FHC’s resurrected blog

In which FHC completes his myspace profile

I went a little further in improving my myspace profile using the“edit my friends” and “change my top friends” functions to switch good looking friends for clever one: a terribly deceitful (almost as deceitful as this friendster profile or this one) gesture which I still feel ashamed of. You see there is a terrible misconception in the gay world that if your friends are good looking than maybe you are too. I also included a lesbian to show that I am open minded and eclectic. While I was at it, I also finalized the essential “Who I'd like to meet” section:

I want to meet a woman. I feel that right now what is missing the most in my life is a kind, esthetic and amusing feminine presence. I would like her to be the Romy Schneider type but warmer and a little more laid back (a.k.a not committing suicide on every occasion). Not warm to the point that she’d be up to discuss my bedroom habits or her yeast infection or to be interested in going to strip bars but warm enough to be interested in my boyfriend’s stories. I’d like her to be beautiful in an odd manner, unconsciously well-mannered, with a consistent alcohol abuse history and to have an endless pot of family money available for gifts. I’d like her to have a discreet laugh and be borderline mute. Ideally she’d be part jewish or European but I’ll consider other weird religions if necessary. A medical degree would be a plus, pharmacology or a drug dealer boyfriend would even be better. She’d be my tireless companion who always worships at my altar even when I am the guilty one.

Eventually I would need a boyfriend too. I’d like him to be really interested in cars and boats so I can end all my inconclusive efforts in that domain. I’d like him to have expressions like “it’s all good”. He should be anchored in the artist community because I have enough boring lawyer and civil servants friends for two. He should have a dog…a Labrador maybe. No, no dogs…I’d be jealous. He certainly would not have a picture of himself with a baby, a group of gay guys (or even worse fraternity brothers) or at the beach on his profile. I’d like to have a few very, very badly dressed straight friends though. A little scruffy to make sure he does not shine. A very strong knowledge of american customs, history and language is a requirement. Very light eyes for a change even if LL says that two fair people should not get together. I’d like him to be completely unaware of his own coolness. Being slightly autistic would fit well with some of my defaults. In addition to the above-described bf, I also would like to meet a cheap tailor and some famous intellectual whose name I could drop in conversation when they become serious (which is pretty rare in my circle of friends).

Ok. I agree …clearly I won’t meet those people on myspace. You have a point.

In which FHC tries to get the WE essential

watFagat’s official visit ended up on a positive note as we all went to see “Children of men” (yet another clear homophobic propaganda). I went through the entire W- E in my usual alcoholic fog. There is not much point in trying to stay sober enough to hook up when your ex has settled in your guest bedroom, is there?. I tried to console myself by discussing with whoever all the sex I’ll get on that snowless ski trip to the Poconos. At Apex, we spotted the very appetizing gorgeous Jesse P., Russ, half of myspace, that very cute Bebar bartender sadly accompanied by his bf, and Rodolphe B. looking really bruised, Fagat was seen talking to LL’s look-alike and we gathered dirty gossips on Julius and Carlos U (this Carlos kid is good! Must be the ethnic thing but he gets a new boy every night I see him out … I guess that justifies the terrible DC-Philadelphia commute). Then everybody got their shirt off and we stumbled back to Kalorama after LL got in some fight with some bartender over the fact that he wasn’t well positioned to get a drink. The following day at Bebar, we just regretted we are not invited to private parties anymore. The bartenders just looked ridiculous in their white outfits. We talked for a while of some cute guy’s drunk monkey tattoo that he had kindly showed us but quickly the conversation died. There was some weird gathering of Alex S.’s past boyfriendship. The graduates looked relieved. Everybody was trying to sleep with Brian J. and Dan R. (DC has a striving boyfriend second-hand market). Mark H. was as unbearable as Nick D. was looking good until someone shipped him to blowoff. Someone told us about David D.'s upper body and we felt we missed out all these years. To conclude we believe that Fagat completed his DC gay agenda fairly well. Of course, he missed Kevin W. but he would have had to stay up a little late as one usually encounters him on his doorstep at dawn in a complete haze.

What Goes Around Comes Around

Obvi we did something terribly wrong to upset our otherwise well-balanced karma. First, we almost drowned in a moment of hilarious terror in Mexico, and now, on our way to Washington, D.C., for the weekend we lost our drivers license and almost missed our plane.

Somehow we and Fagat arrived at the airport mostly on time, and yet from the moment we stepped foot inside the terminal, everything that possibly could go our way - didn't. The boarding passes wouldn't print; no one would tell us how to get them; the line to check-in, even without luggage, was 549420 people deep; security took for ever and, natch, we were selected for extra screening. In a mad dash for the gate, we somehow dropped our ID, which we thought we were clutching tightly in our hand along with our boarding pass. Once we arrived at the actual gate, JetBlue gave us even more problems. "When will the final boarding be?" we asked. "I don't know, maybe 5 minutes, maybe 10, maybe 1," was the reply. "Do we have time to go back to security and see if they found our ID?" I pleaded. "Well, I don't know, but I do know you're wasting time asking me" said the ticket agent. We mean, honestly, couldn't he have just told us.

We make a split second decision: it's either (possibly) retrieve our ID or board the plane. Doing both seems impossible, so we board the plane, sans idee what we'll do in D.C., a heavy carding jurisdiction, to drink heavily, which of course was our entire reason for visiting. We take our seat (actually we first sat in someone else's because we were so flustered). Sweat dripped down our reddened face, and we thought the person beside us was going to ask to be reseated.

As the plane was about to leave the gate, the ticket agent ran onboard. He made an announcement to the plane, and my heart started racing: "Is LL onboard?" This must mean they found our ID. We shook our hands in the air furiously. "We're here, we're here." And then, without explanation, and without any sign that my license had indeed been found, he left, locked the door, and we began our50 minute in-flight deliberation about how, exactly, to get some form of ID from New York to DC to a) Get into Cobalt and b) Get into the Supreme Court Tuesday (the stated legitimate purpose of our trip to DC, a visit to One First Street).

If anyone has any ideas, please call us. We're currently using the real ID of someone we look nothing like except for the dark hair. But using a friend's ID just feels so 1990s, and while some bartenders may let it pass, we think maybe CJ Roberts will be able to see past the ruse.*

That's it.  We have terrible karma, and someone is trying to send us a message that we really effed up this time and are not getting off without a few hiccups in our otherwise well-laid plans.  We're planning on lying low for a while until we recover from these two most recent crises.  Our not so optimistic mother told us that terrible things happen in threes (note to mom: of three children, so far only two have come out of the closet), and after nearly drowning and losing any form of government identification, we're a little nervous about what the Karma Police have in store for us next.

*(ed.: With the amazing help of KMZ and Alice B, we actually expect to have our passport arrive in DC Sunday night. So please, hold your calls).

In which FHC goes to the doctor's office

As I have been enjoying a huge hypochondriac crisis lately, I went today to see my primary physician. For those of you who know me well, there is nothing that I enjoy more than a day spent talking about myself, bowels movements and testicular and prostate cancer. What’s a better place to complain about your life than your physician’s office? For me paradise is a doctor’s office. He gave me a bagel with cream chesese, prescribed many tests (I even did some really cute tuberculosis related stuff) and I even managed to score a prescription to Clonazepam which will reduce my dependency on Kevin W.’s Ambien stash.

We of course evoked my drinking problem and one’s habit of sleeping on one’s old doormat and it was painful for everybody involved (I blamed it on my mother though). On the sexual side of things I think he had already assumed I was a wh*re. Anyway the guy asked me to stop caffeine, alcohol and dairy products for two weeks for some kind of a little experiment. I negotiated and he agreed that I could wait until Monday (a.k.a when LL and Fagat will be out of town because obviously they won’t be interested in playing the whole let’s-be-sober-and-see-what-happens-game). So here is to another week-end of pitiful decadence.

In which FHC gets a few drinks and a downer

Alcohol withdrawal makes me completely paranoid these days. Of course going directly to Cobalt without grabbing diner yesterday besides a crushed Xanax on a toast, which only kicked hours later anyway, had awful consequences and not only on my liver. Cobalt was very fine and I vaguely remember dancing with charming young men ast one point. However, I found myself a few hours later wondering the streets of Adam’s Morgan looking desperately for the new house. Carlos F. had kindly put me in the right direction but obviously it wasn’t sufficient. I eventually returned to Dupont Circle punched in the code of the Corcoran Retirement House and ended up sleeping on the doormat of our old apartment.

Anyway I woke up at dawn still drunk. Drank a lot of water with two Advils and made it to the Professional thingy a little late trying to look as sober as possible. However the entire day was awfully painful as I was in a complete state of paranoia. It’s a new thing; I used to have really happy hangovers back in my college days I remember. But not anymore, now not only am I exhausted, incapable of doing anything and suffer terrible memory loss but it also makes me completely paranoid. I have weird ideas like the feeling that cab drivers are out there to kill me when I am on my bike, that people are plotting against me, that my mother is not my real mother and that even blogging is dangerous. Perhaps I am just a little more lucid when I am hangover.

In which FHC goes to Cobalt

Sometimes even really glamorous people like FHC have to stay until 9:57 p.m. to do the Professional Thingy. They too have bills to pay... sometimes expensive ones.

In which FHC recommends l'Ultimo Bacio

I watched l’Ultimo Bacio yesterday (funny how you too noticed that I watched four movies this week-end, Kill Bill 1&2, Inconvenient Truth and now the Last Kiss). Apparently, a 2001 American remake (with Zach Braff) was produced but I ignored it. This is the power of Netflix, you have the power to ignore awful American remakes which transform sensitive pictures into bloody circus. With Netflix we can all be elegant and romantic Europeans. Stefano Accorsi, the main character, which must have been exactly 30 years old at the time the movie came out, incidentally looked gorgeous.

But that’s not my point. My point is that the whole movie is built around the transitional period in any straight man’s life (the characters are in their late twenties) where he has to accept that the woman he will marry might very well be the last woman he ever has sex with. Yeah it was a cultural experience for me to try to fit in the shoes of a straight man of about my age. In the movie, the man cheats on his girlfriend (albeit briefly…but he cheats) and ultimately decides that he really loves the woman and he marries her and they have kids etc… This is what they call “grappling with finally becoming an adult”. In the gay world, we usually have the same kind of anxiety attack when we are stuck in relationships which are strating to become serious but we solve it differently: we either break-up or suggest an open-relationship (which is just another name for break-up). God granted us the power to remain promiscuous children forever and ever.

In which FHC reminds you that gay is the environmentally friendly sexuality

I watched “an inconvenient truth” yesterday night. Al made me so anxious that afterwards I had to go through that old cigar box labeled “the drugs house” which I keep on my nightstand. I finally found a gorgeous shiny valium pill which I cut it in half. I slept well, missed a booty call but wasn’t too disturbed by the future of our planet (actually valium makes me feel on another planet altogether…a much cleaner one too without gas flares, Bush administration and all that jazz). I woke up at 12:44 p.m. and have been starring at the ceiling since then while listening to “The best of Disney, Vol II”. Perhaps Valium is the real answer to Global Warming.

I think it shouldn’t feel too concerned though!. I have already adopted in my usual selfless manner the environmentally friendly sexuality. I even switched from lube to spit. Just kidding. But seriously, in many ways, homosexuals are at the forefront of environmental-friendly behavior. Firstly most homosexuals don’t breed: they recycle other people’s kids. They don’t place any additional burden on our planet. Additionally, we don’t repress our sexual frustrations by driving huge SUVs (Kevin D. and Ryan T. excluded) and are the biggest eaters of organic broccoli. We also don’t vote for Republicans (Thomas B. and Jim M. excluded). Well I don’t get to vote because I am a dirty Kyoto treaty ratifying foreigner but you do. And in the case of dearest LL, we don’t even pee in international ecological reserves and prefer to put our life (and the lives of two lifegiards) in danger than risking killing protected vegetal. So straight and bisexual readers, we strongly suggest that as a 2007 resolution, you switch to the environmentally-conscious way of having sex: the homosexual one.

In Which LL Reenacts that Whole "Drowned Sailor" Thing

We just returned from Le Mexique and barely have a moment to blog, but our payment from FHC is the only way we afford Chelsea rent. 

We haven't read the blog for the past 6 days, but a quick skim leads me to believe that our so-called "ex" is mostly prostituting himself unsuccessfully.  (Note to FH: we're meeting up with Fagat shortly and plan on getting all the details).

Back to the raison d'etre of le Blog: Us.  We almost didn't come back from Cozumel alive.  There are beaches on both sides of the island - to the west, the sea is very call and serene.  On the other, more beautiful, easy side of the island the ocean is incredibly turbulent and has a strong current.  While we were on that messy side of the island, nature called.  Because its essentially a national park, there are no public bathrooms.  So, as they say, when in the sea do as the fish do: we left the beach to urinate in the ocean.  Only every time a wave hit us we would lose focus and nothing would come out of our bladder.  We decided, foolishly it turns out, to swim much further out where the waves were slightly less rough.  We peed.  Success.  We hadn't been keeping an eye on the shore, and when we turned around, it looked to be a good 200 feet away.  Easy, we told ourself; we are a strong swimmer.  So we tried to swim forward.  But after every stroke, the sea managed to pull us backward.  For 30 seconds we continued to struggle and made no progress.  We started to feel our heartbeat a little more ferociously.  The waves crashed down on our head and all around us; we were losing our breath and strength quickly.

In times of crisis, we've always used a single motto to avoid catastrophe: What would Matt Lauer do?  Instantly, we remembered the Today Show segment on rip tides.  Matt instructed us, when swimming forward doesn't work, to swim parallel to the shore until the ocean is calm enough that you can get back to the beach.  We swam forward.  Then we heard a whistle.  We looked to the shore, where a lifeguard had spotted us.  Then we were really scared: if emergency personnel thought we were in trouble, then we must really be drowning.  Quickly, we raised our arms over our head and waved to him.  He and a buddy swam towards me with little floaties and came to my rescue.  (Pictures to come later once Alex R. and Costas C. are no longer stranded at the airport in Atlanta). We swam back to shore, although it took the three of us a while to get back, even with the floatation devices.

Fortunately, the event went from being 90% scary and 10% funny to 90% funny and 10% scary in a matter of moments.  In fact, we think the lifeguards were a little perplexed to see me laughing as we returned to the shore.  All in all, we had a great trip, are less tan than we had hoped to be, and plan to pay a little more attention in the future when urinating.

Kisses, and happy New Year to the kids. 

In which FHC feels that he really is f***ed this time

Yesterday dearest Fagat, who kindly decided to return to the States and is announced for a visit to DC on January 12^th, called to blackmail me (which is kind of ironic, I know! and what a kind way to check in also) over some absurd rumor. I of course settled and sent him a check (nothing big, just enough to get him back on his feet after he lost everything in a relationship with a Spanish stripper). You see I get that pretty often. Well first because of my unruly behavior (which I completely blame on alcoholism, a very low sense of ethics and a Borderline Personality Disorder) and second because I have left so many electronic records of all my dark little secrets everywhere. I am not exactly what one would call a discreet and cautious person. I am not the only one by the way (follow my beautiful gaze..it takes two or three to tango). I consider that all the e-mails I sent and received in the past few years as well as my Friendster, Myspace, Manhunt (etc..) and Facebook profiles constitute a huge liability (not even mentioning this blog which will represent my doom at one point – we all know that). When I think about it, it really makes me feel paranoïd and threatened and also it makes me crave for a cocktail (at 2:30 p.m). What if I ever decide to run for office or feel called to be a priest? Will all this dirt accumulated on thousands of servers all over the globe just resurface and get in the way of my vocation? What if I decide to become straight ? Will I ever be able to escape my past and start anew like baby Jesus? ô rage, ô désespoir, ô vieillesse ennemie, N-ai je donc tant vécu que pour cette infamie [question mark].

Sometimes I think a good step would be to change of identity. Maybe I could steal LL’s identity: I have everything I need, his social security number, his birth date etc…and he left to lead a new life in Mexico. It would take months before he notices and by then I will be free again. I just need to get circumcised (no, not with your teeth Mark).