Since my small buttercup of a son has been spending quite a little portion of his summer vacation at his dad's—where, rumor is, said dad allowed him to bleach his beautiful chocolate-brown hair orange, meaning he need only grow a goatee and don a flame shirt to pay his own no-doubt cheeky homage to Everything That Was Wrong With Orange County in 1999—I've been running around like one of those unfettered, live-for-the-moment (and the next cocktail) singles without kids. That's right. I've been running around like a gay, minus only (and sadly) the anonymous toilet sex.
Somebody, please tell me that if my sweet buttercup weren't coming back this week, all that rousting about and living for myself and having a gay old time would eventually get old. It would . . . right?
Right?
I wonder if my son looks like a pumpkin.
I also wonder if he's safe there on the mean streets of Malibu. He is a half-Jewish buttercup, after all, and so you never know when someone will go off his meds and decide to hold him responsible for at least half the world's wars in addition to his dastardly half-killing of Christ.
* * *
It's been one lovely jaunt after another. A trip to Felix's for sangria with the girls after work. Another trip to Felix's for sangria with the gays after work. A day when nobody wanted to go to Felix's for sangria after work so I went home and watched movies because I was wearing a really age-inappropriate (okay, slutty) outfit and would have looked like an old French whore sitting and having sangria by myself at Felix's after work. All that plus every new gay bar you could shake your stick at, a small gathering at Quiksilver for 5,000 of its closest friends, and some Democraty stuff too!
Life is sweet, and sort of bloated. Not Mel Gibson bloated, but you get the picture.
* * *
We began with a night on the town—on a Monday!—at Irvine's newish gay club Hamburger Mary's. The design is a disaster, with every sight line blocked by the humongoid bar, where a sparkling water will set you back $5. But the Dream Girls Revue—heavy on the Heart and a keerazy Celine Dion—brought out the kind of magical gays one usually sees only in one's dreams. They were handsome, they were nice, and my gays and I stalked them all over the club. One, Jeff, a gorgeous, kind-eyed brunet for whom I'm divorcing my gay husband, had been brought out for a night on the town by his hunky best friend because he'd just suffered a nasty breakup. Jeff's boyfriend, having moved to New York City, had let him know that he owed it to New York City to be single.
That's quite a debt, and I hope New York City is properly grateful.
We stalked Jeff all over the bar and back, and when we finally left, I sighed to my gays (whom I'm leaving) about how handsome Jeff and co. were—and so nice,when they should have been the bitchiest of catty queens!
“Those are A-listgays,” my gays explained, sighing themselves. Sing it, sister!
Thursday at the Shark Club? Not so A-list as it maybe could have been. While my gays swear the weekly shindigs thrown by boinkevents.com have been amazing for the past several weeks, all I saw was the complimentary whop with the ugly stick at the door; the super-femmey ladyboys making up roughly 85 percent of the clientele lip-synching with great emotion! to the hazardous waste that was seeping from the DJ booth; the “music” just mentioned (even when a fun retro dance number from Madonna or Michael Jackson came along, it was sped up like we were in a spinning class); the terrifying go-go boys, one of whom looked like a thinner, younger and more platinum-haired Steve Westly, while another danced just like a monkey, needing only cymbals and a fez to complete the pretty picture; and the grossly fat girls who escorted their gay husbands only to stand morosely to the side.
I guess you could say I didn't care for it.
As bad as it was, though—and before we get the nasty calls, I know it was Pride in San Diego, and that the club is usually totally super-terrific in each and every way!—there was something even worse this week, which pleased me greatly, since I'm pretty much addicted to that special crawl of loathing as it creeps up and down my spine.
With my Theo, I went to the grand opening Friday of the new Saleen store, home to the guy making your Corvette even Vette-ier and the meatheads with money who love him. Standing in the punishing sun for 20 minutes of speeches before the ribbon cutting was grand, but discovering the payoff was hors d'oeuvres of beef in lukewarm gravy and my choice of water, Snapple or Diet Coke while perusing the unbearably tacky (tacky in a bad way) leather Ferrari jacket rip-offs really made my day. Ooh, is that a Viper? How very.
Luckily, I learned from one of the fashion reporters in attendance, Quiksilver was entertaining at its Huntington headquarters. There was booze enough to shock Braveheart's liver. There was food. There were 5,000 hottie surfers ambling about alongside such old CG faves as Wahoo'sWing Lam and Quik's Evil Bollweevil, a bear of a man who once ditched me (and I him) for 72 consecutive hours in Austin, Texas. “Come meet us at the Four Seasons,” he'd shout into the celly before wandering off to Stubb's,giving Quiksilver socks to random doormen in his path. “Come to The Shot Bar!” I'd call him and say, and then when I saw him, I'd hide and run. South by Southwest was rolling good times.
Quiksilver too. It's the booze.
* * *
By Saturday, when theProgressive Democrats of America hosted a second anniversary shindig at a supporter's home in Laguna Beach, I was feeling like a wet bag of cat hair. (I went out Tuesday and Wednesday, too, you know: Tuesday to Cavallino's in Huntington Beach for some jazz that didn't suck, and Wednesday to Fleming's steakhouse in Fashion Island for lobster appetizers, petit filet mignon Oscar, a bottle of wine and literally every dessert on the menu in preparation for the Weekly's upcoming food issue. Check it Aug. 17!)
But back to the PDA, me and my getting-wrinkly bag of bones. (Baby needs to hydrate!) Aliso Viejo Councilman (and Green) Karl Warkomski was there, talkin' biodiesel conversion (turns out you do indeed need to start with a diesel); Dem Congressional candidate Steve Young, running in the 48th, had some doubtless very cogent remarks on an unsuccessful prosecution of vandalous peace activists in Ireland; the women—volunteers and activists like Gila Jones, Desiree Funsch and Mary Carter (the hostess) kept the event well-lubricated. And when Loretta Sanchez—who'd flown home from D.C. that morning for the event after staying at the Capitol voting till 2 a.m.—is on, she's on. The crowd—by which I mean me—really, really enjoyed her very frank talk about all the shit going down in Congress. And that's actually what she talked about: she said shit a lot,along with shitty and various other permutations, possibly including shitifferous but possibly not too. The older I get—and the longer she's been a Democrat—the more I like Loretta. (I'm sure she wouldn't mind if I called her “Loretta.”) She's outspoken, she votes right—against the Debacle in Iraqland the Patriot Act, for instance—and she reminded us that some Dems from some districts are allowed to be shitheads on some issues. I just hope she wasn't talking about Joe Lieberman. That's one Chosen Guy that needs the boot.
CommieGirlCollective.com. Don't forget Melting Point Radio, Sunday, 11 p.m., on KRLA-AM 870. it sucks less if you call.
