A Bret Cavanaugh Lesson?

Be careful not to take too much advantage of privileges not earned; race, gender, sexual orientation, class, intelligence, beauty or nationality. Acts of arrogance and lack of empathy towards lesser privileged may return like unpaid bills, with compounded interest. Claiming or persisting ignorance will not make the debt collector whole. They want a valuable piece of you.

This is one lesson from the Bret Cavanaugh battle for a seat on the United States Supreme Court.

Beware of changing times and reshuffling powers.

Your immunity can dissolve.

Arriving in New York City after a month driving

Now that I've arrived in New York City after a slow car trip from the Phoenix desert in late summer across the country the most reliably fulfilling aspect of eastward travel is exposure to hot, humid forests and plants peculiar to the regions. Other than Arizona and New Mexico, the vegetation has appeared similar, stitched together into a big whole, since a common beginning in eastern Oklahoma. The United States is divided in 2 regions with a line drawn from west Texas to North Dakota separating east and west. The East is much more similar than the West, more consistent throughout. The West has radically varied terrains and climates, all more or less distinct from the similar one all over the east.

This is not turning out to be an indoor trip. Perhaps i got that satisfied during 20 years living in New York City. First, its the plants, and second the older buildings in a chronological succession of mainly English-American confected styles, that are the biggest attraction for me. And of course the different flavors and cultural accents of people peculiar to different areas.

The old buildings and eastern urban or village infrastructures are what I would add to the West to improve it. Subtracting 60 million people would correspondingly improve the East. Overcrowding begins around Oklahoma City and intensifies to near bursting in the Northeast.

California and the West more awesome and dramatic but the East more beautiful in intricate feathers, subtle designs and heartening details.

Santa Fe is California version of Oaxaca

A mountain road not far from Taos, New Mexico in the New Mexico Rocky Mts. Part of an adventure in Santa Fe.

"Santa Barbara Wine and Cheese" from Saatchi Gallery

Click on this link to go to 'Wine and Cheese" at Saatchi Gallery

"Downtown" from Saatchi Gallery

Click on this link to go to Saatchi Gallery

Alien in Burbank

Alien visitor to Burbank

Planet Burbank

Intergalactic flight

Salt Lake City

Mountain provinces

Coming from another planet

Visiting western colony

Wallpaper

Los Angeles

Naked angels

with lipstick

Make happy

Press the city

Peel off for a good offer.

Sacramento

Floral: Bouquet Jungle (Square format)

Click to go to Redbubble Shop for Bouquet Jungle

Penacho Wall Mural from Society6

Follow this link to shop at Society6

Flamenco Tequila from Imagekind

Go to Flamenco Tequila Store

Guadalajara: Mayate Sunset

In gay Guadalajara, a “mayate” is slang for a masculine man passing for straight who has sex with men in exchange for money or favors. His sexual orientation is exaggerated because his allure is his “straight” mystique. He is a “top,” who penetrates, but is not penetrated. For the right price he will make exceptions.

Homosexuals hang out in the gay section of the plaza behind the landmark Juarez Theatre at the heart of the city. I met Jose here on a bench. He was more interested in talking than listening. What he had to say was fascinating and I asked questions.

Illegal Immigrant

Over 22 years he commuted back and forth between his home in Guadalajara and Tennessee four times. His last stay in the USA lasted 8 years. He always worked in Mexican restaurants, for the same chain in different outlets. His employers contracted and paid for him to be smuggled across the border and delivered safely to Tennessee each time. The last time he passed the border at Agua Prieta across from Douglas, Arizona. Other times he crossed from Nogales, Sonora to Nogales, Arizona. He was in a group of 40 under the care of “coyotes.” Coyotes have the job of smuggling undocumented persons from Mexico to USA. Jose said the cost for his employer was $3,500 dollars.

Before setting off for US Customs, everyone in the group cleaned up and was provided with a forged document. Each member would pass customs with a specific bribed official who was part of the “team”. The applicant provides a verbal code to the agent to cue him. The bribed agent receives 100 dollars per person, $4000 total in this case. If the official is discovered, prosecuted, and sent to prison, there is another willing to cooperate.

Once across the border the group is taken to Phoenix which includes passing through another immigration checkpoint along the highway. There too, an official is working as a “double agent”, for US Immigration and for the smugglers. Vans of undocumented persons arrive at “safe houses” in Phoenix where they are kept indoors with closed curtains while awaiting the next, safer leg of the journey, to Tennessee.

In Tennessee Jose will need a car to get to work. Since he has no legal documents to present at the DMV to register his vehicle and buy license plates, he is guided to an agent his employer bribes directly or through a middleman who issues them.

He works 11-hour shifts, 6 days a week as a cook for 700 dollars. He earns a little better than 10 dollars an hour which is comparable to minimum wage in Tennessee. He is issued a fake Social Security number which he uses throughout 22 years. Obviously his employer saves enough money hiring undocumented workers and paying their smuggling costs, to make it financially worthwhile.

He lives with other illegal immigrants in apartments he hooks up through work. In those 22 years he never received a driving violation that would have exposed his illegal status. Yet, he claims the local courts go soft on illegals who do because the value of illegal labor to the economy makes it worthwhile to overlook a worker’s status. The local police have an accommodating attitude that comes from above.

He appears to be in his early 50’s. Back this time in Guadalajara, he has decided to remain home for good. His 5 children are adults and he has accumulated two houses during the years working in Tennessee. His wife runs a business out of the house they share. One of his adult children lives in and care-takes the other. He is a grandfather.

He claims he’s waiting for an injury in his leg to heal before he seeks lower paid restaurant work locally. Meanwhile he says he is hard up financially and asks me for 20 pesos. I gave him the money and he left to catch his bus. You could say he charged me for the interview, and I got my money’s worth.

Ageing Mayate

The following night we meet by chance at the same bench. I realize he must be hanging out here a lot instead of spending time with his wife at home. Tonight, the conversation turns to sex. He tells me he does not have sex with his wife. He asks me if I am gay and I say yes. He thought so, he responds and says he is open minded, implying he is not gay. I suspect he is. He spends a lot of time cruising in the plaza.

He begins to advertise his body by bragging. His claims sound as possible as improbable at his age. He looks mostly European and part Amerindian, mestizo 70/30. He has a strong, masculine shape. Our shared European ethnicity makes me more critical. It is not possible to judge whether his muscles are firm and stomach flat while dressed.

He proudly says he got paid 500 pesos (25 dollars) a couple times. That would make him feel handsome and virile, and successful enough to keep at it. 500 pesos is 2 times the going rate for a much younger man hustling a low-end location like the plaza according to a source who has cruised here for decades. As opposed to cruising for sex and companionship over the internet with more assurance you will not be robbed by a stranger.

I’d say this man is a latent homosexual, availing himself of the Mayate closet which moralizes, makes right, the act of homosexuality by the fact of getting paid for it. It is a job with the moral imperative to make your client satisfied so you can buy food for children or high blood pressure pills for mother. Collecting payment blurs the shame of doing it because you like to.

Supposing he is gay, he may be suited to years away from family in Tennessee. He sent money back for 22 years and must feel he satisfied society’s expectations. He enjoys those social benefits while at the same time has nostalgia he wasted the chance to fully be who he is. Not just with his dick, but with his intelligence. He calculated there was too much to lose when he started out. He says he is an experienced Mayate which means he participates in gay life in a hedged way. He pulls in and out of it when he needs to without self-labeling as gay. Now is the sunset of his desirability to other men. Some like me, although further out of the closet, tolerate his role as a Mayate.

He’s got his family, his biggest investment in life, using a false identity. Hiding from them who he really is complicates being close. Which is why he stayed away in Tennessee and now spends his days at the Plaza.

There are no Social Security payments in Mexico for someone with his work history. If he becomes financially dependent on his wife or children as he ages the pressure increases to be in the closet. He paid into a false Social Security Retirement account in the USA if at all.

I have limited zeal for the Mayate character, so woven into Guadalajara culture. It’s born and sustained by homosexual persecution. Gay liberation is straining to push beyond resistance rooted in Christian opposition. Playing the role of Mayate is still profitable. Let men drop their masks and do their sexual business honestly. Whether or not money is involved it will benefit all.

Homosexual prejudice, in all its manifestations, bids up the value of being straight or the next best thing, passing for straight. Like racism creates a market for skin whitening creams for those who want to be lighter, homophobia creates a market among gay men to appear straighter.

Cal Avocado

Social life in Puerto Vallarta

Staying on in Vallarta due to feeling codependent with a cheap, almost ideal hotel room, as well as the need to reinforce superficial social ties here for the future. I've been doubting my ability to get this room back at the same price in the future if I let it go. That worry is anxiety.

Went to sit under shady umbrellas with old gringo gay men, my peers, at the beach last 2 weekend afternoons. It's interesting the vetting one necessarily is subject to in order to become "part of the club". A club which no members seem to have long historical ties. Maybe two or three years. Sort of like hazing for a restrictive society, in this case by normal people for a gay country club if there was such a thing. So be it, as there is no other way. Feeling favored, or unfavored, in the conversation, are signs to be paid attention to if the goal is acceptance. And adjust my behavior accordingly.

I know some back stories about people in the club after a month of this, but more to be revealed.

There is a conflicting feeling on my part to go up to Phoenix for a change, or elsewhere.

Last Friday, I went out to coffee for the first time with a Mexican acquaintance over the last few years. I was struggling to relax, in the risk to know each other better we were taking, but glad for the opportunity. I know his back story, which he doesn't know I know. That's useful intelligence and strange when he shares about an "anonymous partner" ( who is not to me) he's separated from. The partner, an even less well known acquaintance of mine, also has no idea what I know about him. I was given hints by his disillusioned lover I could replace or at least supplement him!

i do miss enough contact with more developed and trusted members of my support system. Being the new  old gringo gay man, or the familiar outsider from years of occasional visits, has limits of consolation.

Scent of smoked ham south past Juarez way.

Sometimes living in the third world is like not cleaning your ass for a while, the funky odor nice as smoked ham until it starts to itch.

Definitely wouldnt pay 350k or 1 million dollars for an apartment in Puerto Vallarta. Unless I had 10 million plus. It seems a questionable idea after I leave my carefully scrubbed and bleached hideout (except for the occasional sewer gas) and get on a former US school bus, now operating as a municipal bus, I could have ridden as a boy in Oklahoma over 50 years ago. We passengers bang around like rocks in an old garbage can to the grocery store, due to stiff suspension and rustic paving stones, arriving sweaty and a little dazed, after just 3 miles. 

This is what first world xenophobes are worried about. That the USA and Europe are to evolve into unsafe and uncomfortable Johannesburgs on the Mississippi, Missouri and Rhine Rivers.

I am an optimist, so choose not to imagine bad outcomes; better to imagine how to avoid them and get busy helping the less well off out of poverty.

At this point, the USA might annex Mexico, if they agree. We get poorer in the north and they get richer down here. Our infrastructure deteriorates for a while as theirs improves as the two find balance. And then maybe the new border creates something better for all 500 million of us.

2 Questions Answered for Shutterstock Blog about My Desert Photography

"Old Gas Pump in Desert" Available at Redbubble.com

1. What's the story behind this photo and the desert where it was taken?

This desert is quiet and hot, extremely hot in the summer. Since there are so few people, and little vegetation, it’s a good place to sweat out the noise of the city and concentrate. Vast spaces extend in every direction and peaceful solitude guided this artist into a creative trance. I was overtaken by my own inspiration into a self-confident process. Here, no one is watching, approving or disapproving. Nature is your only mute companion. However, I did take care to watch out for and avoid rattlesnakes. This flat, salty landscape is along the Sea of Cortez in Northern Mexico. While roaming in my car I accidentally discovered it. It was an unplanned surprise that became a working retreat for a few hours. Nature and I bonded in a romance. I consider desert a modernist, introspective environment. It’s so simple; an incredibly flat plane with the bare minimum of natural decoration. 

 

Back home in the city, reviewing the results of this shoot and another in a favorite café, my emotions settled on nostalgia. I decided to add to the foreground an antique, weathered gas pump from the other adventure in a different part of the Sonora Desert, in Arizona. On that adventure I was driving up a rural dirt road far beyond the last suburb of Phoenix and suddenly saw an old abandoned gas station. Apparently, that forgotten road had once been the main one between two destinations.

 

2.   What tips would you give to other photographers who want to photograph in the desert? These tips can be anything you can think of, like how to find cool, out-of-the-way places or what to pack in your bag. What do you wish someone had told you before you started traveling to and photographing the desert?

 

Photography in the desert might be the easiest place for landscape photography. There are so many possibilities and so few people to interfere in your project. Basic practices apply, shoot away from sun, unless you’re going for a sunburst effect. Colors are juicier in the afternoon. I’ve found the best way to get emotional content I hope for in an image is to art direct it, that is, combine elements in the studio. Nature doesn’t always arrange the scene with objects in the best place relative to each other. An artist can do that. Find a background you like and simplify it in the studio if it needs it, the same goes for the foreground. Simple shape concepts have impact. As for equipment, the less the better for me, so I can focus on what inspires me. Accept your limits, financially and emotionally, and get started. There will always be a place for you if you can do that. The sooner you do, the closer you’ll be to finding and revealing the message inside you. And it will evolve.

Twentynine Palms

"Twentynine Palms" print. It is the result of driving through the Mojave and Sonoran deserts between Phoenix and Palm Springs at least 30 times over the last 6 months, affected by the empty landscapes and isolated settlements.

Mojave Desert town at Sunset. Available at Redbubble in a variety of products.

Also available at Society6

The Envious Weakling

Last nite at spanish group we started talking about books weve written, and i couldnt keep quiet and bragged I wrote a book too.

Four people out of 6 at our end of table have written books and traded title information. I was being competitive. I looked at my Amazon rating just now and it reflects a sale. it worries me that one of those people might learn all about me. Or my sister could have bought it. And read my hateful opinions and resentments, my ugly prejudices, my neurotic fear of HIV, and enthusiasm for mexican bathhouses, my rage against religious and straight people and closet cases and critique of moral scolds regarding homosexual men. My small dick fear and hatred of everyone!!

i suppose if i see some hateful comments about the book then ill get used it and the thought of them will cease to scare me. If comments are posted on Amazon, well, i guess they are there forever or until I delete the book from Amazon. Until then, I'm innocent and virgin, so to speak.

My book is no. 97 in LGBT Memoirs category today, between James St James (famous club kid in NYC in the 90's and friend of a notorious gay murderer) and Dan Savage (from Seattle advice column). Of course their books have lots of comments, mostly good, which must give them a sense of intelligence and confidence in their talent. Their books don't dissapear from the list in an hour like mine will. They aren't feeble weaklings. They dodge bullets and are clever enough to fire back with aplomb! 

Xiva in San Francisco around 1979

Xiva (Don Wright) in a portrait from around 1979. He looks like a gangster. Actually, he was a gentle person, mildly effeminate in his speaking voice and body language.

Xiva at the "Bunkhouse" Apartments on Ivy Street in San Francisco around 1979

Xiva (Don Wright) laying down on the tile in my bathroom at 419 Ivy Street in San Francisco around 1979.

Xiva (San Francisco around 1980)

I met Xiva (Don Wright) around 1980 at Cafe Flore on Market Street in San Francisco. I made photographs of him in my apartment on Ivy Street. According to him, times were changing and he didn't feel comfortable anymore visiting the Castro Street Area dressed in "Hippy Girl" drag as he called it. The popular style was levis and plaid flannel shirts, commonly known as the outfit for the "Castro Clone". He passed away from AIDS before the treatment "cocktail" had arrived. We had lost touch by then as I had left San Francisco and lived in New York. This collage was a project I did in 1993 at Fashion Institute, where I worked in the Macintosh computer design lab.

Joseph Durant on Ivy Street in San Francisco around 1982

Joseph Durant in my apartment on Ivy Street in San Francisco around 1980. We met at Cafe Flore on Market Street a couple years earlier and became good friends. He began the Aids Quilt with Cleve Jones. The following fragments about Joseph are from an interview with Cleve Jones by PBS show "Frontline":

""I was with my friend Joseph Durant, and I remember saying: "I wish I had a bulldozer, and I'd knock these buildings down. Maybe if this was a meadow with 1,000 corpses rotting in the sun people would see, and they would understand, and if they were human, they would be compelled to respond." …

So the night of the candlelight march, Joseph and I had stacks of cardboard, lightweight cardboard placards and sacks full of magic markers. We asked everybody to write down the name of one person they knew who had been killed by AIDS. People were ashamed to do it. They would put initials or just the first name, and then finally one guy took two pieces of paper, taped them together, and in big block letters wrote, "Thomas J. Farnsworth Jr., my brother -- he's dead."

Then I hadn't seen Joseph in a while, the fellow who was with me when we were putting up posters for the candlelight march. I hadn't seen him in a few months, and I saw him on the street, and he was skinny, and his skin was gray, and his eyes were yellow. I asked him, "Are you OK?," and he said: "I don't want to talk about it, but it's time for you to get off your butt and start that quilt. It's a good idea." He was still working part time in I think a theater supply company, and he stole a couple of bolts of fabric, and I went down in the basement and found a box of spray paint left over from Ronald Reagan's last visit to San Francisco, and we went in the backyard, and we made the first quilt panels. I made mine for Marvin Feldman, and Joseph made his for a man named Edward Mock.

That's how it started. It grew slowly, because it was very difficult for people to visualize it, even though I had this picture in my head that was as clear as a photograph and drove me quite crazy for a long time, because I could just see it so clearly, but I couldn't communicate it verbally to people.

Dianne Feinstein, who is now a U.S. senator, was mayor of San Francisco at the time. At that point Joseph and I made I think 40 panels for friends of ours, and a couple of other people had contributed some, and we were permitted to hang those from the mayor's balcony at San Francisco City Hall during the Lesbian and Gay Pride Parade. I believe there were about a million people that day who saw it, and then they had the visual understanding of how this could work.""

Zacatecas (With Black mat and frame from Imagekind)

Striking Monochrome Design in Vivid Red. Fill your space with heart energy! This would make a good printed mural for a wall in a store, office, or home. Shop for it at Imagekind:
http://www.imagekind.com/Zacatecas-Wide_art?IMID=745cfc80-0db9-4f04-8711-f85ea8b78ab9