I’m not sure how honest to be. The next part of the story is embarassing. It’s shameful. I still have not fully accepted what happened. That night in Albuquerque, the night before the wedding, I committed a sexual indiscretion much frowned upon by the gay community. Yet it’s one of those moments that simply happens, you didn’t think, you didn’t think, you didn’t think…and then he says to me, as we lay in each other’s arms, “How long have you been positive?”
My body stiffens. Energy zips through my spine. I look up at him with terror in my eyes and he pulls away from me for a moment and I say, “I’m not. But I guess you are.”
It was Blondie that taught me that it was okay to talk during sex. And not just talk, but ask specifically for what you wanted. Up til then, I was under that sad deluded naivete that a ‘good’ lover would just know what to do, would just find those right spots. I’m not saying that doesn’t happen, but it’s not the only way it happens. This naivete is born from the notion that sex and love are the same thing. Blondie broke me of that ‘bad’ habit.
We would be lounging around my room, kissing and doing what we do, and he would out of the blue make a request, like I was a DJ on a radio station. At first, I was taken aback, like “I’m not gonna do that” even though I wanted to, but I just didn’t want him to ask me like that. It seemed so unromantic. I should have just known or he could have communicated without words. But Blondie was not like that. He pushed and prodded me to tell him what I wanted, to do what he wanted, to talk, to open up, to share desires. In about a week, I was babbling during sex, asking for this, telling him i liked that, and on and on.
We sat in the sweat lodge, hot, wet, covered in mud. Everyone else had left except for me, Blondie, and Balance who sat in the opposite corner, beating a drum. Even though Blondie were filthy, we somehow managed to slip our tongues in each other’s mouths. We rolled around in the mud, almost rolling into the center pit, filled with steaming rocks. At one point, the lodge actually caved in on one side (the gods saying no to erotic sweat lodges, some would later claim).
It was some of that sweet, spine-chilling lovemaking that is rare and when it comes you jump all over it. I probably jumped a little too far. Eventually, Balance left and we stayed a little longer until the mud began to dry up in our creases and corners and things got a little chilly. We slipped out of the lodge and ran into the deserted main house and into the shower. The mud poured off us in sheets, clogging the drain, spilling over onto the floor, making a mess. We stood there and kissed and then pulled apart from each other.
Sometimes living out in the mountains would get very lonely. Inevitably, the people you spend your time with would become friends or enemies, but very rarely lovers. You see too much of their undersides too early. Romance is fragile and often shatters under the immediate weight of daily living. There was no room for love.
I often felt like the farmer’s daughter in those stories involving traveling salesmen. With the arrival of any new person, I would rush to my room to put some new clothes, attractive, distinctive, revealing. It was the mountains of New Mexico and you could get away with wearing just about anything. Wrap some old curtains around you, top it off with a dishtowel with a fancy design and a whole lot of tanned skin and you had yourself a look. Or take an old lime-green thermal, rip off the sleeves and collar, pair with a melon colored broom skirt and some flip-flops and you were an oasis of color in the drab landscape.
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Filed under: New Mexico
I spent a month in New Mexico my first time out there. I don’t know what it was that I was looking for, I don’t know what I was expecting to find. The first few days there I spent huddled in a shivering fetal position, sick from the high elevation, the heat, the water, exhaustion. All of the dogs that lived there would come find me and sit in circles around me, occasionally licking me or prodding me to go eat or drink. I lived on cat’s claw tea which is an herbal remedy from the Andes. I knew no one and yet i was to be found sprawled on their floor, quietly moaning. While they may have expected this for a day, they were surprised to see it continue for about 3 or 4 days. It was not the most welcoming of crowds; no one touched me or asked if I was alright, they generally avoided me, having conversations over me as if I was not there. Which was fine with me, because i couldn’t answer anyway. I could barely move.
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Filed under: New Mexico
Later that night, I walk outside and look.
I step outside the mainhouse into twilight and darkness. In the horizon is the dark silhouette of the mountains. The area we are in is called Oso Ridge, which is an indent in the mountains that looks like an upside down trapezoid. It is actually several ridges meeting in a zig zag pattern. The sky is dark purple above and I realize how I have never really known a dark night. There are no clusters of artificial light in the distance, there isn’t even heat. The night in the desert is a vacuum. Huge groups of stars hang haphazardly and a thick wash of light swerves across the sky. To my left is a small ridge with clumps of artemisia dotting a worn path. It crosses the ridge and seems to lead to a small house. I start towards the path and take a few steps into the middle of the ridge. I stop and sit.
(more…)
I had left a lover in New York. We had met one drunken evening at a salacious and rowdy bar in the East Village. After several vodka tonics or beer or whatever, we found ourselves dry humping on a padded bench, where I am shocked to admit I had humped with many a boy previously. The bar was closing and they turned the lights up, transforming what had been a dim den of charming iniquity into a filthy, fluorescently-lit black-painted room. We gathered our things and stumbled into the night. As luck would have it, he happened to live around the corner. We had a nightcap and found our way into his bed, a large floppy thing in a tiny room. But it smelled of Bay Rum and had a Japanese block print on the wall and he was charming and smart and sexy. In between moans and orgasms, we talked about Hindu mythology and Japanese literature. Two or three months whirled by in a haze of chicory coffee (he was from the South), single malt whiskey (and a bit of a drinker), classical music (he worked at Lincoln Center) and Mexican dinners (he loved it). I was pretty sure I was in love.
Filed under: New Mexico
And now the van turns off the highway onto a narrow dirt road headed straight towards a set of mountains. On my left this elegant rock formation suddenly looms into view. It looks like a big fat lady and her husband perched on top of a rock. It is precarious how delicately they sit atop the rock either welcoming you home or warning you away. Hawaii points it out to me, but I’ve already thoroughly noticed and catalogued it. Suddenly that feeling that I’ve made one of those obvious errors that you see on TV shows seizes me. As the highway fades farther into the distance, I realize that I might as well commit to this adventure because it’s happening. It’s happening. Right now.
Filed under: New Mexico
Or else, umm, we’re driving in this shitty van, me, Hawaii and Tattoo. I feel like I might hyperventilate. The past six months flashes before me as Madonna is on the radio, expressing herself. Tattoo says:
“What a great song for your first visit to Fairyland.”
Fairyland.
Filed under: New Mexico
Or else…ummm…I’m still back at my computer sitting at a cubicle in my office in New York on Fifth Avenue, across the street from my bank, down the street from gym, across the river from my home, the fifth floor of an old diaper pin factory in a neighborhood sandwiched between two bridges going left and right.
And I’m looking around on the web for something to read, something to pass the time as I pretend to be fact-checking or editing financial data or whatever it is today. This website is all black and red and potentially subversive. Articles on ‘magik’ and ‘occult’ and ‘gender politiks.’ What is so subversive about the k-for-c thing?
And there’s this article on alternative communities. This bunch of gay guys living out in the desert in houses they built and I love the desert. I picture swarthy older men bathing in outdoor showers surrounded by trees. The desert.
