FHC’s resurrected blog

Is FHC trapped in a Roman Catholic guilt trip ?

As I came (exceptionally) strolling in the office a little after 10:30 a.m. perched on my black stiletto heels, I was thinking that it could have been a joyful morning if it wasn’t for the tremendous guilt I experienced. Guilt is our personal drama (meaning us the Roman Catholics), it spoils our best moments.

First let’s put the record straight, my late arrival was not entirely due (as I heard) to last night’s hangover. Indeed, I shared a bottle of Châteauneuf du Pape with Alex A. in the early evening to accompany the roasted Penguin he had beautifully cooked (a family Portuguese recipe he claims). Later on, I also admit that I mecanically drowned my boredom at Cobalt with many uncalled for Gin & Tonics. Btw, I hate to complain but nobody flirted with me yesterday besides a very undeserving Hungarian hunchback with a red sweater whom I suspect to be a Jehovah’s witness as he whispered weird stuff in my ears during our brief interaction such as “…Ah the truly amazing gift the Lord bestowed on us…”. I would have pursued the relationship if he hadn’t called me a “crypto-fascist bourgeois pig” at one point which kind of turned me off. The place was filled with obese local realtors, fashion distressed faghags and Chilean male prostitutes and I felt like usual right at home.

No, the main reason of my lateness is that I got some kind of a haircut this morning (at least I wasn’t at the bathhouse). This was a really stupid thing to do I admit, because there is nothing worse than spending the first 45 minutes of your day contemplating your own face scarred by years of alcohol, poor choice, drugs, gastronomic mistakes, child abuse and homelessness while commenting silently on your receding hairline (my very tactful hairdresser asked "hmmm.. Have you ever thought of getting a toupee?....") and the puffiness of your gaze. I tried to close my eyes most of the time but I felt that my hairdresser was resenting it which made me feel even more guilty.

Anyway all that to say, that I was in position of feeling quite rebellious this morning as I skipped a few school hours but instead I got all panicky over the fact that my lack of self-discipline clearly posed a threat to society and was somehow unethical. I was even thinking about closing my door to whip myself when I would get to the office. Thank god while I was waiting for my haircut, I read in the paper that some Senators had played hooky on the Alito hearings for extended periods of time too. Clearly I have reached a point in my life where I need to be more experimental with the rules, etiquette and morale standards I have been taught during the last 27 years. Would it only be for complex political purposes and setting the example for future genrations. Bold step No 2: I won’t say “thank you” to the Safeway cashier during grocery shopping on Friday. Bold step No 3: I will only pay my credit card bill one week before the deadline.

Is FHC old, sick or both ?

With age my OCD-like rituals are gradually becoming worse and increasingly embarrassing for everybody involved. I am little by little turning into a mix of Jack Nicholson in "As Good As It Gets" and Dustin Hoffman in “Rain Man”.

As an example I had prepared a fat binder for our trip to Paris including cute little obsessive lists such as a timed schedule and associated checklist, a Paris subway map with little annotations on each stop, copies of my passport and my credit card agreement as well as various Menus  collected from the internet of restaurants I was planning to dine at. I even designed a cute colorful cover for it. I tried to hide the binder from LL at the bottom of my luggage but eventually I got busted as I would check it often to decrease my anxiety while in Paris. I might also have snapped a little when LL’s fragile health threatened the implementation of my little calendar of activities and I shouted “WE HAVE TO FOLLOW MY TIMETABLE” at him as they were plugging his life-supporting machine.

If you put that in perspective with my nasty little habits such as preparing my bag every weekday evening, purchasing the exact same grocery items from Safeway every week, reproducing every night Hebrew characters I can’t read, repeatedly cutting my arm with scissors and blaming Olliver-D-LE-CHAT for it, as well as my distaste for last minute plans, a mild agoraphobia and a tendency to repeat weird sentences to LL over and over again such as “could we form a team?”, “Merry Christmas to you and your entire family” and “I would like to sell you to the Gypsies”, you’d also come to the conclusion that I am beyond nerdy. Running out of orange juice or astringent, starting the day without my ridiculous “to do” list or being invited to a dinner at the last minute plunge me in a state of panic these days whereas I used to cope much better in my youth.

Perhaps I’ll start Yoga in 2006.

In other news, most of my friends have expressed a huge disappointment in learning that LL’s meeting with my family went so well and that he did not suffer any injury to the lower abdomen nor was his left arm arm bitten off by a relative. I’d like to apologize for the lack of drama: we’ll try to amend ourselves next year when we bring to Paris our adopted Korean baby.

FHC sunday communist nostalgia

§      LL and I often have lunch at Peacock Café. Clearly it is not for the food nor for the drinks (they definitely have the worst Bloody Mary on the East Coast), but for the crowd. It is mostly composed of wealthy Burberry wearing Middle Eastern and Latin Americans (definitely not a Euro-crowd, let’s not lie). Mens are not that good looking but clearly successful “nouveaux riches” and women are hip and beautiful in a bleached blond hair kind of way with just enough hints of vulgarity and intensity to make the atmosphere casual and non-threatening. It is all charming and I recommend it. Clearly a nice alternative to the local “old money” Georgetown inhabitants nice manners.

§      What happened to Jean Marc Barr ? I used to replay incessantly in my youth (1988, I must have gotten the video a few years later in my early teens) the parts in which he gets naked in the Big Blue (which I kindly reproduced for your viewing pleasure below). I even had a signed picture of him (I looked for it in my papers all afternoon and foud it…btw I found this Ecstasy pamphlet I was referring to earlier). Now, Alex A. took me to watch Crustacés et coquillages, a light and charming comedy about gays for a change and I did not find Jean-Marc to be that exciting (picture in a yellow tank top). Is it because he aged, because he played a gay character or because he played a local plumber ? I am either ageist, homophobic or elitist. I am most certainly all of the above.

§      I have started a list of all the things I lost this year (which already includes my gloves, my yonger bresson, a pair of Armani glasses etc…). These little materialistic deaths are really painful I must say. Ah the joy of not owning anything…. Sometimes I really miss the eastern part of the Berlin wall.

The apology of routine by dull FHC

We were doing our Saturday afternoon walk by the Chelsea piers as we always do when I am spending the WE in NYC, when LL turned to me and commented “isn’t it strange that we always do the same thing ?”. I could not help but yell“what the f*ck is wrong with routine ?”. Dogs, children and autistic people love routine and guess what ? they are happy (besides Rain Man who might have been a bit disturbed…perhaps…Elizabeth Smart…who is nymphomaniac and sad sad Snoopy ). I think mischevious LL was just being intentionally irreverent as I am sure he must have noticed by now that FHC is predictable and, therefore, boring.

Is FHC really a complete BORE? Let’s say it loud, I love to eat, do and think the same ol' thing preferably in the same limited space. Unfortunately with my usual lack of luck I was born in a f**ed up society that prizes novelty as being “fun”. We all know that America and the gays look down at intimacy, stability and security and believe in the myth that new is fun, and old is boring. Well... our friend FHC refuses to participate in the race to seek an exciting, rewarding, kaleidoscopic life full of surprises. I also refuse to live amazing adventures or experience the world and I won’t buy a Winnebago. Nor do I want to “get rich or die trying” by the way. People who “bring magic and creativity into their daily lives” make me barf my lunch bag. Variety might indeed add spice to life but spice triggers my irritable bowel syndrome so I avoid it. I despise new people, new places, new tools and new plans. If it was my call we would still be non-nomadic prehistoric gatherers living in tipis or even ...caves for that matter. In DC, I never leave a square delimited by Constitution avenue and U street and 14^th and 18^th street: I have never been in other parts of the city and I am not interested. My gym, my work, my house, my doctors, my shops and my friends are all located in that small place. I always dine out in the same places and order the same thing: at Hamburger’s Mary I order the Meaty Mushroom Burger, at Sette, the Calzone, Hank’s, the Fish N’Ship and at L’Enfant, the Ham and Gruyère Crêpe. At the supermarket I always buy the same things over and over. Even in bed, I rotate routines as I was told it is mandatory to keep sex interesting (1^st WE of the month: Routine A in bed with the lights off, 2^nd WE of the month: Routine B on the sofa with the lights on, etc…e-mail me if you want details). My rules, traditions and rituals are my calm and orderly response to an increasingly complex and innovative world and I'll stick to it.

I think I am even going to launch a movement called “F*ck change, f*ck upgrading: Old is the new new” and we will meet every Saturday afternoon by the Piers.

Ok I am off to la Guardia. Ari S. told me that there were mullets at Halo last night. Thank god I was in NYC. We ran into William B. and like usual there is nothing to comment about.

Dedicated to the damaged memory of FHC

I was supposed to have lunch with someone relatively important (a minor important person) today but I forgot and did not show up. When he called me in the afternoon slightly exasperated, I had to pretend I thought we had agreed on another date. I am not talented at playing “pretend”, I just sounded like a liar….but a lie is always better than formal apologies in my opinion (which is the main reason why my relationships were so successful so far): even if, as Montaigne once stated, “He who is not very strong in memory should not meddle with lying”. I started forgetting things a while ago, mostly appointments, passwords and minor events: the kind of small things that drive the people around me insane. Not important stuff: important stuff I have to intentionally binge drink to forget. I wish I had the ability to forget important stuff though: I would erase most of my experiences and human interactions as well as some humiliating memories in gym class in high school. No, I forget small insignificant stuff like my birthdate, the place where I left my keys, or taking my laptop to the office in the morning. In computer language we would say that my “primary memory” is very bad or that my brain needs more “memory chips”. In human language, we say that I did too much crack in my youth and that I really need to calm down on pain killers and sniffing glue. As I am a selfish bastard I do not mind people expressing their frustration with my lack of reliability but this memory thing became a bit threatening to my life. I forgot a few times that I had already taken my sleeping pills two, or three times in the evening which led me to 15 hours sleeping binges and occasionally a few minor overdoses. I also regularly forgot my shrink appointments. And we all know that happiness is about managing your meds well and seeing your therapist and shrink regularly. Finally, Kevin D. ended up charging me rent twice a month and that was a strong signal I needed to react. So I now I use these very tacky “Weekly schedule” and To Do lists. But it does not work perfectly because sometimes during the nano second between the time I hang up the phone and start writing on the “Weekly Schedule” list, I forget about the dat and time of the meeting I just agreed upon. Also the “Weekly Schedule” includes a whole system of dots and crosses I had designed and of which I forgot the meaning. I also have this very dangerous list of passwords that I always carry with me and refer to, I put a sticker on the back of my gym locker with the combination and I write down what I read and watch on a piece of paper in case someone asks me about my pseudo-cultural life (mostly my abuela).

I also forget names and people are convinced I am a snob. That is partly true; it is not my fault if in the US everybody is either called Brian, Steve, Kevin or John. That is the reason why I always try to remember people’s last names (like Sean Cador…that’s easy to remember). Yet we have to confess that the primary reason I forget names is because people are insipid and their individual experiences always sound the same. I have a nice tactic though, when I run into someone whose name I can’t remember, I ask “Do you know my boyfriend/roommate/friend, X ?” and usually they introduce themselves and I catch their names. For girl’s names, I just completely lack interest, and if needed I do not hesitate to tell them “could you remind whose faghag you are exactly ? your name might come back to me”.

In blogorama today, thank you to Kevin McG. who sent a cute little cartoon that summarizes very well my feeling about my blog. This blog is also very brute, I had heard this WE the joke about the famous NYC bar the Cock strategic move... from Chris R. I believe.

Healthy alternatives to binge drinking anyone ?

What happened to drinking heavily on Saturday nights exactly ? It used to be such a smart, healthy, harmless move. It meant easy fun, memory loss, poor choices, being recklessly irresponsible and was the foundation of most of my relationships and one night-stands. Of course occasionally, I would fall asleep, blackout, rape my date, attempt suicide or even fall in the street but it was all good: on Sunday it was over and we would laugh about it at Brunch at Sette. Ah ah good times indeed ! J. These days drinking, even reasonably (like yesterday: I recall 4 beers and two drinks), requires two weeks of recovery, nurturing my hangover and implies a very painful Sunday and at least a dramatic Monday. It all starts on Sunday morning around 6-7 a.m when I wake up dehydrated with terrible stomach pains, mental confusion, sinus congestion and nervousness. It will take me four hours to slide from my bed stumble to the bathroom usually to face terrible physical damages in the mirror. When you live on 17^th street, having puffy eyes over dark circles is a death sentence and forbids you to even go buy the paper. As I usually have a terrible headache anyway, I could not even read "Pearls before swine" if I wanted. So I usually lay there in my bed most of Sunday in a vegetative state with ice cubes over my eyes drinking my tears and coughing. Only around 7 p.m., will I regain enough energy to get a chicken soup and maybe watch a silent Charlie Chaplin movie while hoping to be back on my feet by Monday. How naïve, it is really on Monday morning that the hangover kicks in. I will wake up extremely tired, with a serious cold, looking like Kermit the Frog and unable to have any intellectual activity. As if it is not enough to feel shitty on Monday, my colleagues will make comments such as “You really look exhausted”, “What are these bruises under your eyes ?” or “Funny, it looks like you gained weight over the WE !” (some people don’t know that in my world such a comment is a declaration of war). I will usually feel crappy for a few days after that with my ulcer acting and my week will seem like a Calvary. I even started a hangover mitigation strategy: eating well before going out, getting light drinks, never mixing liquors, stopping moonshine, pacing my drinking but it did not work. I am just too old to drink. What is life about when binge drinking is not an option anymore ? how am I expected to enjoy Saturday nights without getting hammered ? I guess I’ll just have to upgrade my netflix membership to 5 movies a week or switch to Methamphetamines like everybody else in the hood.

I started drinking early yesterday evening with dearest Kristen L. (very hammered too but much younger than I) at my friend’s Madalina P.’s party after LL abandoned me for NYC. Yesterday was also Karl’s 28th birthday and I ended up there by accident. There was a cute guy called Mark, the Gs as well as well endowed Kevin N. who refused to tell me more about his fall out with Alex S. for the second time I believe. As I am still in a liquorish coma, I will end this entry with a blog review. If you needed the proof that in DC not only gay males are bastards: visit this blog. Sadly, this one is also very funny. On the other hand, you still have your usual straight right wing moron blog (Oh I shouldn't say that) who describes his own blog as (I quote) “This blog is written by a conservative with a sense of humor who often posts insightful links with a needed dose of hilarity” (such a statement will only worsen my hangover). Or this more nuanced and funnier republican one. And for desert, the latest on the Ladner scandal we mentioned earlier this month, in this blog or this blog (yesterday someone was telling me Ladner’s predecessor was a pedophile, there is some progress indeed).