Conclusions

At times in my life, I've managed to reach a few conclusions about myself. I'm 44 years old, and at that age, you just realize certain things about yourself. Among the observations that I've made recently:

• I'm never going to get a tattoo. So many of my students have been permanently inked, and they're barely 20 years old. I look at their new tattoos and listen to them talk about how they love getting their bodies altered, and I realize that this just isn't for me. I do find them somewhat intriguing on other people, but even then, it's not a particular turn-on.
• Likewise, I'm never going to get anything pierced. Maybe I'm just too vanilla; perhaps that's the realization I should be having. I don't know. I just don't feel as if I'm missing any holes in my body at this point. I know one student who has a ladder of piercings up her neck. Others have noses and lips and eyebrows and god-only-knows-what-else pierced. Perhaps these are the province of the young only, but then I didn't particularly want to be pierced when I was younger either.
• I'm never going to work at a research university, teaching only a couple of classes a year and devoting the rest of my time to writing academic books with the hope of receiving tenure. At one point, when I was still taking classes in graduate school, that was the dream. Now I think I'd much rather teach a lot of people, try my best to help as many students as possible become better writers. I don't think I'll ever desire the solitary life of the academic, devoting hours and hours to the writing of critical essays and collections of my thoughts to put on the bookshelves of libraries everywhere to collect dust.
• I'm never going to get my hair back. The pelt is slowly vanishing. I miss it already. I've tried some products (some ointments and so forth--such a strange word, "ointment"), but nothing really works. I'm too blase about my hair loss to get plugs or transplants or whatever terminology is in vogue these days. At some point, I guess it's going to necessitate shaving off what's left of my hair. I used to have such thick hair. Those days are long gone now. Even though my hair never "did" anything except hang there or stick out at the wrong places, I would love to have it all back again the way it was 10 years ago.
• I'm never going to become a manager or administrator. I see friends of mine who are, and they seem to be rather unhappy people. They have so much stress in their lives, and they seem forever overwhelmed by bureaucratic detail. And they must deal with some of the most disagreeable people. At least with teaching I can see individual or group progress, and some of the students are grateful or even happy. I'm not sure managers or administrators ever see that.
• I'm never moving back to Mississippi or Alabama. I can barely stand to spend more than two or three days there at Thanksgiving. In fact, it's been several years now since I've gone home for Thanksgiving. I do miss some of the people there, and I do still have family there. But I have no desire to be there permanently myself. My heart truly is in and with Los Angeles. Who knew that a guy who was born in the country of northeast Mississippi would grow up to realize that he's truly a "city boy"?
• I'm never going to have a 28-inch waist again. I like to eat, but I don't particularly care to exercise. I have a waistline of about 35 inches these days. I never thought that was particularly fat, but I do live in the Los Angeles area. That means that I'm "California fat" to people here--or "skinny fat," as they say on Rick and Steve. I suppose if the workload ever permits, I'll get back to going to the gym and running and all of the other things I used to have time to do. Maybe I could shed a few pounds that way, but it's never going to be 28 inches again. I suppose it's not possible to return to one's college weight easily these days (unless you've been steadily working on it since college, and I haven't).

I'm sure as I get older, I'll come to even more realizations. A friend and I discussed recently how every decade seems to bring a new set of surprises. When you turn 20, you start to realize things about yourself, ways that you are vastly different from when you were a teenager. At 30, you have new revelations that you couldn't have anticipated in your 20s, a truer sense of maturity. And now after having passed 40, I've gotten to the seven listed above. Undoubtedly, there are more to follow. Stay tuned.

Thoughts on the King of/and DVRs

After Time Warner took over as the cable provider for my area, they included an intriguing feature as a part of the package to which I subscribed: a digital video recorder. I realize I'm late to this game, that everyone has been using Tivo for years now, but this metal box has turned out to be a new obsession of mine. I have more hours of stuff recorded now than I could probably watch by the end of the year if I stopped working and just devoted myself fulltime to what I have stored already. Earlier this year, I started trying to watch all of the films that have ever been nominated for Best Picture (winner or not), and the DVR just makes it too easy. About 30 such films are broadcast each week so you can imagine that I fill up the recorder all the time, and I get behind very often too. (No, I'm not watching thirty films each week. Rest easy. I still have a semblance of a life away from the TV.)

Occasionally, however, I find space and time for something other than an allegedly "award-worthy" film. Such was the case with a documentary that I recorded in August and finally watched this past weekend: Elvis: That's the Way It Is. I have a complicated history with the King (or "Alvin," as a friend and I used to call him). We're both from the same region of Mississippi, although I'm from a little town even farther north and east than Tupelo. So I grew up with the story (the legend? the myth?) of the poor boy who made good. My mother was always a fan (still is); when she was a teenager, she had a skirt covered with images of him (an article of clothing that would undoubtedly be worth a lot on Ebay these days but which was cut into pieces years ago to be used in making a quilt). I can also recall watching "Elvis: Aloha from Hawaii" with my grandmother. The day he died in 1977 (the 30-year anniversary of which prompted the showing of Elvis: That's the Way It Is and various other of his films) members of my family managed to get their hands on several copies of the Memphis Press-Scimitar, a newspaper long since defunct but the one that "broke" the news first that late summer day when I was 14 years old.

I've seen Elvis performances on film many times, including his "comeback special" where he wears that black leather outfit (don't act like you don't know the one I'm talking about). But this particular documentary was new for me. I thought I had seen it before, but I couldn't recall any of it once I started watching it. Reportedly, this concert at the International Hotel in Las Vegas was a return to live performing for Elvis after all of those years in Hollywood toiling away at films like Clambake, Harum Scarum, Change of Habit, et al. The film starts with rehearsals here in Los Angeles at the old MGM studios. Elvis sports those huge, wicked sideburns he grew in the early '70s, and he looks incredibly fit and very tan when he walks into the rehearsal studio. With that disheveled black hair and that perpetual impish twinkle in his eye, he manages to sing and joke his way through a variety of songs. Before he even steps onto the stage for the live performance, you're entranced.

I know he became a parody of himself toward the end. I know the drugs and the drinking led to his demise. I know that so many people today only know the "fat Elvis" of later years, not realizing that was a very, very brief period of time in his life. People go to Graceland and see the gaudiness of his home; they buy the vials of "real Elvis sweat" and alleged fragments of his gold lame outfit as if they were paying for indulgences during the Middle Ages. People go to the Nixon Museum in Yorba Linda just to buy a t-shirt featuring him and Nixon shaking hands. But you forget all of that--at least I did--while you're watching him perform live.

I'll admit that I wasn't a huge Elvis fan when I was growing up. Truthfully, I don't even remember many of his songs being played on the radio because he wasn't the hottest singer on the charts at the time. I'm sure I must have occasionally seen him on TV, but none of those appearances resonate with me now save for the Hawaii concert and that's because it was "live via satellite": a big deal in those days because it was still new technology. I don't even know that he was a truly remarkable singer for most of his career. Sometimes he would exercise those muscles and perform in a way that made you realize how much power he had, but he often chose pretty lousy material and frequently sang it haphazardly. (In that way, he reminds me a great deal of Dean Martin, another man with a remarkable voice who never really seemed to stretch himself enough artistically.) In my mind, the only song in the film that even approaches greatness in terms of his performance is "Suspicious Minds." (Maybe "Poke Salad Annie," but that has a lot to do with his physicality rather than his voice.) There's certainly an exciting rawness to his early recordings, but he was reaching a peak in his talent during the late '60s and early '70s in terms of his vocal quality; listen to some of his gospel recordings from that time if you want the proof.

But this movie reminded me of some things about him that I had forgotten or perhaps not even realized. He's wearing a series of those white jumpsuits that would become so iconic. There's a different one for each night at the International. And they're pretty wild: fringed, belted, embellished. And each one has a v-neck that's split down to his navel. You can see the definition of his chest and just how tan he is. (I kept thinking how he would fit right in today in West Hollywood; he has that same body type that is so prized nowadays, and he was fond of showing off his body to its best advantage.) These outfits are pretty form-fitting, and Elvis looks amazing in them. Say what you will about how ridiculous he might have looked in later years when he gained weight, but he knew how to fill out that white polyester in 1970. He's sexy, and when he flashes that crooked grin or half-smile of his, you can easily see why so many people screamed when they saw him perform live. He doesn't need to swivel his hips--although he can't keep that left leg still--to draw the crowd's attention any longer.

Elvis was also willing to take some gambles in his shows. He had back-up singers who were black (The Sweet Inspirations) and white (The Imperials). And watching him rehearse with them, you realize just how at ease he was with people of different races. He also chose songs outside of his own repertoire. He sings music from the Righteous Brothers, the Beatles, even the Bee Gees. This was not some rehashed traveling greatest-hits package he's singing. This was a man showing that he was still "current." And even though he's singing someone else's hits, he performs them in his own way; he reinterprets these tunes rather than merely copying them.

What most struck me about Elvis in this film, though, was his rapport with the audience. He is so clearly at ease with them; you can see that he loves them, that he needs them. He plays with them throughout the concert, making jokes and messing up lyrics just to get a laugh or a smile from them. He's pretty risque at times too; he makes several off-color remarks throughout the film. And he kisses dozens of people in the audience--on the mouth, directly, not a peck on the cheek. He goes out into the audience while singing "Love Me Tender," and the women line up to kiss him and be kissed by him. It's astonishing. I can't imagine any performers doing that today. They'd be too afraid.

I'm not sure what compelled me to record this film, and I can't really figure out what has compelled me to write about it and/or Elvis now. About a decade after he passed away, I did write a poem about visiting his birthplace in Tupelo. It was a pretty somber poem about the emotions you feel as you see just how little he started life with and then realize just how ridiculously out of control his life became. So maybe this film was another way to remember him in a good way, as a man enjoying himself in his chosen profession. Maybe I was just wondering what Elvis was like during that time, how he looked, how ready he was for performing--whether he still had "it" at that point. I record a lot of stuff now on this DVR and oftentimes never return to it. Things stay trapped in that machine for months. Sometimes I even delete a program I've recorded because I can't recall what possessed me to think I wanted to see it in the first place. However, I'm glad I took a chance on this one.

The Fire This Time

Last week Mickey's, a nightclub in West Hollywood, caught on fire. A couple of days after the fire, I got to climb onto the roof of the building next to it and see how extensive the damage was/is. From the roof all you can see are these large black gashes from the fire, charred holes open to the sky. The inside of the club must be completely gone. It was a shock to see what had happened to this place that I have probably known longer than almost anywhere else in Los Angeles.

I'm no longer a club-goer. I don't really care for drinking at this point in my life, and all of the men in the clubs seem to be either teenagers or just out of their teen years, far too young for me to find them attractive or appealing (and vice versa). I had only been to Mickey's once in the past 15 years. I wound up there on an ill-fated date one night a couple of years ago; I knew he wasn't "the one" when he kept ogling the strippers and checking out the rest of the club patrons all night long instead of talking directly to me. (Sometimes the signs are subtle; sometimes they aren't.) So I'm not feeling nostalgic for Mickey's because I was a "regular" there. Actually, I only went to Mickey's a few times before I found the club that I would call "home": Rage. That was the club that I eventually considered a regular part of my weekends in my late 20s.

However, Mickey's was the first club I went into after I got here in 1990. I can't recall why I picked it out of all of the rest of them on Santa Monica Boulevard. I paid my fee and walked in. Then I proceeded to be so overwhelmed by the number of gay men in one place that I didn't speak to anyone else all night long. At one point, a handsome guy walked up to me and said, "If you don't move soon, someone is going to hang a picture on you by mistake." All I could manage was a weak smile; I didn't recover the power of speech for another few days. I guess I didn't realize just how young and very naive I still was, even at the then-age of 27 (an age at which most gay men are almost considered "over the hill" nowadays).

I had been to gay clubs before, even quite a few of them in Alabama (a fact which will, no doubt, surprise some people). So it wasn't the shock of the new. I think it really was the number of people in one place. Here was one club on a street of clubs, and it was packed. Here was a large group of gay men while outside in the other clubs and in A Different Light and the restaurants and coffeehouses, there were many, many others. I truly began to feel like there was a community for me here. It's as if I had a sense even then that I had found a place where I could feel comfortable being who I am, a feeling I never fully seemed to have in Mississippi or Alabama; in fact, I still feel completely out of sorts in many ways when I return to either state. But I did feel that way in this city on that night. Oddly, it took a place with strippers and a disco ball (I remember a disco ball, but that may be my overactive imagination) and loud music and a full bar and handsome men to make me feel a sense of comfort.

Now it's 17 years later, and Mickey's is no more. I have no idea if it will be rebuilt or not. I've been unable to find out much about the place since the fire. Even if they (whoever "they" are) rebuild, I'm not really likely to go back. Still, I'm feeling a sense of loss. A part of my past--a small part, perhaps, but still a significant one--is gone. I have no memorabilia from the place, no flyer or photos or keepsake or totem. All I have now are the memories of that slightly scared Mississippi boy walking into a bar in the city that he would eventually come to call home.