Time Change

My heart has been pierced by a knife,
It has shattered into a million little pieces.
The cold autumn air, normally welcome, has crept into the void and it chills me to the core.
I feel as I am a tree preparing for winter, shutting down,
shedding the leaves and fruit that were a part of me for a time, but no longer.
It's a fucking merry-go-round, this game called love.
Let me on, I want to get on,
get me off this thing, why the fuck did I want on?
It is always the smell of a man that haunts me, the smell of his flesh,
the warmth of his skin, the left side of the bed that now lies empty.
I ache, I cry until tears flow no more, I howl, I scream, and then I am silent.

Hopeful, in the very depths of me that somewhere, the light has not been extinguished forever.

Desert Weekend

My friend Christi has been laid up with a bum hip in Phoenix for over a year now. She's fighting the migraine headache that is United Airlines workmen's comp. She, and many other numbers of my friends, have been injured in the line of duty and the company fights them tooth and nail to get their injuries fixed. Yet again, another reason not to become a flight attendant. So Christi has been asking me to come down for a while now and I had a few days off from work, so I headed south to my former hood Phoenix on Saturday. (I lived in Phoenix for a year in 2004.)

Southwest got me into Phoenix a few minutes late, but quite cheaply. (Try FREE!) There really is something to the idea that with no expectations, the flight can't be too bad. It's still such a novelty, after working for the airlines for 10 years, to have a confirmed seat and know I'm going to get on the flight for sure. On top of that, I get to wear whatever the hell I want. Life is truly about the little things.

The weather in Phoenix was gorgeous, between 75 and 90 degrees during the day and not too hot. The first night, we hit Macayo's and had some good Mexican food and margaritas. We headed back to curiosities and watched most of season 1 of Sex and the City. Sunday, we hung close to home. I slept in late, went running, we watched more Sex and a movie. We also got some decent pizza from Nello's.

Monday, we headed over to Christi's mom's apartment and I carried up a new Gazelle exercise machine that had been waiting at Christi's since Mother's Day. Between the 3 of us mechanically challenged souls, we set up the machine in a reasonable amount of time. I am completely uncoordinated on the elliptical machines. I proved to be slightly more coordinated on the Gazelle, but not really. At least I didn't fall over. We headed back to Christi's and made preparations to head out. Unfortunately, Christi's hip was acting up and she had to bow out of the evening's festivities.

My friend Katrina picked me up around 5 and we were off. On Monday nights in Phoenix, there is a gay Martini bar (Amsterdam) that hosts Martinis and Manicures. All martinis are $5 and they bring in nail techs to give you a mini manicure for $5. It's a great promotion and it used to be the place to be in Phoenix. The after work crowd would come in early and then throughout the night, they would be replaced by queens who needed to freshen up before hitting the town. Currently Central Avenue is all torn up with light rail construction, so the after work crowd never quite materialized. However, sitting at the bar was an old acquaintance from Northwest Airlines in Memphis many a year ago, my friend James. He, Kat, and I quickly tore into some martinis and gabbed about our respective lives and airline gossip. Once an airline employee, always an airline employee.

As the evening progressed, we were joined by my friends Rich and Justin. I have known them for years since we all met in San Francisco in 2002. Rich and Justin discovered the circuit this year and have hit the gym hard. Between the two of them, they have lost a total of 160 pounds this year! I almost didn't recognize them. It was great to see them, as always, and to see them so happy and reenergized. A guy named Mike joined our posse and we put some liquor down! After leaving Amsterdam, we headed over to 5 and Diner to grab some food. Our waiter was named Spinner and I was pleasantly surprised to see that Rich and Justin have not turned into queens that don't eat. (My pet peeve. I don't care if you've got some meat on your bones, but it is a cardinal sin to not eat with me. Breaking bread has been a tradition since the dawn of time.) After eating, we headed over to Charlie's and rounded out the evening dancing. It was a really fun night with good friends, a generous amount of alcohol, and a lot of laughter. I wish Rich, Justin, Kat, and Christi all lived closer, but in reality, with all of us leading such busy lives, we would likely not see as much of each other as we would like. The year I lived in Phoenix, I was so busy commuting with my airline job that I saw very little of any of my friends.


I crashed at Kat's house that night and then she dropped me back at Christi's on Tuesday, just in time for me to pack and get to the airport for my flight home. Southwest left on time and arrived a bit early back into Oakland. All in all, I had a great few days away and it's always nice to come home and sleep in your own bed. My new apartment is quite close to Oakland airport, so it's great to have everything so close and convenient.

I am back to work today and feeling pretty good.

Cuidate a todo.

(I apologize to everyone who is not in photos. I was trying to add more photos, but blogger is not loving me tonight. I promise I will get you guys in the future.)

Movie Friday

I had the pleasure of seeing an amazing film from Argentina this week.

Set in 1969, Valentin is the story of a ten year old boy who lives with his affectionate, but fussy grandmother. His biggest dreams in life are to become an astronaut and to have a family. His mother left when he was very young and his father is too busy to be bothered with taking care of his son. At ten, Valentin is precocious and curious. He is remarkably astute for his age and he does a good job with the cards that he has been dealt. As the film progresses, he strives to make up for the emptiness he feels inside. As a child, he doesn't really have the power to affect such change, but he does the best he can. He was a survivor way before Destiny's Child coined the phrase.

I have been trying to pinpoint exactly why this film spoke to me so deeply. The little boy who plays Valentin (Rodrigo Noya) is radiant. He embodies and humanizes this brave young man in such a magnificent and extraordinary way. The other important major player in this film is the beautiful country of Argentina. I have been to Argentina several times and the architecture and look and feel of the country are difficult to describe. Natives of Buenos Aires refer to it as the Paris of South America, but I don't see Paris. The colors are warm to slightly worn, the architecture and construction is always with dark warm woods, and the cobblestone streets and shops give it a definite European feel, maybe more Italian? Much of Argentina looks like a scene out of Evita. Argentinians have a strong pride in their country and a clearly defined attitude and posh accent which may be where the reference to Paris and the French came from. In any case, it provides a beautiful palate for this film and the characters which inhabit it.

I have a strong attraction to melancholy films such as this. I suppose it relates to my misunderstood childhood growing up fat, gay, and unhappy in a rural environment where no one really got me. I was definitely the pink flamingo in the duck pond. My depression era parents were great and provided me with everything I needed, but they didn't get me on some levels. Films like this take me back to that time in my life and there's a certain sadness attached with that period. Thankfully, my life as an adult is a much happier and more fulfilling time.

This film is a magnificent film and you should all put in on your Netflix lists ASAP. Have a great weekend!

Cuidate.

Movie Friday...kinda late

Warning - Severe nerd alert. This post may contain more than the usual amount of nerdiness you have come to expect from underachieversanonymous.blogspot.com. Keep reading with caution.




I had both heard and read about Wordplay, but I did not intend to see it because it seemed even more nerdy than I am. A documentary about crossword puzzles? In an unexpected twist of fate, the film happened to be playing on British Airways' inflight Documentary channel.

Wordplay documents the phenomenon of crossword puzzles and the people who love them. The king of said group is New York Times crossword puzzle editor and useless information guru Will Shortz. (I am not a huge crossword puzzle fan, but I am a regular NPR listener and Will Shortz does a puzzle segment every Sunday morning on the program Weekend Edition which I enjoy very much.) Shortz created the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, a crossword Olympics so to speak, over 25 years ago. It takes place yearly in Stamford, Connecticut and this film documents one of these contests.

I found it very interesting to see the cross section of people that enjoyed crossword puzzles. Young, old, male, female, straight, gay, famous, unfamous. Jon Stewart and Bill Clinton make notable appearances in the film and the film has a fun and playful vibe to it. The graphics and music are also quite clever and they help build up to a surprisingly suspenseful ending to the film. As winter is coming, this may be the perfect film to watch on a cold or cloudy day when you don't want to leave the house. I was pleasantly surprised by it and I bet you will be too.

Cuidate.

Back to the Grind

It's been a fairly smooth transition back to the real world.

I drove O to work on Monday, then headed to lunch with my friend S. We haven't seen each other for a while, so we had a good time catching up. She's been busy with a new job and other projects and I was really busy before leaving for Europe. It seems that the older we get, the less time we have.

I was afraid I would suck when I got back to work. My job is has little room for error and it took me a couple of hours to get back into the routine of things. I was pleasantly surprised that I sucked less than I would have thought. Summer is a busier time than fall, so it is nice to have return to a quieter workplace than the one I left.

Tonight at work, the girls surprised me with food for my birthday. Tamales, rice, and beans from the Tortilla Factory and an ice cream cake from Baskin Robbins. Damn, it was good. I've started running every other day again, so the gelato handles I had are slowly subsiding. My vacation was great, but I did eat too much. Then again, it was Italy. I make no apologies.

Fall is my favorite time of year. I was born on my grandfather's birthday on October 2nd. He was quite a character, a farmer and a local politician in rural New York State. He called my mother on October 1st and said, "You can't have that baby today! You have to wait until tomorrow, so he'll be born on my birthday." (And you all think I'm boisterous!) My Mom was taking care of my five brothers and sisters while my dad was on deployment in Bermuda at the time. She always tells me that I was born on a gorgeous autumn day in Maine and that I was a very happy, carefree, and low maintenance child. I'm not sure if I buy it, but it sounds like a good recommendation. (Maybe I should put this on my resume? Work Experience - Happy, Carefree, and Low Maintenance Child 1973-1983)

I got a new cell phone today, so I spent the better part of the night transferring numbers from one to the other. My friend E was in town from New York right before I left for Europe. We were in the T Mobile store and I found a phone I liked, but T Mobile service in the East Bay is pretty poor still. So I found an unlocked version on E Bay and it arrived today after sitting in the Post Office over the Columbus Day holiday weekend. Plugged in my Cingular SIM card and we are in business. For some reason, the Cingular signal at my house is very strong. It works for me.

So that's my story. It's nice to be home. Cuidate.

I will forever be a Flight Attendant

A friend forwarded this to me and it cracked me up. I was a flight attendant for almost ten years and this rings so true to me.

How to Tell if You are a Flight Attendant

1. You can eat a four course meal standing at the kitchen counter.
2. You search for a button to flush the toilet.
3. You look for the "crew line" at the grocery store.
4. You can pack for a two week trip to Europe in one roll aboard.
5. All your pens have different hotel names on them.
6. You NEVER unpack.
7. You can recognize pilots by the backs of their heads, but not by their faces.
8. You can tell from 70 yards away if a piece of luggage will fit in the overhead bin.
9. You care about the local news in a city three states away.
10. You can tie a neck scarf 36 ways.
11. You know at least 25 uses for air sick bags, none of which pertain to vomit.
12. You understand and actually use the 24-hour clock.
13. You own 2 sets of uniforms: Slacks that fit and shorts that don't.
14. You don't think in "months" - you think in "bid packs".
15. You always point with two fingers.
16. You get a little too excited by certain types of ice.
17. You stand at the front door and politely say, "Buhbye now, thank you, have a great day!" when someone leaves your home.
18. You can make a sentence using all of the following phrases:
"At this time"
"For your safety"
"Feel free"
"As a reminder"
19. You know what's on the cover of current issues of In Touch, Star, and People.
20. You stop and inspect every fire extinguisher you pass, just to make sure the "gauge is in the green".
21. Your thighs are covered in bruises from armrests and elbows.
22. You wake up and have to look at the hotel stationery to figure out where you are.
23. You refer to cities by their airport codes.
24. Every time the doorbell rings you look at the ceiling.
25. You actually understand every item on this list.

My hat is off to all of my colleagues still flying. It's a tough job.

Cuidate.

Back in the old West

O and I safely arrived back in San Francisco last night. It's good to be home. I spent a good part of today arranging my photos. They are available here for your viewing pleasure.

http://flickr.com/photos/silentbobsf/sets

Click on the set and then Detail View if you want to know what you're looking at.

Cuidate.

Como, Firenze, and Roma

Against my better judgment, I rented a car and O and I set off for Lake Como. I’m not sure why, but I have always seen pictures of the area and been fascinated with the idea of visiting. It’s so beautiful, the palatial villas and small towns around this beautiful body of water and set against a dramatic back drop of tall and gorgeous mountains.

Driving in and around Milan was hell on earth. It’s a very confusing city, small roads, motorbikes, scooters, all driving around with reckless abandon and ignoring most road signs and signals. Once we got on a freeway and left Milan though, things improved. Como is only about 40 kilometers away from Milan and it is the largest town at the southern tip of Lake Como. It’s a charming town with a beautiful cathedral. I had made hotel reservations at a smaller town named Bellagio further up the lake. It’s about 25 kilometers from Como to Bellagio, but this is on a two-lane road that stretches the idea of two lanes. In theory, throughout most of the road, there is room enough for two cars to pass each other traveling in opposite directions. In reality, yeah, not happening. It reminded me a lot of the crazy roads in rural Japan where they post mirrors around blind curves, so you can see who is coming from the opposite direction. There’s a little of that here, but in general, the road is a lot of blind curves and locals walking with their daily shopping or riding their scooters or bicycles in the road oblivious of traffic around them. The posted speed on most of the road is about 40 kilometers an hour or about 30 miles per hour. Locals drive the road at about 60-80 miles per hour. It’s complete insanity.

We reached Bellagio and settled in for a quiet two days. Ferries crisscross the lake all day and take locals, tourists, and their vehicles from small town to small town. We took a ferry from our Bellagio to another smaller village named Varenna and spent a quiet sunny afternoon drinking and reading at a beautiful café overlooking the pristine lake. I consumed multiple cappuccinos and my boyfriend consumed multiple Sex on the Beaches. We had a great couple of days exploring our small towns and enjoying each other.

Thursday morning, we packed up and headed back to Milan. Everything went great until we got back to the city limits of Milan and then proceeded to get lost for 2 hours. It is a total nightmare driving around Italian cities. We finally made it back to the rental car place in one piece with no damage to the car. I gratefully handed back the keys and headed to the station for our train to Florence.

We arrived in Florence several hours later. Several of my friends had extolled the virtues of Florence to me. I’m not sure that anyone mentioned what a zoo the friggin’ city is. I’m not the biggest art connoisseur there is, so I wasn’t expecting to be as excited about the city as some are. We stayed in a lovely pensione near the Duomo in a terrific location. A beautiful and hospitable woman named Tina ran it, but it was not exactly what I had planned on. There was a 1 AM curfew, so we had to always be back before she goes to bed. Kind of an interesting setup. Still, it was very clean and it was kind of like staying back home with your Mom. The city itself drove me insane. You can’t just walk from point A to point B. Streets change names two or three times in as many blocks. I constantly was getting lost and I hate the feeling of not being able to find my way around. The other issue with Florence was the tourists. The city is teeming with them! They are everywhere and there is no escaping them. In the district where we stayed, the prices on food items and basic goods were two to three times higher than anywhere else we had seen elsewhere in Europe. O and I walked around the city and took loads of photos. We also kept up our gelato sampling. We’ve been eating gelato twice a day. It is so good. The best I’ve had thus far has been in Milan while we were shopping one day. O liked one of the first places we ever tried near the Duomo in Milan. That being said, of the fifteen different kinds of gelato we’ve sampled, only one place we didn’t really care for. The rest have been pretty close to heaven on earth. We didn’t end up doing too much in the way of sightseeing in Florence. We walked around town and caught some of the churches and piazzas. Still, after you spend a bunch of time in Italy, you tend to get a bit churched and statued out. They are everywhere.

We spent two days in Florence and I was more than ready to get out of there. On Saturday, we caught our last 2-hour train ride to Rome to complete our trip. We club hopped a bit the first night we arrived here and tried out some of the different gay clubs in Rome. None of them were that great, but it was nice to get out and see what’s out there. O wanted to stay out all night, but I wanted to get the most out of our 3 days here. So we got home at 3 AM and hit the sack. The next day, I woke up and looked at my watch. 12:30 PM! We had closed the blinds in our room and when we woke, the room was still completely dark. So we rallied and headed out for an activity filled day. We headed over to the Coliseum area and toured the ruins of the Forum, Palatine Hill, and the Coliseum. It’s really amazing to see everything in person. We also caught the Piazza Venezia and the Emanuele II monument, very impressive with gorgeous views of Rome. After this, we walked over and had a nice dinner in the Trastevere area on the other side of the Tiber River. I like Rome a lot. It’s much easier to navigate around and is more my kind of town. It’s very urban and has a very international feel to it. You also see a lot of homeless people and it’s not as clean as other European cities like Zurich. It reminds me of New York back in the 80s or 90s. There are a lot of drunken homeless people sleeping around the train stations here. I’m more used to it. O is not such a fan.

O and I watched a movie and then he headed out for another night with the boys. I, on the other hand, feet killing me, opted to stay home.

The next morning, my birthday, I got up early and headed for the Vatican museums. O had gotten home quite late (or early, depending on your version), so he opted to sleep in. (The owner of our hotel in Rome kept saying, “You have to be at the Vatican by 7am.” Yeah, that wasn’t happening.) I arrived at 10 AM and found an extremely long line (over 2 hours). I managed to join a tour group and cut some time off the line. Still, it took me over an hour to get into the museums. I was lucky to have an excellent tour guide who was from Arizona and very informative about the Vatican and the artwork contained within. Vatican City is an enormous museum and one could spend weeks there. I spent a little over 2 hours on the tour there and then continued over to St. Peter’s Basilica, which is amazing. The really fun part, to be honest, was the different nuns and priests all over. All different robes, collars, colors, races, and origins. It’s a very interesting operation and I look forward to coming back one day to see more. The museums were among the best in the world. I was most taken by the sculptures and the frescoes, which line the ceilings of the former palaces of the popes. I’m really not a huge art fan, but these museums must be seen to be believed.

I spent the better part of the day at the Vatican and headed back to the hotel. O met me shortly after my arrival and we planned my birthday dinner. I was attempting to find someplace romantic and quaint, but was having a hard time. Our hotel owners were divided on where to send us, but in the end, recommended a restaurant near Piazza Navona which is lovely. The restaurant did not end up being quaint, but they did have excellent food and we had a nice birthday dinner. After, we were determined to locate the two reputed “best gelato joints in town” before we left Rome. We arrived at the first and found over 100 flavors of gelato. I had limoncello and sour green apple which turned out to be amazing, truly some of the best we’ve had. We then stumbled over to the second gelateria which O proclaimed his favorite limon gelato in all of Italy. We walked a block over and closed out the night at the beautiful Trevi Fountain. I had a wonderful birthday with my sweet boyfriend.

This morning, we packed up and began the long trek home. We fly to London tonight and then home to San Francisco manana. Both of us are looking forward to less chaotic roads, Jamba Juice, our own bed, my Mini Cooper, and Thai food. We have had a wonderful two weeks here, but there is truly no place like home.

Looking forward to seeing and catching up with you all soon. Due to the lack of WiFi hotspots over here, my posts are pictureless for now. I promise to rectify that when I get home to a decent DSL line.

Cuidate.