in this case, the "beginning of the end" is a good thing. what it means in this case is that i am at the start of a journey that will eventually take me OUT of los angeles for good, and into a place that is more wonderful and shiny-happy. that is the purpose of this blog.

i actually had another blog for a spell on myspace, and i am rather happy with the 50 of so posts that i made on there. but the nature of those posts was personal, and on this site i intend to steer away from the personal and veer toward the public, that is, a discussion/forum about the best living spaces for an educated single foodie queer who can't quite ever leave the city. i plan to post about cities i have visited and cities i intend to visit, and hope to encourage feedback from readers about these same cities.

some history: i have been in los angeles since '91, when i decided to leave san diego and give the big city a try. i came here because i was a performer: dancer, actor, singer, and i really did all of those things. i was 28 at the time, and full of big dreams of stardom, fame, fortune, and love. in a nutshell, i worked quite a bit, primarily in theater, and yet i could never play the network game that was required in order for me to get work in television and film, and so flash forward to my late 30's where i found myself wondering what i might be doing when i was 50. cue graduate school and a masters in clinical psychology, and a realization that, as an industry town, los angeles would never do for me a a person who majored in relating.

don't get me wrong. i love the city, but like the best of relationships, i also loathe it. but the part that i loathe is that part that is the worst of it--the narcissism, the meanness, the utter lack of community, and the values: money, youth, beauty. now, while i like to think that i have some of the previously mentioned values, i am at a point in my life where those things are not the most important things anymore. and in los angeles, they are the most important. you see, they are not my values anymore. i was thinking recently about how i have been here for nearly 20 years, and yet when i go into the local starbucks i don't know a single person, and they don't know me. that is NOT fucking okay to me anymore. at the gym that i have been going to for over 5 years they still check my i.d. as if they have never seen me. that is not fucking okay to me anymore. and here on my street, the neighbor will come over and mention that she wants the hedges trimmed that border our properties, and she will introduce herself to me even though i have met her many times previously, and that is definitely NOT fucking okay with me.

like the old "cheers" song, i want to be in a place where they know my name. l.a. is not that place. you have to be famous. i am not famous. don't want to be anymore.

so a blog is born. the thinking is that i will stay here for maybe another 10 years, at which time i will pack my bags and say goodbye. but before i do that i need to know where i am going. i have time to figure that out. hopefully you all will help, if there is a you all. not the first time i have jumped into an abyss. here we go...