Mixtape

Tonight I made a mixtape for a boy. I’ve never done that before. I haven’t made a mixtape in years, and I’ve never made one for a guy I liked. I know it’s supposed to be this very delicate science or art form of selecting just the right songs to express just the right sentiment and arranging them so that they compliment each other. It’s kinda making me crazy. That and the nagging sense of the futility and desperation of sending a mixtape to a boy in Michigan who is at best not interested and at worst totally creeped out by me.

But I do like giving people things. I send odd little presents to boys when I have a crush on them. Like books of cowboy poetry. Once, I sent a guy an enormous length of red ribbon and a strip of black lace for Christmas. He’d told me he wanted to be tied up with red ribbon and blindfolded with black lace. I sent them, but sadly we never got to use them.

I guess I sort of have this persistent belief that you can win people’s affection with charming gifts. Essentially, they can be bribed, or failing that, badgered into falling in love with you. It’s a tactic that has rarely proved useful. And somewhere my red ribbon and cowboy poetry sit, neglected. I wonder if those boys still have them (although, come to think of it, I’m pretty sure the cowboy poetry was lost in a house fire). I wonder if they ever look at them and remember me, a weird, overzealous boy, whose efforts at quirky romance always ended up seeming kinda obsessive and creepy.

Here’s the playlist. What do you think?

Side A: Unnecessary Plastic Objects
Love at the Five and Dime – Nancy Griffith
Mary – Liz Phair
Shame – PJ Harvey
Y Control – the Yeah Yeah Yeahs
The Last Beat of My Heart – Siouxsie and the Banshees
Take on Me – Ah-ha
Wicked Game – H.I.M.
Rattlesnakes – Tori Amos
Napoleon – Ani Difranco
Just What I Needed – The Cars

Side B: Wildflowers
Wildflowers – Tom Petty
Too Far From Texas – Stevie Nicks + 1 Dixie Chick
Angry Johnny – Poe
Passin’ Me By – Pharcyde
Square Pegs – Pain
Season of the Witch – Hole
Signs of the Zodiac – Rasputina
Don't Fear the Reaper – (some random cover)
Superstar – Sonic Youth
Keep on Loving You – the Donnas
One Man Guy – Rufus Wainwright
If There is a Chance – the Cardigans

Internext Pix

Jeepers! There are pictures of me all over the Internet! Two weeks ago I was in Florida with the Big Gay Apple crew for Internext, a sort of networking event for internet pornographers. Tons of pictures were taken:

You can read all about the debauchery in my latest Big Gay Apple column.

And check out all the pics:
Here
Here
Here
Here
and Here!
(You know these ain't work safe!)

Birthday Boy

Next Thursday is my 23rd birthday, and like the good little middle class consumerist white boy that I am, I've created a Froogle Wishlist especially for the occasion. Looking over it I realize that it is equal parts perversity and geekiness. It's sort of taken on this weird psychological meaning for me. The desire for material things is apparently the place in my psyche where the comic book nerd and the porn star meet and fuck like they're in a bathroom stall. Such is my life.

The party is at Duvet, Thursday, August 25th, at 11pm. Tell them you're on Jose's list.

Dirty, Sweaty, Smelly

New York is a seething, steaming, fetid mess right now. It’s so hot and humid. The air is thick and oily, like breathing swamp air. It’s dirty and if it had a color it would be a dull, sickening mucous yellow. You can feel it blooming with bacteria. Everyone is sweaty and smelly and swollen, walking around looking wilted in damp, itchy clothes. The sexiness of that shine on people’s skin evaporates when you see the crazed, feverish look in their eyes. And the smell. Everyone stinks.

I don’t know how anyone can even think about having sex in this heat. Even if I could muster up the energy to swim through the nauseating humidity, the idea of touching someone is just too gross for words. It would be like touching raw chicken meat, filthy and slimy and foul.

Last night I was at a birthday party near Times Square where I met this sort-of cute guy. He and his friend had been in the park all afternoon, drinking cheap whiskey and Coke out of coffee thermoses. After steeping in the air-soup out there for hours he smelled of stale sweat that had had time to soak into their clothes and spoil there in the heat. He smelled like the guys who would come into the grocery store where I worked in high school after fishing all day. Cigarettes, sweat, fish, beer.

It made me sort of nauseous. And then I felt bad about thinking that way about him. I felt like a fussy little princess getting all grossed out by the proletariat. It would have served me right if he had smacked my ass and started ordering me around. If he had known what I was thinking he would have shoved me into the bathroom and pressed me up against the wall. He would have taken off his shirt and shoved it in my face. And then he’d make me lick his armpits and suck the sweat off his cock and balls, and I’d have to breathe in the smell of his thick damp pubic hair. And we would have had dirty, sweaty, smelly sex, and I would have deserved it.

9 Songs

The first time I saw Margo Stilley my best friend was making fun of her. I told her to stop and had a crush on Margo for the rest of the day. That was in the fourth grade. We never had a class together, all through middle school and high school. Her brother played soccer with my brother. We had a lot of the same friends. But I don't think we ever actually had a conversation. I don't even remember if she actually graduated with me or if she moved to another school.

Flash forward about six years. I'm reading the Village Voice and there are, like, three different pieces on this one movie, 9 Songs. It's an extremely sexually explicit indie film. Not porn. It was at Sundance. And I recognize the female lead. It's the same Margo Stilley that I went to grade school with. Getting fucked and tied up and masturbating on film.

And here I thought I was going to be the first person from Swansboro, NC, to become famous for being naked on camera. I'm so jealous!