The ministry center formed a large line last week. I am not checking in on it this week. There is too much to do. I photographed the ministry center, to sort-of advertise it, while they distributed food and clothes to people who experienced need. I have never experienced pure need like these people. At least not in my memory. It exists right outside the door every Wednesday at work. So it was that Carol, not the pastor, told me, who brought her old Nordstrom clothes to donate, as we walked around watching homeless people smoke and laugh and talk to each other, each building their carts of objects independently. I sat next to Jim.
Jim is the band’s guitarist. He owns a dog, has a bit of a drawl, and plays acoustic guitar. Jim is the biggest fan of the resonator guitar, and wants me to play music with him and Paul. Paul is the bassist. And I tell Jim, “Jim, you know I run the sound. It would be impossible for me to both play music and be back in the booth with you,” but now I think he’s gotten the hint that I can run the sound remotely, and insists on how cool the dobro is to the rest of the band members.
I sat next to Jim and scratched the head of his golden dog. Jim tells me that he eats dinner alone. “You know Paul,” he told me. Paul’s girlfriend walked around in the background of our conversation, smiling, saying “no photos,” as if photography were a demon to expel, almost hissing. That is alright with me. “You know Paul is bipolar,” Jim told me. “So he’s medicated. And that really helps him, but sometimes, you know, I think he’s a bit too medicated, he’s totally spaced out, if you know what I mean.” And I knew exactly what he meant. Pastor Luther believes that Paul took too many drugs as a teenager, and now I have information to report, if the information is worth reporting at all.
So Jim began to talk about the people around, all sitting on playground benches that Lorrie Klevos, who runs the ministry center, had scored for $10 each. And in front of us was a large, mute woman. “I used to know her from school,” Jim said, “way back in the day.” Jim waved at her. I waved at her. She smiled with gapped teeth. Her hair was not in such good shape; it was falling out, but she smiled. “She was there when I had my first drink, when I was thirteen,” Jim told me. “My dad was a Cadillac salesman, and we had to deliver a new car to the showroom. So we had this new car that was not even ours, and when my family picked me up from her house, I just threw up aaaaallll over the back seat. And it was not even our car!” Jim laughed. And this woman, who was losing her hair, barely articulate, had witnessed this moment from his life. I wondered what it was like to see the people around you to lose themselves, to become less and less sharp.
I sat at the ministry center for Lorrie Klevos to bring burgers, while a large man passed out Halloween candy to all the people. Lorrie laughed and knew each person by name. And I ate a burger with Jim, trying to figure out how to advertise this whole center and its people on a website, wondering whether the government shutdown and its looming cuts of SNAP benefits would draw more crowds to this location. Paul’s girlfriend gave us water bottles from her stash.
I left and have not touched the photos. I put all my camera gear in the car and drove to the camera store to buy extra batteries for Kathy, who was about to be second shooting for me. And I sat in a coffee shop charging batteries, disoriented. And I was in one of those moods that people get when they experience poverty in front of them and begin to reflect: (who can, or should, even be able to afford coffee, I thought, drinking my coffee and charging the batteries for my cameras). A coffee shop is a sort of fabricated non-place, but not really. It’s work. I drove to the Hyatt Regency in Irvine and met Kathy there.
Kathy and I walked up to Vicky and Joel. Both of them dressed nicely. We set up strobe lights for their step-and-repeat for people to display themselves and Vicky explained very little because I had shot this Roses and Radishes event, hosted by OC Tax, before. So Kathy and I began to take pictures of beautiful people, of people who had facelifts and who wore their best clothes, and Vicky told me to drink from the bar because they had already purchased the drinks and did not have enough people coming, and had a quota of money to spend. I ordered a Whisky Ginger and shared some of it with Joel. And the program for OC Tax began, while they fed us an appetizer (salad), a meal (chicken, cooked well, with potatoes and beans), and a dessert (cheesecake). I wondered if there was extra food I could bring to Tommy.
The program began with a prayer. The entire room bowed their heads in prayer, praying that God would make everyone good stewards of taxpayer money. Vicky assured me that this was a non-partisan event, and that both Democrats and Republicans get criticized for bad tax spending, and that this was supposed to be a comedy show but that it might not be all that funny. And it was not. The leader of OC Tax had no funny bone in his body, and so spent the time criticizing people who sexually assaulted women in the past (but they also spent taxpayer dollars badly), so that Vicky and Joel cringed.
Part of OC Tax’s event is to criticize people who waste money. But the man who earned not only an award (three other people earned awards) but also a slideshow (he was the only man who had a slideshow made for him, with video interviews patting him on the back) was a Sheriff from the county. He sat in front of me, stiff as a rock for most of the program. His expression did not change. And when the host announced that he had won something–that he had made his department more financially stable, and cut wasteful spending–the sheriff held his wife’s hand. The slideshow began to play.
In the slideshow were images of this man with the community. He always wore his green uniform, gun in holster, and looked as awkward and stiff as a man who did not know the bit. Everyone in the slideshow, and the videos that followed, treated him like a cute puppy who did his best, as if they were patting him on the head for serving the community. A cute puppy with a gun in his holster, maintaining order, and smiling. Everyone clap. It seemed ridiculous to me. He held his wife’s hand tighter, silent, and I sat down, before the program ended early.
This was all a week ago. Thursday, the normal print class. Friday, was Halloween: Tommy and I went to John’s and we watched old fashion runways with Bonobo in the background while everyone (Justin, Aimen, Josh, Ben, Ulysses, John) talked and talked until 2AM. (We played jackbox, and the contribution I made was putting “Fjӧrk” for the “come up with a band name that uses the word “fork” in it”). Mikey, who was a block away for a Halloween fivesome, texted me, but I gave him short replies because I was busy, so he said “o. k. bye.” We woke up, and I walked out with just underwear and a sweater on, like Ulysses and Tommy, but Josh and Aimen and John all had clothes on, which is fine, but it set a precedent for next time, I guess.
We drove back to Tommy’s, got food, and napped all day.
Sunday, I drove to church. I was tired. Daylight savings time messes up circadian rhythms, I was told, and I sort of dissociated through the service, waiting to get back to Tommy’s so we could eat and figure out the day. Justin and Aimen invited us to iSpa and I told Tommy that I had never been. We ate. We dressed up as straight, so that the spa people would not clock us immediately. Then we went to the spa.
At the front of the spa were two receptionists. A man trying for eye contact sat next to the door, and I refused it, while a man with bleached hair asked me to sign up, to pay, and then asked if I knew what to do at a spa. I told him yes. He was friendlier with me than others. And he smiled and let me on my way. I went ahead of Tommy, and he caught up with me at the showers, where we saw Justin. Aimen was getting a massage. So we sat in the pool and talked, looking around.
I told Tommy that this spa wasn’t as cruisey as the others, but that I was invested in the group of men covering their penises with their towels. They were the only ones covering themselves, and one had a cross necklace. They looked conflicted with their desire. They followed each other everywhere. I was invested in the plot of it. And I looked around at people I felt like I recognized, or some of them at least, from some app somewhere. Tommy and I chatted. We sat close. And Aimen showed up, who Tommy thinks is into me, and I’m sorta into Aimen, and we, of course, are both shy. We went into the steam room and back out, into the cold plunge, and began a cycle, before I sat next to Aimen.
“There’s code,” Aimen began to tell me, as if I had never been to a spa before. I told him I had never been to iSpa, but I had been to others. I let him tell me anyways. “The men with their keys-wristbands around their ankles are here to cruise,” he told me, as if it were a sort of agreed-upon semiotic, but I turned and told him, “I thought it was just practical, because if you’re jerking off, your key doesn’t jingle if it’s on your ankle,” and he said, “you can also see people’s eyes, how everyone’s so shifty,” and I said, “I’ve been making eyes with everyone just to see, like my eyes are shifty, because I’m used to coming to spas just to cruise,” and Aimen and I sat together in silence.
Tommy came out of the steam room, and I decided to take a cold plunge with him, and we established a cycle: steam room, cold plunge, warm bath, on repeat, until Justin and Aimen had to leave. “Next time we should post a circle-jerk on Sniffies,” Aimen said, and then immediately, “oh my God Blake your face LIT UP when I said that,” and I did not know I was that obvious. We did not hug but said goodbye. Tommy and I went back to our cycle. More people entered the spa (more gays!) and there was no longer room in the steam room for us, so we decided: it was time to go to Wursthaus.
We drove to Wursthaus. And we ate sausages. And when we went to sleep I held Tommy close and rubbed his chest, because it helps his breathing. I was hit with a strong feeling and had, at least from how it showed up in the past, a strong desire to leave. Or it was a strong desire, and normally I would get scared and leave. It was not really a desire, but it made me think of all the other people in the past, and growing up closeted and gay, that the strength of feeling towards someone could not be reciprocated, at least not where I was, and so it’s natural to just either distance yourself or run away, at least for me. A sort of gay trauma. But I did not feel the need to run with Tommy, and so noticed this feeling of intensity that would normally scare me. I felt close to Tommy.
I told my friends Ryan and Gianna about that feeling the next day, in a hot tub, and Ryan, who is both straight and a therapist, told me that I had anxious attachment. And I said, “no this is a gay thing,” and he said, “no you are anxious attached,” and I said, “but this is the result of a sort of closeted childhood, not an attachment wound,” and he began to tell me all about his own anxious attachment, about how me and Tommy seemed similar to him and his wife, and I said, “I’m not sure,” but I let him talk. My friend said that he feels qualified to therapize gay people because I am his friend.
I went home for the first time since Friday, and saw my mom. My mom asked about, “what’s his name? Tom?” and I said, “What’s Matthew’s girl’s name?” and she immediately said “Luna,” and I said, “Tommy, and I’ve told you like twenty times,” and I said, “he’s alright,” and I told her about this experience, about how Ryan diagnosed me with anxious attachment because of this thing gay people have. And that I felt sort of proud of this ability to see a feeling that was so strong and just recognize where it came from and not really react to it, and that I wanted validation from him I guess, and how so many gay people that I meet have a similar experience to me, and want some form of affection where it cannot be reciprocated, and internalize that from their childhood, and my mom said, “well that sounds so sad, but we did have James and Curren over, so I’m not sure about your gay trauma” (both are gay and dating each other, which seems sort of insular to me now, and I do not think my mom remembers saying “DO NOT BE LIKE JAMES” and we did not know Curren was a homo. I’ve given up on convincing my mom that we grew up in a homophobic world, because she refuses to believe that she actually did vote against gay marriage when I was a kid, and says, “well we didn’t know any better! I had gay friends as a child!”).
So Mikey told me about his fivesome, because I was bored and asking. That everyone seemed like a character from a porno, and that he began to giggle and laugh when the guys started to say, “YEAH FUCK THAT DICK DADDY. OH YEAH. FUCK. YEAH FUCK HIM YEAH. COME ON.” And that Mikey hates being called a good boy, and I thought that was so stupid: imagine a relationship where both boys have the freedom to call each other a good boy, and it’s not so serious, and he did not like that. Mikey told me about making out with a boy whose boyfriend died to Mikey’s ex-friend Warren: Warren overdosed him (I think I told this on the doc before), and that this boy started to cry when he was making out with Mikey, and I said, “I like Tommy’s friends they’re not drama,” and Mikey said, “that’s good.”
Costar has been telling me that this is such a bad time. It’s scorpio season, and it says not to complain today. Last night was bad at church (I like to say that the worship team embodies every critique of religion so well, and I spent last night babysitting them), but I do not really want to dwell on it that much.
I’ve begun to believe that my life right now is made up of big tiny moments. Moments occur and are difficult to articulate. My feelings outsize the event (Tommy and I went to Wursthaus: how exciting). But really, what I think I’m losing is this literary or artistic lens that I’ve spent a while trying to at least get rid of (what I call my Bataillian urge). At first I could not think with Tommy, I guess, even if I tried. I could not write coherently, I felt immersed in a world of feeling, without coordinating my response to it. Now it’s a bit different. I read The Moviegoer, and I put down some of these small moments, hoping that they, at least, have some sort of direction to them.