In Which We Go for a Walk and Regret It

My very, very dear niece Amber came out for a visit with her husband Spanky. Amber has, more than once, told me Spanky’s real name, but I am unable to overcome the charm of the nickname and so I have no way to remember whatever moniker he might have been stuck with at birth.

Amber reigns over a sizable ranch in far North Texas, pretty much actually Oklahoma, but there was a time as a tween when she lived here in San Francisco for a while. She has not been back since that magical spell and so had a number of places she remembered that she wanted to revisit, chief among them the beautiful cliffs and beaches of Lands End.

Coincidentally, Lands End is very special to me as well. When we first moved out here and were poor as poor rats, R Man and I would go for hikes out there pretty much every weekend. Even if I hadn’t been an escapee from the swamps of the Gulf Coast, it’s impossible not to be swept up by the gorgeous vistas Lands End serves up.

And so I was able to show off as an informed tour guide. The main path is at the top of a steep bluff; the trail down to the beach includes eleventy bazillion steps and somehow twice as many coming back up. Don’t ask me how, it’s the fucking Twilight Zone out there.

It was a beautiful visit and I’m glad we did it, but oh my god, it was tough. All that time R Man and I had spent scrambling up and down those cliffs was 20 years ago or more. One of the problems with being a creaky old man is that I keep forgetting that I am a creaky old man until I do something like reliving a hike I had enjoyed as a much younger and more limber homo and wind up blowing out my back.

We got (finally) to the last six or seven steps and I thought, “You know what? I am never going to make that, I’ll just die here, it’s okay.” By the time we made it back home my back and legs were so sore I had to bow out of the trip they made down to Big Sur the next day.

I know I complain about my bad back a lot here, but the couple of days right after our hike was an extra special kind of ouchy. I would apologize to my back the few times I dragged myself out of bed, but it didn’t help, oddly enough. Eventually things got better and I was even able to join Amber and Spanky when they got back for an evening of prowling around Chinatown. It was very amusing.

I’m glad I got to spend time with her, she’s very sweet and charming, and I’m also very glad I didn’t die on those FUCKING steps. I swear it was a close call.

anyway, naked men:

Where was he when I needed motivation up those last goddam steps?

You know what I needed? Somebody, perhaps this young man, to carry me up the stairs.

Snow White’s missing dwarf, Doofus.

Oh, this guy again.

It’s impressive to see someone who can stand at one urinal and piss in the one next to him.

Smooth.

Such a sweet, sweet face, full of boyish charm and then, holy hot damn, that bazooka.

Sort of the opposite of boyish charm, but very appealing.

In Which We Are Arty

Super Agent Fred gave me a charming pair of portraits for my birthday. They are a couple of powerful women who have challenged and overcome the limitations society has attempted to place on them.

They are top-notch bitches.

I realized this afternoon that my entire social life revolves around sitting in Peet’s cafe and scowling at people. I’m not complaining, and it makes me wonder, what’s really so bad about leprosy?

Sort of along those same lines, my dear, dear niece Amber has revealed she has plans for me should I ever find myself living out of a shopping cart under a freeway here. She has a lovely big house and assures me that I’m welcome there, which is so sweet of her, and there’s a big private loft above the living room that’s all mine. I see my future before me, the crazy old uncle locked in the attic, occasionally howling, demanding coffee and gay pornography. Actually, it sounds okay.

I know I mentioned in the last post the newspaper in Austin had warned that security lines were so bad at the airport they wanted you to get there three hours early. Obscene. I got there a couple of hours before my flight and my Uber driver dealt with the massive traffic outside by simply driving around it and then cutting through three lanes of idling traffic to drop me off. What a gal.

I have Clear, the pre-approved security, get-out-of-jail card and that let me jump to the head of the line and then the frazzled TSA agent just waved a bunch of us through an old timey metal detector instead of the Star Trek-y booth and boom, I was through security in less than 15 minutes. I spent longer in line at the coffee place getting a latte. Irony, it’s what’s for dinner.

guys I’d wait in line for:

Willie Gomez, who still refuses to publish nude pictures on the internet, selfish bastard.

Arty AND meaty, the best of both worlds.

Sorry, you’ll have to repeat yourself; all I can hear is your dick.

Soon it will be beach weather. Are you ready?

Deservedly cocky.

Some cliches are just too potent to ignore.

Texas Time

Yes, Super Agent Fred  and I are back in the old country, visiting our respective crazy, crazy, crazy ass relatives.   Who are these people?  How could i possibly have sprung from this?

My brother is the exception and I love him, he and his wife, to whom he will have been married 50 years in September.  Amazing

Amazing also, is his saintly restraint in dealing with my father who has gone from befuddled crankiness into actual insanity.  There have been “incidents.”  There have been calls from management (who seem to be actually quite nice, and determined to give the people who have been entrusted to them both dignity  and independence.  Even if they deserve neither.  Which brings us back to my father.)

Anyway, daily calls  where Ed has to stop running his own business and take time to go straighten out today’s mess.  I feel so guilty, tucked away on the far coast, absolutley insulated from the madness.

Anyway.  Texas.  Excellent Mexican food, combat strength air conditioning, and boys who truly look like this:

Of course, they are in the minority, squeezed in between the giant mounds of humanity that make up the rest of the population and take up far too much room.

We go home at dawn on Monday morning.  I am counting the microseconds.

In Which mrpeenee Returns to the Old Country

Well, here I am in Texas, land of my birth and home of a bakery that spells one of their offerings as “petifores.”  Oh god.

My brother Mike has entered a hospice as part of the final stage of his cancer.  I decided to come visit, but now I’m not sure why. 1) the hospice is three hours away, much closer to Diane von Austinburg and I’m unclear on how much visiting I’ll be able to do and 2) my other brother Ed says Mike is pretty befogged by morphine.  I vividly remember how little R Man  was in touch at that point.  But I want to see Mike’s wife, who is absolutely charming and I want to show support.  Or something.   Whatever, I’m straightening my Florence Nightengale cap, prepared to visit the shit out of whoever will see me.

So I’m here, tucked into a nice hotel in a sort of out of the way neighborhood.  Its location makes it all the odder that the professional football teams playing against Houston stay here.  The hotel is always very coy about admitting that, but Secret Agent Fred and I ran into them last time we were here and they were checking in.  Believe me, it’s not easy to hide a lobby-full of gigantic tightends lummoxing about.  Just now I was squeezed into an elevator with three of them and I thought I might faint.

Baby, let me tell you, those are some big mens.

Howdy

I wish this was my Texas, sadly it is not.

My darlings, I write to you from a barbecue induced coma.  Yes, it’s all too true, I have returned to Texas, land of my birth and home of the world’s most delicious smoked brisket.  I have barbecue sauce smeared up to my ears and will probably never be able to degrease my hands, but it was worth it.  I’ve had fabulous Mexican food three times and barbecue just now; say what you will about Houston, the old place can certainly sling the hash.

Of course, it’s not all fun and games and enchiladas.  The night I got to New Orleans to see about selling my house there, my oldest brother, Ed, called to say our other middle brother, Mike, was very sick with liver cancer (again with the cancer!  Oy!) and I should came back here.  I wrapped up unloading the New Orleans house (which included its own share of memorable meals and innumerable annoying errands) and then hurled myself into the swampy embrace of my homeland.

It’s odd how even though I’ve been away my entire adult life, the Gulf Coast of Texas has a culture that is still my background.  As soon as I get out of the airport, my accent returns, my sinuses swell to accommodate the indigenous mold and mildew, and I instinctively start looking for tacos.

I had several visits of varying degrees of hilarity with my family, some of whom are charming, some of whom are annoying, some of whom are insane and some of whom are annoying and insane, and I haven’t even seen my father yet.  I was sort of holding the worst for last, I suppose.  My brother Mike is in terrible shape, gaunt and frail and talking about a liver transplant, which, I have to say, seems unlikely.  I’m afraid the next time I’ll be here will be for a funeral.

In the meantime, though, I continue to be faced with the odd combination of big city freeways and redneck cowboys that makes up my heritage.  Fortunately, I return to my beloved San Francisco tomorrow.  Even with its sad lack of decent barbecue, it can’t come soon enough.

Again, Yo.

Oh darlings, I’m so very sorry to have sort of drifted off like that.  Oops.  First there was my whirlwind tour of the south, then my computer died and then inertia won out once again.  But trust me, my thoughts were never far from you.  Except when I was thinking about snacks.

Austin was terribly amusing since I got to hang out with Diane von Austinburg and eat excellent Mexican food and I found a cock ring in a thrift store.

I visited with my white trash crazy family in Houston all of whom are still white trash, crazy and very amusing.  The less said, the better.

The night I got to New Orleans there was a parade.  Not for me, specifically, but for Halloween, but close enough.  It was the Krewe of Boo.  Is that adorable or what?

I had a lovely hotel.

And I got to visit with Jason from Night is Half Gone who took me out for the biggest banana split I have ever seen, cause the pound and a half of shrimp I had eaten for dinner shortly beforehand was apparently not enough.  He was charming as always.

Oh, and I bought a house.

My plan is to live there during the fall and winter and then flee back here to San Francisco to avoid the miserable heat, cause I have done my time with that bullshit.  It’s a block over from my best friend in a terribly cool neighborhood, has a huge yard and seems structurally sound, but shabby, just the thing an elderly poof needs as a hobby.

It’s been a rental for the last thirty or forty years, I’m sure we’ve all seen the equivalent dingy white paint and cheap bathrooms.

I intend to drag its sorry ass into the land of fagulous beauty.  My friend Stephen, who has lots of experience with renovations, is in charge of the remodeling and I’ve anointed myself as Queen Decorator.  Lots of turquoise.

I’m going back on Saturday for the inspection on Tuesday and unless that turns up a nest of alien invaders in one of the back rooms, I’m set.

News from Austin.

I’m hiding out at Diane VonAustinberg’s for a few days as part of my 2013 World Peace and Enchilada Tour, which will also include a flying visit to my family in Houston and a longer one to New Orleans as a reward for putting up with the flying monkeys that comprise my beloved relatives.

Diane is,of course, the consumate hostess, aside from trying to kill me on her treadmill by luring me up on it backwards, like some crazed OK Go video.*  We had delicious Mexican food tonight and look forward to tearing it up in various thrift shops tomorrow.  The thrill of other people’s discarded crap!

*DVonA says:  I did nothing to lure Mr. P onto the treadmill (“I’m really getting quite good at this” he says, just before slipping off the end. “Except now I’m sort of dizzy.”).  I have done nothing but give him excellent directions to my house, which he ignored and which resulted in him taking an hour-long tour of the Texas hill country. Now, back to Mr. P.

Lies, all lies.  Although I am sort of dizzy.  Maybe I should go lay down.  Also, when I demanded candy to assist in the creative process, Diane denied having any and offered dried apples instead.  How am I supposed to sling wit and wisdom with dried up apples?

Possibly more travel bulletins as they occur.

There and Back Again

Outside the Menil Gallery, my favorite museum in the world.

mrpeenee is back from the magic that is Houston. While I did not literally kiss the San Francisco ground upon returning it was only my backache the stupid plane had given me that stopped me. So what were some of the highlights from my childhood home? Enchiladas. That’s it. Turns out the sole reason Texas exists is to create superior Mexican food. I ate it every single day I was there, some days snarffling it up for lunch and dinner.

I had rented a Cadillac in order to fit in as well as I could. When I went to pick it up, the guy presented me with an SUV. “I do not want a truck. I want a car,” I explained. I might as well have announced I wanted a pony. The rental guy pointedly turned to the fleet of cars stretching away from us. All SUVs. Welcome to Texas.

My brothers and me. I know some people would think it not fair that I am the prettiest, smartest, tallest and youngest, but that’s how things roll in my family.

Lone Star

This year marks a significant anniversary for me; it’s the year I will have lived in San Francisco longer than I did in Texas, where I was born. Beyond a mere statistic, it is also a great comfort to me. I will be chanting it to myself on Saturday morning, far too early, as I go winging off to Houston for a family visit.

I have a complicated relationship with my family. When I’m with them, they amuse me, sort of, but when I escape back here I find myself with no great desire to return anytime soon. In fact, I haven’t been back to Texas in the last six years. I blame George Bush, but the fact that they all, and especially my father, make me sort of crazy might have something to do with it.

My plan stretches no farther than Mexican food for dinner three nights and barbecue and Gulf Coast seafood for the other nights. I had looked into possibly visiting some galleries, but the most interesting one has obviously changed focus, now concentrating on lesbiancentric spoken word. Yo. I think I’ll pass.

Trust me when I say none of the boys I ever run across there look like this:

Vermontino

Super Agent Fred and I are off to Vermont tomorrow. Have you heard of Vermont? I understand it’s this adorable little state, popular with lesbians and cheese enthusiasts. And then, at the other end of the spectrum, I’m going to visit my father in the old folks’ home he just moved into in Houston. Whee. In fact, Super whee.

In unrelated news, the woman who trims the nails of Saki, my Evil and Adorable Cat, warmly recommended giving him a bath the last time we went in for is pedicure. A cat. A bath. A catbath. Doesn’t that just seem to be asking for trouble. After all, Saki barely tolerates going in to have his razorlike talons nipped down. I’m sure washing him off would only lead to sulking and cat turds in my bed. We have filed this under “Ideas, Bad.”

Here’s a good idea: