December 31, 2014

More Auld Friends

Arriving in Seattle in the middle 60’s, I found no lasting friends, but my family, about whom I’ll write something soon, found me. For the rest of that decade, besides my academic career, they were the focus of my life. I do regret not having even one close friend from those years, just the family. At least frequent letters to and from Lee in New Orleans were an emotional connection to the world outside the ever-growing family.

In Milwaukee in the summer of 1970 when my wife and I split up, I rather quickly I found gay friends. Make that lovers, who became lasting friends. They’re gone now, Ken and Kenny, my simultaneous loves. Ken and I were close through many decades, particularly the 70’s in DC, until he passed away around 2010. My dancing boy Kenny only survived until around 1994. The plague, of course. Both will be in a future memoire about my Hippie Poet persona.

As far as the 70’s in DC went, Lee/Chas and Ken, from New Orleans and Milwaukee respectively, were my old comrades. As was Charles from Tulane, my platonic partner in the house and myriad interests. I had some very special lovers then, but either the affairs or they themselves ended far too soon. I hope someday that all these lost friends can live again in a memoire about my Courtesan persona.

After a brief sojourn in New York, I arrived in Santa Fe in 1981 as a mature gay gentleman and ran smack dab into my lover/partner of the next 11 years. That’s also a tale that must await a memoire—if I live long enough and the creek don’t rise.

As you may notice, my two high school friends, Cookie and Dennis, and two “lady friends,” Jane and Frances, all mentioned in the previous post, are my only surviving auld friends. However, you couldn’t really call them close after so long and across all the distance.

Besides my family, here in Santa Fe I now have newer close friends. Don, now 83, may qualify as auld, or at least old. He and I met at a gay dinner group years ago and started our own dining tradition most Monday evenings. We share many opinions, concerns, perspectives, previously married backgrounds, and a healthy appreciation of nubile youths. Don is amused that I go out dancing and imagines that some night some guy is going to snap me up. I don’t.

There is one other amigo here in New Mexico you might call auld, or at least viejo, though he’s a bit younger than I. Douglas and I met back in 1981 when he was the roommate of that partner mentioned above, and our friendly association drifted lackadaisically along through the 80’s.

After I got single again in the 90’s, we forged a real, warm friendship, sharing events, trips, and outings all over the place. Witness the silly fact that I call him by affectionate nicknames. He calls himself Doogie, but I’ve gone through Doogaloo and Dugalug to Great Doogly-Moogly (per The Simpsons). All along I’d considered the Dugless One an appealing and interesting Santa Fe new-age type, not too whacked out, and charmingly peace-love and nature connected. Doogie’s spiritual enterprise has long been running a program of intercultural outings called Earthwalks, and he’s focusing on it again in his retirement.

Well, I guess that’s it for any auld friends. Thank goodness I haven’t lost them all yet. Those lost ones are always with me, be they long-time or only temporary human connections. Often when this old dame goes out, like I will tonight to Molly’s Kitchen, they’ll come and ride with me in this old but still kicking body, living again in our dance.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

December 29, 2014

Auld Lang Friends

Like always, as I wind down this Old Year, I’m mindful of all the wonderful friends and lovers in my life. Of course, many of them have gone to their rewards, but they still live on in me. Fortunately, some from my past still live on in fact.

Just the other day I phoned Cookie, a high school neighbor friend in Arkansas, and we happily reported that we’re both still kicking, though as she said, not very high. She married my best friend in junior high, who deceased several years ago. My best friend in high school was Dennis, and we’ve been in loose touch again since our 50^th Reunion back in 2010. After the Navy, he married and, like Cookie, made a full life in those woods I left behind in 1960. I visited them a year or so ago and hope to do so again this spring coming.

Lasting friends from New Orleans were fewer than one might think, given my social history there. Those still kicking are actually women friends. I’ve never “dated” a girl—just “went out” with them. Gorgeous blonde Jane and I spent most nights in La Casa de los Marinos dancing mad merengues—or resting in the Gin Mill a few blocks away, and saw countless dazed dawns over Decatur Street. She now lives in San Miguel de Allende and visited with me in Santa Fe some years ago. We email periodically.

Another from that period is Frances, now living in Seattle. She was an Art History grad whom my beloved Indian Desai and I met one night in Cosimo’s, a jazz place on Burgundy, and took to the Gin Mill to see the lowlife. They got together, and I got alone. Frances and I have kept in touch through the other chapters in our lives with visits, cards, and emails. Desai went back to India where he married, and we lost touch in the 70’s. I sure hope he’s still kicking.

I also “went out” to La Casa de los Marinos with another woman, Martha, a student from Southeastern in Hammond with wild blonde hair and arresting blue eyes. She and I created a leaping dance we called “The President Kennedy.” Martha lives (I hope) in Arcata CA, a militant vegan lesbian grandmother known locally as Granny Green Genes. We haven’t been in touch for a few years, but at this late date, I’m afraid to check on her.

A platonic friend from back then was Lee (later Chas). Faithful correspondents through the rest of the 60’s, we hung out together when I moved back to New Orleans in ’71. In ’72 we moved to Washington DC together and were close neighbors throughout that decade. But when I moved off to New York, we lost contact for some fifteen years. In the late 90’s he got back in contact, and we resumed our old closeness. For several years he came out to Santa Fe in the summers for the Santa Fe Opera season and would stay the weeks with me. He died in 2003.

Not quite so lengthy was my platonic friendship with Charles, a faerie sister from Tulane. We weren’t all that close in New Orleans but accidentally re-connected in an elevator in a Chicago hotel some years later. When I went back to Ann Arbor in ’72 for dissertation work, I moved in with him and his lover for a couple months. Then Charles moved to Washington DC right after Chas and I did, and we wound up buying a Victorian house together at Logan Circle.

1320 Rhode Island Avenue NW–The Four Belles

Charles is a special story unto himself, a tragic drama lasting till he passed on in 1992. On that sad note, I’m getting all choked up, so let me save other memorials for another time. Sniffle.

December 15, 2014

Tattoo Rant

Now that I’ve let everybody in on one of my most intimate eccentricities, I don’t imagine that the rest of them would shock you. So I’ll leave those disclosures for another time. Instead, I’ll save you the trouble of reminding me and do a rant right now from my un-inked perspective about tattoos, relying largely on my spa experience.

Besides the physical exercise, going to the gym in the daytime (as well as out dancing at night), provides many eyefuls of the tattooed and otherwise ornamented bodies of young folk. Sadly, I usually can’t discern details of the vast (and idiosyncratic) patterns or appreciate the artistic statements, since staring isn’t polite.

(As a sociological observation, I’ve been noting now at the EDM sessions of the local twenty-somethings that they don’t seem to be quite as taken with tattoos and piercings as are their elders. I’m even seeing more “kids” nowadays at the Spa without a mark on their bods.)

Certainly some folks of my vintage have tats, but I think I’ll make do with my cockadoodle. What I can’t quite grasp is the frame of mind somebody must be in to post some of the weird things I see as tattoos. Of course, chacun á son weird. Personally, I like more of the ornamental design stuff than the pictorial or narrative. (One guy has a fox chasing a rabbit across his belly.)

By me there’s something classy about the patterned armband or ankle-band, but for some reason I find those maniacal Maori shoulders and orientally intricate sleeves personally disturbing. But some of the full-back tableaus are impressive. Aesthetically, I’d prefer more cohesive patterns, something more of an overall design.

In my historical wanderings, I’ve run across lots of tattoos amongst Native Americans. There were some spectacular full-body tattoos amongst the extinct Timucua people in northern Florida. They were painted by the artist Jacques le Moyne (around 1565) while at the ill-fated French settlement of Fort Caroline. The best I can do for an illustration is a detail from an engraving of one of his lost paintings.

Timucuan full-body tattoo

Full-body patterns like that are probably more than most folks could put up with, I suppose. But I do wonder why facial tattoos are so neglected. They would be a sure way to (modestly) get people look at your body art. While enthralled long ago by the Indian mounds, I ran across some great line-art engraved on shell from the Mississippian site called Spiro Mounds in Oklahoma, some of which can be seen re-drawn in my Gallery of Pre-Columbian Artifacts. My favorite is the head of a warrior with the so called “forked-eye” tattoo and a remarkable hairdo and headdress.

Warrior Head with forked eye tattoo

In my Aztec obsession I’ve run across any number of facial tattoos. Frequently faces were sectioned in different solid colors, and they used eye embellishments. It would seem that such designs were the identifying “signatures” or “trademarks” of specific individuals. Talk about having an unmistakable identity. Here are four I’ve drawn on authority of the marvelous Codex Nuttall which is admittedly of Mixtec origin, but what the hay! Don’t miss the other details including the (real) beards.

Aztec/Mixtec facial tattoos

Native American tattooing traditions continued long after European contact and the colonies. In the late 18^th century a young Creek gentleman named merely John combined ink and jewelry in an elegant fashion statement. Here’s my rendition of a 1790 drawing of John by the early American artist John Trumbull.

John the Creek

By the way, I have a superb suggestion for truly personalizing tattoos. Considering the Aztec picture-writing of dates in their ceremonial calendar, folks could very easily sport their personal Aztec birthday-names as identity-tattoos. All you’d need to do is consult the tonalpohualli to find out your number-day name, grab one of my day-signs, slap the appropriate number of dots in whatever arrangement around it, and there you go. Here’s one for someone born on the day Five Flower (which is also the day-name of their god of games and parties).

Five Flower

Not to belabor the subject, though I will, I rather think that some of my Aztec deities would love to ride on somebody’s bare back. Take for instance, Itzpapalotl, The Obsidian Butterfly (or Clawed Butterfly), the goddess of the night and stars.

Itzpapalotl, The Obsidian Butterfly

Go for it—the colors are entirely up to you.

December 4, 2014

THE AZTECS ARE BACK!

In case you guys wonder why I let several months go by after my first posting, it was because I was working on both the next instalment of memoir and on drawing. I decided that my Aztec deity images and book on the ceremonial calendar weren’t of much use to anyone in those formats. People should have some way to get involved in the images and learn about the Aztec gods and goddesses, I figured, and what better way than to work with them the way I did (with such fun) coloring them for the book.

So I’m doing a coloring book. It’s a rather intensive project to rework the images into full-scale icons in the barbaric splendor of the historical codices. (In a weird way, I feel like a “santero,” the traditional New Mexico painter of saints.) I’m calling it rather appropriately YE GODS! THE AZTEC ICONS and also planning an illustrated encyclopedia of the Aztec deities to be called YE GODS! THE AZTEC PANTHEON.

Shooting for a total of 26, I have most of the basic images, but turning them into the icons is taking a while. The project could easily take another year—or more. And it gives me something to do in my dotage. Presently I’m in the middle of the third in alphabetical order, so at least I can give you the first as an example: ATL, the deified element of Water.

ATL, Aztec God of Water

Click here to download the icon with a caption page and model images from the Aztec Codices.

It is also available in freely sizable vector drawings on the coloring book page.

§§

November 20, 2014

NIGHTLIFE IN SANTA FE

[Thanks for and to several compliments on my website (notably chock full of interesting stuff) and my first blog posting about dancing, I think I’m ready to get regular about this thing. While in my youth I used to have trouble prioritizing inspirations, as I got older it got to be more of a yes or no question. Now at my venerable age, I’ve got to balance the time and attention I give to several weighty priorities.

My multi-tasking isn’t doing several things at once, but rather synchronously. I seem to turn focus like a searchlight from one obsession to another, largely by sheer will-power—and calendar-power. If I’m going to blog, by golly, it better be on the calendar. So, for the moment, I’m going to mark Thursdays for new postings. Keep checking in on me!]

Regarding nightlife and dancing in Santa Fe NM, as I mentioned before, for the past few years the Rouge Cat had been Santa Fe’s more or less gay dance bar. To my horror, without any fanfare or folderol, soon after my first posting it closed. In fond memoriam of the Rouge Cat, here’s a cursory history of my dancing venues here in Santa Fe.

On visits in the late 70’s, I’d go to the Senate Lounge, a venerable bar just around the corner from the bus station. It was my first experience of a “mixed” bar. By the time I moved to Santa Fe for real in 1983, the Senate was gone, and being in a relationship, I didn’t go out very much. Still, there were a few dance occasions at a great place called Club West on Alameda and another called El Paseo on San Francisco Street. Then came the Cargo Club followed by Club Luna on Cerrrillos (or the other way around?). After that my partnered years became a blur, and by the early 90’s I didn’t know from night spots.

Once single again in those early 90’s, I danced at the Club 414 on Old Santa Fe Trail, where I first encountered Oona’s disco wildness. I found myself dancing on a table, starting a tradition of six or seven tables along one wall as go-go boy stands. Within a year or so the action moved to the Drama Club on Guadalupe Street, with a stage where we danced like wild people and had great holiday parties for hot, shirtless frenzies. It reigned for a few years, only to be replaced by the same owners’ Paramount, a glitzy space on the corner of Montezuma and Sandoval. That was a glorious institution for several years hosting Oona’s regular Wednesday Trash Disco, and life was exceedingly good. But it closed; they tore it down, dug an enormous hole, and built the new Santa Fe County Courthouse. Sic transit gloria.

With the passing of the Paramount, there was a drought for some time (years?) until Oona started dance nights at the lounge at Rainbow Vision, a gay retirement community, now called something less vivid. There was a little stage where I shook my beauty with vigor and sweaty abandon. Then the entrepreneurial Paramount owner opened the Rouge Cat, and the dance scene got a new lease on life. For about four years.

Since my first posting, dancing this year was really difficult, with an occasional youth party at Molly’s Kitchen with electronic dance music (EDM, which I’m trying to appreciate) or a couple hugely appreciated Trash Disco nights at the Palace Restaurant. That is, up till a month or so ago when there was a revolution in Santa Fe’s nightlife. Maybe it had something to do with the election of Javier Gonzales as the city’s new mayor?

Suddenly music events started happening all over the place on the weekend nights, and walking around the (old) downtown almost reminded me of the (old) French Quarter. What’s more, wonder of wonders, two new dance bars have opened! First the Skylight on San Francisco, a huge place with a gallery overlooking the dance floor, and then the Blue Rooster, a reincarnation of the Rouge Cat, now as a self-proclaimed gay bar, with the familiar dance floor downstairs and Oona presiding on Saturday nights.

You’d think I’d be in hog heaven, but last weekend it was cold out and I wasn’t really feeling like driving downtown. Instead, I realized that with that great Pandora online music system it was no problem. I pulled up a “cumbia colombiana” station and danced shirtless and in slippers in my living room for a good hour and a half. Dancing with eyes closed, I peeled away a half century and was once again in the mad third room of La Casa de los Marinos. Maybe tonight I’ll pull up Greek and visit the Gin Mill, but on Saturday I’ll be at the Blue Rooster. Promise.

January 28, 2014

The Motto

Welcome, readers, to the inaugural issue of my blog. First, I must deliver a

MESSAGE FROM ALPHA CENTAURI

I want to have come unto your world
Like a comet, or better,
A wandering sun,
Spark of invisible systems,
Flashing a solar radiance
On the night sides of your eyes.
I want to burst through your bonds
Like a bullet, or rather,
A vagrant ion,
Quark of divisible atoms,
Leading fission’s chain dance
Out the rare earths of your arms.

1969

So, hello. Next, you should know that the motto in the banner above is my new one for this eighth incarnation. For years I’d affectionately applied it to my mother, who square-danced vigorously into her nineties, and when she passed away recently, I had to accept that I’m now the old dame.

This motto was inspired by a small book by Don Marquis called “Archy and Mehitabel” (1927), the title characters respectively a free-verse poet reborn as a cockroach and an alley cat who is Cleopatra reincarnated. It’s adapted from a line in “mehitabel sings a song.” (Archy can’t type caps or punctuation.)

I first started dancing as a teen to the rock and roll of the mid-fifties, a rabid fan of American Bandstand with all the groovy moves. In my early sixties debauch in Latin and Greek bars, I danced mystical rituals in Dionysian ecstasy, proclaiming: TO DANCE IS TO REJOICE.

In young adulthood, comic-strip beagle Snoopy gave me a new motto: TO DANCE IS TO LIVE, which served well through the seventies. In my mature partnered years in Santa Fe, dancing was rare since nightlife wasn’t part of domestic routines. Once again a free (old) agent, in the early nineties I started dancing disco with the philosophical motto: I DANCE, THEREFORE I AM.

Now it’s: THERE’S DANCE IN THE OLD DAME YET!

For some years I’ve been going to the Rouge Cat and hoping my favorite DJ Oona’s “spinning.” For many years she did Trash Disco on Wednesday nights in various clubs, and I merrily did my thing wherever she reigned. Now she only does Saturdays and plays the good trashy stuff early on, switching at prime time to the contemporary style of music. (It sounds like a pile-driver on speed. Small wonder the young folks can’t seem to find a rhythm to dance to.)

Consequently, I sometimes resort to dancing to CDs at home in the hall, but I miss the synergy of the dance floor (and the volume). Curiously, there are some great dance rhythms in classical music, but a Beethoven symphony is exhausting for an old dame.

HIGHLIGHTS IN MY DANCING HISTORY

In high school in Arkansas, I appeared on the local television station’s teen hop. Somebody took several of us, including my sister Judy, to Texarkana to KCMC-TV. I was thrilled to dance in front of TV cameras just like the kids on Bandstand but didn’t feel any different for being televised. I now find a smug comfort thinking that those images of me rock and rolling are still radiating out through the universe, by now maybe approaching Alpha Centauri.

You wouldn’t think that in three years of almost nightly debauched dancing in New Orleans, I’d be able to pick out a highlight. But I can—it shines in my memory like a baroque altarpiece. Must have been Mardi Gras of 1962 when I went as a Cossack (actually the Russian poet Sergey Yesenin, husband of Isadora Duncan). At the end of the Third Room of La Casa de los Marinos, I danced transcendent cumbias and merengues on top of the roaring rainbow Wurlitzer with a beautiful Mexican boy in full mariachi finery—against a wall of swirling, dreamlike murals. Maybe I glorify it a bit, but that night was a joy one doesn’t experience twice.

After some years of marital immobility, in 1969 I suddenly found myself briefly alone and on the town in Washington DC. In a basement gay bar called Lou’s Hideaway right on Pennsylvania Avenue, next-door neighbors with the new FBI building and the National Archives, I danced with an exquisite Latino boy called Bolo to “The Age of Aquarius” and forgot all about being a married man. Again an unrepeatable joy. Let the sun shine in!

About a quarter-century later, after sublimating my dance first in running and then in working out at the gym, I met some young guys who took me on a trip to Key West. We went to a big gay bar—not the Monster, but which one I can’t recall—and I had an epiphany. To my utter amazement I found it now completely comme il faut to dance all by oneself. That night I danced up a seriously memorable storm of jubilation, and I’ve ridden its winds ever since.

Another night like no other was in 1997 after my younger daughter Aimée’s wedding when the party moved to the Drama Club on Guadalupe Street, then the hot gay spot in town, and made a splash in our gowns and tuxedos. The father of the bride danced solo on one stand, his nephew up on another with a drag queen named Gina, and his mother up on the stage with an older lesbian lady, while bride and groom and other family members kept lower profiles on the floor. Too bad no one took pictures!

Just one more. It was early on in this new millennium when the Paramount was still open, (its site now obliterated by the Santa Fe County Courthouse). For maybe six years it was the most fabulous dance bar with incredible Trash Disco on Wednesdays and wild weekends. Once I found myself more or less dancing with an attractive blond guy who never even looked at me, but his moves were finely in tune with mine, an exquisite communication. After a while I looked at him more closely, appreciatively, and recognized Leonardo DiCaprio—who danced away into the crowd without look or word. Silly as it sounds, I felt blessed.

Richard Balthazar

there's dance in the old dame yet!