New Hedwig

And I found myself thinking, had Lady Gaga become the new Hedwig and the Angry Inch? Or some kind of Hedwig and the Holograms lovechild? That was my pointless thought for the evening.

On the night of Lourde's leaving party, I showed at around eight-thirty and just got home at around three. By that time I'd come to the conclusion that I'd been partying with the queers too much of late, my standards had been raised in the absence of straight parties. Over the past six and a half hours I'd had... *tries to think* a giant flagon of beer, two bourbon and cokes, the better half of a joint, then I'd nonchalantly downed the roach for good measure, followed it with a can and downed four or so beers to round it up. I hadn't even reached a stagger. If I'd spent the same amount of money partying with my queer friends over the same amount of time I'd have been be resoundingly ridiculous. As it stoods, on my way home I burped and it smelt like cheap beer, weed and wedges. Don't get me wrong, though, I do love my hetero chums.

The night itself was fairly fantastic, I was the only gay guy in the straight bar, I managed to catch up with many a many of my friends that I hadn't seen in weeks, said my farewells to Lourdes with no teary eyes, had people shout me drinks, the band had good enough taste that they played Johnny B Goode and didn't suck and I wound up dancing on the roof of the parking lot next door, a drink in one hand, a cigarette in the other, while music from the club across the street was blaring. I eventually wound up eating fast food on the waterfront, before deciding to wander home via a quick dance at the nearest gay bar.

It had truly been a good night, the only flaw being the knowledge that had I experienced it with my queer friends and the bag of magic tricks that they bring to a party it would probably have been a lot more enjoyable. Should I over do it at a straight party I was liable to wind up vomiting and or passing out, if I over do it with Dorothy, Galahad, Sawyer or Jack I was more likely to black out then pass out. I'd rather just keep partying and not be able to remember it than let loose my lunch and be very aware of it for the rest of the night as well as remember it the next day. But maybe that was just me.

Yours,
Titus T.

Teenage Life and Death

As of the tenth of August, I was twenty. I did very little to actually celebrate that fact, most of my celebrating for the week was done from midnight Saturday onwards. The better part of my night had been spent partying, while enjoying endless lines being cut by an OCD hooker, some of which were snorted off risque regions of said sex worker and her friend.
So I found myself twenty, younger than most people mistake me for, and in the rare case, older. Eliza, Dorothy and Galahad all told me the night before that I occasionally presented myself as being around the eighteen years old mark. I asked Galahad later and he described it more eloquently. There is a point in your life that you look back on and you think to yourself, that's how I was then. The 'then' in question is the point in my life that I found myself at on the dawn of my twentieth birthday. While I usually come across as older than I am, I sometimes did things that seemed immature or oblivious, which threw people, until they find out how old I really am.
At first this notion caused me pause for concern, but after some thought I realized I wasn't just happy with the arrangement, but I also understand why it is I found myself acting this way.
Hopefully I don't sound too self-pitying, pretentious or full of myself when I say this, but I didn't have the chance to enjoy my teenage years like most adolescents. While other children my age were learning to drink, date, drive, party and fornicate, I was dealing with other fun things like serious mental illness and dangerous eating disorders. I was never really in much of a state for a social life. My peers had the option of pushing their boundaries and finding their limits, while mine were forced upon me for my own sanity and safety. In fact, outside of school I have almost no memories from my teenage years.
The upshot of this is that I had the chance to learn more about myself and my limits than I would have if I'd taken the conventional route. I achieved by seventeen what takes most people many years more. Not a road I would have taken optionally, but the outcome is that I do find myself more mature and responsible than I would otherwise be, if only out of necessity.
So now, free from home, and healthy in my head once more, I had the chance to do all of the wild and crazy things I'd never done, but on a scale not available to my schoolyard chums. Now I was twenty, I could act at last like I was eighteen. So should I want to party all night, snort lines from a hooker's snatch, fake my own death or dance like noones watching and sing like noone's listening in general, then I would.
And I did. I was twenty.
And I was determined that it would not be a year that I was going to forget in a hurry...

Yours,
Titus T.

In the Court of Dorothy

The night before my birthday, Galahad, Eliza and myself found ourselves in the court of our dear lady Dorothy. I found myself entranced by the fact that I was able to maintain all the concentration that I lacked when having a conversation with Audrey. She had the strange effect of making my brain race with fantastic ideas, but muddled my tongue whenever I tried to explain them. But that night Jack had kindly left us a cache of unused medications, so my nostrils were all a-tingle with an intense focus.
It came come in handy when I found myself involved in several conversations, recording an account of the whole experience, as well as keeping track of the conversations that had trailed off so that they could be revisited and finished. At one point, we were trying to coax Dorothy into divulging her opinion of Jack, which was difficult, since she was slightly hung up on topic of escapades between her and Eliza, and struggling with the perfection involved in a lady of her profession cutting lines of a less than legitimate substance.
I adore the intense focus that Ritalin gave me, and so long as the after-affects weren't too unfortunate, intended to indulge more often.

There was more of that night that I wanted to write, but never did. I was writing from above the gathering, looking down on the scene from Eliza's loft, and the party was beckoning me to come down, in the form of small lines on the table top.

Yours,
Titus T.

Lust's Lustre Lost

Halfway through July that year there was a rearranging of the human furniture in my flat. People moved out, people moved around and people moved in. To be accurate, one person moved in. Sawyer. A name from my that I had all but forgotten about, coming back into my life from out of my past, as if to counterpoint my approaching twentieth birthday.
Sawyer and I had known each other for a few years, in the carnal sense. We'd met through Jack, and the only time we even ran into each other one or both of us were either off of our faces or out of our head. It was a very convenient arrangement, no strings, no attachment, just brief nights and dirty bedding.
Then I found out that he was going to be moving in, this perpetually partying drunken one night stand was about to be moving in just through the wall from me.
Only someone else moved in entirely, a socially and politically aware, vegan, tree hugging lovable goof of a room mate appeared instead of the substance abusing deviant that I'd come to know and lust.
At first I was taken aback, then confused, then I simply felt guilty over the way I'd misjudged him. The person who I'd mistaken for some love you long time screw in the dark was actually one of the sweetest and more sincere people I'd met since moving into the city. And he even supplies me with a nigh-endless amount of baked goods that he liberates from the capitalist dumpsters of the city. I may have lost the illusion and the emotionally unattached shag that I used to know, but on the upside I now had him as a friend, and soon he had even managed to charm all my friends in his own inimitable way.
The question the whole experience left me with was slightly more selfish. If this was the vastly false impression that I had developed of him, then what equally erroneous mental images had people been making in regards to me? Who knows how people whom I'd met briefly actually saw me? I certainly didn't.

Yours,
Titus T.

Once upon a time

I moved into the city towards the end of February in the year two thousand and nine. Before six months were up I had taken up smoking, quit smoking, and almost stopped drinking. I had also made friends with a handful of addicts and dealers, a prostitute with political aspiratations, drag kings, queens and assorted queers, gained a sidekick, joined a theatre troupe and found myself juggling three men. I had even tried my hand at, among other things, fire dancing, pole dancing and burlesque.

Now, a week before my birthday, I found myself looking back on the past six months. I had done things that I was not proud of, and had things done to me that I would sooner forget. I had made memories and met characters that I would cherish for the rest of my life, artists, musicians, performers, vagrants, vagabonds and good-for-nothings. All of them now my friends. I had changed the lives of people, for better or for worse, and not even known it til after the fact.

I have aimlessly ambled the streets of this city all through the night and seen the dawn colour her streets again and again and over again. I had come to love her smells and her sights and her sounds and her children. She had shown me a side of her that I did not know existed, and shown me a side of myself that I did not know existed either. The past six months had done more to rewrite my life and myself than all the other days since I had left my childhood home nearly two years before. And along with my childhood home, I now found myself leaving my childhood. In one week, I would be twenty, and instead of the Peter Pan stirrings that I felt prior to turning eighteen, this last week of being a teenager instead found me filled with a sense of looking forward, and wondering what new stories this city was writing for me in the months to come.

Yours,
Titus T.