Chapter 46: Schmangled!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Schmangled in Ibiza
After Vancouver, I went to Ibiza. And I made it off again. Alive! I think that’s quite an accomplishment, compared to my housemates and many, many, many others on the Isle of Sin who spent their entire time just absolutely caning it. I went out to the nightclubs twice, but as for my housemates, well, it’s definitely against protocol to reveal too much, but let’s just say that by the end of the week Siegfried was roaming the villa muttering to himself “I’m DETERMINED TO REGAIN CONTROL, JUST DETERMINED”, while Paul (aka Doris) retreated to his darkened room with La Gay Grippe, hacking like Mimi from La Boheme, and Daniel lay prostrate on the sofa complaining of being “schmangled”. Sensible Ian Hitchcock gave medical counsel. I am officially adopting “schmangled” as my word of the month.

I have to say that my trip did not start auspiciously. I was traveling on my birthday, and a staggeringly large number of people - including my mother AND my brother! - neglected to wish me happy birthday. Also, my route to Ibiza was long (New York to London to Barcelona to Ibiza) and some of its component flights were delayed, and so I had to run pell-mell through both Heathrow and Barcelona airports, barely making it onto the relevant flights, gasping and in an absolute lather of sweat. And when I arrived in Ibiza it was raining. And my luggage had gone AWOL. Iberia had no idea where it was. (“You must understand, Mr Worthington, we have absolute chaos. We have lost 18,000 bags in the last week.”) It beggars comprehension. Anyway, in the end it seems I got off relatively lightly. My bag pitched up after 36 hours, which probably seems like the highest good fortune to those pour souls whose bags seem to have disappeared into an Iberian black hole. Some ten days after travelling only the direct 40 minute flight from Barcelona to Ibiza, later, Iberia still can’t find my friend Rob’s luggage. A gay man’s nightmare: “It had ALL my favorite things in it!” he wailed to me. My friend Gaspar told me Iberia has a shop somewhere in Madrid where it sells luggage that it fails to reunite with its owners, so perhaps Rob should go there.

But once I had All My Things back in my hot little hands, I had a great time on Ibiza. Siegfried organized a lovely villa, and Ibiza is a staggeringly pretty place, the hedonistic nightlife being only its more famous aspect. One afternoon, at Paul’s insistence (thank you Paulie!), we drove through pretty pine and scrub forests to the north side of the island to watch the hippies play bongo drums and firedance at sundown. Gorgeous. The old town (Dalt Villa in Catalan) with its high stone ramparts and cobbled streets on a promontory by the sea is magic at night. And of course, the Spanish are just so relaxed and easy about life. Mojitos and sangria on the beach, and nobody bats an eyelid if you smoke a joint in public. The US, UK, Canada and Australia just seem so unnecessarily uptight in comparison.

And we went to some great pool parties, including one high in the beautiful hills along a 5 km dirt track. Unfortunately, our hosts Juan Pedro and David, were expecting only 50 people but some 600 or more arrived, so all drinks ran out nearly immediately, leaving absolutely NADA to drink. (Tap water in Ibiza is salinated.) However, ever so fortunately that evening, I was hanging with the delightful Thomy Valdez Piedra and his posse of fellow Cubans. And as the evening dragged on and everyone was gasping for thirst, desiccating in the hot night air, steeling themselves to drink the pool water, all of a sudden the Cubans started producing Red Bulls, Coca Cola, water and juice out of their asses, seemingly. All of a sudden REAL JUICE and ACTUAL WATER just seemed to appear in our little dancing circle. I guess it’s the Cuban instinct; noticing times of imminent shortage, they hoard, or at least know where to source things. A most useful survival skill, methinks.

A few days later we went to another smaller, more intimate pool party by Kike and Carlos, at their house deep in the pine woods. My friends Chip and Ariel had to drive down to the main road in a borrowed Jeep to guide me back through the confusing dirt tracks through the forest. Shortly after arriving back the owners of the Jeep needed to leave for airport. Chip couldn’t find the keys. Panic set in. The music was stopped, search parties were mounted, and the host started screaming. All to no avail. The owners of the Jeep consequently missed their flight, and my friends had to buy them a new ticket. So just, please, try and imagine my absolute horror some 20 minutes later as I’m fumbling in my pocket for something and it slowly dawns on my that my keys in my pocket don’t exactly feel like my keys.

Quote of the Year:
“Show me someone who lives with his boyfriend and sneaks out to have sex with women and I’ll show you a real bisexual.”

My Magic Boots Show Their Powers Are Nearly Limitless
Those of you who read my blog regularly may recall Chapter 42 in which I tell of my purchase of a pair of magic boots which cause people to manifest an uncontrollable desire to have sex with me. Well, I’ve been lugging these damn boots all around and I finally got a chance to wear them when I went to visit my great friend German in Barcelona. We decided to go out one night to the Metro and I put them on, thinking “Thank God, I can finally wear them! OH THANK GOD!” Oh, I was so happy! Well, as soon as we arrived at the club I thought “God, these people are ugly, I sure hope these boots don’t work tonight!” But my boots’ power is apparently quite flexible. For I’m standing drinking my little drink, trying to avoid catching any ugly person’s eye, and I feel something roll under my foot and I look down and it’s a must-have gay-butch accoutrement that I have been coveting for well over 2 years, and I’ve never been able to find one in any shop, anywhere. Naturally I scooped it up and shoved it in my pocket faster than you can say rapido, puta! I’m going to ask my boots for money next.

Barcelona was just lovely, and I understand why so many people from Europe are moving there. On my first night there were street parties near German’s flat, in which each street competed in decoration and there was drinking, and music and dancing. I bought a chocolate hash ball from someone selling them in the street and practiced my Spanish. The streets were packed with people from every walk of life at 1am in the morning on a Thursday. It’s clear the Spanish don’t sleep. Check out my photos. A few days later we went to one of Barcelona’s many beaches, where my gorgeous friend Sarah from Sydney spent the afternoon ogling all the hot men, and then afterwards German took a bunch of us out to a Basque tapas bar, and then for a stroll through the Gothic quarter of Barcelona.



How a Six Year Old Girl Gave Me a Complex
On my return to London I have lunch with Ian Temple's family, Ian and his boyfriend Jack. His mom Sylvia and his sister Susan are just lovely, not that I got much chance to talk to them in the onslaught of his niece and nephew. ("Peter, come and play with us now! Please.") They really are the most engaging children. Though Charlotte, after a close scrutiny of my face asked pointedly "Why do you have a big lumpy vein on the side of your head?" According to Ian, she can be relied upon to point out one's physical imperfections with brutal honesty and unerring accuracy. So now, in the gym, and in the bathroon, and when I'm getting dressed, I've not been able to stop staring in at my disfiguring vein. I'm wondering if one can get varicose veins in the head. And if Doctors can glue it flat. Later, as Charlotte was writhing on my lap in a paroxysm of ecstacy at having a new and compliant playmate, Ian reached out and ran a finger across Charlotte's creamy white cheek and said to me "Wouldn't you just love to have skin like this?" in a tone of voice rather like Cruella DeVille discussing a Dalmation. God love him. And Jack too, for loving him. (Apologies to Ian, Sylvia, Susan and Jack. Coudln't help myself. Love you all.)

Chilled out, Santorini-style
Now in Santorini with my friend Lance from New York, staring across the rim of an ancient volcano cauldera sunken in the sea. Everything is blue and white and I'm chilled to the point of nearly being in a coma.

Chapter 45: King Poo

Dear Reader: If you want to find out what King Poo refers to, I'm sorry, but you'll just have to read on!

Right now, I am on a plane to New York, feeling sad at leaving my family and friends in Vancouver, but happy to be going to see one of my very most exhaulted tip-top bestest friends in the world, Mr Lance Berman. I just woke after deciding that a catatonic nap was the only possible response to being served a microwaved “cheese pizza” which had congealed and fused with its paper serving bag. (I am flying on Continental, ugh.)

Looking out my little window in the bright sunshine I can see below me a giant patchwork of square and rectangular fields, some brown, some light green, some gold, and some so dark as to be almost black. The earth is flat, flat, flat and the patchwork of fields stretches to the far horizon without end. There is one road, heading straight to the edge of the earth. I wonder who lives below.

It’s now 10 minutes later, and I’ve just looked out the window again, and if by magic – a 500km hour high-in-the-sky magic to be sure – below there are now only dark green forests and crazy swirls and blotches of black lakes. No sign of man. It is beautiful. Pristine. Hallelujah! Bring it on! Bring back the forests!

A party: I was back in Vancouver partly for the 90th birthday celebrations of Hugh, my momma’s man. The day of the party, Momma and Hugh were getting quite sketchy and much whisky was being drunk as a stress remedy - I opted for Xanax instead – but in the end the event went off beautifully. My momma gave a touching speech, and then caused raucous hilarity when she stopped mid-stream, looked at Hugh beside her, prodded him and asked loudly in a sternly aggrieved tone of voice “Are you listening to me?”

She’s beautiful, my mother, 78 years old. Here’s a picture of her, looking totally radiant in a dress that I made her to buy. One good thing about having a gay son/brother/friend is that at least we can help with sartorial advice.

A sad man: At dinner, I was seated next to a man that my mother warned me was “very boring”. But actually he looked kind of intriguing to me, in a student-of-my-fellow- man anthropological sort of way. Very old school English, wearing a beige safari suit, and a little grey Hitler-style moustache. I asked if he had children. “Yes” he said. “Four of them. They come with hand outstretched and they disdain their father.”

Yikes I thought, I’ve got a tricky one here. I marshaled my charm. “Grandchildren?” I asked.

He tried and muttered and counted on his fingers but then admitted that he couldn’t remember how many grandchildren he had. And then he volunteered “My first son is very hard working, yes, very hard working. The second son, I fear, is not the marrying kind. He is, you see, a ho-mo-SEX-you-al.” He stretched out the syllables and then looked at me gravely over his half-moon glasses as though he’d just confessed that he had cancer or something. “He’s very preachy about it.”

“Well, so am I,” sayeth yours truly. “And perhaps your son is preachy because he feels you don’t accept him, don’t love him as he is.”

I thought Senor Safari Suit was going to choke on his flan. He looked EXACTLY like John Cleese in Faulty Towers, caught out in some horrible faux pas. He blanched, then I had to endure a long backpeddling ramble about some sterling mentor-teacher that Senor Safari Suit had whilst a young man, who was probably a homosexual but since the mentor-teacher never tried anything "untowards" he was therefore a capital fellow. The poor man!

A quote from Dean Martin: Hugh is bloody amazing; my brother and I call him the walking, talking, 90-year old human encyclopedia. He’s got perfect recall, and seems never to have forgotten anything he's ever learned. He’s almost totally blind, and so I volunteered to drive him to the liquor store for the requisite provisioning trip prior to his birthday celebration. Despite being blind he knew exactly where everything was, the exact location of each brand of whiskey, brandy, and beer. Each shelf wherein resided a certain vintage of South African red wine, or BC White. Hugh’s capacity for drink is prodigious, and yet I’ve never seen him drunk. Shopping for a birthday card for Hugh, found a great one with a quote from Dean Martin. “You’re not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on.”

A poetic image: I saw an image that will stay in my mind’s eye forever. I was at English Bay beach in the late afternoon. The sun was low over the ocean. A white gull flew low overhead, against the backdrop of the bluest sky ever. Then, all of a sudden, the underside of its wings caught the setting sun in a way that they started to fluoresce a beautiful rose, so that it looked like the gull was being borne aloft on wings of pink fire.

An important lesson that I never seem to learn: When I arrived back in Vancouver after a year’s absence I plugged in my old pre-pay Fido mobile phone and was astounded that it picked up a line, and could receive calls as well. But I couldn’t get the fucker to send a text message, so in an irritated fury I drove down to the local mall and marched down to the Fido kiosk, and demanded that my problem be fixed. It turns out that I had had a ghost number – which could receive and make calls including international and all at no charge. Fido had no record of my number or these calls. Or at least they didn't until I felt compelled to bring it to their attention! How many times in life do I have to learn the lesson to not tamper with Wot Ain't Too Broke in order for it to sink in?

Ain't nuttin' better than a blackberry: Momma, Hugh, Ruth and I went to Yellow Point on Vancouver for a few days R and R. It’s beautiful and wild there, arbutus trees with peeling orange bark, golden burned grasses, tall fir trees, sun sparkling on the water. Bunny rabbits everywhere, not at all shy, and deer, with little ones, too. Ruth and I went picking blackberries from the brambles. There is nothing so delicious as a sun-warmed blackberry fresh from the vine, worth all the scratches. We went kayaking and biking and hung out on the rocky beach (see picture of me and the beautiful Ruth).

At a total loss for words about King Poo: And we also saw, nailed to a tree, one of the all time great signs of the world. I really don't know what to write about this sign. I am at a total loss for words, so I'm just gonna let the picture speak for itself.

My insatiable cat: My little grey Russian Blue is so sweet. She comes meowing at me, with her one overly long fang, making her look somehow curiously louche, as though she's just drunk four feline martinis. She headbutts my hand for petting, then twist her head around almost 360 degrees like an owl in an effort to ensure that my fingers massages all the right places. She is insatiable.

What are you good at? A few nights before I left Vancouver, Momma and I had my best friend Ruth and her parents over for dinner. It is always easy and delightful fun when we all get together, kind of an extended family sort of thing, but without the family stresses. We always laugh. We sat in the garden eating salads, cold cuts and pate, and a sinful lemon and whipped cream pie made by Ruth’s mom. I don’t know why but I suggested that we all play a little game where we take turns saying something we think we are good at. Here’s the results, in order:
Ruth: “I am good at saying things in a good way. Communicating. Except with my partner.”
Martin (my brother): “Making people laugh.” (This is entirely true; he’s hilarious. When Ruth’s mom said that if she were incapacitated, she wanted to be left alone in her room and not wheeled around in a wheelchair, with people coming up to her poking her and saying “Gosh, you look great!” my brother replied “No problem, Liz. We’ll just put you in a burka.”)
John (Ruth’s dad): “I am good with animals. And tutoring.” (John revealed that he was volunteering to help young school students became aces with fractions.)
Hugh: “I am good at being right, for the right reason.” (This was said with just a smidgen more humility than it sounds.)
Me: “Two things. I am good at writing. And also at friendship, I think.”
Liz: (Ruth’s mom): “Expressing my mind, wouldn’t you say, John?” (“Sure” he replied evenly. “And the silent treatment!” piped up Ruth.)
Mum: “I am really good at cleaning bathrooms.” After general laughter my mammasita says “And I’m good with little children and I’m kind to my fellow man. Unless he happens to be a telephone marketing sales person, calling during dinner time.” Laughter, laughter, laughter.

Thanks to Ruth, Kerry, Mark C, Mark D, Joss, Sylvain, David, Borja, Tim, Jenz and Scott for the friendship in Vancouver. And to my brother Martin and Momma above all. You draw me to Vancouver, again and again.

Anyway, must go. Landing soon in The Big Apple. Though the weather forecast indicates it should more appropriately be called The Big Sweat.