Exquisite Landscaping

I passed by a gaggle of local New Haven high school kids processing from their hotel prom into limos and yellow school buses. They were en route to the 'after-party,' whatever that can entail at age 17 and in shiny synthetic visions in satin reminiscent of Olympic figure skating, TV ballroom dancing, and bridesmaids circa 1990.

Amidst the hormonal hair-sprayed girls, and their delinquent soon-to-be wanker-mimbo escorts, there was one boy who stood out from the crowd, mostly because he was not wearing a shirt, but also because he was wearing a white tuxedo vest and gold tie. I congratulated him for the flamboyant gaucheness of his outfit and even snagged a few photos of the all-in-white-semi-nude exhibitionism. Of course, he was very obliging and more than comfortable in front of the camera. His confidence gives me hope for the future of embracing homosexuality in America's public school system.

King Tut

It's an abandoned university dorm room in the middle of the night. The place gets eerie at this time of year, when all the undergraduates are gone, except for a few straggling seniors awaiting graduation. My friend is an artist and uses her oversized single as a studio. She says, "It's great—I keep lumber, and power tools, and all sorts of things in there." She grew up on a farm in a "very rural blue-collar part of Wisconsin" that afforded her about 20 acres of personal space. One of her first worldly experiences was when she traveled to Siena at age 16 to do an apprenticeship with a 50-year-old painter. Her parents shipped her off with a little duffel bag, and she arrived at the man's falling down house in the middle of the Tuscan countryside.

Her Sienese painter/master was a typical Italian man...he would grab the paint brush out of her hand and smack her with it if he didn't like what she was doing. Plus, he expected her to cook him dinner. She mixed his oil paints for him and ran away to the city whenever possible. The best part about authentic travel experience is that, after enough time has passed since the traumatic 'culturally enriching' period, you always look back on it with fondness, even if it involved a middle-aged creeper and crying yourself to sleep every night.

Champagne Socialists

Sometimes it's nice to steal things even when it's not necessary. In fact, rich people are often the most dangerous ones prowling through luxury department stores. I'm sure that Winona Ryder had something other than pinching pennies on her mind when she scooped up 5,000 dollars worth of Marc Jacobs and Gucci items at her corner Saks Fifth Avenue. The phenomenon of kleptomania is like many destructive addictions, such as alcoholism, or watching reality TV: it seems like a good idea at the time, but after you've passed out in the shower, buried in floral print blouses, having watched 48 hours of Jessica Simpson prancing around her McMansion wearing velour, you realize that your favorite pastime is a destructive one.

I had a firsthand experience with thievery in the notoriously "ghetto" New Haven. Anticipating the closing of the campus dining halls, I became anxious about my access to food while squatting in my dorm room during the coming weeks. My friend and I decided to "get even" with our exorbitantly priced meal plans. In the space of 72 hours we went on an ultra-gauche shopping spree and stealthily pilfered the following items: 1 carton vanilla soy milk, 4 boxes Kashi Heart to Heart cereal, 2 boxes Cinnamon Life/Cracklin' Oat Bran/All-Bran/granola, 4 c. Quaker Oatmeal, 1/2 c. cashew nuts, 3 c. chocolate sprinkles, 8 slices luncheon meats, 1 c. hummus, 2 c. grape tomatoes, 2 c. yogurt, 36 Anjou pears, 5 bananas, 49 apples, 12 oranges, 1 loaf potato bread. It sounds like a recipe for disaster. And in the end we have decided to book it to Manhattan and leave all our precious rationings behind.

A Handsome Catalogue!

I found a wayward Mother's Day card soaked and dirty on the streets of New Haven, under one of the flowering trees next to an elaborate wrought iron gate. I am not sure if the card ever made it to the mother, or if it merely fell out of the son's pocket en route to the nearby post office. The front cover had an illustration of a book on it: "Mother Knows Best: The critically acclaimed best-seller." And then there was the boy's personal heartfelt message:

To the author of many critically acclaimed best sellers,
Happy Mother's Day. Thanks for all your wisdom. This mother's day is especially meaningful mostly because we had such a great mother-son bonding/quality time :) Thank you for everything, especially for supporting me through the amazing and challenging year!
Love,

Jack

I always thought of parents as being more like crutches for when you have a sprained foot and less like books for when you are in need of "wisdom." We go to our mothers kicking and screaming, and rarely seek them out when we are at our mature contemplative intellectual best. But the son's card was a soggy, wrinkled mess in the street. And it's the thought that counts.

Perfect Confection

At a lovely British Art Center lecture on Victorian paintings, which are notorious for being no body's favorite, the overriding theme was Morrison's Pills. Or, something to do with philanthropy and a rich English man who patronized the arts thanks to the phenomenon of his diuretics.

Gauche things to mention while lecturing at the Yale Center for British Art:

1. "The mounting of this exhibition was a long and arduous process that required the full strength of 12 Herculean men."

2. "This picture of the Babylonian marriage market always makes me think of America's Next Top Model."

3. "If you'll allow me five minutes to finish off, I'll discuss this picture of cheeky repose."

4. "I would take a few questions, but it's definitely time for a drink."

In proper Anglican fashion, the elderly audience, along with a slew of thirsty graduate students, trotted to the miniature crab delicacies and appropriately named "Hob Nob" wine. I bonded with a striking woman wearing fabulous ethnic jewelry and a frisky tunic dress—and there's nothing Victorian about her.

Throwaway Culture

This morning at the New Haven corner coffee shop a middle-aged woman sat next to me eating her raspberry scone and writing repeatedly on a pad of paper: "Please God give Brendan strength/Please God give Brendan strength..." And just like that for pages and pages. Meanwhile, across the street, there was quite a sizable security brigade forming in front of the museum. Everyone in the coffee shop turned to stare out the windows and gawk. Apparently, there was a "special guest" visiting the Yale Center for British Art today, and "no one knows who." There was a proliferation of Chinese flags and well-dressed Asians carrying large bouquets. My guess is it was a noted Chinese pop singer along the lines of Miley Cyrus. Perhaps the recession has forced Yale to sell off some of its fine art assets, and the young lovely is looking to cover her bubblegum-colored loft in a glorious George Stubbs tableau.

According to a textual message drifting around campus, the mystery guest was far less of a trendy tween icon than I had anticipated: "it was liu yandong the only female member of the politburo and the highest ranking female in china." Well, I got the gender right at least.

Repair Black Watch/Wallflower

I was fortunate enough to partake in the festivities of Passover with a good old non-denominational New Haven Seder that devolved very quickly into flourless chocolate cake. I love this wheat-less and unleavened thing...

Gauche Things to do while Wine-Shopping:

1. Upon entering the store, dashing straight over to the impromptu wine tasting event without hesitation.

2. Asking the person attending you, "Does this Chambord come in a family size?"

3. Buying those mini champagne bottles and then asking the cashier, "Do you sell extra-long straws?"

4. Exclaiming things like: "This bottle looks smaller than this one," or, "This one just doesn't have a high enough alcohol content for my taste."

5. Ogling vodka bottles based on the decorative aesthetic of their labels. Then choosing the one that has a picture of a lemon on it, because it reminds you of the Serge Gainsbourg song. (This is not so much gauche as just plain deranged.)

6. When asked to present your ID, handing the cashier your Pennsylvania driver's license and then saying, "OH wait, that's the wrong one... here you go." And then pulling out your other ID (the one from Mississippi).

7. Buying Baileys.

You & Me Solo

On the cover of today's Yale Daily News there is a photo of a beaming young couple, two Yale seniors (both Catholics and on the crew team) who are engaged to be married upon graduation. It all began when they met on the steps of the New Haven post office, and they sealed the deal (not literally I'm sure, since they are devout Catholics) when he proposed to her last year on those very steps. What a whirlwind tale of tidy romance.

Marriage before the age of 23 is uncommon these days, and the figures are dropping in recent years: apparently only about 25 percent of women and 16 percent of men choose this path of an early yoke and bypass the lovely exploratory period of the 20s dating scene. The Yale Daily News reported that less than 40 percent of young marriages end in divorce, which is less than the overall 50 percent divorce rate.

My guess is that it's all a matter of luck. Destiny could have it that you meet the man, or woman, of your dreams while studying for final exams, under the harsh fluorescent glow of the library reading room, at age 19. For some women, their destiny seems to be meeting a series of mixed characters until the right one comes in, maybe late in life. And then, oops, that one wasn't the right one either—just a regular old mimbo/wanker conglomerate.

In a Festive Teepee

The past few days have been a veritable mini cruise in celebration of my birthday. It all began when my sister made a trip to New Haven and I showed her a few of its many charms. First there was The Cupcake Truck, where she surprised me with a red velvet cupcake topped with edible gold. That evening we stopped in at the neighborhood cigar bar, the Owl Shop, where a table of middle-aged Connecticut men told us about the nuances of their jobs as liquor promoters. Luckily, just as they whipped out a round of Jägermeister liqueur and insisted on mailing us various alcohol-related "tchotchkes," eight of my friends showed up to steal me away for the first surprise party of my life. Ironically, it was hosted in a sorority house, a place I would ordinarily never be caught dead.

The three-day birthday cruise segued into two incidents of spontaneous guerrilla-style dance: the first took place next to the Yale University Art Gallery's Oxfordian arch, to the mellifluous sounds of Prince's "Delirious" blasting from a Volvo; the second transpired next to the Harvard Square T-stop, to street performers' Andean ethnic folk music.

The birthday finished with a quieter intervention on the Boston T. My sister had found a beautiful eight-foot-long tree branch outside of the Museum of Fine Arts. Thinking it would be a perfect decorative accent to our lavender bedroom walls, I brought the unwieldy branch into the subway with us. When I entered, the subway operator immediately called her supervisor and said, "A woman just brought something like a large tree branch in." The branch's presence in the subway worried a few, delighted some, and mystified many. It's funny to see what a touch of nature does to an urban landscape.

The above picture is of a woman in a fetching fur hat at an ever-popular Yale Center for British Art reception.

Safe Stirrups

There are few things more awkward or irritating than the annual gynecological visit. Well, I can think of loads of more uncomfortable scenarios, but on this icy March afternoon, the last thing I wanted to do was to sit semi-naked, partially wrapped in over-sized white paper towel "gowns," atop a hospital table with its own pair of stirrups. And the doctor never arrives in a timely manner.

Gauche things to say to your Gynecologist:

1. When asked the following question about your sex life "So, you have a steady partner?": Replying, "Yes, at least one of them is definitely steady."

2. When asked if you need a refill on your birth control pill: Replying, "No, I'm pretty sure none of my partners are father-material."

3. When asked if you use condoms: Replying, "No. But let's hope he does."

Overall, the awkward physical aspect of going to the gynecologist is only exacerbated by the fact that half the time, or most of the time, the patient is not even in an intimate relationship, let alone multiple ones (like the gauche and rather promiscuous above-mentioned example). Being alone on a cold doctor's table with stirrups should be more enticing than being in bed with a wanker, but unfortunately, women seem to gravitate towards the latter.

The above picture is of the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, New Haven. Please understand that this post advises people to practice safe sex and be as selective as possible with their partners.

Pity. Of Young & Old.

This afternoon Hanif Kureishi, English-Pakistani novelist, playwright, and screenwriter, came to Pierson College for a Master's Tea, blanketing my 4pm procrastination in a bitter British coziness. Kureishi wrote the charmingly geriatric film with Peter O'Toole, Venus: the story of an unexpected relationship between a lazily gauche girl and an elderly actor (a veteran of Britain's stage and screen now type cast as "the corpse").

Kureishi discussed "the crash" that occurs in a writer's process, after the thrill of the seminal idea has subsided: it's like in love—after six months, when you realize what that person is really like, and then you either break up or you come to terms with who they are. I wonder if love is always as bleak and businesslike as Kureishi describes it.

On his unwillingness to sell out, after Kureishi turned down a big Hollywood deal, he said, "I could see the check hovering in my retina all the time." He has the expenses of twin fifteen-year-old boys to consider, but he distilled the fate of the young generation down to the following question: "Do you want to read a book by Tolstoy or do you want to spend the day on Facebook?"

For all his cynical spins on success, Kureishi had a clever finish. His teenage sons say to him of his writer's lifestyle: "Dad, we've never seen you do a day's work—whenever we look in your study, you're always laying on the sofa and listening to the Beatles."

"Read it violently, aggressively."

Jealousy is not necessarily an unproductive human downfall. My preschool nemesis became one of the primary motivating factors in my life: I wanted to have more doll accessories than she did, I wanted to learn to write my name in cursive like she did, and then, years later, I wanted to date her boyfriend, and I wanted our beloved high school English teacher to give me more attention around the Harkness Table.

This former rival became my early academic incentive, but it became tiresome to try to exceed her (especially since she was a star ice hockey player, and I have never been fond of team sports, or cold air). My jealousy turned into an unshakable desire to be different from her. In boarding school, this impulse led me down many a wayward path—jumping in ponds late at night with underclassman boys, writing poetry, dressing exclusively in orange velour jumpsuits, directing French experimentalist theatre productions, and occasionally wearing wigs.

But in the end, I would never take back this rivalry. We are now close friends, and I admire her for her early acceptance to Harvard Business School, her charming boyfriend, and her varsity women's ice hockey scores. Because, just two hours south of Cambridge, in the delightfully underrated city of New Haven, I have many brilliant things of my own—an unedited (and probably unpublishable) manuscript, a gay boyfriend named "Poodle," and an aversion to overly strenuous physical activity.

Pigeon-Fanciers

The new Charles Darwin exhibition at the Yale Center for British Art is Entitled "Endless forms": Charles Darwin, Natural Science and the Visual Arts. It includes everything from pigeon skulls, to Cézanne paintings, to a seven-minute looped video of pheasants mating. The visiting curator from London, with her lovely nest of salt-and-pepper hair, kicky tweed dress and leather boots, told the touring students, in her most deadpan British manner, with regard to the pheasant footage: "If you're waiting for the climax, there isn't one. It's seven minutes of very elaborate courtship."

A rotund fellow interrupted our tour to add his insight on scientific theories of artistic vision. He was wearing an odd combination of pinstripe suit, leather suspenders, linen shirt, and backpack, and his intervention was delightfully disruptive.

My friend and I had the odd fortune of encountered this interloper the very next day, at the New Haven hot spot tapas restaurant, Barcelona. He was wearing almost the exact same outfit, and his unconventional charms abounded. We joined him for tequila and late-night professorial chit chat at the home of his friend, a member of the university faculty.

But back to the British: in his old age, Darwin became a "pigeon-fancier," which means that he was "not at all snobby."

Good on Paper

My Valentine is incredibly handsome, tall, masculine, devilishly intelligent, with a touch of sardonic wit about him. Thanks to his decidedly pimp status, he manages to wear brown suede slippers at all hours of the day, in all seasons, and still look impeccable.

Late tonight I am taking him to dinner at my favorite restaurant, and then on to the Anchor Bar, a New Haven classic (with a gold neon anchor-shaped sign and a changing window display that incorporates various plastic dolls—in short, very David Lynch).

My Valentine and I share just about everything, or at least all the important stuff: a love of Paris, a fondness for brief trips to Cambodia, a taste for queer theory and the "problematic male gaze," and a fascination with older men with big art collections.

Jealous?

An Eye Patch

"On the eve of Charles Darwin's 200th birthday," tonight's Yale Center for British Art keynote lecture was accompanied by wine, sausage tartlets, and inordinately opportune people-watching: elderly women in fur, young men in lime green ponchos, tweeds and plaids mixed in combinations both horrifying and delightful, and the usual rarefied debauchery of art world academia.

With Darwin's theories on evolution always pertinent to my own observations of human sexuality, and with Valentine's Day looming, here are some of the more egregious post-breakup mating rituals.

Gauche Things to do to an Ex:

1. After months apart, emailing your ex to suggest a friendly drink. Then, after he/she refuses, sending the following email response: "No problem. Just a bit of leftover curiosity." Classic wanker behavior.

2. G-chatting your ex, or contacting them via any form of simultaneous cyberspace messaging. If you have something specific to say, express it in a hand-written letter...you will inevitably change your mind about sending it, due to the letter's inappropriately aggressive or spiteful tone. You'll be grateful to have not humiliated yourself by way of as lowly a form of communication as Gchat.

3. Calling your ex in the middle of the night, especially with the idea of initiating phone sex. Need I say more?

Meet Me at the Tower.

Valentine's Day is approaching, a reality that is almost as undesirable as the mid-winter weather. In an attempt to distract myself, I hosted a gathering of friends in my charming dorm room overlooking the glowing Harkness Tower and a snow-covered Cross Campus. A crew of underclassmen boys showed up, most of them involved in theatre, and all of them on the verge of coming out of the closet. At Yale, we refer to the abrupt transition from straight-to-gay as "The Sophomore Surprise."

One of my many romantic shortcomings has been falling in love with gay men. They tend to be clean, witty, well-dressed, and, as my waiter described the venison stew last night, "lean and fun." I even hosted the dorm room fête in celebration of my favorite gay boy's recent admittance to graduate school in London. Accordingly, I bought him a box of Cadbury Fingers, the classic U.K. chocolate biscuits that are so dreadfully named. I suppose I should attend "Graduate Student Speed Dating" night, or go to the biweekly booze-and-romp fests at the sticky-floored, aptly named Toad's of New Haven. I suppose I'm not making great strides towards a happy Valentine's Day by staying in my dorm room with a box of Fingers and a crowd of adorable gay guys.

The Lonely Hearts Club

New Haven's Duncan Hotel is a vision in authentic outdated suicide aesthetic. My glorious coucou troubadour friends took a trip to picturesque New Haven to visit me in my collegiate glory. The evening was filled with the following things (not necessarily in this order): sipping wine, examining Slim Aarons photography for senior essay research, dancing in the attic of a grungy house on Howe Street, sleeping in a claw-footed bathtub, drinking a curiously strong champagne and whisky cocktail, singing "My Funny Valentine" while ambling down Chapel Street, ordering Alpha Delta Pizza, walking up and down five flights of stairs due to out-of-service elevator attendant at suicide Duncan Hotel (to retrieve Alpha Delta pizza), sleeping in purple leggings under suspicious satin bedding.

My dear friend came to visit us around one in the morning. During the walk from his off-campus apartment on Edgewood Street to the Duncan Hotel, he thought contentedly about how lucky he has been to have survived almost an entire four years at Yale without encountering any of the crimes of allegedly sketchy New Haven. At that very moment, two anonymous Wankers of the Week approached him from behind, and before he knew it, he was being punched in the face by an aggressive stranger with a shaved head.

With the doors of the David Lynchian Duncan Hotel only steps away, my friend raced to the entrance. The nighttime receptionist buzzed him inside, saving him from a potential sidewalk tragedy. Safe and sound in the hotel suite, he paced around with a new found appreciation for life and a slight anxiety about an unhinged jaw.

W + Anchor

Things are strangely familiar these days. I went on a jaunt to New Haven to meet the celebrated transvestite-potter-artist-extraordinaire, Grayson Perry. He was in his little girl persona, Claire, who wore a poufy silk dress (pictured above) with red tulle underlay and a black bib embellished with rhinestone-encrusted phallic rocket ships. Perry's main source of inspiration is his childhood “cuddly toy,” Alan Measles, a teddy bear who takes on dictatorial status as “ruler of the establishment” in Perry’s art.

I sat in the front row and admired the artist’s dazzling glitter eye shadow and red patent leather shoes. I loved Perry’s insights into aesthetic, emotional, and global topics, especially his/her view that “testosterone is the most dangerous chemical on the planet.” I am also fond of his obsession with adding gold to most anything he creates: he says, “even the most sophisticated of collectors find their heads turned by a bit of gold.” Perry's firm belief in Barbaric Splendour (e.g. blinged-out pimp style, gauche use of patterns, etc.) contrasts any “minimalist or puritanical sense of restraint.” I like to think of it as Miami Beach vs. Beacon Hill.

Perry also showed his ingenious design of the letter “W” suspended above an anchor symbol--how clever: W + Anchor = Wanker (a pejorative term in British slang that literally means “one who masturbates”). I am in the midst of having a much-regretted tattoo removed from my hip bone (in a lengthy and somewhat painful five-month process), but I already envision my next tattooed mistake to be Perry’s W-anchor symbol. Maybe with “wanker” perpetually inked on my hip, I will cease to seek out these sub-par male characters in my everyday life.

When I approached Perry after the lecture, I noticed a fake black-glitter heart-shaped tattoo beneath the corner of “Claire’s” eye…the girlish embellishment speaks loads to art and life in general: glittery, heart-shaped, and black all over.