Me Love You Long Time

As I was walking to the train after getting my hair cut a couple of days ago, when a man in a Mustang pulled up next to me and asked for directions. I always love feeling like a true Chicagoan, so I welcomed the opportunity to point him the right way. After I helped him, he asked if I would come with him to make sure he didn't get lost. I kind of felt like a gullible little schoolboy when I realized that he really didn't need directions and that he just wanted a piece of Richie Pie. I politely refused the ride and went along by myself.

Is it wrong to feel good about being propositioned on a corner like a common street whore? I'd be lying if I said that I didn't walk to the train feeling a little good about myself.

Then I imagined what my life would be like if I were a street-hustling rent boy. My hooker name would be Niko and I'd be one of those hookers with a heart of gold like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. I'd know hundreds of sexual positions and fifteen operas so I'd be good enough to take to fancy social events.

I would catch the eye of the Baron Von Sugarcuben, who would fall madly in love with me as I whisper honeyed words into his ear. Then at one of the Baron's parties, a rival baron will call me out as a rent boy whore in front of all the Austrian high society.

My baron loses the respect of all of his friends for consorting with a rent boy and I'm forced to go back to the streets, giving random blowjobs to police officers who patrol the park at night.

I don't think I can handle all of the extra emotional stuff that comes with being a man of the night, so I'll just keep politely refusing car rides from strangers. It would be hot to fantasize about, though!

World Peace

Seeing the Miss Universe pageant the other night reminded me of the days when my mother made me compete in various child beauty pageants when I was younger. I was the Jon Benet of the San Francisco Bay area!

From what little I remember, the child beauty pageant scene is exactly how it's portrayed on television and in the movies. The parents of these poor children were really pushy and I remember the other kids being yelled at as they cried. I remember the mothers being more glamorously dressed than the kids in the pageants.

I was a big winner when it came to talking to the judges because I made everyone laugh with my response in one of the first shows I was in. The guy asked me how I was feeling at that moment and I said "hungry." I didn't know about comedy and its effect on a tense competition situation, but I picked up on the fact that a candid and honest response to a question made people smile and laugh. That in turn helped me win. I made out like a bandit at those stupid shows.

There was even a swimsuit portion of the pageant, where all of the young boys wore the skimpiest little swimming trunks and were told to flex their muscles for the judges. I was getting sick of walking barefoot on a cold floor and I just wanted to go home, so I pouted as I walked down the runway like I was a frail supermodel. I did make friends with a little white boy named Paul. We played with our He-Man action figures while we were still in our swim shorts backstage in the changing area.

The glamorous world of pageantry ended when I turned six. I remember my mother taking me to one of the registration offices after days of training me to tell people that I was still five years old. She'd ask me: "how old are you?" and I'd say "five." When we got to the office, the woman at the desk asked me how old I was and I said "six." She told my mother that I was too old and I couldn't compete in that pageant. I rode home with my mother as she scolded me for not lying like I was supposed to.

I didn't see the point of beauty pageants at age five and over twenty years later, I still don't see the point. Everyone knows what goes on backstage and it's so phony. Does anyone believe the words that are coming out of their mouths during the interview? Beauty pageants are just an enormous waste of time and another way for skinny bitches to try to stick it to people who weigh more than 90 pounds. But wasn't miss Puerto Rico's dress fabulous?

Get a room!

I've seen many offensive things in my life. I've seen parents hit their children. I've seen knife fights between rival gang members. I've seen American Idol auditions. Today I saw something that truly caused me mental distress and I think it is an abomination. I saw a young man and a young woman displaying their affection toward each other so overtly that I threw up in my mouth a little.

They were a young Filipino couple and they were so in love with each other that they didn't care how people would react to their heavy kissing and extremely loud baby talk. I think I heard her call him her "cutsie wootsie." Then he did this thing where he made her pick one of his closed palms because there was supposed to be a prize in one. The first one she picked was empty, so she picked the other one and that was empty. But then he proceeded to tell her that there was a hug and a kiss in that hand and they went on to make out like two gay boys in a Gap dressing room.

I'm not opposed to love. In fact, I love a lot of things. I just feel that when you giggle and peck your partner like you're an anteater and he or she is covered with tasty fire ants that you've crossed the line of good taste and tact. My only comfort is knowing that they will soon suffer immense agony and sorrow. It's the law of equilibrium. Things in nature tend to balance out and preserve the eternal union of opposites.

That means that because the two shmoopies couldn't keep their hands off each other because they were SO in love, they'll either get an std and blame each other for sleeping around or she'll find out that he likes to wear women's panties and get spanked by big black men on the 'down low.'

A lot of people will be like: "But Richie, I think you're jealous and you don't want them to be happy because you don't have a meaningful relationship with a man."

I'd say to them: "I'm not jealous, you cum bubble." If anything, they're the ones who are acting maliciously by rubbing their relationship in everyone's faces. It's like when a gay boy buys an expensive Baccarat crystal ring and stretches out his limp wrist so everyone can see how expensive it is. The truth is that it's just as delicate as a relationship and all it takes is one swift blow to shatter it into a million little pieces.

Ok that part sounded a little bitter, but do you get my point?

You're welcome... ya JERK!

As I walked to work in the extremely yucky rainy weather, I saw an elderly man walking with no umbrella. Being the gentleman that I am, I went up to him and offered to give my own umbrella to him. I feel that there's enough bullshit in the world that we have to deal with and I just want to do anything I can to cut down on that stuff. I also wouldn't mind getting a blessing from a senior citizen because senior citizen blessings are just as lucky as four leaf clovers.

Rather than hearing kind words and being filled with a sense of warmth, I was treated to a nice verbal lashing and an angry wave of a wrinkled and liver-spotted hand. "Back off of me, you punk!" It's not like I was trying to alley rape him or anything. I just thought he'd like to not get soaked so early in the morning. Silly me.

This made me remember a situation that happened to me a couple of weeks ago as I was entering the bank. There are two sets of double doors, and I saw a man getting ready to enter. I opened one of the doors and smiled, but he just smacked his lips and gave me a dirty look like he just saw my face on an ad supporting Judy Baar Topinka. "I can open a door by myself, thank you!" he said to me. Then he opened the next set of doors and said, "see?"

When did people become so ungrateful? I'm not a fucking boy scout! I just like to do nice things for people every now and then. It makes my day a little brighter and it gives me hope that maybe they'll do something nice for someone also. But when people take my generosity and shit all over it, it counts as twice the weight in the other direction of the niceness spectrum. I guess I just have to focus my mitzvah somewhere else - somewhere it can be appreciated... like at a sex club.

Imagination Cultivation

This morning a woman snapped a photograph of me from across the train tracks and when I turned to look at her, she quickly walked away with her head down. The strange thing is that she had sunglasses on as she was taking the pictures. I'd say that this is the fifth time this year that some stranger has taken a picture of me and walked away. It's a different person every time and they always go away when they see that they've been discovered. I don't know if I should be alarmed by this, but it's fun to think about why they need photos of me.

I might be a dead ringer for some prince who lives on a distant island in the Pacific Ocean. This prince, who could be named Rudolpho, could own a priceless natural pearl collection because natural pearls are really big in the pacific. There's probably a group of jewel thieves based in Chicago who have been planning a heist and one of them saw me at Caribou Coffee talking about all the 'pearl necklaces' I've had this year.

It would be the ultimate case of mistaken identity, but then they realize that I'm not really the prince, so they hire me to impersonate him and gain access to his super secret jewel cache. It would be like "Point of No Return" meets "My Fair Lady" meets "Alias." They'll give me lessons on how to act like the prince and everything will go fine until I meet the prince's personal bodyguard/secret lover, Fernando. Fernando realizes that I'm a fake after we have sex because the real prince doesn't have major rockstar sex like I do.

Fernando is torn between his love for Rudolpho and he new sexual desire for me, but I've already given the vault codes to the jewel thieves. While they make off with the pearls, I'm stuck trying to get out of a sticky situation when the real Rudolpho bursts in and demands to know what is going on. Then I explain to Rudolpho that I'm his long lost twin brother as I inch towards the window. Using one of the most stealthiest tactics in existence, I say to everyone: "Look over there!" and jump out the window as everyone's attention is diverted. There's a speedboat waiting for me and we all sail away back to the United States.

It could have been nothing at all. These random photographers could have just been photographing something next to me. It was just fun to use my imagination. I love to encourage people to think about things from different perspectives and to keep in mind that nothing is ever beyond the realm of possibility.

Papa, Can You Fear Me?

One of the storylines on General Hospital involves a man coming back to town after faking his death fifteen years earlier. His daughter, who was merely a child at the time of his 'death,' has grown up to be a brilliant young woman and she is deeply resentful towards him for being away for so long. This made me think about how it would be if my own father were to come back into my life.

I thought it was completely normal to grow up with just one parent. I guess I was fortunate to not feel incomplete when I saw families on television or in real life with a mommy and a daddy and little Billy and Janie playing in the yard with their dog, Spot. My sisters and I grew up just fine without a father. I have to admit that it was a little lonely without a male influence... and being a boy scout was so rough because all of the events were "Father/Son" and I was the kid who showed up alone for EVERYTHING and the scout leader had to be my 'father' for the day.

If my father showed up out of the blue, I think I'd be a little angry at him. Since I've never met my father, I really don't consider him as a part of my life that I missed because he was never there in the first place. You can't miss something you never had. It would just be awkward for everyone anyway. This is how I imagined our first encounter:

"Hi."
"Hi."
::long pause::
"Um, I have to go weigh my cat now. See ya."

I don't really have a cat, but leave it to me to think of the most oddball excuse to get out of an uncomfortable situation.

How do you think an old Portuguese man would react to the news that his long lost son is a big raging homo who is famous for this thing that he does with his tongue? Even though he hasn't been a part of my life, I still feel the need to prove myself to him in case he doesn't respect me for being gay. He used to be a boxer, so I need to become an ultimate fighting champion so he'd be afraid of me. Then when I see him and he knows that I'm a fabulous gay man, he'd kind of flinch when I go to shake his hand out of fear of me ripping his arm off and using it as a doorstop.

There ya go, all you psychology majors. Go ahead and have fun with this post. Gay man, daddy issues, violent undertones, acting out, and the need to prove my worth.

Like Water For Richie

As a child, I fondly remember the smell of my grandmother's cooking as I'd come in from several homoerotic coming-of-age experiences with my boyhood friends in Guam. She made the kind of food that filled you with a sense of nourishment and love. It wasn't like my mother's cooking, where it tasted like bitterness and loathing. Before my grandmother passed away, she wrote down several of her favorite recipes for me and I decided to make an easy one yesterday.

Chicken Kelaguen is a perennial favorite at parties in Guam and my sisters and I have been known to consume massive amounts in a very short time. It's that good. It's marinated chicken, cut into small pieces and seasoned with lemons, onions, and peppers. A lot of people who aren't Filipino or Chamorro tend to shy away from this food just because of how it looks.

I didn't pick a great day to start cooking. Unfortunately, I began my culinary crusade in the midst of one of the biggest hangovers in my life. I'm starting to believe that nothing productive can be accomplished when you're hungover. I went drinking with a bunch of friends and I thought I was Superman because I was able to drink so much without getting wasted.

That didn't matter to me! I was determined to make my gran proud, so I continued the fateful journey in my cramped little kitchen. The chicken was overcooked, I had to substitute a leek for a green onion, and I ran out of lemons. I also didn't have a suitable container to put all of it in, so I had to use several small bowls. It was a disaster! To me, the chicken tasted very bland and disappointing. Was this a metaphor for my life?

I've heard that the stress and negative energy that you feel is transferred into the food that you cook. Could that have been why my mother's cooking always tasted very different from my grandmother's cooking? Was my haste and lack of preparation the principal cause of the terribly-tasting Chicken Kelaguen that I made?

I'll have to test this theory by making the dish again, but I'll have to prepare all the ingredients ahead of time. I will also need to be in a better mood. I'm usually in good spirits after an intensely sweaty sexual encounter. People may not want to try my food after I tell them something like that because they'd always be wondering where my hands had been prior to that!

How much is that doggy in the window?

This week I succumbed to the inevitable gay hobby of antiquing. The term 'antiquing' comes with an inherent, fascinating sense of anticipation. I always imagine being bombarded with great finds and amazing little gorgeous, Anoushka Hempel-type things that I can put in my apartment and incite oohs and ahs from my friends and various gentlemen callers who don't even know my first name.

My big thing now is looking for toys that I owned when I was a child. I recently found a toy that brought me hours of amusement in my days as a plucky and tragically interesting lad who made mudmen in the backyard after the summer rain. It was an old pull toy, shaped like a dog and named "Little Snoopy." When he rolled across the floor, a mechanism attached to the axels made a simulated barking noise that brought so much delight to my lonely days. One day, my sister got mad and she pulled his springy tail off. My mother threw my doggie in the garbage and I never saw him again... until now.

I saw another copy of my fun little toy and I bought it immediately. I did have a problem with the fact that those mother fuckers charged $19.95 for the bloody thing, but all of that went away when I pulled Little Snoopy across the floor and heard him bark again.

Antiques are little time machines that are capable of transporting us to happier times in our lives. I don't live in the past, and I don't think it's unhealthy to stay connected with the things that made me the person I am today. It could be worse, really. I could have bought a velour Last Supper tapestry to hang over my dining area like the one we had in our house!

Faster than a speeding bullet, more fabulous than a pair of Prada loafers

I caught a little glimpse of the new show on the Sci-fi channel, "Who Wants to be a Superhero?" and all of my childhood fantasies came rushing back to me like a million locusts swarming to a farmer's crops. The people on the show were dressed up as superheroes and I got so jealous seeing that. A friend of mine made a comment recently about my fascination with capes and golden lassos. She said "oh another gay boy who wishes he could fly. What is it with queers and comic books?"

There's been a lot of debate recently about why gay people really identify with comic book heroes like Superman or the X-Men. Every stupid expert agrees that it's because they're hiding from society and they have to keep this huge secret because the world is very intolerant, blah blah blah. I don't believe that shit for one minute.

The real reason why us gay folks enjoy a good superhero is because they've got cool powers. We want the powers! Think of all the bullshit we have to deal with every day. Who wouldn't enjoy the opportunity to slam a homophobic cab driver into a brick wall with one hand after he called you a sissy fag boy? Super powers would ensure that nobody would fuck with us anymore. And don't even get me started on the outfits! Skin tight bodysuits and a long flowing cape? Yes, please!

Imagine how wonderful the world would be if gay people had super powers! People talk a lot of shit when they say that they'd make the world a better place, but gay people would really make it a better place. Condos would go up faster if you hired a superhero contractor. They'd pour the foundation, do the wiring, and would still have time left over to make a mean cosmo for the housewarming party the next day.

I just claled to say I lnve yot

I was walking back to the office from my lunch break yesterday and I saw this guy who I dated briefly back in January. He was driving, and he almost went into the other lane. I felt like a true geisha when I realized that I was able to stop a man in his tracks with a single look.

He got mad at me in January because I was playing darts with another guy and he drunk text messaged me from across the room. I was trying to do my dart hustler routine and he totally ruined it with his constant glowering. The last message I got from him was DONT CLAL ME EVVER AGIN. I've never claled anyone and I don't think I ever will. I assume he meant to tell me never to call him again, so I didn't.

Drunk text messaging is quickly replacing drunk calling, an incredibly annoying disturbance that usually takes place at an ungodly hour. The caller tells his or her victim how much they love them or how good of a time he or she is having. In a recent survey I conducted, nine of the fifteen people I asked have told me that they'd received a drunk text message in the last six months. They're usually misspelled and make absolutely no sense. Six of the nine messages were sent between the hours of 2 A.M. and 4 A.M..

I think it's a step in the right direction. The drunk person would have had to be dexterous enough to hit the keys to spell the words and to even find a person's name in their directory to begin with. Drunk calling just requires a push of a button or a simple voice command. So the next time you get a drunk text from someone, don't get mad. Be happy that the mere thought of you was a shining beacon in a sea of tequila in that person's warped mind.

Primal

This week I learned that even through years of opening doors for people, keeping my elbows off of the table, covering my mouth when I yawn, and never interrupting people when they're speaking, I still am not completely civilized.

I was out running along the lake a few days ago and it was still wet from the previous night's rain. There's an area on the running trail where the paved road comes really close, and it had been filled with a lot of water. As I neared the bend, a woman in a Lexus came up really fast and she splashed dirty water all over me. She wasn't paying attention because she was talking on her cell phone.

It happened in slow motion, as most traumatic things do. I tried to say every curse word in my vocabulary at the same time, but it only came out as a loud grunt. As soon as I made sure that there were no foreign objects in my eyes and that my hair wasn't messed up, I made a beeline for the Lexus. She wasn't driving very fast, so I was able to hit the back window with my palm. That's when she panicked and sped away and I was left behind, panting and grunting as the sweat dripped down my dirty face.

When I got home, I went straight for the refrigerator and opened up some leftovers from the night before. I didn't bother with utensils because I was so hungry. I think it took me fifteen seconds to ingest a bowl of cold gumbo. I wiped my mouth with my hand and I finally realized that I was a savage.

It's kind of like that movie "Walk Like a Man," where Howie Mandel's character was raised by wolves and his brother hires an expert to educate him in the ways of the civilized man. He may have been human on the outside, but he darted off in a howl as soon as he saw a fire truck. It makes me wonder if we should even bother with table manners or grooming. Inside all of us, there's some ferocity and bestiality that is just waiting to get out. Is it wise to suppress it?

I've decided that the balance between man and beast is the best thing I can do in this type of society. I replace certain words in my vocabulary with noises and grunts. That may not fly very well, but I'll just have to play that one by ear. Another safe place I can let my inner best roam is in the bedroom. There's nothing wilder than red hot sweaty animal sex. At least I can blame the howling and biting on a latent primeval fetish.