March 27th, 2005

Easter. It doesn't mean much to me. Not religiously. My prolapsed soul lost its grip on me somewhere in high school. Now it rattles it's chains around my ankles I suppose. I've pushed it down that far.

"This is a German song, as sung by a flower in a field, who sees a beautiful woman coming towards him. He falls madly in love with her, and wants her to come closer still. She does, eventually stepping on him and crushing him. His dying words are thanks that such a beautiful woman would be the one to kill him."

 And she sang, stomping her foot down with a twist as she got to that part of the story in German. We laughed, even not speaking German. She was good. "You must sing with your whole body, when you sing Opera. You scrunch up your butt
even, and flex your legs. Hold out your chest." 

If I never appreciate opera, I'll at least always appreciate the work they put into it. So happy Easter to all, and to all, a Good Night.

March 12th, 2005

Mothers against Artists

I had to shave my mustache off. It is associated with cops and pimps and convicts and pedophiles. As an artist, I was interested in seeing what would happen when I had a mustache and went about in a non mustache world. Which of the four would I be taken for? Or would people think it meant something else? People in hip sneaker stores might think I'm from L.A. A fabulous trendsetter. At a trendy nightclub I found no women will dance with me because of it. Mating rituals are strong there, people are reading the clothes and the look, it was not a place to be experimental. I work at a photo studio that is attached to a warehouse. On the college degree/photo studio side, people gave me a hard time, said I looked like Magnum P.I. On the warehouse side, the older guys with mustaches gave me a new look of brotherhood. A young guy asked if I got a promotion.
Apparently mustaches on older men are fine. And entirely appropriate on farm hands, men in a helicopter fire support unit, or other largely male groups like police officers and fork truck operators. Not appropriate on a lone thirty year old, with brown pants and a three day stubble. The rules are unwritten, but I was about to discover, they are strictly enforced.
The message in an American mustache was reflected back to me at the Randall museum, a community park with a great nature center. I was taking a beekeeping class one Saturday afternoon. During the lunch break I went downstairs to look at the animals in cages. Lots of birds and bats and snakes. I was looking at a raven, when I noticed the first mother eyeballing me. She didn’t grab her kids, she didn’t have to. She was surrounded by other mothers and park officials and staff. This mother was not threatened. But she detected a predator. She gave me the stare. To let me know she was watching. Any moves to touch a child and they would have me cornered and stoned to death. The most menopausal of the lot would step on my forehead and scalp my upper lip, then triumphantly show the mothers my hairy adornment, my mark of depravity, pinched between her fingers like a momma ape picking deadly mites from a favorite child.

I was there learning to spot the difference between a crow and a raven, not thinking about squeezing a Pampered ass. But the glare was picked up and passed along as I went from display to display. Over by the dung beetles a mother with dark hair and red lipstick just turned around and stared at my shabby shoes, then kept the sneer as she looked up at my face. What a day to skip the shower, I thought to myself. Her children were screaming through the glass, trying to get the gopher snake to move off his heated rock. I thought back to survival training. If a mother bear thinks her cubs are threatened, ball up and play dead. Raising your arms over your head and shouting as you flail them won’t help if she is protecting her young. She will only be more apt to bite through your neck. So I balled up and fell down behind the barn owl cage. When the sun went down and they were closing up, I snuck out through the heavy glass doors. I got home with my head down low so just my eyes were over the dash. I got in the house and went right to the razor. Being an artist is no match for motherhood.

March 12th, 2005

It's one of those days that makes living out in the Richmond District worthwhile. The wind is unnoticeable, the yard sales are in full swing, the fog is somewhere off the coast, heading to Seattle. My front door is wide open, letting in fresh air, and I can see power boats cutting white wakes into the mouth of the Golden Gate from my window.

But don't think the Richmond District of San Francisco is your average suburb. Driving down Fulton this morning I was surprised to see an 18 wheeler, (minus the trailer, so probably only a 6 wheeler at that point) making a U-turn out on the grass of the Golden Gate Park. I moved over a lane, only to see a homeless man with his pants around his ankles, apparently finished with his morning elemination. That surprised me so much I turned around to look over my shoulder and nearly knocked the aluminum rocker out of an elderly Asian woman's hands. This was all on one block. Thank god my yard sale partner screamed and I looked back to the road and missed her.

March 6th, 2005

Portrait of the Penis of a Young Artist.

I had a portrait taken of my penis taken on Sunday afternoon, March 6th, 2005. As I got ready at home, it felt like an important moment. The world was about to see my Achilles heal, my enemy and my ally. The first thing I did was give it a little haircut, like I was going in for school pictures. Then I picked out some clean zebra stripe underwear. As a morale booster, you know?

This wasn’t going to be easy. I can’t speak for what goes on in the Castro, but where I live in San Francisco, it isn’t normal for men to show off their penis, erect or otherwise. I heard a man wanted to make a photo book of penis’s both hard and soft, to show men are basically the same, and clear up some of the mystery about size, as well as make the point it isn’t dirty to have a dick.

I thought it sounded like a great idea. I love the freedom of America, and it feels like that freedom is always under attack by moral conservatives. It sounded like this book was a chance to make a change. It’s just a penis folks. Nothing to see here.

And yet people are amazed I did it. They think I must have a real hose. Not true, and the truth will be out, in a hard (no puns please) cover book next year. It’s fine. I understand that isn’t a legend of an appendage. I’m cool with it. I don’t know if I would have done it if it was way below average. I hope I would have "had the balls” to be photographed because it is important to know people are proud of themselves and the work they do with what they have. Anyone with a 10 inch trouser trout in their pants can show it off, because there is little risk. It is more courageous, more inspiring, more revolutionary when someone below average is unconcerned with judgement.

Whatever the size, I hope you see the natural wonder of a growing penis. It is amazing to watch. What man hasn’t watched his balls move around as they constantly adjust to temperature? Or looked down at the little thing and wonder how it grows? The whole unit is like a bird, or a baby bunny rabbit, born hairless and blind.

The penis is like the man behind the curtain we don’t want others to see. It drives a lot of what the rest of the visible man does. The importance of being nude is rarely discussed. It is often overlooked. It is usually criminalized. Clothing must be protection, and protection is power. Men don’t want to see other men nude, it threatens an invisible power structure.

In high school I could have used a ten incher. Now that I’m older and I’ve learned that women respond to someone who is creative, those extra inches aren’t important. Yet, if one of the men in the book has a more handsome penis than me, I will feel bad. Oh well. Bring on the body issues, I need something to work through.

People want to know what the experience was like. It was hard to get hard. There was no fluffer. The word on the street has it that Viagra has put an end to the fluffer position on porno shoots. This operation didn’t even have the budget of a porno shoot. I was standing in someone’s third story walk-up living room, pictures from Maxim taped to the wall for stimulus. A bottle of water and a promise of a copy of the book were all the reward I was to receive. But I was happy to be a part of it.

I don’t know if I thought I would get an erection organically, on demand perhaps. I was standing in my portion of the living room with giant lights aimed at me, screens, scrims, Foamcore and other photo studio essentials like heavy gauge extension cords crisscrossing the floor. A line of black gaffers tape laid out on the ground directly in front of the camera, which was on a tripod at crotch level, was like seeing the wall I would stand in front of before the firing squad. I was very far from that familiar old feeling of arousal. So I gingerly perused the magazine titles. Beaverhunt, Hustler, or Playboy? Or, will it be Mandate, for the gay men? I wondered which title I should pick up, in case someone was watching. It says a lot about a person when you know what porn they read.

I also saw a stack of towels, and wondered what exactly they expected from me. Maybe this was a porn shoot after all; some scam, someone was running a dirty little website around here...but no, that towel was there to wipe the lube off so the penis wouldn't be shiny in the photo. It happens from time to time that the truth is grosser than fiction.

“You can take your clothes off now,” came the voice behind the curtain. Really? I had a band aid in my hand that I needed to place on my knee so that all the different model’s photos would be sized to scale. The first photo, the un-erect one, was not a problem. My penis was as little as it gets without being on ice. Now I was still naked, with three men on the other side of a very thin and not-at-all sound proof curtain waiting for me to get hard so they could take the picture and catalogue it on the computer

I was gripped by a panic that it wouldn't get hard. Or that I was going too slow. This is my virility here, come on little buddy, sit up! Sit up! I might be in this room for hours, trying to think of every girl I’ve ever seen in my life. I know I have a greatest hits in my mind somewhere, or should I try reading the letters section in Playboy?

In this age of online porn, I'm not sure what to do with magazines. Honestly, it seemed quaint. I tried looking at the really small pictures in the backs of the magazines that offer more "advanced" themes. No luck. That's when I realized it going to come down to simple friction. I tried to relax. I’ve had thousands of unwanted erections. Sooner or later it would rise to the occasion. This was a glimpse of life as a porn actor. A highly skilled profession after all. Not one for me.

This was art, not sex I told my friend afterwards. He didn’t believe me. “How did you get a hard-on? You thought about sex. It was a sexual thing.”

Yes, part of it was sexual, but the intent for me was an act of rebellion. Why show my penis in front of a camera? For the same reason women in the sixties burned their bras. This is my body and I’m not ashamed of it, I don’t want it criminalized. How else can I make the point to my President and the FCC? Nude isn’t rude! It was last year that Janet Jackson showed one breast to the nation. The result was tightening of regulations, fines of hundreds of thousands of dollars for indecency, fines that turn out to be many times more than the fine for dumping toxic waste in a river. I am not happy with America being afraid of nudity and sexuality.

This project made me realize how much importance a man puts on his penis, and how much fear men have of exposing themselves. That feeds the double standard of expecting women to be unclothed in every movie, yet no one ever sees a penis, except in porn. Is it un-American to show a man nude? Repression, fear and shame will not make us a better country. If I can be part of something that exposes this, I am glad to do it.

America is too homophobic. We are raised up thinking that to look at another man's penis, either in the locker room, or in a magazine, will make you gay. If the mere sight of a penis is traumatic, how I am supposed to go to the bathroom? Blindfolded? So here is my penis, because I don’t want American’s to forget what it is to be free. My penis is the face of democracy. It’s the Spirit of ’76, not an America claimed by Puritans. This book is the Wild West, not the Bible Belt. We have to stand up for our beliefs as well. I’m sure many of the penis’s on this page are gay penis’s. That's democracy! A voice to all! Try to guess which penis is gay. Don’t you see, it doesn’t matter? We are human. Here’s some proof. (look for a link when the book is published)

March 4th, 2005

I wore cowboy boots to work today. I wanted to look like a truck driver, so I had black cowboy boots, ripped Levi's, a red and white pearl-snap cowboy shirt, and a black mesh CAT diesel power hat. With my mustache, and the pad of paper and pen in my shirt pocket, I looked pretty authentic. I brought along a Red Simpson CD to set a musical highway mood.

The studio where I work has concrete floors, and my cowboy boots sounded like stilletto heels on there. People thought I was a woman walking towards them. There is a woman who wears boots on set, and she clicks and jingles. It's her boots and keys. I just click. Like a woman. I thought cowboy boots were supposed to be tough. Instead they show my feminine side.

Tough guys learn from this: Cowboys boots are for dirt, unless you have spurs. Spurs would convert the high heel on hardwood clicking into a more singing cowboyish jingle jangle.