Rolando's Tattoed Arousal

Nudity Advisory: If you are uncomfortable with male nudity or gay themes, please exit this blog at once. Thank you.

I steeped into the empty bed in the half light after the party had faded from memory. Not everyone had gone home it seemed. A lazy friend wandered around the newly empty rooms wondering if he was going to get a ride home after all. I almost said he would, when from the side door walks in what I thought was a walking picture. His tattoos were almost wet. He had changed so much since the last time. He might have been drinking or perhaps he always shed his clothes so easily. Now that I think of it, he always walked around in his briefs when we roomed together years ago.

I was glad to see him, but all he could say was that they had to come off if he was going to spend the night. I hadn't invited him, but I insisted that we didn't have to sleep like that. He didn't listen to what I had said as he slowly lowered my briefs with his index finger. I stopped him when all he exposed was pubic hair. He didn't like not getting his way so he took his briefs off. It was then that I saw that he wasn't as smooth as I had remembered. Maybe he had grown some hair on his tummy and just a touch on his chest. It was hard to make-out as the brightly colored tattoos were everywhere.

I had never cared for tattoos on men, or women for that matter. He wore his as though they were layers of colored cloth. Patches or irridescent green were overlaid with violet and ruby red patches of patterns and long triangular obelisks. He smiled when he saw that the colors on his skin fascinated me and that perhaps he would get me to remove my briefs after all.

When I complied he looked at my tattoo-free body and said it was too plain compared to his. He assumed I had at least a zodiac sign or two on my butt or near my pubic area. I asked him if natural-colored flesh was a crime these days? He said tattooed people preferred their own kind. He thought I was one of them. I couldn't believe that because I lacked synthetic pigmented designs on my body, I was out of the picture. He started to walk into another fading room in my house and I followed him as naked as he was. His colored thighs and butt slid by the glass and made the light on the other side turn green and golden red as I followed him not wanting this evening to end as quickly as it had begun.

Outside the street was dark. No one was out this late in my neighborhood. He got into his car, waved and said that he'd visit me when I had acquired at least one broken rose on my thigh. I looked at myself as he drove off and felt the emptiness that differences in skin tone sometimes cause between people.

A Night in Sodom

It's painful to read the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Bible because you get the impression that this story is probably why lots of people hate gays so much. It obviously reported what might have been a mass rape had not supernatural intervention changed things considerably.

Imagine though, if the two messengers (angels) had not rescued Lot as he spoke to his friends and neighbors about how wrong it would be for them all to rape his two male guests. The story would have been even more heinous and then when both Cities of the Plain were destroyed by volcanic lava, as some have suggested, then perhaps some folk today would say that the Gang Rape Mob had gotten their just rewards.

I've sometimes felt sad for all those homosexual, as well as non-homosexual men and women along with their children, who were destroyed in such a painful way. Some progressive folk have suggested that it was natural causes that destroyed them, and that it was not divine retribution that wiped out all those people, the semi-good (Lot's future sons-in-law and his wife) with the bad. But I start to think that if I were visiting such a sex-obsessed culture that wanted to gang rape every stranger that came into town and took refuge in a religious persons' home, I probably would have been raped, as well. That's nothing anyone wants to experience, regardless of whatever distorted prison fantasies some gay men have. I've had them in the past myself. I even used to hang out in bathhouses when I was a young man that had mock prison cells replete with bars and minimal mattresses. I'm glad I survived to tell the tale.

How to Chase the Blues Away

This post reminded me of similar journal entries when I was 24. I can relate to that sense of being alone or loneliness, as well as spending time and more time trying to document what was happening to me & what it all meant. Then, more than now, I would reach for one or more music albums that would improve my stark mood. Now I watch a funny movie or go for a walk and sing as I walk the dog. When worse comes to worse, I chant these words silently as I'm falling asleep or as I'm sitting in my closeted life. They have helped me even when I was living with a man & had suffered insults & unfaithfulness on his part, or on mine. The words of comfort, believe it or not are these: "The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom then shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life. Of whom then shall I be afraid." They got me through all kinds of difficulties & still come through for me.

Urubury Milk - Uranus Milk

dream from age 17 about progressive rock group with album of same name. yes cum elp cum king crimson = urubury milk

Imperfect Art's Better than No Art at All

"Don't worry if it's good or bad art. Just keep on producing. Let others decide if it's good or bad." Paraphrase of a statement by Andy Warhol heard on PBS.

While some deified him making him to be larger than he, or anyone has a right to be, that is the nature of hagiography and you wouldn't bother making documentries or writing biographies unless you felt your subject was larger than life. The American Masters documentary seemed to last forever. I say that in a good way. It could have lasted another hour and I would have enjoyed it, as well. It seemed, at first, to be the four hour film that is playing in New York City. It's hard to imagine that the longer film could be any more intriguing, but that, of course, waits to be seen. [Further research has confirmed to my delight that the PBS 2 hour installment is the second half of Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film by Ken Burns. Where else, really, except on PBS would you have anyone even in the art mainstream going to a four hour film. This is one DVD that will be worth buying from PBS when they release it on their website .]

Having had interest in Warhol in the past, starting in the late 70s mainly through his artistic patronage of Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, later on I became more interested in him because of his art for art sake aesthetic.

While a junior at the Greater New York Academy our high school choir naively sang backup on little-known Warhol superstar "adult" film actress, Ultra Violet's (Isabelle Collin Dufresne) one and only music album. The music teacher later became aware of what Andy Warhol movies were like and requested that we not tell the conserative high school princial, less she get into trouble for not checking out who we did back-up singing for. It was a great brush with Warhol's Factory group in a modern recording studio. Perhaps the reason for her realtive unknown status when copared with Viva and Joe Dallesandro is the following quote:

Andy Warhol on Ultra Violet: “She was past a certain age, but she was still
beautiful; she looked a lot like Vivien Leigh... Ultra would do almost anything
for publicity. She’d go on talk shows ‘representing the underground,’ and it was
hilarious because she was as big a mystery to us as she was to everybody else...
She’d tell journalists, ‘I collect art and love’. But what she really collected
were press clippings.”

That sounds all too familiar for Warhol who is supposed to have expresse little sympathy for little Edie Sedgwick when he was informed of her death.

In the mid eighties his films, especially the ones directed by Paul
Morrissey, like Flesh and Trash, caught my eye. They were vaguely
interesting to watch, but they made for good conversation at the rare dinner
party where I could mention that I had videotapes of those films and fished
around for other Warhol admirers.

In the late 80s I saw a documentary that I mistakenly remembered as stating that Chelsea Girls was a lost film of his.
Only snipets remained and what was shown in that documentary seemed priceless to
me for it only hinted at what it must have been like to have seen all three
hours of it. Well, six hours, since it was shown in split screen mode.

Late last year, when I found the DVD version on an imitation ebay site,
I almost forked over $25 dollars for what I had doubts was either a rare bit of
film history, or a mildly interesting piece of trash. Reviews I read mentioned
that the people and the goings on in the film were distasteful and only had
modest artistic or sociological value.

Tonight's documentary expressed a
very different point of view. It presented Chelsea Girls as one of Warhol's masterpieces.
I felt a little disoriented about whether I made a mistake in not buying this
out-of-print masterpiece when I had a chance to do so. I'm sure if it's as good
as PBS says it is, it will be released again someday.

While the film had
limited value for recreating the Happenings and art atmosphere of the 60s, a
decade that fascinates me for different reasons as time goes by, one thing was
evident this time around that I had ignored during other encounters with
Warhol's various art projects. The man was vanity and self-absorption
personified. You could say I wasted two hours of my life watching this art
biography. But in the end, he was a human being whose mother visited him in the
hospital when he was recovering from his near death, the result of being shot by
an enraged former Factory denizen. At the end of his quite/quiet life, his
remains now rest on an eternally snowy hillside in his hometown, I presume,
where remaining relatives or admirers visit him or photograh for this and future
documentaries. They mentioned that the first half of the 20th century was
important for Picasso and that the last half was important because of Warhol. I
wondered who would be the major artist, or writer, or musician for the first
half of the 21st century.

Watching the film about Warhol and his often
incessant art production made me long again to explore writing seriously. I have
a Canon camcorder I purchased last year and half ago and have only shot two or
three cassettes worth of film. I could do so much more with that $600 dollar
investment if I set my mind to it. I could buy a sampler and create my own
"borrowed" musical soundtracks for the two or three films as well as others.

I even thought of taking the few nude and semi-nude pictures I've taken
of myself and doctoring them with Photoshop and putting them on this site. Most
are anonymous so my identify would still be protected. I don't want my mother
recognizing her nude son on an accidental visit to her son's blog or site one
spring day. Or I thought of searching for "found" photos and processing them
beyond recognition, as Warhol or others seem to have done, and then I could have
said to have created some kind of art or artifact, as opposed to creating
nothing at all.

This is perhaps an attempt to take to heart Warhol's
advice to keep on producing without worrying about its eventual merit.
Perfectionism has its negative factors. When you can't be certain of the
relative perfection of something you write or do, and decide not to write or do
anything at all, you wind up with an entire life of waiting for perfection to
arrive, for people to arrive to show you the way to a more perfect life, and
eventually you arrive at the end of your life, and you're still waiting for that
perfect moment that, alas, never did arrive.

Better to attempt imperfect
writing and imperfect works of art or music, than nothing at all. Perfection is
after all a relative concept.

Sex Club Vacation and Surprising Encounter

Nudity Advisory: If you are uncomfortable with male nudity or gay themes, please exit this blog at once. Thank you.

He found himself at the entrance to a club that looked like it oozed with sex. It did. It oozed with more than sex or semen. There was a sinister quality to the club inside that was not apparent when he first walked in.

It was a narrow club. The bar was almost invisible, but the men were there, like guides to inner doors that revealed darker and darker secrets. It had been what seemed like years, though only days or weeks had passed since he had made hard, cold contact with a naked form in a club, so the inner recesses of the club drew him deeper and deeper until he thought he found what he was looking for. When he entered the first room and stripped completely nude, to his horror all the other nude men in the room were flagelating themselves with leather whips in a brightly lit room that made the scene even more garrish. It reminded him of the monks in Spain that walked the streets in white hoods and simultaneously flagelated themselves as the blood oozed from their atoning backs. Hoping that this was just some sort of bad cabaret from spoiled clubbing denizens, he got nearer to the opening of the darkening door that led into the back room. To his horror, with what little light fell into the door to the backroom, among the crouching men and twisting bodies were other men whipping themselves and whipping others as well. Nothing like this could ever attract him. In fact the darkness of the entire series of rooms and situations filled him with the darkest of horrors.

He slipped into his shorts in time to be met by Lindo Archer, whom he hadn't seen in years, and the pot belly that greated him told a sorry tale of beer and too many late nights in the dark. Both Lindo and his potbellied form greeted him by quickly taking off his shorts and not asking, but demanding, that he let him quench his thirst. He liked the guy, so he just stood there and let Lindo help himself. After all he was a one-time friend or acquaintance, and this was better than anything the dark rooms and the whipping men had to offer.

He waved goodbye to Lindo, pulled on his shorts again and walked over to the outdoor pool where he was the only one to jump in with nothing but his cotton briefs on. The huge pressure of the water pushed the flimsy fabric off his body and he walked out of the water totally nude. No one seemed to notice. It was that kind of town or state of mind. When the owners of the club, waved at him to come back next week and do it all again, he waved with a doubtful smile and looked at his soiled lace bikini briefs that had an odd burnt-ochre stain on the fabric and on his fingers. He wished he were closer to water to rinse away the odd-smelling paste, but the taxi was not going to wait another minute, so he jumped into the cab as is and let the driver complain about smelling nothing pleasant for the second time that year.

His blue denim leg, a strong and confident limb, grounded itself into the edge of the sidewalk. The pressure was there though the sneaker barely touched the granite. As the red-haired girl below his careless arm touched her left cheek to feel the oil and dirt, he told her the light would change in a moment; if the color were true they’d cross. The stationary girl leisurely looked up at him, brushing red hair from her eyes, and expressed displeasure at the faded green of the light. They might have stayed there longer, waiting for a hue full of depth, had a sixteen-year- old youth not have “zinted” past the summer-erected traffic light. His Irish hair had caught fire long before he lured Denim and Red across the street. To cross Bleeker Street they first had to notice how his fiery, dead-protein hair had been blown by the dirty afternoon wind.

Someone’s sister "ankled" past the “We Need You” sign between the “walk” and “don’t walk.” Her hair bled into the air even if it did return some of the dark liquid to her shoulders.

Perhaps the waitress outside the window didn’t think she was pretty. She had a subtle and classic kind of beauty, the kind only certain women have. Then the endless shades of style, of balanced beauty or style, eluded me, as the variety of possibilities eluded me. One man outside the open window had an almost-beauty or style—something there, but not polished or original. Then it struck me that the “tishtatically” serene and handsome 28-year-old man who ordered a mild dish, pears, crackers and cheese, might have done so to keep his complexion fair.

Eight o’clock, only 20 minutes away, would mean my having to leave. As I thought of the brevity of the meditative hour, a mild, orange hint of a sunset “backgrounded” itself, behind the slightly still tops of trees just two blocks away. The curving black neck of a street light structure, silver in darkened disguise, held itself aloof from sky and trees.

Before parting, she made him softly peck, first her right cheek with his lips. So near her eye, his brief kiss left its impression. Out of necessity, he rid himself of another wimpy kiss. This time her other cheek, the one left, absorbed brief lip and quickly turned with face, as he backwardly walked away from her. His black jacket’s leather would meet dark air an hour hence and would forget the girl standing near, in front of the traffic control box. The faded and refaded concert bills, posted years ago, told of the box’s oblivious presence. The girl thought for a minute that she would stay there leaning on the dark green box for a few minutes, thinking about his customarily brief kisses. She looked straight ahead at the entrance to the café for about an hour. Noticing the rain was beginning, she hugged her shoulders and slowly walked to the station.

This had been her only afternoon with him in over a month. How brief it had been. She wasn’t exactly surprised when he had said good-bye an hour after he had said his weak hello, but she had hoped that maybe, a month was long enough to make him remember the words he had yelled at her from the street. His had been rude words, harsher than she had ever imagined they could be. She descended down into the subway and left the street’s thoughts high above her head.

May 15, 1979, Tue.