Track Mangoes

In No Particular Order


The Graduate, (1967)
The emblem of adolescence. When Benjamin's father asks him, "don't you think that idea is a little half baked," Ben replies:

Network, (1976)
Max says his final goodbyes to a trope of the modern ecological system:


Gone with the Wind (1939)
Tearing down her mother's green velvet drapes, Scarlett O'Hara declares:


Vertigo, (1958)
Kim Novak as the false Madeleine points her gloved finger at the growth rings of an ancient sequoia:


The Wizare of Oz, (1939)
The gayest classic of them all. And in the aftermath of the AIDS crisis, it still lingers as an eerie ambassador of gay past, gay present, and gay future.


Mommie Dearest, (1981)
And perhaps my favorite. Joan Crawford (Faye Dunaway) casts off utilitarianism:

A Short Portrait

No matter what time of year, Job always wore cutoffs. Even in the gelid months, when his Addidas got soaked to the sole, he stood on the sidewalk, underneath the glowing sign that read “The Escape Nighclub” and chatted with the people waiting to get to get in.

In addition to his booty shorts, Job wore a black tank top, bedizened with plastic rhinestones, and a string of fake pearls that hung limply around his neck. His face had been elaborately painted with MAC producs and craft glitter from Micheal’s. He smelled sickly sweet, like potpourri. He shared a cigarette with a short girl in a black leather miniskirt.

The Escape Nightclub opened its doors in on New Years Eve of 2003 under somewhat woolly circumstances. The venue itself, situated a few hundred feet from Portland’s Park blocks, had undergone eight changes in management in the past twenty-eight years. Mildred’s Palace, Metropolis, The City Nightclub, Evolution, The Rage, Misifit’s Café, The Edge and Klub-Z were The Escape’s former manifestations. All failed; all were unprofitable.

“It’s just easier to call it ‘the club’ since it keeps changing,” Job said. “I’ve been going here since it was The Edge. The Edge never served alcohol at the bar, The Rage might have; the license was too expensive, you know.” I told him that the crowd seemed bibulous nonetheless, pointing out a group of girls who were attempting to hide an Aquafina bottles filled with whiskey in their purses. “It’s a cruel joke: they surround you with insecure people and then ask you not to get drunk before you come.” He leaned in closer. “Hell. I’m a little smashed.” The short girl in the miniskirt laughed and snatched the cigarette from his fingers. “The club has definitely gone downhill,” he continued. “It’s not like Klub-Z. Klub-Z was where it was at. That was kind of the hay day.”

“Fuck yes it was,” the girl said.

“We had a pole back then.”

“Fuck yes we did.”

“Way more fags came to Klub-Z.” The way he used the word, fag, I could tell he meant it endearingly.

“Remember the floor back then?” the girl asked.

“Oh. Oh. And the pole.”

“You already…”

“Oh. Oh. And remember those hot guys that would come down from Seattle every other week.” Job fanned himself with limp wrists. “It was sexy back then. And. And. And everyone was fucking everything. And every weekend it was like a maze, and everyone was connected to everyone else by some body part.” Job sighed. “Everyone looked forward to the weekend. It was an excuse to get fucked and fabulous.”

“But then Ziggy got caught,” the girl said, stamping the cigarette out on the sidewalk.

Zig Tognetti founded Klub-Z in the summer of 2000. He was the club’s eighth owner. From the venue’s founding as Midlred’s Palace in 1980, shortly preceding the American AIDS crisis, the club had offered what some might call a ‘safe haven’ for gay boys and lesbians, generally from the surrounding suburbs. The club came out from the underground when the owner of The City Nightclub purchased the rights to the “Rosebud and Thorn Pageant,” a regionally famous drag competition, today the oldest running teen drag competition in the world. Tognetti’s performance manager, Thomas Christiansen, insisted that “If you need a place to be who you truly are, whether it is gay, straight or somewhere in between, Klub Z provides a dance floor where you can be anything you want.” Others, and perhaps Job was one of them, used less saccharine adjectives when describing that ‘haven’.

“Oh, don’t you know what happened to Ziggy?” Job asked. The girl had disappeared. It began to rain softly, a slight drizzle. “I thought he was pedophile. I knew that he was having sex with the club kids, and I heard something about kiddy porn a few years back too. They arrested him for peddling E and cocaine, though. It would have been funnier if they bagged him for the pedophile thing. Well, I think it would have been funnier. He would hit on the kids too, I remember, this one time, I think I was sixteen or seventeen, I was standing outside the club, and he came up makin’ some comment about how I would be hot in a threesome with him and his boy toy of the moment.” Job looked up at the sign, buzzing above us. He exhaled deeply. His breath fogged and curled upwards. I looked down and noticed his forearms were covered in goose bumps.

Shortly before Tognetti’s arrest, and subsequent closure of Klub-Z, he had fired his DJ, Scooter, over an altercation. Veteran club-goers such as Christensen, Job, and the club’s current performance manager, Jerrick Hoffer, have canonized the content of the bout as part of the establishment’s behind-the-scenes arcana. Job insists, however, the bout was about “doing coke in the office,” while Hoffer claims Scooter left, frustrated by the fact that “half the staff would be gacked out and not doing their jobs.”

After Klub-Z was shut down the venue remained empty for several months. It was not the only venue have it’s windows boarded up either. All along the Stark Street, an avenue lovingly referred to as “The Gay Villa” by some, working class dance halls were beginning to close. The Fish Grotto handed management over to The Red Star Brewing company, Scandal’s nixed its primary watering hole, and two blocks away Panorama, a 21+ techno hall was shut down (later to be renovated as an upscale cinema/bar, playing the finest in independent films, serving the finest of Oregon’s wines). Klub-Z had apparently met a similar fate until Scooter, along with the club’s former doorman, Robby, took out the building’s lease at a price higher than what Tognetti had paid for it.

Despite his infamous reputation as a lecherous anathema the way Job spoke of Tognetti and his club seemed to voice a melancholic nostalgia.

Eventually, Job announced that he was “fuckin’ freezin’ his fuckin’ guddam nips off.” So he lead me inside the club. I followed him to the bar where he sat down and ordered two cans of Red Bull. The music was so loud, so percussive, that I missed his interaction with the bartender altogether. With the music nearly deafening, I attempted to listen Job’s persiflage about the price of purses at Sak’s Fifth Avenue. Half way into a rant about how “the Louis Vuitton cherry thing was gross” my attention wandered to the multifarious collage on the wall behind the bar. A paper fish. Lava lamp. A plastic clock. Spray painted records with the faces of famous drag queens and slogans like “Nobody Listens to Techno.” It was metro pastiche.

Job and I sat at the bar, sipping Red Bull, watching the crowd dance atop a light-up floor. I asked Job why the girls outnumbered the boys. He took a swig, setting his can down on the bar and sighed. He flipped his blonde hair out of his eyes and turned to face me.

“That’s what I’m talking about. That’s why I liked Klub-Z. Klub-Z was a gay club. When the fag-hags learned that they could come on their own, when they learned they didn’t have to bring their gay friends, they went…I don’t know, they went nuts or something I guess. I don’t know!” The bartender came by and picked up Job’s empty can. “And then, then,” he continued. “When the jocks from Lincoln High School figured out that the club was full of desperate straight girls accompanying repressed gay boys, well, well. I don’t know. I guess they…” He stopped and rubbed his forehead. “Look. Look: I don’t know.” Job got up off he bar stool and headed outside, saying “I’m hot,” as I followed in his wake.

Several underage clubs popped up on the Portland club circuit from the early nineties to the early 2000’s. Among them was The Quest, a hip-hop disco; The Metro, a hookah bar gone pizza parlor; Backspace, a café for live Indie music; and the Meow Meow, a teenage punk palace. Most of these venues either careened sideways, away from their original mission statement, or shut down altogether. (Today Backspace is a cyber café, boasting interactive x-box dens and a plethora of arcade machines, while The Quest has fallen off the map and out of the memory of the kids from my generation). Strangely, The Escape, Klub-Z, The Edge, or, if you prefer, “The Club,” has strolled down a steady path in providing gay teenagers with a place to dance for the past twenty-five years.

But, sometimes, when Job speaks of the club there is a trembling in his voice. He becomes visibly frustrated when describing the new crowd of déclassé degenerates who flooded the floor of The Escape. They’re loud, they’re drunk, but perhaps most disturbingly for Job, they’re straight.

It was raining harder outside. Most of the people who were in line had either ran to cafés down the street or had been admitted inside. Before exiting the club, Job had grabbed a grey garment bag from the coat check. He held it close to his chest. Inside was a wool business suit, an overcoat and a pair of women’s underwear.
“Do you ever get harassed standing out here?” I asked Job. He flipped his hair again and laughed, rearranging the bag in his arms.

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know.”

“Duh.” Job started rattling off the litany of injustices he had experienced standing underneath the buzzing Escape sign. He seemed oddly nonchalant about the incidences, as if they were practical jokes a frat brother might play on his housemates. “A few weeks ago,” he told me, “I was standing out here waiting, and a bunch of white fucks in an SUV pelted me with an egg. Left a fuck ugly bruise and got egg poo up and down the back of my leg. It was gross. Really fucking gross.”

It was about one A.M. when the cab arrived to pick Job up. I bid him farewell and watched as he tossed his garment bag into the back of the cab. He hopped in, waved goodbye, and as he shut the door, he sank into the seat, faineant in repose. For a moment my impression of him, the slack posture, the “aw-hell-nah” mannerisms and catty rejoinders, the club kid clout, the pomposity and rodomontade, seemed to melt away. Collapsed in the backseat of the cab, he reminded me of some of the young men I knew going to high school. Sincere. Cute. Optimistic.

And then the cab sped off: down the road to a hotel where Job would meet a client of his, a regular.

Earlier that night I had asked about the contents of Job’s garment bag. He informed me it was for his job. It was “part the deal.” “It’s really kind of easy,” he had said. “Like. Ridiculously easy. He sends me these thongs and I have to wear them under the suit. I go to the hotel. He takes me out sometimes and plays footsie with me under the table. I make 3000 dollars a night. So, it’s pretty good.”
“What do you spend the money on?” I had asked.

“Purses,” he said matter-of-fact’ly. "Gucci purses."

Job assured me that there were other boys in his line of work who hung around the club. But, when I asked him to point them out, he shied away, blaming their poor attendance on the rain.

"Medals are more important than times."

-Micheal Phelps, the morning of August 14th 2008, semifinals, being interviewed by Ann whatever her name is.

I suppose you can be a "fish in the water," but then you have to be prepared to smell like a vagina.

But enough about Phelps already. It was a boring day in Beijing for the male gymnasts. Yang Wei did well, like he do, and everyone else kept screwing up royally. Sasha Artemov gave us a few treats on the high bar, an event usually dominated by Horton, but thwarted his hopes of a medal in floor exercise. (And, if he turns to the camera to thank National television for all their support I will snap his pretty little nose off.) I really can't decide what was more disappointing: everyone falling, or the fact that I was missing season two of "Mad Men" to watch Yang Wei kick butt.

OF all the instruments in the gym, I am enamored with the pommel horse. There is something about the constant spinning, the incredible balance, upper body strength, and focus that makes this instrument fascinating to watch. The mistakes look so similar to the successes on this beast. Perhaps I admire that which I cannot understand. Pommel horse routines can be terribly yawning for most people, but I can't help gritting my teeth at the wobbly arms.

Maybe that's why I love watching this guy:

"A woman who grew to be 7 feet, 7 inches tall and was recognized as the world's tallest female died early Wednesday, a friend said. She was 53."

But more importantly...

"Coincidentally, Allen lived in the same nursing home, Heritage House Convalescent Center, as 115-year-old Edna Parker, whom Guinness has recognized as the world's oldest person since August 2007."

This leads me to believe that our country is purposefully storing all of our "unique" Guinness world record holders in the same nursing home so as to keep them from their adoring public.

And who knows what this alleged "nursing home" is really like.

Yesterday, Tuesday the 12th, 2008, I and millions of Americans, in a vain attempt to retain consciousness at work and appear busy, fled to the internet. We were greeted by a large headline on the MSN homepage which read, in large, bold letters, "Should we punish Russia?" Morbid curiosity led me to read the corresponding MSNBC article (found at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26159742/?GT1=43001/). At the bottom of the page, after reading the article, I saw in the "more from msnbc" section another appauling headline: Images: Swimmers smooch, gymnast heartbreak. (Jens, do you want the url?) These are grossly sensationalistic headlines. However onto more pressing matters, what the article on Russia revealed was, to put it lightly, discouraging. The introduction paragraph reads:

"WASHINGTON - Scrambling to find ways to punish Russia for its invasion of pro-Western Georgia, the United States and its allies are considering expelling Moscow from an exclusive club of powerful nations and canceling an upcoming joint NATO-Russia military exercise, Bush administration officials said Tuesday."

Bravo MSNBC! Everything is forgiven. In one paragraph you have provided a succinct summary of all of the issues at stake, and even hinted at hidden significances that lie festering beneath your sensational journalism. All our glorious western power has been reduced, essentially, to kicking Russia out of an exclusive club. They go on to say, "Washington and its friends have been forced to face the uncomfortable reality that their options are limited to mainly symbolic measures, such as boycotting Russian-hosted meetings and events, that may have little or no long-term impact on Russia’s behavior, the officials said." The is all in direct contradiction with what president Bush told a crowd in Georgia in 2005, "The path of freedom you have chosen is not easy, but you will not travel it alone. Americans respect your courageous choice for liberty. And as you build a free and democratic Georgia, the American people will stand with you." Apparently we will only stand with them symbolically.

Above all, this headline prompted me to write this post today in lieu of checking the headlines. I'm sure it was a better use of my time.

The Olympics are in My Uterus: reflections on women’s gymnastics, Kerri Walsh, Misty May, Amy Winehouse, and a word on Michael Phelps’ Affair with a Mollusk


“If it’s not bleeding you shouldn’t put a BandAid on it,” my sister said, laying down on the sofa. I rubbed the finger I had sliced earlier that day at the café chopping almonds. The gash ran across my pointer, from on side of the knuckle to the other. It looked like a smile.

She sat up and rubbed the flesh blow her navel. Groaning and using the coffee table to hoist herself up she walked into the kitchen where she prepared herself a hot pack. When she returned, she collapsed on the sofa and laid the pack across her belly.

“Visiting the ruby city?” I asked

She noded.

***

When the female body undergoes muscular trauma, caused by exertion, the body begins to use what nutrients it can. Fat stores shrivel, including fat around the breasts and thighs. Muscle falls off the bone, including the pelvic floor, which allows a woman to expel a fetus from the body without internal tearing. The digestive system eats away at the walls of the uterine cavity, making women unable to menstruate. If the female body exercise in excess it sends a message to the brain, “Hey. We can’t deliver no babies.”

I think it’s safe to say the female gymnasts of the US and China won’t be cycling this month. (What would Lance Armstrong say?) Unable to bear children, breastless, and practically uterus-less, it’s hard to call these little gymnasts “women,” even though most of them are 16, 17, 18. But, oh oh oh, the gold is so close.

It’s a girl thing.

So, I digress for a moment. I think it’s safe to say the Olympics have been drained of its playfulness. Government, commercially subsidized athletes and steroids have obscured what it means to become an Olympic hero. Yet we don’t really bat a lash and still expect everyone to break world records. After all, personal life isn’t what the Olympics is about, right? It shouldn’t matter if their heads fall off after the uneven bars, so long as they win the gold. The kind of cold, single mindedness, of athletes like Phelps and Yang Wei are simply symptomatic of the larger Olympic downfall (ala Frankfurt School). So, it’s really not their fault. Really.

I can get over the death of my own romanticized, man against all odds, attitude towards the Olympic games. But I still can’t help feeling…well, creeped out. I don’t know how anyone can watch the broadcast from Tiananmen square and not feel uneasy. There are some things that creep you out for good reason: (When a professor comes up to another professor and says “How close can I get with a student before it becomes sexual harassment,” it feels a little creepy). Not only is it unclear who “ought” to win the gold medal, but it’s unclear who ought to ought to want this persona win the gold over that person. It’s the triumph of the “little guy” that’s inspiring. But it’s not clear who the “little guy” is anymore. Privilege has skewed it. I can watch Alicia Sacramone do well on the floor exercise, but when we know she’s lived a relatively comfortable life in Massachusetts’s pomp, attending Brown University on a scholarship she, financially, doesn’t deserve, I can’t help but wonder what dishwasher in New York could have done a better job.

The same thing is happening in the art world. We could watch Ella Fitzgerald sing and forget the fact she was a whore, but, for some reason, we can’t do the same for Amy Winehouse.

***

“You’re feet smell awful,” I told my sister, who has since abandoned her hot pack and moved on to belly massage.

She reached down and rubbed her fingers on the soles of her feet. She sniffed her fingers.

“Yummy.”

“I think my finger is infected,” I told her.

“Good. I hope it falls off. That way you won’t be able to blame anyone for anything anymore.”

***

Michael Phelps is a cocky sea cucumber. When asked “What does winning all these medals mean to you?” he replied “I’m almost at loss of words [sic]…to win the most gold medals is unbelievable…I don’t know what to say…I feel…incredible.” He had more to say about his goggles falling off in the 200 fly.

Phelps is at his best when he’s been beaten. In 2004, watching him grit his teeth at Thorpe and Van Den Hoogenband was enthralling. Phelps openly admits that, sometimes, his practice is fueled by anger and desire for revenge. In response to Thrope’s schoolyard taunts, made before the 2008 games in the Australian tabloids, Phelps said “I welcome comments. They fuel me.” And, he said it with an eerie calmness. It felt like a Star Wars Movie, with Coach Bowman as the Sith Lord and Phelps as Darth Vadar. (I feel your anger. It gives you power. Makes you strongah!)

I don’t believe in Evil, but I do believe in blinding hatred. When Phelps came on the scene in Sydney he was fresh. Now he’s a rolled up ball of athletic magma. He’s like a protein shake that makes you poop uncontrollably: you kind of like it but it’s also sort of…unpleasant.

Now, Thrope and Hoogenband are running away with their tails between their legs and Phelps crashes through the Olympic villa like a bovine Goliath. What. A. Snooze.

***

My sister listened to her voicemail on speakerphone.

“Hey Kashi it’s Sonya. I’m just sittin here watching TV and eating a lobster. I used a lot of butter. It tastes SUPER DUPER delicious. Call me!”

I wondered if “Lobster” was a euphemism.

“Dilly?” I muttered.

“Yeah,” my sister replied. “She’s a fat lesbian.”

Thank god, I can sleep now.

***

A reader brought up an interesting point. “Jens. If you hate Phelps sooo much because he wins all the time, how come you don’t feel the same way about the volleyball giants Kerri Walsh and Misty May?” Put quite plainly, Walsh and May are women. Phelps is a boy. It’s second wave feminism 101 as per bell hooks and Gloria Steinem. You go girls!
Walsh and May are also a unit that move with artistry rather than force. By themselves they are good, but together they make a harmonious pair. Watching them play ball is on par with watching the great Tai Chi masters move through space with grace and ease. Their sets and spikes are meditative.

So, in short, it’s a girl thing.

***

Another message.

“Hey Kashi, It’s Sonya. I’m just sitting here watching TV and eating some chicken. HAHA. Still waiting for your call girl. Toodles.”

It’s hard for me to enjoy anyone who uses the word “toodles.”

***

I’ll leave you with another comment from a reader. He writes: “Jens, I know you and would be unsurprised to learn your contrarian dismissal of Phelps had [sic] something to do with you wanting badly to suck his cock.”

Reader, where would we be without our sexual frustration?

Of all the Olympic athletes to perform thus far, the one I admire the most is Laure Manadou, the young swimmer from France. She gleefully pranced into Athens’ 2004 games, when, at the delicate age of 17, she brought home France's first swimming gold since Jean Boiteux in 1952. France christened its darling “La Sirèn,” or The Mermaid. She took a world record and sat, it would have seemed, at the top of the world.


But two years after Athens Manaudou embarked on furtive tryst with Italian swimmer Luca Marin, one that would end in rubble. Shortly after meeting Marin, Manaudou eloped to Italy, leaving her longtime coach, and opting to train in Turin. "Between Italy and France," she declared, "I have chosen Luca Marin, the love of my life. I want to live with him and have a baby." She kept her childlike optimism up until the Turin club expelled her for what they deemed a lazy attitude. Her vaporizing relationship with Marin culminated in a dramatic poolside display, when she threw the ring Marin had given her into the water. He followed her into the changing rooms and she formally broke off the relationship that day. Within hours, nude photos and a private video of Manaudou had appeared on the internet. I still can’t decide who’s more immature. To add insult to injury, Marin began dating Federica Pellegrini—a swimmer who now trains with Manaudou’s former coach.

At the start of the 2008 games Manaudou maintained her dignity. "Anything I achieve here is a bonus," Manaudou said last week. "If it goes well, great. If it doesn't go well, it's not the end of the world. I'm not going to die as a result." But after being a brutally beaten by Pellegrini—who stole Manaudou’s world record in her own event—Manaudou is considering quitting. "I'm asking myself if it's worth continuing. I don't even have the desire to swim anymore," Manaudou told France-2 television Tuesday after placing seventh in the 100-meter backstroke. "It's tough finishing seventh or eighth."

La Sirèn de la France has become nothing more than a fish flopping on the carpet. And I love her for it. With not much left to her name but an outdated world record and a sex-tape, shoving her head in the sand seems like the only option. She’s a pop star with muscles and chlorine damaged hair. But then, isn’t that what excites us about the Olympics? The prospect of death? When I watch the mechanical Chinese gymnasts I feel no real sense of excitement because I know they will win the gold. They’re the new Russians: cold, precise, and unflinching. (Just like their government!) But when I watch the childish and cow like American gymnasts, stealing the Bronze medal from the Germans, attending their first Olympic games, my blood begins to boil. With the fall of the Hamm brothers, placing in the top five it would have been a miracle. And yet, when they clinched that medal, the rejoicing feels just that much. And death still lingers, even for young hopefuls. We know it’s over for Raj, that Justin Spring’s knees will give out soon, that Haggarty is too old, and that Sasha Artemov ultimately disappointed his father, despite his enthralling performance on the pommel horse.

The Olympics are just life expedited. Youth, beauty, and grace are valued above wisdom and sagesse. Stars are born and die within a twelve year period. “Legends” quickly fade unless they are nothing short of god coming down from the heavens and giving you a handjob. (We may recall Nadia, but can we really recall any Olympic champions pre-World War II?) And there is also something distinctly American about enjoying the Olympics. Regardless of marketing incentives, America doesn’t endorse its athletes in the same way Russia and China do. China wins because they must (pressure from the government, I can imagine, is unbearably heavy, not to mention the Olympic village was practically built for the gymnastics team). America wins because it can. What’s even more exciting is the little swimmers from Kenya, Cuba and Japan those who fight tooth and nail for the honor of swimming in the final heats, even if they know they will finish dead last.

Oh, but America has some machines of its own. What more is Michael Phelps? His “eat, sleep, swim” tenor and self-aware egotism is well oiled and seasoned for nothing else but pumping out gold medals. He openly admits he does little more than swim and play video games. At least Laure had a boyfriend. Phelps’ sweep, thus far, of 9 medals is perfectly of indicative of fat American gluttony. All eat, no flavor. Manaudou’s story is the tragic, where Phelps is the melodrame. He totes himself on par with Mark Spitz, but how can he when his face repeatedly pops up in that repulsive Visa commercial? Phelps doesn’t have to live a life outside of swimming, and chooses not to. He’s inhuman. This is, perhaps, why I can watch him make Olympic history and not bat a lash. I would be happier if a baby seal won the gold medal.

But, Laure Manadou brings a tear to my eye and a smile to my lips. When faced with the prospect pummeling Pellegrini in the pool, she failed. Tried as she did, she could not swim fast enough, hard enough, to redeem herself. How like life. How French. And now she grapples an existential question: to quit or not to quit. She’s the Hamlet of Bejing.

As far as I am concerned, death awaits her when the torch burns out. Will she oust herself or…wait? Death is so near. It’s loss that makes the gold sweet. But it’s also loss that puts gold medals in perspective. After all, it’s just swimming.