The Cockettes – A Mini Movie Review

I don’t want to define who The Cockettes were, but The Cockettes is the name of a documentary by David Weissman and Bill Weber. The film covers the years 1969 to 1972, when I was 16 to 19 years old.

I watch the movie and think, “Yeah, I knew that was going on. Why didn’t I move to San Francisco and do that scene?” Then I remember the trouble I was getting into in Pompano: Hitchhiking to Greynolds park to score, skipping school to go to parties, watching friends inject.

I was never really made to be a successful drinker. It was always one more, one more. If I was lucky I puked in the toilet, but more likely I only made it to the sink or somewhere in a car (real tough to clean). I had a certain ideology about using drug to expand my consciousness, but wound up just getting high, some of it fun, some of it scary as hell, most of it just boring in retrospect.

Being a teenage kid on the streets in San Francisco would not have been a pretty scene. So I’m grateful for the people who were able to be the Cockettes and grateful to those who put it on film and help me remember the idealism of the late 60’s and early 70’s without having to have been exploited, hooked up, or cracked up. (That came a little later in my life anyway. So did the dresses, heels, blue eye liner, and just a bit of glitter.)

For more on the Cockettes than I could ever tell you see the link:

http://www.grandelusion.com/index.html

Spanky

The Everglades Bar, 1984. He was a cute slip of a boy, very slim, with light brown hair, a very light mustache, and a shit-eating grin. We went back to my place. (I was renting a 2-bedroom house, with Florida room, very cheap from my friend Ted. This was great because as one room got too cluttered I just moved into another room).

Anyway, we went back to my place and he was being coy and somewhat shy. He said, “I have a very smooth ass.” I was planning to find that out for myself. He repeated himself and added, “Do you wanna know why it’s so smooth?” I decided to play along.

Part of the game was that I was to coax the story out of him. He said that he was raised in an orphanage and that the other boys used to pick on him. He kept teasing me along, sweet-talking me, cajoling me into asking him why his ass was so smooth. I had finally asked him in just the right way: C’mon baby, why is your ass so smooth?

He looked at me shyly, looked away quickly, and blurted out, “Spanky!”

I started spanking him, thinking that this was a prelude to some smooth fucking in that smooth ass. Over the knee spanky. Standing up spanky. In the kitchen spanky. In the bedroom spanky. He wanted more spanky. He wanted harder spanky. And the more I gave him and the harder I did it the bigger his grin got. Ear to ear.

Hours later, he had finally had enough spanky and I got what I wanted. My poor hand was sore for three days after.

Moral of the story: Keep a hair brush handy!

Mini Movie Review – Mysterious Skin

I saw a movie called Mysterious Skin with Joseph Gordon-Levitt who played the kid in 3rd Rock from the Sun. It's about how childhood sexual abuse (from the same perpetrator) affected two very different boys in two very different ways. I am so impressed with the film and with Joseph as an actor. It was a very difficult film to watch at times - not necessarily because of the abuse, but more because of Neil’s (Joseph’s character) experiences as a hustler in NYC and watching the catharsis of Neil and especially Brian, the other boy (played by Brady Corbet). 

Thank You George McGovern!

Seeing George McGovern make the book tour rounds on C-SPAN brings back the memory of election night 1972. I had been working on the McGovern campaign for four days. (I knew nothing about politics, but my friend Chris was working on the campaign and I started tagging along.)

On Election Day I had been driving people to the polls, most of who apparently voted for Nixon. I went back to the local McGovern headquarters after the polls closed and was hanging out. This woman walked in, pulled some beers out of her purse and said, “Who wants one?” I do! I do!

Her name was Diane. She was 29; I was 19. We wound up hanging out together and went to the Victory Party together – it was already paid for. She taught me how to drink tequila shots with the salt and lime. Since we were Democrats we continued drinking at a house party.

Somewhere along the line we wound up in the back seat of my ’62 Plymouth and I lost my virginity – with women anyway. Around 5 in the morning I wanted to go another round, but she told me she had to go home and make lunch for her husband to bring to work.

For some reason, I remember the menu: Sliced egg sandwiches.