FHC’s resurrected blog

In which FHC remembers London in the 30s

I recently watched “Bright Young Things” with some Brit-obsessed friend of mine (who insisted that I need to read the caption and adopted a British accent in the middle of the movie). I always love stories like “Requiem for a dream” or “Party Monster” in which it all starts very lightheartedly with bright drugs and enchanting parties and ends up somewhat dramatically and unexpectedly with death, abandonment and children. The wildest partygoers commit suicide, become schizophrenic or paraplegic or at least get an arm amputated, while the others, jaded, marry and procreate. It reminds me a little of my father’s predicament that being carefree (read: gay, smoker or junkie or all of the above) eventually catches up with you in life. He even had an interesting formula to summarize it but I can’t remember it right now. Anyway I gather that life is merciless for those who have too much fun (read: sex, drug and easy money) too early in life. These movies are telling us that it is much wiser to spread it over a longer period of time. Why can’t they just stop right before the pathetic degradation part? I am sure it has something to do with some overall Hollywood religious zealots plot. I also enjoyed watching Stephen Campbell Moore who, at times, looked almost rozvaresque. Finally it reminded me of the sad fact that Evelyn Waugh never even acknowledged my friendster request (what a conceited f***ck).

On another topic, I was a little saddened to see that nobody seemed really interested in knowing the evolution of my gonorrhea case. Only one person on his way to the clinic sent me a worried TM reading “do you really have gonorrhea”? which made me sneer. Also the difference between glucocorticosteroids and anabolic steroids did not go through the translation and my mother sent me a two pages e-mail today telling me that I should really stop taking steroids and that I am fit as it is. This was embarrassing for everybody involved. I also haven’t drunk anything since Sunday evening and plan on continuing to do so during my trip to Baltimore this week-end to visit my ex.

In which FHC tells the story of his plant

So I am a little worried for my plant. As I am moving into in a dark and damp dungeon, I am afraid that she might not survive it. It’s a pretty ugly plant on the greenish side with a little dirt by the feet but it has a cute story. My first living-in boyfriend (may god bless his heart or whatever organ he has where the heart should be) had a lot of plants in our apartment. The guy was collecting unemployment so he had a lot of time to water them. When we eventually broke up I was feeling very guilty because some stories of my unfaithfulness were surfacing (I might have been a little on the promiscuous side at that time as I hadn’t developed the strong set of ethics and morale I am now equipped with – rule #1 kids: never date someone who just came out) so I let him leave with everything. Per comparison my last divorce was much more economical but then I got a lot less side-sex too…anyway. So when I noticed that he was leaving with all the plants I told him: “Hey why can’t I keep a plant?” to which he replied “You cannot take care of a human being, how do you plan to take care of a plant?”. It must have been the wittiest he ever was (may god bless his heart). So I kept this ugly plant and everyday I watered it and talked to it and everything and each time the f**er would come by I would tell him “ See !!! how beautiful my plant is”. Eventually unemployment ran out and the guy became some stripper in some sleazy bar but I always kept the f***ing plant and now it’ll die. Love that story.

In which FHC has college life nostalgia

Today Fagat (the old one, not the new fresher one) wrote to us a very empathetic yet insolent “I haven't spoken English in two days and I'm finding it a bit maddening. I don't know how you've done it for the 17 years you've been in the United States”. That’s funny because I actually went to American University yesterday on my way back from the Billy Goat Trail with my dear friend Fred to walk around campus. It reminded me of when I arrived in the US six years ago on August 16, 2000 (at the end of what will be remembered as the crazy pre-September 11 era of free sex, reckless freedom and endless opportunities) and only talked to squirrels for four days while sleeping directly on my mattress because I did not have any sheet or a cover. I also got to show my friend the residence in which I had my first gay experience (Hughes 509 at American). 2001 was the year everything changed in my life and strangely enough I have not even one picture left of that year and almost no friendship…probably because I spent most of it either in bed or studying. This was an exhilarating time of mental liberation which I wish I could re-experience and maybe the only time in my life were I was more excited than scared. My biggest regret is that I was not able to spend my undergraduate years in an American College as I believe this is the best place for one to become oneself (American Colleges are wasted on American kids if you want my opinion) but still I am grateful for that all too quick year of 2000/2001 Yesterday was a beautiful sunny day and the freshmen looked gorgeous on the quad and I thought that after all I should try spending more time at my alma matter. Life on campus in the US just always gets better.

In which FHC shares a few tricks on how to avoid losing

Despite LL’s kind, yet awkward and slightly demeaning, efforts to make me win to build my self-esteem, I have been constantly losing at Tennis in the last few days.

I have always hated competitions mostly, I believe, because I am obsessed with victory and love to win as a way to confirm my worth. Sadly I tend to be a huge loser. I vaguely remember that my mother taught me when I was just a charming, albeit meek and extremely small, child that for men of my condition it always is better to die than to lose. As a somewhat logical consequence, I happened to lose the little talent I had whenever I was expected to perform at my best: I was a mediocre golfer, judoka, footballer, musician, swimmer, and sailor and later on in life lover. I am also a very poorly performing human being but that’s another story. I also have fond memories of being left out at school with the less popular children whenever we would pick teams and ended up giving away my mother’s silverware to avoid this embarrassing and traumatic situation. The only thing my mother would not let me be mediocre at was riding, because that little brat, Bonnie if I recall well, who dies in “gone with the wind” (an all time favorite of French women). I just find it so hypocritical that people call all forms of high school sports competition “a game” when it actually is the most tragic part of most childhoods and most coaches are just neo-Nazis.

After a while, I got pretty fed up of losing and then decided to spend the rest of my life avoiding contests of all kind at all cost on the basis of the very famous rule that “if you don’t play, you can’t lose” and looking for all the shortcuts. I even became gay (one hell of a shortcut if you want my opinion). If someone asks me to join some team instead of saying “I am not a competitive person”, I can just indicate that “I am a fagot”: which usually does the trick. The idea of buying trophies from e-bay to place above my chimney only occurred to me much later in life. On the professional level, I usually pop a beta-blocker or use some backstabbing technique whenever I am expected to compete but mostly I try to lower expectations as much as I can. I am always amazed that one is asked to live with oneself for such a long period of time in life.

In which FHC gets smashed and stuff

FHC got slightly…seriously… wasted yesterday night starting at 7:30 p.m. celebrating James B.’s visit to DC with stops to JR and Cobalt [two local bars targeting desperate gays – a rising segment of the gay market] and our office smelled like alcohol until 2 p.m. or so today. Moreover I had completely forgotten about some kind of an early meeting and arrived pretty late looking like your average alcoholic [my excuse was “Sorry I mixed alcohol with GHB, anabolic steroids and sedatives last night”]. This of course did not help our little jetlag issue or our ri”no-far”in-ji´tis and we have been completely out of it all day. The brief lightness of drunkenness always comes with a heavy price tag in my case. As another alcoholic friend of mine I had lunch with two days ago, and who will remain anonymous, once told me: “I preferred when I was on Wellbutrin, at least I would pass out in hallways after three drinks and not remember anything the day after. It’s blatantly f**ed up”.

This would usually be enough mock social life to last me for the next ten years but actually I have to get smashed once again tonight for the mandatory Wednesday night dinner which will take place at Rick H…. at least I am not cooking this evening either.

In others news, via Caroline V., nothing like French Hip-Hop to vcheer you up: you click on "akh", you click on "clip", you choose "votez".

Friendster: Chronicle of a Death Foretold

I have been reading everywhere lately that Myspace is the trendy Friendster. I actually thought for a long time that Myspace was friendster for poor tacky people who eat chicken pot pie, that Facebook was friendster for jewish nerds and that linkedin was for suburban community college graduates. But now that Myspace is officially central to the kitty porn industry and that it scores almost every week articles in leading magazines (I started reading one in this month Vanity Fair while in my bathroom but did not go further than the first paragraph ...), it is clear that I was terribly mistaken. Myspace is indeed more promiscuous and hip than friendster.

Oh and I prove it, I ran a googlefight just to prove my point.

It is true that there is almost nothing going on friendster anymore, the only people who update their profile or add pictures are the leftover flawed people: the ones that could not find a long term relationship or a social life in the three years of friendster existence or the people who just met someone and are trying desperately to send hints to the other part of the relationship through their friendster profile. I suspect a third of the profiles are of people who died of overdose, suicide or H5N1 in the last three years (unfortunately the friendster type is your average melancholic druggie who eats Chicken Mc Nuggets). Even Kevin D. is getting laid on Craig’s List these days. Myspace on the other hand is apparently a very lively social website.

Sadly Friendster pictures are slowly aging, most of the gays had their quick gorgeous friendster photoshoots to use for their profile in early 2004 (for some it seems they had re-used 1987 pictures) and since then time, mortgage payment and routine sins took an heavy toll on them. Friendster has now become a gigantic Dorian Gray portrait: when I browse friendster my most common thought is “this kid used to be damn cute”.

The sad truth is that I have neither the necessary social life (I have spoken with a dozen people among my friendsters in the last 10 months and I merely receive a friendster message per week) nor the energy to work a Myspace profile. This does not let me any option but to live in the memories of the early immoral Friendster and to stay in my current relationship. I think I am going to have to sub-contract my Myspace profile to some dilettante college student.

Talking about gods and monsters.

You say something, midget?

Amidst the huge amount of napping and cocooning that constitutes your average FHC Sunday, we managed to watch this monument of Republican pro-life political culture that March of the Penguins constitutes for all of the avid little conservatives out there [So FHCesque of me to blog about something that came out a year ago] ! Indeed one has to admit that this culture of fearing change and the unknown much more than fearing being hungry, cold, in danger is a profoundly Christian Republican view of things. The movie ambience feels very much like DC during the last five years and their loveless mass breeding followed by regurgitated fish binge eating is depressing to me. These Penguins are clearly very bored at times. Ultimately the weight of tradition and bad political management always end up with unnecessary chicks deaths. I have actually expressed my lack of enthusiasm for the so-called Penguin specie in past entries but what I had never realized is how helpless they are. These tiny uneducated butlers that have been oppressed by Antartica culture of capitalism for years need some high caliber BCG consultant to come in and review their whole reproduction system for them because it sucks badly. Please send your checks to my new environmental project: “Organizational consultancy: dealing with the Emperor Penguins poor collective choices”.

Today on my way to brunch to Freemans [almost as good of a pick than our Saturday night gem: Gene’s] I ran into some stickers of Tattoo, my old friend from Fantasy Island and dearest LL insisted on taking a picture. You see LL thinks I look a little like Tattoo, aren’t we all flattered when someone compare us to some TV star?. What happened to our TV midget friends? it has been so long I haven’t seen any. Reality TV and midget dating websites must have killed them. I did some research about Tattoo – Hervé Villechaize…yes he is French - for you. First I found out an unpleasant Surgeon General's Warning: “Listening to your i-pod during pregnancy can cause your baby to look like Herve Villechaize” but I finally I stumbled on the terrible, yet somehow expected, news that Tattoo committed suicide in 1993 (a sad ego story that some of my friends should read carefully)…. I was only 13 and was gorgeous.

Among other appalling news some jewish quarterback in the Superbasin this year is 4 years younger then me.

FHC’s earliest memory of Christmas

I usually get in a fight with my family, break-up with my boyfriend and give my notice to vacate to my roommate around November to avoid the big filthy annual Christmas gift trade. I did not time it very well this year and I find myself having to get personalized Christmas gifts for people who clearly don’t need anything and have high expectations. It is a dangerous and stressful exercise that involves lust, revenge and greed and that I would prefer to avoid. Silent Night, Deadly Night. I was brought up in a family where people did not know how to hide their disappointment when opening their presents: my mother particularly had the annoying habit to express her frustration. She threw more than one painted noodle necklace and patiently handmade holiday ornament at my face at Christmas time and interrupted many poems by angrily asking where the real gift was. Doesn't feel like Christmastime until I feel dried hand-painted noodles slapped into my face now!  There is always a huge terrified silence when she opens her presents on Christmas morning as we are all conscious that her disappointment could lead to a murderous rampage (we even had to replace cutters by plastic knives to open presents in 1991). My brother started to breed too so it means even additional gifts and my niece is still too young to understand that “when uncle FHC was a kid, he would only get one orange, two pieces of charcoal and physical abuse for Christmas and yet he was such a happy camper! He also had to walk to church for hours in the snow in cardboard shoes. That's how f**cking tough FHC’s Dickensian youth was out there in France during WWII”. This year, after much thinking, I have been seeking to pick my Christmas gifts for all my Christian bullies’ relatives out of the undergear catalog so as to ensure at least pleasurable shopping experience. I fear gift-unwrapping time.

Nostalgic recollections of my slutty years

I devoted part of my week-end (the part that was not spent in a South East strip joints nor drinking away my sorrow to be orphaned by LL absence) to go through my papers at home with  the noble goal of getting rid of most of it. So clearly this is going to be an unexciting and nostalgic entry. I landed 5,5 years ago on Ellis Island with only two luggage and yet it is amazing the amount of paper and junk I managed to accumulate. It is also amazing that I ended up reaching 148,5 pounds as I wasn’t bigger than Fred C. when I made it here, but that’s just another junk food and quitting smoking sad story.

Back to the junk: I found many memorabilia and collectables from my so-called past relationships which in retrospect either show how unfaithful I was or/and how dumb the other part of the relationship (when there was any which was infrequent) was. It also revived some great memories such as the first place I ever had sex in - Hughes 509 at American - (ah the warm fuzzy feelings of  being _______ for the first time) or just finding rolled one dollar bills that still smelled like Coke. Through my domestic archeological excavation, I came to understand that if someone writes you “I will always be there for you” and underline the “there” it usually means you will be through two months later and that years later you will find their nickname ridiculous. There is a subtle irony to old love letters when time has smashed all the good feelings towards each other and all is left is the yearly visit to your ex-friendster profile. I might have been a poor selfish troubled unemployed self-hating slutty crackhead f*cker during the first phase of my life in the states but it really makes awesome souvenirs. I also found numerous letter from collection agencies (mostly mandated by Stephen K. my poor years once psycho-analyst), pictures of my meeting with Faye Dunaway, and the folder in which I kept the thousands of rejection letters I received while trying to become a Marketing Assistant in NYC in 2001/2002. Clearly, they are worth keeping if I ever have to prove to popular revolutionaries that I myself once was a victim of the society stratification and my own internalized homophobia.

I also found Christmas cards from the Stanton Group, Rodolphe B., Governor and Mrs. Bush - dated 2000 (the later being a tiny bit astonishing). I went through so many friendships these past 5 years: I should have kept tabs.

I ended up not throwing away anything thinking that if this is a funny activity after a few years, it will just be hilarious in a decade….or really depressing.

FHC cleaning out his closet doors

Those of you who had the opportunity to swing by my bedroom (not that I expect this category of readers to be in any way large as I never managed to keep in good terms with my tricks. I wonder why), know that my closet doors included, until today, very childish yet unpredictable “collages”. As everybody is aware that I reached the US years well after my teens ended and moved in with Kevin at the end of my gayest years, it is quite embarrassing for everybody involved to have such a decorum. Last time, I showed my bedroom to someone, we had diner and he never called back. I thought it might be time to clean this mess. It did include interesting memorabilia though such as the lyrics of this “Barbara” song of Prévert, a press clipping of the wedding of Ben Goldsmith and Kate Rotschild, a male condom manual destined to Africa, a velvet nation card (free admission on the 1st Saturday of each month), a leaflet from velvetpark magazine, a picture of my ex. Jim S. outside of this L.A. “Club Tiger Heat” (still on their website 8/8/2002 Photos page 2) the business card of my dental professional ex-boyfriend, a table card indicating erroneously “Mrs. ….” In fornt of my name from a seated diner at the German’s ambassador’s residence, a (LL…hint…hint… Christmas gift idea coming up) shot from the “soccer practice” video, invitations to the corruption dc parties, a fortune cookie which said “for a good cause, wrongdoing may be virtuous” (too bad, they did not define a good cause), a picture of a plane I flew to Matadi intended to frighten my mother (I said I'm sorry Mama), a “scoped” clipping from the Harvard Crimson in which unsophisticated James L. S ’04-’06 describes himself in three words as “not on friendster”, a picture of Castro pensive, a newsweek’s header mentioning “France : the Return of Hate” (as if it was once out), invitations to Colette opening parties I never went to (particularly a nice one from Michael Lau and one for Arne Svenson’s Sock Monkeys), a receipt for $200 worth of liquors at the ALPA boutique of the French Embassy, a sad picture of China by Stephen Shaver, Tristan C’s resume, flyers for the Roxy, a coat check ticket that apparently I never claimed and even my employment authorization card for my "Optional practical training". I will particularly regret the pictures of Ryan Locke, the gorgeous Nautica model (Why Grow-ups are not allowed to have naked models on their wall wonders FHC), an interview of BEE with an amazing picture of Ian Somerhalder (I am the gayest FHC in the hood or what ?), a French pamphlet on Cocaïne titled “Cocaïne crack ou free base” (I used to have another on Ecstasy … I wonder what happened to it), Elian Lille’s “Salut Salope !” sign and Max Ehrmann’s desiderata that I wanted at one point to make my life philosophy but never quite assimilated. Am I an adult now or what ? As LL says "it feels really different now". Clearly they were a bit more than just closet doors.