Diary of An Unrepentant Sex Addict

Sunday, October 15, 2006

Get On the Shortbus

Voyeurism is Participation

That's the tag-line for John Cameron Mitchell's Shortbus, which opened in general release this weekend. I've been chomping at the bit to see this, ever since I first heard about it and the fact that it featured real, un-faked sex between the actors. I have a weird thing for "real" film fare that dares to cross that line-- I own a copy of Romance, and have also seen Intimacy (which only had one little bit of crossing-the-line). I do confess that my fascination isn't strong-enough to yet experience Brown Bunny.

So I went in, expecting some nice titillation, and hoping there was some reasonable movie around the juicy bits.

This is, without exaggeration, one of the best-written, most moving films I've seen in years. Years. And I see a lot of movies. At this point, I'm easily in the high hundreds, though I doubt I've reached 1000 yet. I truly love the art of film, but I just was not ready for how good, how touching and gripping the characters and their stories were. In my defense, I had not seen JCM's previous film, Hedwig and the Angry Inch. If I had, I'd have had higher expectations going in, and the movie would still have exceeded them.

(As it happens, another theater was doing a midnight screening of Hedwig tonight, as well. So I made the evening into an ersatz JCM double feature.)

It's hard to describe the film without giving away too much about the characters. You need to discover them bit by bit, like everyone else in the theater. The lead character is a couples' counselor named Sofia, played by Sook-Yin Lee, one of only a few of the actors to have an "established" career. I imagine getting actors willing to have sex on-camera wasn't easy, so it's no surprise really that so many of them are relative newcomers. But everyone in this film is good; there isn't a bad turn by anyone. Even the local color-- NYC performance artists appearing as themselves-- avoid the bland and/or wooden presence that usually comes from pulling such a celebrity out of their usual element and plopping them in front of a camera. The movie, in a broad and general sense, is about the intersecting lives of several New Yorkers who are all damaged in some way related to or centered around sexuality. Every one of them makes you ache, because each problem, different as they all are, resonates. And they all end up at the same underground performance art/music/play-space called "Shortbus". I can't explain much more without giving things away. Except that I came close to tearing up at several points, and I'll be back to see it again. And I'll buy the DVD when it comes out. (I'll also be buying the Hedwig DVD, but I don't have to wait for that one.)

It feels sort of like this movie has started a gradual movement of change in me, I don't know how to explain it. Seeing things in these characters that I recognized in myself, gave me a feeling like maybe things can be different, can get better. And, on an unrelated note, this movie has made me feel a genuine pull towards NYC, something that no other film has (and like I said, I've seen hundreds of films, of which several score were NYC-centered). I wouldn't be surprised if there was really a scene similar to what the movie portrays out there. If I thought I had a chance of meeting the right people, and finding that kind of creative, expressive space, I'd be looking at job listings tomorrow.

See this movie. You'll be so glad you did.

-D

Labels: , ,

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Linky Linky

I've cleaned up my blogroll a little bit, dropping a few of them that haven't been updating. Not that I can exactly point fingers, since it's been ages since the last time I wrote on two consecutive days.

I've also added a new one: Suburban Sex Worker. In the name of fair disclosure, I know this person personally. But even if I didn't, I'd link to any blog that brings the following morsel:

Poor guy huffed and puffed and puffed and huffed until I faked my little house getting blown in!

I'll never read "The Three Little Pigs" the same way again...

-D

Labels: ,

Still Not in London

Things have been almost funny-enough to rate as an evening comedy. Except people would get bored halfway into the first show and start flipping channels.

I have my work permit. I have my residency visa. What I do not have, however, is a job. Due to cuts in funding from their clients, the company I was to work for had to rescind their offer. I'm in full-on job search mode now, and have had some very promising interviews.

I got to Denver on May 10 of this year. At the time, I expected to be in London by mid-June at the latest. It is now October 10 (well, 11th to be pedantic). The person who gave me the spare room to stay in has been patient beyond belief. She's an ex-SO, and yes we've given in to the occassional urge to fool around. I think I even mentioned this before, not sure. Its a shallow substitute for actually being out and meeting someone to have a relationship with, but it beats the five-finger revue.

And that' s another thing. I've shied away from trying to date, except one attempt at placing an ad on the "Casual Encounters" section of the local Craigslist (and we all know what that leads to). After all, I'm not going to be here much longer. A few weeks at best. I've been telling myself that for over FIVE MONTHS now. It's not realistic to try and indulge in commercial sex, for several reasons; I don't have much income (and I need what I have), I don't have my own place for outcalls, and most of all the spam-to-real-ad ratio on the local "Erotic Services" CL section is abysmal. I've actually considered trying to write a 'bot of sorts, to read the ads off of the RSS feed and flag the ones that have obvious tells of spam. I would hope that CL already has something like that, but you couldn't guess it from the Denver ERS section.

I just want to be in London. I'm tired of whacking off because I don't know if I will be around long-enough to justify trying to date. At least when I find myself whacking off (excuse me, I mean "wanking") in London, it'll be because I haven't found a date, not because it isn't feasible to look. And if London completely falls through, I'll head back to the bay area. One of the really promising interviews was a bay area company. Of course, I've given up the apartment that was priced way below market, so I'm not looking forward to trying to find housing. But while I used to wistfully think of Denver, I realize now that I'd been in Silicon Valley long enough for that to become home. So if I don't get to go to Europe, I'm going to go home.

And have all the sex I can.

-D

Labels: , ,