Monthly Archives: December 2014

Bonus Shot: Ringing In The New Year

31 Wednesday Dec 2014

Posted by in Chiang Mai

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Ringing In The New Year

Going through my photos for a few of bell and gong ringing for a ringing in the new year post – other than those featuring a nude dude – I ran across this one among several others (not counting the aforementioned nude dude ones). And it sucks. There’s no bell. Or gong. Or nude dude for that matter. There was a drum. But it’s not in the photo. And you can’t even see the guy’s face who is pictured to see if you’d want him to be a nude dude. Plus it’s a bit blurry. Which was Noom’s call as he deleted it from my computer. But fortunately Noom’s computer skills do not include knowing about emptying the trash can. ‘Cuz despite all of its faults, I like this shot.

We were in Chiang Mai, visiting Wat Phan Tao during Yee Ping again. At night, they decorate the ground outside the ubosot with thousands of candles in little clay jars. So it’s a very picturesque setting. Unexpectedly during our visit, a five or six man drum troupe appeared, swirling about and beating their little hearts out. It was dark, which isn’t a good thing for photography. And they were moving like crazy, which didn’t help either. By the time I got close enough to take a shot their performance was almost over. So technically, it was one of those shots that got away. Except I managed to click this one anyway

Despite it’s blurriness, composition-wise it’s a good photo. The crowd is just enough out of focus to be background, and yet their attention draws your eyes to the drummer anyway. And while the guy to the left has nothing to do with the shot he looks like he’s walking away and the drummer’s attention seems to be focused on him. Or maybe that’s just the gay part of me reading something into the story that isn’t there. And while from the shot you’d have no reason to know why, the drummer’s movement is captured too. It’s one of those shots that makes you stop and look again. Although that could just be that you’re wondering what in the hell the photo is supposed to be about.

It works best, however, because despite all of its faults and its possible story that wasn’t, it immediately brings back that night. To me. Which is the important thing. To me. Although I’ll admit the shot I took of Noom naked in bed that night does the same. But that’s a different story. And a different memory.

Backpacker Conquer Thyself at Wat Chana Songkhram

30 Tuesday Dec 2014

Posted by in Wats of Thailand

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There’s something about a wat whose name means Victory At War, or Conquer All Obstacles – depending on whose translation you prefer – that can’t seem to keep backpackers off its property that just doesn’t seem right. You could argue that The Buddha, who renounced all of his worldly goods and took off on his own journey of discovery, was a backpacker in his own right. But then he never went in for dreadlocks. And probably bathed occasionally.

It doesn’t help either that one of those conquer-worthy obstacles is that someone also named another wat in town the same. Not that a Thai would ever get the two confused. Because while both get their name from victorious foreign battles, only the one plagued by backpackers got its name from beating the Burmese bloody. And if there’s one obstacle Thais like to beat the crap out of, it’s the Burmese.

Only one of the two Wat Chana Songkhrams has a sign posted at its entrance reminding visitors to dress appropriately and not enter the temple in shorts, too. But then only one of the two wats has the great misfortune to be situated right next to Khaosan Road. And at that wat the belief is that if you make the proper offering to both the main Buddha image and the statue of Prince Maha Surasinghana (the dude who gets the props for bitch-slapping Burma) it will help you over come all difficulties in your life. There’s just a Buddhist twist.

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Not being as anti-Burmese as Thais, the Buddha taught that it is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. So the blessing from Wat Chana Songkhram is assistance in conquering yourself. Then all sufferings and problems are easily overcome. Probably because in that 12-step program, you’d ditch the backpack and become a regular tourist. And learn the meaning of en suite bathroom. Or at least become enlightened enough to quit using a Buddhist temple as a short cut to the river.

The temple’s full name is Wat Chanasongkhram Rajaworamahaviharn. And if you enjoyed that tongue twister, the name of the principle Buddha image is Phra Buddha Norasee Trilokachet Mahetthisak Puchaniyachayantakhodom Boromsasada Anaworayan. And not Fucking Backpackers as you’d assume from the frequent mutterings of Thais worshiping there. But then karma being what karma is, there are a few temple-owned stalls in the courtyard that offer over-priced trinkets for sale to backpackers. So conquer that.

Less unclean visitors can instead purchase offerings for the Buddha and Prince Maha statues and thereby be blessed. Like getting to watch an angry monk chase improperly dressed backpackers off the property. ‘Cuz no one ever said the path to enlightenment couldn’t be enjoyable too. I’m not sure who you have to make an offering to to see what happens when a Burmese visitor enters the wat. But maybe Burmese only visit the other Wat Chana Songkhram. Since that one is only in honor of beating the Vietnamese and Cambodians.

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Other than the occasional poorly dressed backpacker scurrying away from an angry ball of saffron, there’s not much to see at Wat Chana Songkhram. It’s of the standard white wall red tile roof temple design. It’s a mid-sized wat. And offers little that other nearby wats don’t do better. But there are several pair of elephant tusks decorating the ubosot’s altar, one of which are the standard ivory while the other is ebony (and if that forces that Michael Jackson song to play in your head, just remind yourself what a Thai is willing to do to get his hands on some elephant tusks these days. Even though Thais love elephants. Backpackers just don’t know how good they’ve got it.)

Built in the eighteenth century, the temple’s former name was Wat Klang Na, or Temple In The Paddy Field. It conquered that rather non-glorious moniker when it was restored and designated a Royal Temple in honor of the aforementioned and equally non-glorious loss by the Burmese in several skirmishes during the mid to late 1700s, one of which was gloriously named The Battle Of Nine Armies. Prior to its name change, when all it had to crow about was the paddy field it sat in, King Rama I appointed a group of Mon monks to care for the wat. And it became known as Wat Tong Pu. Just like another wat in Ayutthaya. So that similarly named wat problem is one the wat has never managed to conquer.

But stick a bunch of Mon monks in a wat and the next thing ya know the entire area will be crawling with Mon people. Which you’d think would be a problem when you are once again going to battle with Burma since that’s where they came from. But instead the local Mon formed a major troop in Prince Maha’s army, helped slaughter their relatives back home, and after returning to their paddy field King Rama I rewarded their endeavors by making the temple the center of the Mon sect of Buddhism. At least in Thailand. And at least until he made it a royal temple. Since conquering princes matter more than conquering Mon. None of which you’ll learn by visiting the wat. ‘Cuz the only sign they’ve posted is the one intended to conquer backpackers.

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By the way, that the main Buddha image inside the ubosot is in the Subduing Mara position has nothing to do with the Burmese who were subdued. Or the backpackers one can only hope become subdued. Ditto for those elephants that donated their tusks to the altar display. It’s an homage to the Buddha conquering Mara. And while Thais generally hold the Buddha in great esteem and reverence, the proper offering to that image is three incense sticks, a lotus blossom, and a candle. While the image of Prince Maha gets the lotus blossom, the candle, and five incense sticks. Which should give you a hint about how reverent Thais are about conquering the Burmese. Even if they honor that feat in a wat that shares its name with another temple just a few miles away.

(Wat Chana Songkhram is best reached by boat on your way to a day of slumming it on Khaosan Road. Besides the elephant tusks, the monks’ quarters are the highlight of the wat. And there’s a few chedi out back worth a quick look too. Open from 6am to 6 pm, admission is free. To the wat’s great misfortune. ‘Cuz if they charged an entrance fee, they’d have a lot fewer backpackers to deal with.)

Getting A Read On The Digital Age

29 Monday Dec 2014

Posted by in It's A Gay World

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I’m not sure if the advent of social media and constant communications is a good thing or not. I want to say not. But there’s a concern that my opinion may be influenced by age. And I don’t want to come off as an old fart yearning for how things used to be. Otherwise I’d vote Republican. And generally I believe advances in technology are a good thing. It’s just when marketing and technology meet, their bastard child is often problematic. Unfortunately, despite some amazing technological advances the most famous quote associated with PT Barnum still is true and relevant today. And while Steve Jobs was undoubtedly a visionary, I fear he never lost sight of those words once his technological visions became reality and entered the marketplace.

I’ve watched cellphones grow from being an oddity and a cumbersome piece of equipment to a necessity that few can live without. Cellphones good. Our level of connectivity these days, not so much. And while the latest bells and whistles that come with an iPhone 6+ are nice, if you owned an iPhone 5 and just had to upgrade as soon as the new model was available . . . well, PT must be chuckling his ass off in his grave. And Jobs is right there next to him slapping him a high-five.

I just saw a commercial on TV for one of the latest cellphone models and – you may want to sit down for this one – it has the capability of adding voice to text messages. Wow. Imagine that. A phone that you can use for voice communications. Who would have ever thought? I’m sure the world will be a better place now that you can leave a voice message for someone on their phone instead of just in text.

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Thanks to technology, the world is moving on. Sometimes quicker than perhaps it should. Schools in the U.S. are beginning to no longer teach cursive writing. Because no one uses it any longer. Everything is in text. Cursive writing is becoming a lost language. Which isn’t a big loss. But I would like to be able to travel in time and go back to bitch slap my fourth grade teacher who used to brow-beat me over the sloppy hs I composed since there is now no use for that skill anyway. And I wonder how many years it will be before there are experts in cursive writing whose job it will be to translate documents of yore (like from 1990) ‘cuz few others will be capable of reading them. It’s probably a good thing that the Patriot Act dispensed with so many of our rights guaranteed by the Constitution ‘cuz within 25 years no one will be able to read that document anyway.

I’m less ambivalent about e-books. It’s no accident that the Kindle invokes visions of hell’s fires. E-readers are the work of the devil. Books, if you recall, started out as sacred things. And the first printing presses were used to make bibles. I’m not exactly a religious person. As we like to say in California, I’m more spiritual than religious, dude. But when it comes to books and my faith in the printed word I can put a fundamentalist Baptist preacher to shame. Not just because I’m an avid reader. But because books and my true religion – scoring hot guys – go hand in hand.

Back in the day all it took was a singular visit to some new guy in your life’s home to get a good read on him. His choices in reading material told you almost as much as did the contents of his medicine cabinet. And I’m not just talking about whether he had a copy of The Advocate or Honcho on his coffee table. What books he read, and kept, and which were lovingly dog-eared said much about who he was.

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If he was in his early 20s or younger and had a copy of The Catcher In The Rye in his bookshelf, his iconoclastic leanings were a good thing. If he was in his mid-30s not so much. And you realized spending time alone with him – and without witnesses – might not be a good idea. Too many self-help books sounded a warning too. Okay, any self-help book was cause for concern. A large collection of graphic novels if not balanced with an equal number of books that didn’t rely on pictures for telling their story was never a good sign either. And if he had a copy of Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, I always knew that the chance of a real romance between us was in the cards.

A lack of books in his living space spoke volumes too. They say opposites attract. Which may be true. But spending time with someone who doesn’t enjoy reading when you do is never gonna result in a long-lasting affair. But those guys made wonderful fuck buddies. Just like guys whose shelves were filled with Harlequin romances gave good blow jobs. Not that you would want to stick around long enough for him to gargle.

Not long ago Buzzfeed had an item called What Books Straight Boys Read Tells About Them. I didn’t read it. But did bookmark it figuring it would be one of the site’s slightly sarcastic and humorous bits. Regardless, they were onto something. Visiting a straight boy’s place who you had the hots for, and checking out his choices in reading materials, gave you the info you needed to know in what your chances were that you could end up in his bed. If he had the complete collection of Ann Rice’s Vampire Dairies it was a good sign. Ann had primed him for some man-on-man love. If his shelves held the collected works of the Twilight saga movies in novel form, not so much. Not because that didn’t mean you wouldn’t score but because it meant he was gayer than you were. But at least it quickly settled the question of whether he would bottom or not.

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Now that e-books are all the rage, those clues are no more. And you can’t even keep an eye peeled for his DVD collection of the Twilight movies because nowadays everyone just streams the movies they want to watch. Where once a guy’s video collection containing a few too many James Franco movies told you he was as up for a little man-on-man sex as James appears to be, now you’d have to log onto his Netflix account for that info. And bi-curious guys who’ve been perusing lots of gay porn on the internet tend to erase their browser history. Technology sucks. ‘Cuz it is no longer as easy to determine whether or not he will.

Between e-books and Amazon, local bookstores too are becoming a thing of the past. And that too has cut into my sex life. I don’t know why guys who worked in bookstores were always so easy to pick-up, but I always had more luck at Borders than at gay bars. Sometimes all it took was purchasing Armistead Maupin’s latest and a smile. When I lived in Hawaii I’d pick out the hottest Border’ clerk and ask him if they carried Mahu Surfer. And then watch to see how red his face turned, or how nervous he became. When Borders went bankrupt it wasn’t only the company that lost. And that was the fault of e-books too.

Fortunately, there is still a decent used book store in my town. Even more fortunately there is a cute Asian guy who works there. I’ve been toying with him. Slowly. ‘Cuz he may be the last bookstore employee I ever get to bed. It started when I picked up a copy of one of the books adapted from the 30 Days of Night graphic novels. He got all excited. Not that graphic novels are necessarily a good sign, but science fiction and fantasy buffs are generally at least familiar with and look kindly on androgyny. And in my book the ladyboy lovers of today are the gay boys of tomorrow.

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Using that hook, I segued into Andrew Vachss’ Burke novels. He was familiar with the author (he wrote a Batman novel or two) but hadn’t read any of his others. And as I’d hoped, he loved them once he had. There’s a lot of gay in the Burke novels. And dark, crisp, razor-sharp prose. Which made for a natural in suggesting some of J.R. Lansdale’s stuff next. He loved those too. The question is no longer will he, but how much effort will it take to get his ass in the air. I think I’ll bring up those Twilight adaptations next.

I don’t have a problem with all technological advances. I was hooking up with tricks off the internet before most people even knew what it was. I even found a boyfriend on-line. Huh. Come to think about it, that boyfriend was Crazy Ray. So maybe I should have been a bit more distrustful of that technology a bit sooner. But then it’s not the technology that’s the problem. It’s that technology’s application that can be worrisome.

On-line romances are all the rage these days. Even though half the time the person you fall in lust with turns out to really be an 80-year-old loser who still lives with his mother. Assuming it’s not an 80-year-old loser who still lives with his mother that you were looking for. And I’ll bet you half the guys on Farmers Only. com can’t tell the difference between a horse and a cow. The jury is still out on that one. But I’ll let ya know how my profile heading – Want Me To Milk You? – works out.

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And okay, so I can no longer peruse the personal library of some guy I just met for a clue as to who he is, or more importantly just how psychotic he may be, but checking his FaceBook page when I get back home to find he’s already changed his status to In A Relationship sounds the same alarm. Plus, for a mere $9.95 I can get his entire arrest record.

Those who use the internet for what it was created for – porn – have no problem. Ditto for those who use their iPhone to stream porn rather than update their FaceBook page. And while I miss the days of hooking up with hotties at a gay bar (or your nearest bookstore), for sheer convenience you can’t beat Grindr. But some pundits claim that aps like Grindr are ruining the fabric of our society. Which sounds like some old fart yearning for how things used to be to me. They’d probably be better off sticking to FaceBook.

They claim that digital hook-up aps desensitizes us to the human experience; that the ease in which you swipe away those whose physical appearance is below your standards, removes the possibility of meeting someone who otherwise would be a positive influence in your life. By which I assume they mean those guys who you used to say had a good personality. But that’s not the point of Grindr and its like. It’s for quickly finding someone bedable, not for finding your future husband. Unless you are into cheaters. And its detractors should just sit quietly in their room listening to all the Adele songs they’ve downloaded while the rest of us enjoy using Grindr for what it is.

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Nonetheless, those ugly guys who can’t get laid off Grindr are onto something. The more we use our digital devices for communication, the less communicating we do in the real world. And sometimes it’s just silly. Over the recent holidays, I watched my niece text her mom to find out when dinner would be ready. Moms was in the next room. Once we sat down for the meal I was expecting to get a text from her asking me to pass the salt. But she was too busy texting her friends, each sharing just how dreadful their family holiday dinner was. As though anyone actually enjoys spending the holiday with their biological family.

Worse yet was my experience at the local shopping mall. Being the dutiful son that I am, I took my mom to the mall so she could do her Christmas shopping when anyone with a brain knows you’re supposed to do your holiday shopping on-line. No problemo. It’s the one time of the year that there are a lot of hot guys at the mall. And since most are laden with gifts they’ve just bought, it’s easy to spot and avoid those who have children. So I thought a little Christmas cruising was in order. Wrong. Every person exiting a store, no matter how many packages they were carrying, had his or head buried in their cellphone with thumbs flying. Eye contact was non-existent. How can you cruise some hottie when you can’t even get him to notice there are other humans in his vicinity? And once again technology put a major dampener on my sex life. I’d have been better off staying at home and reading a good book.