So, I was watching another gay movie.

Actually, bizarrely, it really is called that.  Or, according ot it’s working title, “Gays Gone Wild.”

It went straight to video. 

But that’s not what I wanted to tell my gentle reader. 

No.

What I wanted to share with my gentle reader was a rather… shall we say, curious coincidence.

See, as in many movies there is an antagonist in this one.  Or rather there are three antagonists.

Can you guess what they are named?

The Jaspers.

I shit you not. 

Jasper, Jasper Pledge, and Jasper Chan.

Now, evidently “Jasper Pledge” is not named after a brand of household cleaner.  He is instead named for a new initiate into the mysteries of fraternal brotherhood.

You think I’m making this up?  See the aesthetic dreck which constitutes this particular film.

You would then be witness to lines as will surely enter into the immortal canon.  Lines such as “Sayonara, bitchez.”

Needless to say, this line is uttered by Jasper Chan.

Where, I ask, where on earthy did the fine crew that thought to cast Perez Hilton, RuPaul, and Lady Bunny in a movie that did not involve hand puppets, get the idea that “the salient other” is a fellow by the name of Jasper?

Because it passeth understanding that they would have gotten this idea from reading the comments in a blog that isn’t even public anymore.

Because otherwise my life is one bizarre episode of the Truman Show.  Or I’m going insane.

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I wanted to tell this story to the tune of Blue, as in “Yo listen up here’s a story/ About a little guy that lives in a drunk world/ and all day and all night and everything he sees/ is just drunk like him inside and outside…”

But then I figured, aww… f*ck it.  I should just tell a story, and tell it, ahem(!) straight.  But where to begin, that’s the question…  

So, one day, about four months ago, da partner and I were invited to a Christmas party in East Sacramento.   Not very far in East Sac, to be sure — just down the street from where Sutter buried his peons and kanakas, behind the blood bank, and damn near across the street from where they keep Hitler’s brain in formaldehyde.   But, it must be said, just far enough east of the freeway that it is very clear that it is East Sac, and not Midtown, and so far from the roving bands of drunk suburban white people causing mayhem and destruction on St. Patrick’s Day.*

We went, in expectation of good cheer and (if we were lucky) perhaps even hilarity, for we knew the host and so consequently knew that she provided both an ample board of delicious food and a selection of intellectually challenging board games.  In a word, we expected the tried-and-true combination of good company + good food + mixer-type-activities = fun.

This particular evening was to provide a genuinely unique mathematical proof of this equation, the kind of proof that one might receive after teaching the same lesson plan year after year (”turn to chapter 8.  As we can see in the first exercise, you can not only add similar quantities to either side of the equation, you can multiply each side by the same quantity.  This expands the range of solutions availabe to us in solving algebra problems…”), knowing that some students will never understand what you’re saying and not even make an effort, others will nod appreciatively in the hopes that a smile and a nod will result in at least some credit, others will think they understood and gamefully try and produce the proof but fail, in the most heart-rending manner (dude, did you really think you understood it?  And yet you produced this?), and (thankfully) most will take the lesson to heart and produce the requisite proof with the hope that they will take the credential and move on to other, more personally interesting subjects.

And then, and then.  Every once in awhile there comes a precociously GATE-erific 8th-grade student of whose genius you aren’t absolutely convinced until you re-consider the evidence, months or even years later — much like Septimus Hodge looking over the proof that Thomasina knocks off, almost absentmindedly, when she thinks he thinks she doesn’t think he’s paying attention.

Sort of like the proof that one receives after attending the same party year after year — well, not perhaps the same party, but surely the same kind of party, just as one is asked, repeatedly, to work through the same algebra proof, the better to demonstrate one’s mastery of the basic art of manipulating the simple equation 2x+1y +z =5 – the same parties we’ve all been to, where someone brings that bottle of  New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc they just discovered, while someone else brings their recipe for blue cheese biscuits (dude, that shit is f*ckin’ crack, I tell you), a third person brings the latest board game they’re super-excited about, and yet a fourth person decides to demonstrate, to the delectation of all and sundry, their mastery of the art of making Oprah’s Pomegranate Martinis!!!**

Or, in this specific case, the case we happen to be talking about at the moment, someone decides to drink everything they can get their hands on, engage in progressively more slurred (not to mention louder) bouts of “dude, do you know this word?  What about this other one?  I bet you can’t give me a word I don’t know,” and, not surprisingly, steadily ratcheting up the machismo factor.

This fellow will, for purposes of simplicitly, be referred to in the remainer of this post as WTSG. 

On an utterly unrelated side note: what’s the definition of machism_a_?

A woman that kick-starts her vibrator.

On a somewhat-related side note: let me give all of you reading this blog a simple piece of advice.  I am happy to engage in word-play with you.  I am even happy to do so when I am drunk, although I would note that the volume of my voice and the precise quantum of wit I am trying to communicate tend to move in opposite directions, and so — rather like someone who shall remain nameless, but who is known in East Sac as WTSG — I tend to become louder and less sensible the more booze I’ve consumed. 

All of that being said, I would note that it is probably not wise to engage in competitive wordplay with me when you are drunk and I am sober. 

Why? 

Not because I am especially smart, nor because I have an especially large vocabulary. 

No.  The real reason I would advise against this is because I have a (small and rarely displayed in public, to be sure) mean streak.  And if — just saying, if, purely hypothetically — you are drunk and I am sober and you bait me with competitive wordplay, I might, just might, supply you with words that are unkind.

Such as…. oh, I don’t know, “unctious,” or ” otiose,” or “satiety,” or “aperient,” or “emetic.”  Or, because it turns out that I have preternaturally accurate instincts in these matters, words like “concupiscience” and “meretricious.”

Just…words to the wise. 

Because by all means drink all you please when you are among friends.  Though I would not recommend getting too, too drunk and trying to make new friends, especially if you happen to have come to this party in the company of a woman – with whom you happen to share a bed and a home — and the new friend (to whom you spontaneously offer a backrub, and m0re to the point offer to take home) is, well, a man.*** 

Nor would I recommend that you, or to make the matter crystal clear, I would not recommend that WTSG — upon being most delicately and considerately escorted out of the party at the behest of the host, but accompanied by the woman WTSG came with — declare to the fellow who happens to have brushed his arm:

“Don’t touch me!  People pay me to touch me like that!”

The reason I recommend against this course of action is not because it reveals WTSG’s membership in the oldest profession.  No, that is WTSG’s own affair.  I, who spend 8 hours of every working day toiling in the bowels of A Large Government Bureaucracy the better to ensnare the good people of this state in the clutches of the Foucauldian carceral-industrial state, am in no position to make moral judgements about how other people earn their money.  The reason I recommend against saying those particularly, delectibly, provacatively, revealing  words is that they tendentiously describe WTSG’s lady-friend, in quite unflattering terms, as, well, a lady-John.

And that, my friend, is careless, oblivious, and — most damningly — ungrateful.  It is, in a word, unforgivable.

It is also why, three months later, WTSG’s name happend to come up at a very similar party where “The Bowl Game” was played.  And where — because in truth his name came up more than once (thrice?  No, I must admit, no less than four times in one round) and the precise nature of his, shall we call them escapades? (no, that would be imprecise: pecadillos, or perhaps, more gently, picaresques, is the word, I think, for which I am grasping) was discussed.  At length.  So that those who were not present at the original party could know, in precise detail, what was said and what transpired.

Such as the fact that the woman with whom WTSG came to the party, and who so graciously escorted him home, evidently kicked his sorry ass to the curb last weekend. 

Or that a gentle reader of this blog himself blogged about the events of the Christmas party, thus apprising the sister of the host, which in turn led to the host finding out about what was said — much to her amusement — but also, it must be said, opening the way for this blog.

Or that the letters WTSG will, now and forever in the annals of East Sacramento, stand for White T-Shirt Guy.

Oh, and did I mention: when the invitation to a Christmas party says “wear your Christmas finery” DO NOT, I REPEAT DO NOT wear a white t-shirt.  This is, in a word, plebian. Low-class.  Rude.  Cracker-tastic.

Why?  Because your sorry meretricious ass — oh, and did I mention that I didn’t even deign to notice whether your ass is flat or bubblicious?  Oh, right, because I’m MARRIED, and so NOT INTERESTED in the services of WHORES  — can try and flatter me all you want with your “oooh, I see that wearing collars under your sweater is “in” this year!”; but it does not flatter me. 

You want to know why?  Because real men don’t pay attention to whether their collar is over or under their collar.  Jesu Christi, are we back in 8th grade and in a John Hughes film?  NO.  It is 2009 and you can wear your collar however you damn well please. 

Doesn’t everybody read Details?  Sheesh. 

Just don’t wear a fucking t-shirt to a party where the hostess clearly and explicitly requested that you dress formally.

*Oh, but I digress.  Is there anything, anything, so frightening as roving bands of suburban white drunks?  I submit to you that the answer is “no.”  If there is anything that Texas taught me, it is that when you get to many white people together in one place, they start pulling some evil shit.

**Shit, I’m channeling Texas here, aren’t I?  Please tell me I’m chanelling Texas?  Because if I’m not, the truth is too awful to contemplate.

***A married man — which was, I suppose, to be overly fair in this instance, technically in some legal doubt at the precise moment in history that these particular events took place.

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I’m sorry, I’m just not used to reading the New York Times for porn.

Twice in one week.

I simply must remember to renew my subscription.

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I just realized that, after working for A Large Government Bureaucracy for two years*…

I have damn near produced a second dissertation.  Four (4) article-length pieces that together make for a 170-page manuscript.  And that’s just the appendix to a (much shorter, at 20 pp.) “executive summary” and a (somewhat longer, at 75 or so pp.) “process analysis” that will, my manager assures me, be what people will actually read.

A little word to the wise for anyone ever inclined to read anything I ever write.  Pay attention to the footnotes and the appendices.  ‘Cause that’s where the good stuff will be. 

Just sayin’.

When do I get my second Ph.D., by the way?

*Two years  come April.  That’s when I receive my final civil service evaluation and (pending approval) vest in the real retirement plan, the real vacation-time multiplier, and the doesn’t-f*cking-suck-so-hard-I-have-to-patronize-shyster-doctors-on-Capitol-Ave. real dental plan.

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It turns out that when you google Commander Plaza, this is what you get.

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So, one of the necessary activities that attends the (admittedly gradual) taking over of the family manse is…

The “merging of the libraries.”

This is a delicate operation. 

Partly because it involves the purging of volume upon volume of deliciously trashy detective and murder-mystery literature that no one (not my mother, not da partner, and most certainly not my father nor myself) will ever read again.  Items such as M.M. Kay’s “Death in Zanzibar.”  Which, I am assured by the most reliable of sources, is really a most ripping read.

Why must we purge such delectations, I hear you ask?

Because, sweet reader, we need the fecking room.  As hard as it is to believe in a house this big, there are too many books for the shelf space we have.  So we must purge.   We must purge such classics of the western canon as Jewelry Making for the Amateur, or Education for Revolution, and even ” Ruth Beebe Hills’ Hanta Yo (”now a 5-hour ABC-TV Mini-Sieres Entitled “The Mystic Warrior”).

Oh, sweet Jesus.  Where do I begin?  “Ruth Beebe Hill?”  “A  5-hour ABC-TV miniseries?”  Or as the blurb puts it, “reading Hanta Yo is like entering a trance. (New York Times) Sensual and emotional order has been rearranged.  Happenings take on a strage direction and an odd meaning.”

Um, last time I checked, if I wanted to rearrange my sensual and emotional order, I took two shots of vodka and called the doctor in the morning.

This rather reminds me of a recent reunion where someone (the innocent shall remain nameless) was lectured first on Tibetan sovereignty by a woman in a peasant dress, and then secondly on native sovereignty by a drunk Miwok. 

When the innocent bystander related this story to my mother, she remarked, “Shit, has nothing changed in this town?  That happened to me in the late ’70s when I first moved here.”

This…this is my personal nightmare, I must admit.  Sort of like the prospect of reading Hanta Yo (or Clan of the Cave Bear) — which as God as my witness, will, like the eating of raw turnips, never happen again.

But I digress.  The original intent of this post was to apprise the reader of the three, count them, three volumes of overlaps between my library and my parents.

Can you guess? 

I’ll give you a hint.  Think “Oprah’s reading list.”

Yes, that’s right: Jonathan Franzens’ The Corrections.  That’s one (I leave it as extra credit who had the hardback and who had the paperback).

What about the others?

Okay, so the second one is a little harder, if only because it’s an extension of the first:

Carlos Funtes’s The Old Gringo.  Yes, the one that was made into a movie with Jimmy Smits and Jane Fonda.  (what, you mean you didn’t see it?  Say it ain’t so…).  So really, just Oprah Winfrey avant la lettre.

The third one?  This is a little harder.  Think…let’s see… old school WASP.

No, not Tom Wolfe.  Sheesh.

Old school WASP.

Give up?

Milton.  And not just two copies, but three.

Including one from my mother’s divorce from her first husband.  But we won’t go there.

So, if anyone wants a copy of “Paradise Lost” or “Areogapitica” or “Samon Agonistes” you know where to find it.

UPDATE:  further merging has revealed a much longer list of multiple copies, including:

Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart; Aeschylus, The Oresteia (the Lattimore translation); Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights; James M. Cain: The Postman Always Rings Twice; Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote; Don DeLillo, Underworld; William Faulker, The Sound and the Fury; Thomas Frank, What’s the Matter with Kansas; Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet; Peter Gomes, The Good Book; Henry James, The Turn of the Screw (plus The Aspern Papers); a fourth (!?!?) copy of the collected works of Milton; Jose Saramago, Baltasar and Blimunda; Will Shakespeare, Henry VI Parts I, II, and III, as well as King Lear; Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; Theda Skocpol, Social Policy in the United States; and John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi.

Oh, and lest I forget: 3(!) copies of the Bhagavad Gita.  Including one with the original Sanskrit, Roman transliteration, English translation, and the “elaborate purports” (wtf?) of, yes, you guessed it, the founder the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.

Because although we may be the absurd products of way too much liberal education we are still, at the end of the day, Californians.

Anybody want any of the above?

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Every once in awhile the cult of ancestor worship in my father’s family takes a gothic twist that even I, at the advanced age of 34, would not predict.

As part of the long-extended handover of the family manse, my parents have gradually been moving (or deaccessioning) their various belongings.   So, for instance, all of their art is going up to the Ranch or to Tahoe, to be replaced by our art — with certain pieces (such as the Japanese silk screen in the dining room) remaining, for lack of a better word, enfoeffed.  Other items — such as quite a number of books, and entire closetsful of clothes — are going to Goodwill. 

It was when going through his closet that my father discovered a family artifact that I had never laid eyes upon.  The discovery — or perhaps revelation is the more appropriate metaphor here — of this particular piece of lore has led me to wonder what other treasures remain yet to be unearthed, poked at, and variously disposed of.  

This particular artifact is a garment.  Specifically, a lambswool and canvas jacket with leather hemming.  The exterior raggedy and ripped nearly to shreds, the collar somewhat mangy, all of it in shades of brown ranging from yellowed ivory through fawn and on to chocolate.  

This was the coat of spare color worn by my great-grandfather and namesake when he took his grandson fox-hunting. 

This coat has aquired the marks of use and distress, class and status, the semiotic simulacra of which brands such as Abercrombie and Fitch charge a shit-ton of money.  If commodity fetish-worship truly exists, this is the the kula-ring, the sliver of the cross, the mummified fragment of St. Mammon’s own Prada bag.

In my father’s telling, they never did kill many foxes.  Not because his grandfather the Methodist minister was opposed on principle to this activity.  But rather because the real pleasure of the hunt lay, in my great-grandfather’s opinion, in sitting on a log in the South Carolina woods, watching the sun rise, drinking coffee from a thermos, and listening to the hounds bay through the mist.

Paging Colonel Sartoris.

As my mother remarked, when told what the moldy old piece of wool was and meant, if the fancy girls at her Episcopal Church growing up in suburban LA in the 50s had known she was going to marry into a fox-hunting family, they would not have been quite so quick to despise the stepdaughter of a Pentecostal butcher.

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So I was up at Tahoe the other weekend, by myself (da partner had taken a freebie plane ticket to visit friends back in Texas).   Doing the things that one normally does on such opportunities: cooking oneself a nice steak, watching a painful noir, reading Proust, blogging, and going showshoeing on the lakeshore. 

It is, after all, in those moments alone that one’s character is revealed.  

In any case, when I rented my snowshoes, I had the privilege of being part of the following conversation:

Moi: So, can you recommend any coffeehouses around here?  I’m looking for a place that has free wireless.

Snowshoe-Renter Guy: Sure, there’s one just down the road.  Where is that place, honey?

Snowshoe-Renter Guy’s Taiwanese Girlfriend and Business Partner:  Next to the sushi place.* 

SRG: That’s right.  They’ve got great coffee.  You should go there.

Moi: Thanks.  I’ll check it out.

SRG: Just don’t use too much cream.

Moi: Erh?

SRG: I mean half-and-half.

Moi: ????

SRG: Just don’t use too much half-and-half in your coffee.  I like a lot of half-and-half, you know?

Moi: Sure.  [wondering where this is going, but figuring that since his girlfriend is there it can't be too bizarre, right?]

SRG: I mean, I like a good four ounces.  And that bitch behind the counter, she’s always yelling at me “You’re using too much half-and-half, damn you!  Don’t use all the half-and-half!”  And I’m like, “what the hell is your problem, bitch?”  Now every time I go in there it’s all I hear :”don’t use so much goddamn half-and-half!”  ‘Cause you know what the problem is, right?

Moi: Uhhhhh…

SRG:  They want you to order a breve.  That’s what they call it, when you get a shot of espresso and fill the rest up with cream: a breve.  They want you to order it so they can charge you more.

SRGTGABP: [silently shuffling paperwork and watching me as I edge towards the door]

SRG: You know I had a friend in Honolulu once that got thrown out of a Starbucks for doing the same thing.

Moi: Really?

SRG: Yeah, he started pouring half-and-half into his coffee and the next thing he knew the manager was yelling at him, and some big-ass Filipino guy was coming around from behind the counter.  True story.  Ask any of my friends and they’ll back me up on this.  You better not take too much half and half when you go to the Starbucks in Honolulu or they’ll bring out the big Filipino guy and the next thing you know your ass is on the sidewalk.

SRGTGABP: [cough, cough]

SRG: Oh, dude, I’m sorry — am I holding you up?  Here, take a sticker [handing me both a Squaw Valley and a Kirkwood sticker].  You’ve been really patient.

Moi: No problem, man.  But in my family we don’t go to Squaw Valley [handing him back the sticker].  Too far to drive.  Thanks much for the advice, though! [hightailing it out of there].

[three weeks later, entering the same shop, this time for cross-country skis]

SRGTGABP: So, how was the coffee? [turning to SRG].  You remember this guy, don’t you?  He’s the one you told to be careful about the half-and-half.

SRG: Oh, yeah.  So how was it?  Good coffee, didn’t I tell ya?

Moi: [trying not to miss the beat].  Absolutely.  I had the french press, and it was great.  But you were right, she was kind of a bitch. 

SRGTGABP: That’ll be ten dollars for the skis.

Moi: Do you guys prefer cash?  Or can I leave it on my card?

SRGTGABP: If you pay in cash we give you a 7 and 3/4% discount.

Moi: [laying a tenner on the counter] You got yourself a deal, sweetie.

And so what is the lesson here, ladies and gentleman?:

a.) You can always get good coffee in California, or

b.) When available, go for the french press but stick to 2%,

c.) Trust the Taiwanese chick to keep the books.

*I’m sorry.  Sushi, in Tahoe?  Please.

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