That sweet soul Charles Gropin had another dinner party for misfits on Friday night, only this time the misery guts issued mostly from his heterosexual friends and us queer freaks could only sit and commiserate from the sidelines. He must have put together this disparate group on purpose, just to watch the fireworks explode. The seven tenets of T.Z. includes the inferences that all humans are lost and looking for love, no one knows what we're on the planet for or where we're going, no one has the right line on anything, and we're all on a runaway train with not one person having the power or knowledge to stop it, not even G.W. Bush, the Pope or J.C. Superstar.
(Yeah, yeah, you probably beg to disagree, we're here to bring up kids, hold down a job, create wealth, pay off a mortgage, create something grand, find enlightenment, realise our 'godhead' i.e. give 'god' our head, on and on ad nauseum. There's a surfeit of "purpose" to human endeavour, but I'm an existentialist, the infinite heavens remain silent no matter the torrent of human prayers, questions, pleas and excuses thrown into the void, each individual has to face life's great exigencies alone, Death lies in wait for all and Society seems out of control, and we're all left gob-smacked and hysterical in the Chaos, that's why religions/philosophies get created. For me the Hindu's Vedanta gets close i.e. Sat Chit Ananda which I translate as Knowledge Consciousness Bliss in the here and now, it's a pity my own fucked up humanity muddies the celestial waters.)
So with these thoughts I watched as a certain schitzo named Mandy started moaning about men betraying women every step of the Way. I protested that human's betrayed each other , no matter the sex, men betrayed men, women betrayed women, women betrayed men, my recital got tedious in it's truisms. "No man handy" Mandy spat more denunciations of the male species and a guest whom none of us had met before, an American named Dora from SanFrancisco, agreed sympathetically with her, saying such sentiments gelled with her own recent experiences of men. I then pleasantly interrogated Dora on her knowledge of the artistic history of her city, trying to engage her and make her feel welcome in this hothouse of Aussie larrikanism.
Mandy suddenly went ballistic and spewed on the American, confirming my sour view of generalised human frailty, forget the gender specifics. She must've felt the focus of attention had shifted off of her in her egregious need for a man's love, she spat chips hissing about how she couldn't handle silly American accents and could Nora please shut up, like, really shitso schitzo behaviour that was inexcusable. The American took umbrage and ran from the flat squawking about her vulnerabilty, while the rest of us, in our embarrassment, giggled hysterically like Jimmy Dean. So, I epiphanied, it's not only poofs who are disenfranchised and on the edge.
Charles ran after her while others told Mandy what a rude bitch she was, being quite mad she had no insight into her social idiocy and spouted bullshit denails, and miracle of miracle, Charles talked Dora into coming back to us, she flopped at the table and had a semi break-down, telling us all she's very sensitive of late because her boyfriend had beaten her up and it not only physically hurt but was emotionally devastating. This was supposed to be a polite, superficial social occassion, now we were all deep in psycho-drama and spluttering our sympathies. In an attempt to soothe all rumpled sensibilities and provide company in the existential leaky boat, I confessed that many of us were having a hard time these days, especially me who had a purulent leg and needed an operation but it had been cancelled twice and I was slowly being poisoned to death by anti-biotics with buckets of puss leaking from my knee daily.
This was too much information, my fellow alienated choked on their stewed veal and shoved a joint in my gob to shut me up. Knobby Israel tried to sing Bob Dylan to fill the foetid airwaves only Nardine the Sardine, wailing on in her Ice-lobed cut-throat harangues like one of Charles' scratched Maria Callas records, told him to shut up, she preferred original compositions to bad covers, thus the party slipped into befuddled chit chat as randy Mandy snuggled up to men she hoped, out of politeness, wouldn't shove her off, with me informing her in saccharine sarcasm what a lovely person she was. Peter Pumkin played his violin like a stoned, camp, honey-spirited Yehudi Menohin to soothe our shattered souls, and I told my broken-arsed life story about a mother who didn't love me to a bored Dora who kept passing out dead drunk.
This is what passed for human comfort and social engagement for a whole bunch of lost souls on Friday night, not just Queers, the Hets were as dysfunctional as a mad hatter's hatful of arseholes. Towards the end, it was a glorious relief to go up onto the roof to smoke a joint and gaze at the moon in the cloud-strewn heavens, the mystic stars consoling me in their wise silence. For all the pain, it was still ecstatic to be alive, conscious, luminous, for a few brief moments the human condition drifting languidly in a refreshing breeze, and with the generous, friendly gaze of Peter Pumkin to fall into, it was cool.
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