5:10 p.m. - 2004-06-06
absolve, absolve, absolve
I know it should come as no real surprise, but there is nothing like moving far-ish away to make you feel lonely, depressed and pissy. I am all three, at the moment. I love being in Seattle right now: the summer is going to be gorgeous here, I'm here right in the middle of the Seattle International Film Festival (more on this), I'm going to see FRANZ FUCKING FERDINAND on Tuesday, there are loads of cute boys here....
But I'm completely alone, like any recently relocated arse. Not completely, I'll amend. My friend Kat from work is here and in a similar sitch, so we do make some time together. I hate waiting for shit to happen. Waiting to meet friends and fucks is a devestatingly slow process, but if you rush that shit it never happens. I had a little luck with the friends already, but whatthefuck? I went to the screening of Before Sunset, the sequel to one of my perennial faves Before Sunrise (ain't that just sooo clever?). It was one of the big premiere events at the SIFF, and I just barely got in, being a naive, neo-Seattlian, non-thinking-ahead sort of fellow. Waiting in line with the rest of the poor bastards who didn't get tix, I stuck up a conversation with the people around me and had a decent little chat. About the film, its predecessor, traveling, basic shit like that. Very nice, but obviously a bit temporary. Once we got into the theater, it was packed and it was all goodbyes from there on out.
The movie...was so fucking good. It had all the elements that made the first one so great. The tension was even more intense. I loved watching the two main characters watching each other, occaisonally reaching out to touch one another, contracting nervously. I think that Linklater's biggest success in this movie is making the audience think it's always about to end, that these two are going to part again at any moment. But he crowbars the tiny window of time they have together, again and again and again. We start to feel the same nervousness, that soon it will all be over again, soon they'll just walk away from each other again...wow. I had to go home and drink lots of wine to deal with it. Heartbreakingly good.
Other interesting things to note: so, I have a mohawk now. It seemed like a good idea when I was pretty drunk and about to peaceout of Missoula. I'm pretty happy with it, I've been doing to combover hawk (who pioneered that...Morrissey? Bowie?) and loving that, too.
But.
When I went out on Friday, Kat and I ended up at this really lame gay club. Maybe not lame, just hopelessly generic. Not really the kind of place I like going to at all, but one of the sorts of places I always seem to end up in. Anyway. Some boy comes up to me at the bar and tried to tell me that the mohawk made me look like a big, scary gay killer (As in 'killer of gays' rather than 'killer who is gay') and I should basically get rid of it.
'What about the gay glass ceiling?' I asked. 'What about all the gay boys on Capitol Hill with mohawks?' Naturally, I asked this after I told him that he was totally fucking stupid for suggesting that the mohawk has significant origin in the Nazi party.
Anyway, the point of this bitching session is...I was so excited about Seattle because it seems like one of the refuges of the alternagays. And maybe it is. But there lingers this bizarro homo-sexism around guys that look different. And actually want to look different, because this homogenized, Abercrombied image smacks of a desire to normalize and immitate heterosexuality rather than recognize and celebrate the inherent differences of gayness. My whole rant was kind of sparked by something truly fucking inspiring I read in Tablet, a quality local publication. Read their letter, it's sweet.
Tomorrow, I'm getting on the ball and trying to land myself an internship. Here's hoping.
P.S. I'm still totally obsessed with that Destroyer song, The Bad Art. Unfuckingreal.
