The Half-Boyfriend… we’ve all been there…
31 Days of Brannan… Day 2
Today’s Playlist: Half-Boyfriend
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So here’s the song that crystallized it for me. It made me a bonafide Brannan-ite (?), Jay-Fan (??), I’m gonna need help with that one. There’s gotta be a marketing moniker for Jay’s fans out there – The Jay Babes? I’ll keep thinking on it.
Anywho- Half-Boyfriend.
Yeah, man or woman, we’ve all been there. The guy you can’t possibly believe you’ve hooked up with but he’s hella hot in his own bad boy way, treats you like a second class citizen at times, but damned if he isn’t either great in the sack or will bust your balls with some romantic (and completely unforeseen) gesture that just makes you have one of those ‘well fuck me running’ moments. So you give in yet again, even if your brain keeps screaming behind that thick pane of glass that separates your head from your heart telling you to give him the boot but you just can’t cause he’s one hell of a number and the other guys and gals are all thinking how you so scored with that one.
Am I right?
Now, I can’t say with any certainty that that is what Jay experienced (I mean, I don’t know the man, personally) but the song had enough common truth in it that that’s what I took away from it.
For me his name was Ron. And lord did he fuck up my life for a while. He was the son of a friend that my mom knew back when she was a kid in her old neighborhood. Small world right? I mean the guy’s family moved away when my mom was still young. But somehow fate had a hand in it and Ron turned out to be gay and so did I – what were the chances of that? Say nothing of his finding his way to me?
Stupidly, I took it as a sign. The universe was saying we should be together… (yeah, not so much).
We did a lot of shit that was technically illegal (how we got away with it I’ll never know). I was in my late teens (just outta high school) and just yearning for some man on man love. Ron was energetic, he was built, he was – okay, he was a little quirky when it came to the bedroom (at least at that stage in my life). Ron was far more sexually adventurous than I was at that stage but I went along for the ride (save the dumb-ass remarks ’cause you ain’t thinkin’ anything I haven’t thought or said to myself). So I got into shit I probably shoulda saved until I was a bit more mature. But it didn’t go that way. I wanted the bad boy adventure he promised – it was wild, it was certainly dangerous, and it was flat out stupid.
Ron and I were really rarely on the same page – probably why Jay’s lines from Half-Boyfriend hit me over the emotive head rather hard:
I could give a million reasons
Why we should not be friends
Our moods change like the seasons
My mood ends your mood begins and
You’re a tease, you’re a cockblocker
You’re a loud mouth bitch, and a big talker,
But that’s okay.
You’ll grow up someday.
They are certainly what I latched onto and took away as ‘preach it, brotha…’ because in those few lines he took me right back to those heady and wild and completely stupid days of young love.
Oh, and a sidebar here – I should come clean about my fangirl stalker write up of the day before. I tend to write with tongue firmly planted in cheek. So while I have nothing but complete admiration and am often awestruck by Brannan’s prose, I am hardly the wild and nut-ball cray-cray I prattled on about in yesterday’s post. I was just having a bit of fun. I can be off that way sometimes. Partially why I get it when Jay riffs esoterically on his YouTube channel. When I am in the doldrums and can’t figure out how to get the creative juices flowing I just listen to a few of his mental musings and it’s like splashing cool water all over my tired brain. If brains could gain any benefits from such an exercise. But, well, hopefully you get my meanin’…
So back to Ron the bad-boy Half-Boyfriend in my life:
So I finally got smart, or should I say my friends and family got smarter than me at that point and made me see the light. This after a bad drug induced moment where Ron went completely off the rails and I had to, with the assistance of his parents who were then living in Seattle (we were in San Diego) have him committed to County Mental Health so he could recuperate and get some much needed help. Turns out there were a whole lot of issues I didn’t want to even look at then that came out in the wash from that little drug induced scene.
Looking back on it now, I just shake my head and thank the universe that I smartened up. In a way, I kind of thank Ron for being the whack job that he was. I got my bad boy phase through early on in life. Which led me to the man who I would spend the next ten years of my life with (and no, that’s not the hubby of 20 years that I am married to now). But more on boyfriend number 2 when we get to the post about the song that reminds me of him. I’ll let you all know when that is.
Now for a completely esoteric moment from Jay – I love it when he just does something fearless… never fails to make me smile.
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JAY’S TOUR DATES – Please check them out and catch his show in your area…
Fae-ry Tales Reimagined…
Author’s sidebar (to provide some context): So I’ve not been blogging as much as I should the past couple of weeks. Life fully inserted itself and pulled focus as it is wont to do from time to time. I had finals in school (yeah, this gay dad put his daughter through college before he ever got around to finishing his own schooling – guess I’m a good father that way), work was a bitch (isn’t that why it’s called work and not play? And on top of all of that I was busy trying to get my first novel to a publisher. Anywho, long story/short – I was busy. But that didn’t mean for a single second that I didn’t have things roiling around in my head just itchin’ to be hurled onto this here digital paper, right?
So here’s what I’ve been mentally riffing on in the back of my mind…
…whilst dealing with work, school, life and the book: traditional character re-imaginings. Now, normally, I am split on this topic. There are some icons in literature and movies/TV that I think are completely sacred. This is why I will NEVER watch Elementary (Watson as a woman = ludicrous). That was simply someone who was too lazy to finally play up and pursue the last step in the Sherlock/Watson bromance and actually make them (male) lovers and so, made it mainstream palpable by throwing a female into the mix. Uh uh, nothin’ doin’ there. So Sherlock’s sacred. As is James Bond – I wouldn’t make him gay for the world. He’s far too much of a romantic fuck-up to wish that on my fellow fey brethren. Now, Benedict and Martin’s Sherlock (set in modern day London)? Sign me the fuck up!
Benedict and Martin
I could wax nostalgic over many such literary and media laden icons like these. But my thoughts were running rampant on a different sacred ground that I was just itching to see go GAY! Disney Villains.
I’d like to point out that I was totally smitten with a certain artist over at Deviantart.com by the name of Sakamichan who has some amazing artwork over there. There is a particular vein where the Disney princesses and villains have been reimagined as their Fae Boy counterparts. This got my creative juices flowing.
First up – Ursula vs. Urs
Disney’s Ursula reimagined as Urs by Sakamichan (deviantart.com)
This could go in so many ways that the original Hans Christian Andersen tale didn’t. I could see Urs actually having the hots for Prince Eric and finding a means to torment Ariel that would take on a whole new meaning. That waifish little fish woulda had a tougher time with a studly and horny gay boy on her finned backside that’s for sure. But if we add a whole other gay boy layer of icing to this lovefest cake? What if Ariel were a merboy instead of that insipid carrot topped girl?
Ariel as a merman…or gaymer? – He looks pretty gay either way…
- VS.
- Ariel as the fish of a girl she can be…
Next up: Cruella DeVille vs. Cruel DeVil
Disney’s Cruella as reimagined by Sakamichan from deviantart.com
Now we’re getting to the meat of the matter – and I ain’t talking dog meat, neither! This gay fashionista would have added an intense sexual tension if he wasn’t only interested with the puppies but what if he was interested in wrestling a Roger Radcliffe who had dallied with his more prevalent bisexual past while in college. Perhaps Roger is bored with domestic life and Cruel finds the repressed and domestically whipped Roger irresistible? Hell, maybe the dogs are just the trip wire to snag what Cruel is really after? Some man on man action with said repressed husband? That sort of action might’ve made the puppies blush!
Okay, I know. This whole blog entry is rather silly. I get that. That’s where I am mentally after an exhausting round of school finals, work crap and a novel submission. But I have one more musing to propose and it’s a doozy –
The Grand Finale – Maleficent vs. MALEficent…
Maleficent as reimagined into MALEficent. Emphasis on all things MALE…
Now we’re cooking with gas…!
This whole thing would need a complete re-write. I see it as two brother’s dueling for the heart of one simple gay prince who doesn’t have a hope of finding the kind of love he truly wants. He’s probably a waifish man-child. A geek amongst princes – you know the type? Can’t swing a sword if he hired a knight to do it for him sort of gay boy? A King’s worst nightmare?
Only his father wouldn’t berate him. He’d love his shy but lovable little princeling. Now the real story would be about the battle between Prince Philip and Maleficent. In MY version the boys would’ve been half-brothers with Maleficent being the product of an illicit affair between his father and a comely witch. Maleficent would be that son. So as not to eschew him entirely he introduces Maleficent to his half-brother hoping that the two of them would grow close. And for a while they do. Until in their early teens they fight for the affection of a common but ruggedly handsome stable boy. When it seems the stable boy prefers the romantic overtures of Philip over the wanton sexual come-ons of Maleficent, Maleficent pulls a terrible stunt that costs the young stable boy his life. In grief Maleficent accuses Philip for the boy’s death and vows that one day he will visit a terrible curse upon his one true love.
The rest can sort of play out along those lines – with perhaps a replay of the same sort of love triangle between Maleficent and Philip over this new boy. Will the brother’s ever learn or are they doomed to repeat the mistakes of their past? Kitchy, I grant you – but isn’t that the very nature of fairy tales. Faery Tales like you’ve never imagined.
And here’s a twisted take on this whole re-imagining – what if Philip and Maleficent were trying to correct the mistakes of their past? Maybe behind closed doors Maleficent is into painting toe-nails and soft-pillows and chatting about fashion and romance literature. And what if Prince Philip was a total leather daddy now and wanted nothing more than to bend waifish Anatoli (which means East or Sunrise (Dawn) in Russian)? But, I dunno… I think I like Maleficent being the dominatrix-esque leather daddy, don’t you? Either way, you have to admit it would be a far cry from either the Grimm Brother’s take or even the Disney remake.
…or perhaps, like me, they’ve been the musings of your gay boy dreams?
Life inserts itself…
So I haven’t been posting the past couple of days. Not for lack of wanting to, I swear. Ideas have been floating around like flotsam on a swiftly moving stream. Sometimes I can’t get them down before they go floating off. Slinking away to wherever ideas go when they aren’t plucked up in time.
I’ve been firmly entrenched the past few days on Skid Row. No, not the slums of San Francisco, though it would be an apt description, I suppose. But this particular Skid Row is my granddaughter’s school production of Little Shop of Horrors. She goes to a elementary/middle private school in Marin County. The school pulls out all the stops for their year end school musical. This year it’s Little Shop. And because I have oodles of years in my past in theatre, I donate my time to help out with their production.
Little Shop of Horrors Logo
The cool thing this time around is that they chose a musical that is very high on my list. Something that I successfully passed to my granddaughter. She isn’t old enough to have tried out for one of the leads (she’s a walk-on customer and a part of the plant – which was her second choice of roles (the plant, not the customer)). She plays the plant with real gusto.
So I’ve been assisting with getting the kids through hell week to opening night (which was last night). We had everything a musical production goes through as it gets mounted… lead actor meltdowns, inconsistent knowledge of the script, musical numbers that had to be woodshedded and cleaned up while the rest of the show was going through painful tech stop/start rehearsals.
Anything to get the show mounted and running. We ran right up to the doors being opened so friends and family could make their way in. In addition to assistant directing duties, I was choreographer, hair/makeup, costume master, prop master and just about anything else that someone wasn’t taking care of. I take time off from work (yeah, donate my vacation time where I could be doing something else, to the school play. I’m aces with my granddaughter. That’s cool enough for me).
Thank goodness they only run for two nights. So while opening was last night, we’ve got closing night tonight. Yup, three months of prep and meetings for TWO nights – and as Martha Stewart says, ‘that’s a very good thing.’ (Only because I don’t think I could take it if it went on longer…)