orange crush

Here's what I can do to avoid working on chapter sixteen: I can blog.

I'm afraid this is gonna be all over the place. I've been trying to encapsulate last night in my brain since I was in the middle of it, and I feel incapable. Molly Venter (pictured) performed a CD release party last night at a tiny little yoga studio on Kerbey Lane. I got a call earlier in the day to see if I could round up some extra chairs. I called on A, who loves to throw parties and has that kind of stuff, and got eight from her.

When I arrived at 7:30, a handsome blond man was loading chairs into the room from a little shed in the yard. He spotted my penny-dotted truck and said he had to have a closer look. He had a German accent and a gentle way about him. His name is R. He said the truck looked like a "belt animal." He couldn't think of the word in English: in German, it's Gürteltier. Come to find out, he was talking about an armadillo. I said, "You have armadillos in Germany?" He said, "No, but we have a word for everything."

He is a friend of the owner of the studio and appointed himself door-watcher, trying to keep the door closed as much as possible to keep the air conditioning in. Since I already had a crush on him, I appointed myself as his assistant. It was fun greeting people, and R and I were making each other laugh a lot.

Early on, he said something about liking big boobs, so I realized that he was not my type (or maybe I should say I'm not his type, seeing as how I don't have boobs at all). That was okay; I called it a "Flash Crush," and made mention of a boyfriend I had in a story I was telling him. So we knew the score and things went on from there.

The little yoga room filled up and the owner told money-taker arm band seller L that we could only hold X amount in the room (I think it was around 70), and when she sold all the arm bands, L told us to put a sign on the door saying the show was SOLD OUT. R jumped on this, made a sign out of a business card, stuck it on the door and locked us inside. But there were still people driving up, and a half dozen people or so wanting to get in.

A couple of songs into the show, people were knocking on the door to the rhythm of M's songs. It was weird. And then they went to a side door -- a couple got in that way, but then I think the owner locked that door. Then the people outside the door R and I were "guarding" opened the window right next to it. I raised the blinds so they could see in. R got agitated by this for awhile. "The air conditioning!" I told him I couldn't close the window on the people because they were mostly my friends out there (and M's friends, too), including A who had loaned us her chairs! Eventually we let four or five more people in, and others were happily gathered around the window.

During the break, R and I followed J out to his car and got high, really high, it was strong shit! I didn't think about the fact that I normally wouldn't get high in a situation like that, probably because I was following my crush out to the car -- even though I already knew he was straight.

When we came back for the second half of the show, I had a couple of emotional and creative breakthroughs, as simple as thinking I wanted to write something inspired by M's songs the way P.T. Anderson was by Aimee Mann for Magnolia. And then I had this idea to get S to write a song inspired by each chapter of my book and have M perform/record it. That would be nice.

But I was having other, much deeper, hard to explain things going on. I was really high and was coming down from the current useless crush and M was singing "Playing For Keeps," and the lyrics were connecting to what I was going through in a very real and bittersweet way. The next song was "Hello Fear," and I don't know if it was during that song or the next one that I noticed that E was singing, or trying to sing along with every word. And I had a sudden realization about E.

I haven't mentioned E yet. I met E awhile back at the Dance. He was one of my earlier useless crushes. We hung out once, I gave him a ride somewhere where a bunch of other Dancers were meeting; his shirt was sweaty from having been dancing and I happened to have one in the truck that he could wear. I dropped by his house unannounced once and it wasn't bad or anything, just a little awkward, I guess. I was going to Dance and dropped by to see if he wanted a ride. I knew he was straight; it wasn't about that. It was really about needing a friend at the time. But it kind of played out, I don't know why, and we stopped hanging out; maybe he didn't like my vibe or something.

Shortly after that was the soup party that S and I threw (a year ago about). I remember E being there and being very animated for a group of people who were piled up on my bed. I didn't think much of it at the time (perhaps because I was recovering from that crush or something). But last night at M's show, hearing E singing along, I suddenly realized that hE and I are very much alike, a little awkward sometimes but also inventive and creative and animated.

What's interesting about E has to do with D, who is a friend of L -- the woman who introduced me to the Dance. The first time D came to Dance, I kind of latched onto him. He was sweet, we had nice conversation. This was back when everybody used to go to LR's house on Friday nights after Dance. I encouraged D to go and once there sat at his knee and fawned over him. He didn't seem particularly put off. I mentioned to L after that -- after I found out that he was her friend -- that he was cute. Her response: "Hm, I don't know if he swings." Which still strikes me as a weird response. Maybe she's more in tune with my energy than I care to admit, but, really, I wasn't asking her to set us up or anything.

After that exchange, the next time I saw D (and I'm not saying the two are connected), he avoided looking at me. I wasn't imagining it; it was very obvious and very weird. That was months ago, and still to this day he hasn't looked me in the eye.

Some time after that, I saw D and E dancing together. And they arrived at M's show together last night. (For the uninitiated, straight men regularly dance together at the Dance; in fact, I'm pretty sure I'm the only regular Dancer who is a gay man.) I hugged E by default; it seemed right, I didn't know what else to do. No biggie. D avoided looking at me; whatever. They've found in each other what I wanted with each of them...well, maybe slightly less, but it's what they wanted with me, perhaps. Or maybe D is afraid of his attraction to me; I seriously think that straight men are drawn to me, "attracted" to me, but most of them probably know where their affections lie and so it doesn't end up being a problem for them (usually just for me), but sometimes it makes men uncomfortable.

When E passed me on the stairs last night, he squeezed my shoulder, which I thought was a sweet gesture.

After M's concert, R followed a group of us to Kerbey Lane Cafe and it was lots of fun, lots of laughs, and good strawberry pancakes.