Notes

Notes · · Tucson

Momento

Until people started mistaking me for you, I didn't realize just how high you had raised the bar for me to just be myself.

You know?

What did the original cover of the 1983 Peter Godwin recording, Correspondence, look like? I only remember it didn't look like this. And what were the names of those two songs by other artists from that same time period? The one a sultry recitation of New York City personal ads at the time and a chorus that went: "Person, to person, to personal announcements." The other half-spoken, half-sung by a fey voice with a seemingly feigned British accent intoning: "Cardboard sidewalks. Breakdance! Breakdance!" I can't remember and typing the words person-to-person and cardboard sidewalks into a search engine is useless.

I don't remember if I was counting lasagna noodles into boiling water or measuring diced onion in a cup when my nephew, who was going through some kind of superlative phase at the time, exclaimed, "That is more than anyone has ever done before!" Although he was saying that about everything at the time, it was perhaps flattering taking into account it was only dinner for six.

I am wondering now how many times has this woman served me breakfast? I don't know that either. Once again, though, I have forgotten to use the mustard I always remember to ask her for.

Leaving the tip and waving to you, I think about how I don't know your name anymore, but I can picture clearly and even feel the cool and breezy afternoon long after what's-his-name introduced us when I stopped worrying if your quirky mix of attention and indifference was shyness or scorn.

And which of my friends was it who came out of the restroom shocked because the man at the urinal next to him was peeing arms akimbo? You tell me. This afternoon I remembered to do the same after almost an hour of sorting through compact discs at the bargain music store and not wanting to touch myself because I hadn't washed my hands first.

Who knows the names of the other three people who have told me I look like that one guy? I only remember it's you and the woman I always see in the checkout line, so there are five of you.

Notes · · San Francisco

Now Five Years Later On-Or-Time After Time

It's raining again. After I arrived in San Francicso, it rained for like forty days before I was here for even four weeks. I want to say it doesn't get me down, but it does.

Yesterday was sunny though and I went for a long run in Golden Gate Park with a thumpalicious soudtrack of Eurodance versions of Eighties music—thank you, Devio. I was lost for about half of the jog and that's a beautiful thing since running in circles as I was, I ended up seeing more of the park in thirty minutes than I did in the thirteen years I lived here before.

Of course, it's always a joy revisiting the rose garden, the soccer field, the Green Tea Garden, Stow Lake, and of course, the Queen Wilhelmina Hose Garden out by the windmills. Who knew oversexed men like windmills so much?

I finished up at Ocean Beach. It was magic. Imagine my silhouette against the horizon with my arms raised triumphantly to the sky. It was sort of like that. Sort of like being a cancer survivor in a made-for-TV movie. But without the cancer or washed up celebrities.

Well, that's only part true. When the endorphins kicked in I did imagine a scenario involving Don Alonso Quixote and Sancho Panza. You see they have retired to a tiny village in the hills outside of Fresno that nobody knows about. It's a shame, really, that the locale is so obscure because it just so happens there is more Brutalist architecture per acre there than anywhere else on the planet. It's true! One afternoon, Lindsay Wagner and Erik Estrada are skydiving. A freak wind carries them off course and they land in the village. Eventually, they make their way to the travel agency Alonso and Sancho are operating from one of the shop fronts on the mezzanine level of the Tiny Village stock exchange. Lindsay and Erik are desperate to buy tickets back to their intended target of Burbank where they are to be the judges on a new reality game show teaming college wrestlers and cheerleading squads with couples experiencing fertility difficulties. Sadly, Quixote and Panza don't actually do any travel planning from the agency. They are strangers to this modern age and have bought blenders instead of computers. They make the actors protein shakes and send them on their way.

A long run on a sunny day is like MDMA no one can take away.

Notes · · Tucson

Apr 22, 2002

Journey to the Far Side of the Sun. Dir. Robert Parrish. 1969

Journey to the Far Side of the Sun. Dir. Robert Parrish. 1969

What a swell day. Had I written here today, I might have shared my thoughts on rediscovering the pleasure of sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson's Barracuda and how I would gladly discover the song all over again as early as tomorrow if it were to be performed by brothers Luke and Owen Wilson on air guitars as the opening act to my morning shower.

And I might have felt awkward mentioning my feelings regarding the androgynous young man and woman who look titillatingly like two beautiful young men when they start making out on their yoga mats and how I don't recall ever experiencing a sun salutation when I was on the elliptical trainer before.

It's possible I would have also written about the exhilarating bike ride home this evening at sundown, trying to beat the darkness, and how some of it was down a hill that when I take as fast as I usually do, I can hear the fine hairs on my earlobes shouting,"We are all going to die and it will be your fault!"

But in tiny little voices that are easy to ignore.

How do you work something like that in though?

And none of that would explain why I find myself covered in beef and glitter with no insight to offer (for now) as to why.

Context is always so difficult for me.

 

...

Day 16 stomach tonic courtesy Mr. Trinity

Notes · · Tucson

Another pretentious list…

look --

  • Center for Creative Photography

listen--

  • Blondie ~ Atomic (Tall Paul Remix)
  • Barcelona ~ I've Got the Password to Your Shell Account
  • Voice Farm ~ Free Love
  • Yoko Ono ~ Ask the Dragon
  • Suburban Lawns ~ Gidget Goes to Hell
  • Sparks ~ Moustache
  • Lady Zu ~ A Noite Vai Chegar

eat --

  • Mocha Almond Cookies at Bentley's
  • Melatonin

Notes · · Tucson

Johnny D

John in England

Subject: hold me
Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2000 21:08:41 -0700
From: John D’Hondt
To: Richard Whitmer

OK, I am still waiting for a sign. I pray: Yeshua, fait moi un signe! Seriously, I need that little bon mot to move south, that crux de la croix, that petit chou, that spanish inlaw with yellow adobe walls in the bedroom with my name on the mail box made with a label maker.

John was a writer. He loved all things Belgian. He was an expert on Joan Baez and The Singing Nun, whose stories he told in hilarious one-man shows in cabarets around San Francisco in the nineties. He was my good friend and accomplice. Recently he was tortured by feelings nobody should have. Sometime over the weekend, he dealt with those feelings in a way that nobody should. My heart is so heavy right now and I’m left wishing I could ask, Johnny, who’s going to write your book about Dominique? Who else will call me on Sunday morning to say, “Fabio, I must have you! Peet’s and the library?” Who’s going to be our operation’s man on the inside at the monastery? Who’s going to comiserate with me about all these people turning the city into one big dog run? Who will make fun of the guppies at Harvest with me even as we cruise them over the olives and marinated tofu? And I really don’t think anyone else will regularly leave lengthy messages for me about Dusty Springfield’s career in the years before I was born. Johnny, if I believed in a next time, I’d curse at you and tell you to stick around next time. As it is, I don’t know what more to say except that I really, really wish you had stuck around.