Me and Mr. Jones

Sitting among the stacks of old books, counting the bricks or the wall,
searching the spaces for a little recognition.
You know the routine.
What will they say when I’m gone?

It isn’t depression, or a craving to end the pain. Just afraid
that when it happens I’ll disappear.
I would like to go
and find a book with my name on it.

Or better yet, I’d like to find the space where my book should be,
then put my name on the waiting list
because someone had checked it out.
Some boys crave flowers, I want to be read:

Roses are red.
Violets are blue.
Tony Wears a Tux,
and I need you.

If “the text is a tissue of quotations drawn from innumerable centres of culture,” then what am I?

And if I die, what will be my memory?

I am starting to worry for my legacy; the contents of my pockets.

However, I am gently welcoming the dying of the light.

I just want to ensure that Tony will survive.

And if Tony, then will I?

The death of one god is the death of all.
One’s grand flight, one’s Sunday baths,
coffee and oranges in a sunny chair.
The body dies; the body’s beauty lives.
I do not know which to prefer…

Gird up now thy loins like a man. My tongue
is the pen of a ready writer.
My soul thirsteth for thee,
my flesh longeth for thee
in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is.
Thou has the dew of thy youth: wine
that maketh glad the heart of a man.
We spend our years as a tale that is told.
We take sweet counsel together.

My times are in thy hand.
Cleanse thou me from secret faults.
Lead me to the rock that is higher than I.
Keep me as the apple of the eye, hide
me under the shadow of thy wing.
For thine arrow sticks fast in me, and thy hand
presseth me sore. I will both lay me down
in peace and flee as a bird
to your mountain.

Every so often, a blog (even one as flashy and wonderful as Tony’s) needs a publicity stunt. Now is one of those times.

So, Tony has teamed up with The Reluctant Receptionist to write a simultaneous entry about a prescribed topic: our first cigarette. Stay tuned for the exciting results!

I remember the moment very clearly, it was a turning point in my life: afternoon in the woods with Frank and Billy, Frank taking great pains to help me inhale. Dizziness and frolicking, the intimacy of youth. But this must wait, because there is a history.

You can blame television or advertising or a moral lapse of society, I think the desire for substance was in my genes. The image, the authority of holding a cigarette and a bottle of beer in my hands. The pause and contemplation. I was five or six when I remember the fulfillment of this desire as my cousin and I sipped our cream sodas in bottles and puffed on bubble-gum cigarettes. All we did was pose, and strut, and try to mimic our parents who were drinking and smoking on the front lawn. The bubble-gum sticks were designed so if you blew on them a puff of powder was released from the end. Genius.

So the mystique and fascination was well-learned before Frank stopped me after lunch to tell me that Billy had a surprise for us. I was 15. 10th grade. I was in love with Frank and had been friends with Billy for 7 years. At times Billy was annoying, clingy and nerdy, but today he had scored a couple cigarettes from one of the older boys on his golf team. Frank asked me if I’d ever smoked before. I said no, denying my bubblegum days.

Billy lived in a subdivision off the main strip of town and across from an undeveloped wooded area. We dropped our stuff off at his house, in his room, performed our prerequisite and nervous giggles, and headed out for “a walk.” Down the path, over the hill, and behind the dilapidated old house. All the while, Frank was explaining how to inhale. “Just breath in, deeply, quickly.” We practiced and he judged. “Good job, guys.”

We had two cigarettes and a couple packs of matches. Soon we had less than a half pack of matches as our flames were blown out in the wind. But we prevailed and Frank puffed and coughed and then said, “Watch.” He pulled, elegantly, chest-expanding, face-discoloring, and then exhaled and started to giggle. “Head rush,” he explained, “try it!”

The moment of truth. I pursed my lips and he placed the thing inside. He coached and I sucked. “Breath in your chest, don’t just hold it in your mouth!” I tried. Burn and cough and spit. I dropped it. Billy shrieked.

But I was hooked. Instead of letting Billy take a turn I pleaded with Frank to show me again. So he placed his hand on my back and put it in my mouth again and I felt the smoke enter my lungs. Penetration. And suddenly the world turned upside down as the tingles danced all over my skin and I tripped and fell over. Frank fell with me. We laughed and rolled around, forgetting about Billy and the world.

The afternoon continued with a masterful idea of lighting the second cigarette with the first and Billy got to play. But soon it was back in my mouth and I inhaled again, held it in too long, and felt the heavenly bliss that is a rush from a cigarette. And nausea, but I just ignored that.

We tried to calm ourselves down, but the exhilaration of being bad was just too good.

On the way back to Billy’s house we all used the breathspray we’d stolen from his mother’s purse. And Frank cautioned us to “try and act like nothing happened.” I pretended, but I never forgot.

I hear voices.

I think they are just my own, but sometimes I’m not so sure. For instance, a few minutes ago I was eavesdropping on a conversation in the next room, and I was certain the following was said:

“Are you ready to do the urine sample?”

“Not yet.”

“I just need a dribble.”

Now, before you think I am totally nutso–the conversation did take place. Someone was asking someone for a cup of pee, that part is certain. However, what seems to have not taken place is the comment “I just need a dribble.” My sources claim that actually the final comment was “I just need a little bit.” What is the difference between “a dribble” and “a little bit”? The world.

You see, one of them seems like a typical response to “Not yet.” Coaxing the boy who is about to pee in a cup that he needn’t worry because you only want “a little” specimen then he won’t feel the pressure to perform. However, telling him that you are seeking “a dribble” is a hell of a lot funnier.

And that is the point, really. I can’t tell if I actually misheard the comment or if my mind transformed it so it sounded better to my ears. This may seem a subtle difference, but it happens all of the time. And often, it happens during situations that don’t really occur. Conversations occur to me and then are enhanced and then I repeat them as fact. Over and over. Often to myself in the shower or while walking down the street. And I laugh. Lately, people are starting to stare.

I’m not sure if it is the novelist in me who needs to re-arrange the world to fit into a nice narrative, or if I’m cuckoo for cocoa-puffs. Either way it makes things interesting to me, and allows me to deliver it interestingly to other people. So maybe it is actually a gift. If only people would stop staring…

The only other thing to confess at this point is that I also twitch. Or jump. One time I was on an elevator and was getting so excited that I was jumping a little and all of the sudden a loud voice started to say “Are you okay? Do you need assistance?” It was the intercom, and the person speaking was at the security desk watching me on a camera and couldn’t figure out why I was jumping. Neither could I. But I stopped so they wouldn’t worry. You know, come to think of it, was there really a voice on the intercom? I sure hope so. If there wasn’t it means I missed out on several floors of jumping time.

Whoever searches the internet for the phrase “tux fuck”–I thank you!

In my opinion, this is both the most entertaining search-string I’ve encountered yet, and also the most relevant to Tony Wears a Tux. And I am happy to report that when you performed that search, Tony was the first hit. This is cause for celebration!

Also, it should be noted that Tony decided to look and see the other sites your inspired search retrieved. And you would not believe the treasures that abound on this humble internet. The best of the best was a column in the LA Weekly which feature the tales of “Tuxboy.” In it you may find the Tuxboy Mission Statement, hereafter the official slogan of Tony Wears a Tux: “Exorcising chronic seasonal demons with inopportune formalwear.”

“Standing in the shower thinking
About what makes a man
An outlaw or a leader
I’m thinking about power…
The ways a man could use it
Or be destroyed by it
The water hits my neck
And I’m pissing on myself…”

And so begins the epic tale of my morning, with an allusion to the album that I once considered to be the existential roadmap of my life. When the song occurred to me I was, predictably, standing in the shower. And I was thinking about you.

Do you know the song? It appears right smack in the middle of Jane’s Addiction’s major label debut: Nothing’s Shocking. The album cover featured a photo of Perry Farrell’s sculpture–two naked women joined at the shoulder and hip with flaming hair and sitting upon a floating bench. Other lyrical subject matter dealt with mass media’s morbid fascinations, seasonal love and intimacy, and the Nietzschean concept of God’s demise. And drugs, of course.

This, to me, was the pinnacle of popular culture. The soundtrack to my coming-of-age. The reason I once tried urinating in the shower and later pierced my nose. (The reason I removed the nose piercing: over-zealous kissing of boys and my OCD’s inability to stop playing with the hoop. Unrelated anecdote, sorry.)

The posturing of rockstars (to be taken as general term for any famed music-maker in any current popular genre) is attractive. Their hyper-identities seem more sincere than those of other celebraties, yet are so contrived and stylized that they allow us to wear them as our own. And we do. From clothing to philosophy to narcissistic self-examination.

And validation: Perry and the boys of Jane’s toyed with ambiguous sexual identities in their clothing and onstage antics. Besides Michael Stipe, Perry offered some of the only explicit validation I could find for my personal expressions and desires. In fact, he once discussed gay men in his film “the Gift,” saying that he was jealous of their secret desire and intimacy, describing a scene at a restaurant where two men stare intently at one another but only dare to touch feet under the table. It was a sweet image, sustaining me through my junior year of high school. Gave me hope.

Today, in the shower, I realized that I shouldn’t need that hope anymore. Nor do I need Tony (my own posturing) as an excuse to write. I have you. And there are some things I would like you to know.

While you were sleeping I peeked through the door to revel in your beauty. Spread out on the bed, an arm tucked behind your head, eyes resting under their lids to the soundtrack of relaxed breath. Blankets covering you from below while your chest stood out in proud glory. How my desire longed to lie down upon that well-formed stage. A graceful, grand, and handsome place for love.

This is not the point but it could be. My emotions are distracting.

Looking in at you I felt again the power of my love’s conviction. For all the minor days of doubt, denial, and fear I suffer there are these epiphanic times to remind me of why I feel the way that I do about you. Like our first night out along the canal when we argued about the existence of fact and you revealed your attraction for men. We hugged and for days I couldn’t quit my enjoyment or fascination with you and our potential energy.

Then there was the night you found me stumbling drunk and upset and took me back to my home and tucked me in and…. Oh those broken rose petals and our total inability to slow down! Your poetry, plays and my realization of your curious depth. Our first sweaty weekend reunion after moving to the East coast. My birthday calendar. Chocolate syrup and honey surprises. And last week at the club how playfully you danced with the beaded necklace! All of this speaks volumes to quiet any questioning of compatibility or commitment.

What remains is insecurity’s echo. The reverberation of being abandoned. The gnawing need to be re-affirmed of your feelings. The whole reason I still sometimes feel like I am in a cage. This morning I thought about your power. “The ways a man could use it / or be destroyed by it…” I want to be spied on while I am sleeping. To be read about on-line. To be listened to on a mix tape. I want to be discovered and understood for who I want to be.

Rockstars do things to get noticed. To be purchased and put on posters on walls. To be quoted and sung along with by large crowds. To be loved. Boy, you’re gonna to carry that weight a long time.

However, I am aware that this sometimes has more to do with me than you or you and me. I’m realizing lately that the empty places inside may need attention from me and not just you. But still from you, too. I also realize that I need to focus on all the attention that I do receive from you and not take it for granted or diminish it by wanting more. And, most importantly, I know that one song cannot sustain an entire blog. So, here’s the other one I was thinking about and singing this morning (and even now as I write):

“Black is the color of my true love’s hair
His face so soft and wondrous fair
The purest eyes
and the strongest hands
I love the ground on where he stands

Black is the color of my true love’s hair

Oh I love my lover
and where he goes
yes, I love the ground on where he goes
And still I hope
that the time will come
when he and I will be as one

So black is the color of my true love’s hair”

Two hours ago, someone got to Tony Wears a Tux by searching Google for the phrase: “Serious deep dicking.”

A few weeks ago, someone else found the blog by searching for the phrase “Watched him pee.”

I don’t know if this is more a commentary on Tony or on the people searching the internet. Either way it amuses me immensely.

Final thought: If you can name the song that yielded this post’s title, you’ll win a prize.

anticipation and its discontents.

i’m being eaten from the inside out.
or perhaps i’ve been bottled,
stuck in the basement and
expected to age. expensively.
not much else.

a noise inside my head.

mandatory functions are abhorrent.
breathing, sleeping, and a slight cough,
must each be accomplished
while still appearing competent. attentive.
a challenge.

absolute certainty or delirium.

love is a particularly potent situation.
it distills the moments
of absence or presence with
incessant demands. excruciating.
this is all.