“…the more Republicans I meet, the more I like my dog. Just once I would like to see a politician with an ass too small to fit his own head. It has been a rough few weeks sitting back trying to get my rest and stay out of politics, but honestly, there seems to be no end to this madness and I once again find myself not able to keep my mouth shut. I used to have a handle on life, but it broke. Let me count the new ways the Republicans found to wear their ass for a hat…
One. I heard a Congressman from Texas today say that Obamacare was forcing hard-working, middle class families to purchase health insurance they don’t need. Now there is a congressman who has definitely put his head in a place where the sun doesn’t shine. Show me someone who doesn’t need health insurance and I’ll show you the second coming of Jesus. And for the record, it’s called the Affordable Care Act because before it was passed, healthcare was no longer affordable for most Americans. Do these Tea Party asshats really take us for fools?
Two. We are a country that blindly followed Bush’s codpiece into “preventive” war not once but twice. Now a bunch of children get gassed to death by a dictator and we are suddenly too weary for war. Really? Republicans too weary for war. Sounds to me that they are too weary for a black commander-in-chief. Oh dear me. Did I say that out loud? God forbid someone suggest that Republicans are racists. He’s a Muslim from Kenya with a fake birth certificate…short version: he’s black.
Three. Not crazy enough for you? How about thinking the answer to gun violence is more guns? We’re up to what, about one mass shooting a month now? It sure seems like there are plenty of guns to go around. How about we try a different approach like asking ourselves why we need more guns than actual people in this country. Are there really that many deer to hunt? And something tells me if the British are coming again, it’s not with muskets. One thing is for sure: Guns don’t kill people… but they make it real easy.
Four. Oh but for the love of God if Texas wasn’t dealing with enough crazy already with Rick Perry, we now have to deal with Ted Cruz. Now here’s a guy who talks in circles so effectively, it’s no wonder his head eventually ran into his ass. In an effort to show off his grasp of the situation, he had to go and bring Dr. Seuss into the mix. For the record Senator Cruz, the moral of Green Eggs and Ham is to try something new… you might like it. For example, 40 million people might actually like having access to healthcare. Cruz staged his ridiculous talk-a-thon against cutting off debate only to then turn around and join 99 other senators in voting to cut off the debate. He’s no Wendy Davis. That’s for sure. But exactly what should we expect from a man who said, “We need 100 more like Jesse Helms in the U.S. Senate.” If brains were leather, Cruz wouldn’t have enough to saddle a junebug.
I could go on, but must I really? Let me sum it up for you. Now that the government is closed, will hard-working, middle class federal employees get paid? No. Will Congressmen get paid? Yep. They’ll continue to get their $174,000 a year, and they will have health insurance as well. Asshats everywhere. I mean it. Really.”
String the House Republicans up, the whole fucking lot of them. Osama Bin Laden’s stated goal was to bring the USA to its knees economically. He called Iraq war “America’s gift to me.” He’d be so proud of the GOP and their Sociopathic Teabagging Masters.
As unlikely as it may seem at this point in my life, not so long ago—okay, it was ancient history—on any given Friday or Saturday night I could be found at any number of different watering holes in the Phoenix metro area. Sadly, none of them still remain except in memory and in scattered (because one did not take cameras into gay bars at the time except under extraordinary circumstances) photographs.
Maggie’s/Moon’s Truck/His Co. Disco
One of the first clubs I went to in Phoenix (on the occasion of my nineteenth birthday, finally legally able to get in) was a place that went by various names over the years. Located in a non-descript concrete block building on the east side of 16th Street just south of Indian School Road, on that particular night, it was officially going by the newly-rechristened name Moon’s Truck. The actual name was unimportant because I soon learned that regardless of what was on the sign over the entrance, everyone simply referred to it as Maggie’s. It changed names again about a year later to HisCo Disco before finally being forced to close by the neighbors’ continual complaints about noise and other goings-on in the area.
It was a cavernous, magical place, and at the time was known for playing the some of the best music in Phoenix. It had a slightly raised lighted dance floor and a sound system that would leave your ears ringing for hours. I would meet up there with my friend and dance partner Kent and no matter where the evening eventually took us, we always started at Maggie’s.
While outwardly an all-inclusive club (gays, straights, men, women, and people of indeterminate gender) were always welcome at Maggie’s, the one thing I remember most about Hubert, one of the DJs (who did not want women in the club) was how he’d always yell “Uterus!” when one walked in. I found it amusing at the time, even if it embarrasses me now.
I also managed to repeatedly bed two of the bouncers who worked there: Ken and Paul. They didn’t particularly like each other and both were aghast that I would have sex with the other. Awkward!
It was also there that I heard the debut many of disco’s greatest hits, including Donna Summer’s Once Upon a Time album, Cerrone’s Supernature, Alec Costandinos’ Romeo and Juliet, and African Queens by The Three Degrees. The arrival of Supernature coincided with the club putting up a huge new mural over the dance floor, and to this day I still don’t understand the meaning of it:
Both Kent and I had assumed at the time it had been done by some local artist, but I discovered it in a wallpaper sample book several years later—still with no explanation or even name attached to it.
Kent and I decided it was an underground temple discovered by archaeologists on some far off world, something that would actually figure in my still-to-be-completed novel about someone being reuined with his long-lost love from an extraterrestrial past life—an underlying meaning Kent and I also both quickly assigned to Donna Summer’s Once Upon a Time.
But I digress.
A few months later, one night I noticed a new face in the DJ booth. The most overwhelming sense of deja vu came over me, leading me to believe that perhaps this stranger was someone I’d known in a previous life. When I ran into him again working at the local mall, I took this as a sign that I should at least strike up a conversation, which is exactly what I did.
Steve Golden and I became great friends over the following months, with him eventually becoming one of the great unrequited loves of my life. When he lost his day job at the mall, I got him job in the mail room at the homebuilder I was working for, and later we both ended up as legal messengers for a prestigious law firm downtown. Unfortunately, it seemed after the Universe threw us together, time or circumstances were never right for our relationship to develop into anything more than an intense friendship; something I mourned for many years after he suddenly up and left all traces of his life in Phoenix for San Francisco in 1983.
Steve doing his thing.
I lost track of Steve after he left, but after I found myself in The City a few years later I secretly hoped our paths would magically cross. They never did. He passed from AIDS in 1991.
The Forum
If Steve wasn’t working or the music was off on any given night, we’d often migrate over to The Forum. This little dive with a sunken wooden dance floor was located in the corner of an L-shaped strip mall at the corner of East McDowell Road and North 41st Place. While a much smaller club, The Forum was still a fun place to go and the music was always good, even if the resident DJ—George—could get a bit surly if you asked too often what he was playing. I don’t remember it ever being a reliable venue for getting laid, but it was the first place I ever slow-danced with another man and I did form some very deep friendships there, a couple of which survive to this very day.
Bullwinkle
In the weeks before Maggie’s officially closed, a new bar called Bullwinkle opened on the north side of East McDowell Road, just a few blocks east of 16th Street. It was a small club, on the end of a strip mall that had definitely seen better days. It had the distinct advantage of ample parking and no neighbors nearby who would complain about noise. The interior had also been completely remodeled from the ground up, so it hadn’t yet developed that stale beer-and-embedded-cigarette-smoke smell, and it was truly a joy to go to. Most of the staff from Maggie’s ended up there, including both Steve and Hubert. I have many memories of the place, including the first time I heard the B52s’ Rock Lobster and Planet Claire. It was there that I also—on the eve of celebrating a year of involuntary celibacy—blew it completely by going home with a hunky, muscled psychologist who actually came up and asked me to dance (I was usually the initiator of these things). Mark was twenty years my senior and ended up taking quite a fancy to me.
The sex with the shrink was great. In fact, I have to say it was the best I’d had at that point in my life. It turned into an a very enjoyable little fling, but eventually ended after I showed up one evening at his house unannounced. That night I learned two important lessons: (1) always call first and (2) don’t date psychologists. They’re more messed up than you are.
Bullwinkle was also the place where I finally made the realization that in those settings, everyone was waiting around for the other guy to make the first move. If you were that guy, chances were good that you wouldn’t be going home alone. Yeah, I faced my share of rejection, but the more it happened the easier it got, and eventually going up to complete strangers became almost second nature to me. It was never effortless, but it definitely put an end to that almost year-long dry spell.
After Hotbods opened and siphoned off most of Bullwinkle’s clientele (not to mention its employees), it turned into Trax, the closest thing Phoenix had at the time to a leather dance bar.
Hotbods
About a couple years after Bullwinkle opened, the owners of the now-defunct Maggie’s opened a new club called Hotbods. It was located at 3437 East McDowell road and dwarfed Maggies in size. I remember Steve (who of course had re-secured his employment with his previous employers) showing me the place shortly before it opened and I was duly impressed. The dance floor, mirror balls and neon had all been relocated from Maggie’s and had been augmented by a state-of-the-art sound system controlled from the second-floor DJ booth. There was a lounge-type bar closed off from the main disco for those who actually wanted to carry on a conversation without screaming, and the sheer scale of the place was something very new for Phoenix at the time.
Hotbods came into full swing after I’d moved to Tucson, but I made numerous trips back to Phoenix when I was single—and even after Dennis and I had gotten together—just to spend an evening there, and I have several strong memories of the place. One concerns the first time I heard the BAM-BAM-BAM Disconet remix of ABBA’s Lay All Your Love on Me, and how after dancing with an adorable little blond cub to the song, returned home with him (on his birthday, no less) for a night of carnal abandon. The second involves the multiple weekends I came north with camera in hand to take these photos and watched in amazement as at one point the entire dance floor was taken over by leather-clad men dancing to Linda Clifford’s Don’t Come Cryin To Me. Hotbods was where I first heard Patrick Cowley, and where one night Steve came over the intercom to announce, “Mark, this is for you,” right before playing Paradise Express’ We are One.
Along with The Connection, Hotbods came to an end after I’d relocated to San Francisco. It will be missed.
The Connection
“Where the men are.” Never were more true words spoken. The Connection had been open for many years, but I never ventured there much until after Dennis and I moved back to Phoenix in 1983. Frankly, the place intimidated me. Silly when I think about it now. Funny how I had a preconceived notion of the type of men that went there, only to have those preconceptions totally thrown out the window once I stepped through those doors. Over the next couple years I made some wonderful friends and had lots of hot nasty sex via that place, and it saddened me no end to hear that it was another one of those venues that did not survive the ravages of the epidemic.
The group St. Tropez (or whatever group of performers they happened to scrape together to lip sync) giving a performance at the Connection’s 1983 Benefit AIDS fundraiser.Bartender Brent Walker (who moved to San Francisco a few years after I did), the infamous Kenworth, and the dance floor/DJ booth. Ah, memories of all…The back patio, where many a fine luau was held.
As I wrote earlier, sadly none of these places survive. Maggies/Moon’s Truck/HisCo. Disco is now a car stereo installer. The Forum changed its name and went straight. The space formerly occupied by Bullwinkle/Trax is now Karumba, described as “a latin dance bar.” The Hotbods building is now occupied by a company called Inventory Adjusters, something that appears to be a cross between a pawn shop and a second hand jewelry store.
I am reminded of an episode of the old Outer Limits where an air force fighter pilot and his wife are trapped in an alternate reality suspended in time—or a variation of the time dilation idea that was later used in an episode of the original Star Trek.
From iO9:
A new study suggests that small animals like birds and flies can observe movement on a finer timescale than larger creatures. Compared to us, many of these animals are able to perceive the world through a Matrix-like “bullet-time,” allowing them to escape larger predators.
We know that animals sense the world in any number of ways depending on the species. Dogs, for example, have awful eyesight and low horizon line. So instead of depending on their vision, they perceive the world primarily through sounds and smells. In addition, animals have varying dynamic ranges when it comes to their senses; dogs can hear up to 40 kHz, dolphins up to 150 kHz, and bats up to an astounding 212 kHz. Much of this has to do with the various ways animals have adapted to their roles as predators and prey.
Now it appears that there’s a kind of dynamic range that exists in vision, as well — and it has to do with the rate at which the world can be perceived. As the new study published in Animal Behavior shows, small animals like insects and small birds can take in more information in one second than a larger animal, like us bulky humans.
Indeed, all you need to do to get this impression is simply watch the way a small bird, like a budgie, twitches as it scans its surroundings. What looks like near-spasmodic behavior to us is an animal that’s essentially working at a faster “clock rate” (so to speak). To them, humans, or larger predators, appear to move in slow motion; we likely appear impossibly slow and cumbersome through those eyes.
To measure this rate of visual perception, a team from Trinity College Dublin (TCD), Ireland, used a technique called critical flicker fusion frequency — a system that measures the speed at which the eye can process light. It works by measuring the lowest frequency of flashing at which a flickering light source is perceived as a constant. The team looked at more than 30 species, including rodents, eels, lizards, chickens, pigeons, dogs, cats and leatherback turtles.
So, for instance, at the low end of the scale, deep sea isopods (or woodlice) could only see light turning off and on four times per second. At rates just slightly faster than that, these creatures perceive the light as being constantly on. Flies, on the other hand, have eyes that react to stimulus more than four times quicker than the human eye. Compared to us, flies see the world in slow motion.
And we are not amused. Autumn used to be my favorite time of year until we moved to Colorado. In Arizona it marked the end of the long hot summer, punctuated by much cooler mornings and a new crispness; a new clarity to the air itself. It was like someone flipped a switch and you just knew summer was over. In San Francisco it was just as much loved, albeit for different reasons. Fall marked the end of the notoriously cold late summer fog, the beginning of Street Fair season, and usually provided a few short—if delectable—weeks of Indian Summer. While I still enjoy the arrival of cooler—and eventually—cold temperatures here in Denver, now autumn is simply a precursor to eight long months of it-may-suddenly-drop-ten-inches of snow-at-any-time and makes my anxiety level go through the roof while anticipating trying to get around town.
As I drive around the city and see the all those golden leaves starting to appear, all I feel is a pit in my stomach and I fully understand why my mother—after divorcing my dad and returning to her ancestral homestead in Wisconsin—lasted precisely one winter there before returning to Phoenix. Unfortunately, I do not have that luxury because Ben has made it clear that while he’s willing to relocate once his indentured servitude is complete in Denver, he sees no future back in Arizona whatsoever.
