FHC’s resurrected blog

Well, well, well look who is back !

More than 4 years have gone by and things have changed !!! It's 8:46 a.m. in the morning on a Sunday for one. I have to go to a meeting my friends but I'll be back and I'll tell you EVERYTHING that happened in the last 4 years in 2 (just two paragraphs).

In which FHC reflects on America, White People and Drinking

The fact that lately I am constantly constrained by my medical advisors to monitor my drinking (in order to switch alcohol for prescription drugs), confirmed my worst fear: I am an alcoholic surrounded by alcoholics. In the meantime I rediscovered that New Yorkers, who are more civilized than Americans, still do not drink, they do lines of coke. By the way, I am always amused when people pretend that if gay New Yorkers are slim it is because they walk everywhere.

There is this purely cultural white people thing in America that they can only effectively socialize with other human beings by getting tipsy in the very first moments of any interaction. Worse, it takes them at least five drinks (the definition of binge drinking) to be fully fun and inhibited. Finally, they require about seven drinks to be able to dance or have intercourse. They only live during their “happy hours”. The expression “to grab a drink” is considered a social activity similar to “watch a movie” or “go for a run”. Above all creatures, the gays are the ultimate drunk community because they actually value drunkenness and alcohol addiction as a sign of “coolness”.

On Friday, I had to leave early some friends of mine at Bistrot du Coin because, as they were getting more inebriated, my relative sobriety was clearly becoming an impediment to a fun conversation. At Vlada (definitely not a place to visit sober), I was seating on the couch with a bottle of Water when some fugly twink suggested that I should smile more. And, I only managed to go through le Souk (on avenue B) on Saturday by getting smashed on Sangria. Everybody who made it to Mr. Black on Saturday, woke up with a severe hangover but nice memories. Those who went to Nublu, only had a headache. And I ran my first 4 miles race, a step closer to rehab.

In which FHC wants to give up the internet

My rapport to the internet is unhealthy (read: neurotic). I also believe that this might get in the way of both my plan to become a yogi (very time consuming) before the fiscal year ends and the hermitlike behavior I plan to adopt to reach my goal.

Checking my personal and professional thingy e-mails is the first and last thing I do every day. The rest of my awakened time is spent frenetically refreshing CNN.com, dragging thousands of spam e-mails in the trash and placing LL and Kevin W.’s messages in little folders, checking my bank account, my health insurance portal, e-bay, friendster, myspace, facebook, itunes and my favorite blogs. Nothing really changes during the day (besides mass murders on CNN.com) but I still behave like an addict and return to the same webpages repeatedly interrupting my substantive activities every ten minutes. Whenever I send an e-mail to a cute boy, I then constantly check outlook until I finally receive an answer ignoring the fact that there are people out there who have other things to do then immediately answer everything they receive and constant access to the internet. I am lucky that the professional thingy concluded that I was too unimportant to be given a blackberry (and a company car both requested earlier this year).

Among the potential solutions to end what clearly constitutes yet another obsessive compulsive behavior, I envision to check my e-mail only once a day, commit to keeping my inbox empty, give up blogging and take one day offline every week. If I successfully gave up Mark H. and Crystal Meths (not simultaneously though), this must not be much more difficult.

In which FHC is hard on himself

The implementation of my new two delusional projects “FHC becomes a yogi before he reaches thirty” and “FHC gets a break from the real world in 16 months” this week end, was seriously hampered by my lack of English (and to a certain extent mathematical) abilities.

I was at Sports Club L.A. Saturday and at Results Sunday for Power Yoga 2 and my performance was clearly disappointing. I could not understand a word of what the instructor would say. She would mention words referring to parts of my anatomy I had never heard before like collar bone and tail bone. I know cock, legs, back, neck and stuff like that but I am sorry I don’t know the name of my bones in English (or even in French actually). The names downward dog and warrior 1 just left me distressed even if I had popped half a Klonopin ahead of time. After the class, old men in the sauna room showered me with advice (like using a real mat) and I just realized it is going to be a really long journey.

I did not only fail at Yoga over the Week-end. I took a GRE diagnostic quiz early on Sunday which turned out to be dramatic. Later on, LL told me on the phone with his usual kindness: “you did better than the monkeys, didn’t you? they get about 25% of the questions right”. Well yes I did, barely. All my answers for the analogy and antonym questions were wrong. I just don’t know these words. The mathematical problem solving was also a disaster. I guess there too I’ll have to study.

In the meantime, I lost 4 friends on friendster (probably the result of not going out for two week-ends straight), it’s raining and LL (whose new friend is a real yogi who eats raw food at 26) also said “you sound so depressed” on the phone today while Chelsea Hotel No 2 was playing in the back. I listened all day to Sung-lo by Erin McKeown.

In which FHC is a little bitter about Spring

As I was watching X. in madras shorts and some sort of sandals passing me by yesterday, I felt I was not ready for spring at all. If it was not for the fact that I am still in a wintry mood, I anyway never understood why grown-up men feel that they can wear culottes, polos and all kind of wild colors as soon as the weather get a little warmer. This is particularly unbearable after 9 p.m. I barely tolerate shorts in footballers, Indian cricket players and teenagers with nice legs but let alone middle-aged gay men in shorts on their way to spread their tyranny a little further in the gay world. Soon summer will come in and they will wear tank tops exposing both their soul and their flesh bare. I will be repulsed but then hopefully they will all have moved to Rehoboth and us pants wearing people will breathe more easily. I should work on my spare time on a list of the best-dressed gays in town, I think Andy L. would figure on it, Kevin W.’s 2003 (pre-poverty) wardrobe and then…nobody.

Overall, I just feel that spring is not a good time for Clonozepam, wood-paneling, crying in your custom-made closet (courtesy of Mark H. who monitors Craig’s list for all of us), tweed jackets, canes, l’UOMO magazines and that song “Bohemian Like You” by the Dandy Warhols. Also spring kind of creeped on me: the trees blossomed while I was dying on valium in my cave and yesterday, while I was drinking a cosmopolitan at Regent with perfect company, I felt it could have waited a few days for me.

In which FHC is off for a few days anyway

There are two schools: the malaria school and the flu school. If it is malaria then you will not see me for quite a while. If it is the flu, then my life is just really trite.

In which FHC listens to Mr. Blue all day long

Now that I painfully solved this DSL story I needed space on my computer so I committed a little musical genocide today. I started with all the Jazz: even the Ken Burns and Jazz FM compilations went in the garbage. I had to keep Duke Ellington and Miles Davis out of politeness and in case someone audit my computer post-mortem (let’s just say I hope that will not happen).  Then I deleted all the Dixie Chicks, all my R&B and half of my Hip/Hop including The Game, Trey Songsz, Zapp & Rogers and Jeffrey Osborne. I kept DMX because I think it was LL’s break up gift. I destroyed all Morcheeba. I hesitated to get rid of Morrissey but I knew Kevin W would never forgive me. I trashed all Brazelectro and the Dawson’s Creek soundtrack which had infiltrated my music collection. I saved me about 5 GB.

Then I played “Mr. Blue” by Catherine Feeny and “Shiranakatta” by Yoko Ono all day long trying to get the meaning of it all. As it was a difficult exercise, I went through two weeks worth of peapod groceries. In the meantime, Vividblurry and Frenchbenj were more or less blogging about hating their body for completely opposite reasons. Also I found out that Vernard Gilmore is staying until sunday night room: 307 at the Watergate Hotel and had some cheap flowers delivered to him.

In which FHC discovers the peapod effect

I weight myself at Results: partly, because I like to convey a message to fellow Results members that I too am serious about this whole “working out” thing. Additionally I trust the gays, above all other human creatures, to make sure Results’s scale does not lie.

I historically oscillated between 145 and 148 pounds (to be compared with an “official” 5 ft 7 in height) for the last 2,5 years depending on the amount of sex I was getting (directly correlated to the amount I drink as I don’t hook up sober. Period). Three weeks ago, my weight suddenly snapped out of its sluggish pattern and increased at a faster-than-expected 2/3 lbs/week pace. At first, I did not pay attention to it blaming the increasing number of Enrique Iglesias songs in my ipod. However, I eventually reached an unheard-of 155 pounds on Sunday evening. I gasped of horror and started kicking the electronic scale before retreating hastily to the locker room. I found this sudden weight gain to be even more worrying considering the fact that I had been sober (….ok…more sober than usual) during the same period for the sad reasons we all know.

When I shared this tragic story with my friend Juan V., he blamed it on the ineluctable hormonal changes and slower metabolism associated to being in my late twenties. I hated the glandular explanation. Look at Mark H.! he is in his early forties and he only is vaguely overweight while his sex drive is clearly not waning. I finally isolated the peapod effect as the explanation. I have joined this grocery home delivery service upon my return from the unnamed destination. Practically, for the first time in my life I regularly fill my fridge with two weeks worth of groceries, which I end up eating in the two following days. In the Kevin D.’s era [circa 2003-2006], I was living on sporadic food supplies relying exclusively on pasta and tuna cans. Prosperity and convenience are threatening my delicate figures. LL, always wise, also indicated to me yesterday that cranberry juice and protein bars are fattening which I was of course completely unaware of.

In which FHC sobers up

One of my doctors thought it was a good idea to place me on Augmentin CR for a bad case of clap sinus infection (if you hooked up with me during the past few months or more probably if you hooked up with someone I hooked up with etc.. etc.., please go see your doctor to check if you don’t have a case of “sinus infection” too). This reinforced my physician’s recommendation to stop alcohol for the next two weeks. As I have not blogged sober for the past year and a half, I am sure you perfectly understand what it means for the little relationship we had going on. You can still watch this…courtesy of the late Kevin D.

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.