Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Mea Culpa - Youth Worship - What Ethnicity Are You? - Dick Shots on the Dancefloor.


When I re-vamped and relocated THEHONESTTEASE to Tumblr, I vowed to be a more dedicated and serviceable blogger. But just after I made that resolution, work picked up precipitously, and I matriculated in the Masters Program in English Literature at Fordham University where I have been taking “Sex And The Enlightenment” reading something like 875 pages of 18th Century Novel a week. To say I have “been busy” is an understatement. But now that work has slowed and my class is winding down, I want to catch up by relating to you an anecdote from Memorial Day’s Alegria I forgot to include in my last installment.
   But before I get on with that, I’d like to make a note as to the content on THEHONESTTEASE. At first glance, what you read here might appear transparently autobiographical with nicknames exchanged for real names for the sake of privacy. And while pretty much everything I have written here has happened in one way or another, I wouldn’t claim it is all “true” in the strictest sense of the word.
     The demands of privacy, the limits of memory and the dynamics of story-telling transfigure and remix a lot of my experiences to make the more digestible, more coherent wholes you read here. Some of the characters, like today’s “Dr. Mario” for instance, are not strictly “one person.” “Dr. Mario” is a condensation of at least two different, very charming people who I have had similarly cutesy interactions with. The single stories I relate are combined and collated snippets from multiple similar but distinct situations. So I guess you could say that the stories you read here are more “representative” of my thoughts and experiences than documents of any real, individual events. So don’t fact check or try to call me out. Just enjoy. That being said, without further ado, let me take you back to the dance floor at Pacha maybe about a month ago …
I am dancing with an old fuck-pal of mine when Dr. Mario appears next to me.
I made Dr. Mario’s acquaintance no less then five years prior on another dance floor 30 blocks down from where we are dancing now. Back when I had “a type,” Dr. Mario was it; short and built with a well-aged-but-persistently-boyish handsome-ness that suggests, at least aesthetically, that sex with this man amounts to “getting my cake and eating it too.” His not quite over-powering Superman-like jaw and slightly salted pepper hair all just below my field of vision (he is 5’5’’ish) was devastating to me before dating enough of his type finally inoculated me against their Napoleonic charms.
Dr. Mario knows my fuck-pal. They smile at one another, go in for a kiss on the cheek and Dr. Mario proceeds to dance in our loose constellation of bopping heavenly bodies. Feeling gregarious - I lean in and say: “Hey, Dr. Mario. I’m TonyEatsPuppies.” Dr. Mario is more than happy to talk to me and, so, shaking his hand I say: “We met, like, years ago at Victor Calderone/Evolve when it was at Crobar.”
“Was I an asshole?” He asks in conversation-propiciating self-deprecation.
“Notably so. You came up to me asked me if I was sixteen.” I was twenty three at the time.
Dr. Mario smiles. “Yeah, that sounds like me.”
“You one of those guys with an age thing?”
Dr. Mario lets his shoulders slump forward in theatrical defeat. “When guys are so young, they are just so beautiful.” He says with exhausting fervor.
I squint my eyes dubiously at Dr. Mario. Truth be told, I find something self hating or offensive in “youth worship.” We are all aging. Not to get all-Heidegger-about-it, but it’s our existential condition to always be older. Youth worship maligns that condition we all share. And what’s more, it objectifies people in a blanket fashion; we are all perishable and perishing, it implicitly says. Our value is always declining. We are always less. It’s too fatalistic for me to get into. Daddy-worship, as irrational and infantilizing as it can be, always gives you somewhere to go. If nothing else, it glorifies the human condition that is aging.
I should know by now not to share my opinions regarding men’s desires with men themselves, but I find myself saying: “That age-thing is lame. Have you had sex with a 22-year-old lately?”
He laughs. “Unfortunately not.”
“It’s dismal. Haphazard at best.”
He giggles harder putting his hand on my shoulder for support and nods forcefully.
“So you’re Italian?” He asks.
I strain to prevent a reflexive eye roll. Gay men love identifying one another’s ethnicity. Knowing one’s ethnicity allows gay dudes to impute all sorts of assumptions about one’s personalities (mostly stereotypes) and, more importantly, gauge love making style and penis size. Like one’s star sign, ethnicity services the illusion of knowledge (or perhaps even faux ‘intimacy’) without having to get to know someone.
“And Jewish.” I say. Disclosing my uncommon mutt-mix often disrupts the gay dude’s sizing me up by ethnicity. I can usually see the pin-ball-like thoughts inside their minds ricochet furiously back and forth as they think: “Big penis or small penis?! Big penis or small penis?!” But Dr. Mario’s pin ball doesn’t ricochet. It shoots straight through.
“That’s a good mix.” He says giving me the sense that he finds the accident of my birth pleasing.
“You’re Italian, I guess?” I ask trying to sound interested in the ethnicity-game.
“Yeah.”
I have to admit though, I enjoy the way Dr. Mario plays the ethnicity game. His probing is relaxed, playful and attentive. He elicits information, but doesn’t move to presume from it. He only makes sure to express his nebulous approval. This is a conversation strategy my daddy-obsessed narcissistic personality finds addictive.
“What do you do?” He asks.
“I’m a lawyer.” Kind of.
“Wow.” He rolls his eyes. “You’re a dream.”
“What do you do?”
“I’m a doctor.”
I roll my eyes. “I should introduce you to my mother. She’d die.”
And she would. Looking at Dr. Mario’s boyish-Italian grin and taking note of all his positive Napoleonic socializing traits (He is gregarious, outgoing-but-always-polite and engaged), I can’t help but think my mother would find him incredibly attractive herself. I wonder for a moment if I have learned my taste in men from my mother. Or if, somehow, I want to please my mother with my dating choices. Or make her jealous. I think I would make a very dedicated psychoanalyst assuming, of course, I’d practice primarily on myself. And my mother.
“Of course. Mothers love me.”
“I can see that.” I say taking a swig of water. “You have a boyfriend, right?” I know I met the boyfriend, also named Mario, a couple of years ago.
“Yeah. You wanna see?” Dr. Mario shows me a picture of Big Mario on his I-Phone. Big Mario is 6’0-ish, lily-white (not Jewish or Italian) and has the kind of body that warrants being called a “physique:” Big, hard and kind of shiny.  “That is my 50-year-old boyfriend,” Dr. Mario says proudly.
“Do you think the youth-worship thing comes from having a guy older than you at home?”
“Maybe.” He says seeming to take the question seriously. And then toggling through his I-Phone, Dr. Mario says: “Here let me show you something else… “
I get an impassive but suspicious look on my face. I have gotten that tingling of my spider-sense when, on-line, dudes send me dick shots… which are never solicited. I find disembodied penis a turn off. “No dick shots, Dr. Mario! Let’s keep it classy!”
He laughs and passes me his phone. “Don’t worry,” he says. It is a picture of him, shirtless with summer abs smiling in a mirror. It’s one of his winning pictures, he knows it and I am won. “Ohhh,” I say. “That’s adorable.”
“Told you not to worry.” He says taking back his phone. “And you should know,” he adds making purposed, pointed eye contact, ”doctors don’t do dick shots.” And suddenly, it doesn’t matter that Dr. Mario is no longer “my type.” I swoon.

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