Last weekend, Josh was in a fashion show with clothes designed locally and jewelry/accessories made by his best friend, Evie. Josh turns 40 in a couple weeks. He's grown his hair out over the pandemic. It's long, wavey, and curly at once. He's beautiful. His plan was to cut it after the fashion show, but his mother begged him to reconsider. Being a good Cancer who listens to his mother, I imagine he'll never cut it again.
Shawn's job at the liquor store is going well enough. He likes working on our street again. In addition to being a clerk and stocker, he's become a bouncer. Alcohol turns good people weird, so he's had to force people out of the store. A guy with a machete came in and accused another guy of stealing his umbrella. They proceeded to fight, machete against umbrella, until Shawn stepped in, kicked them both off the property, and confiscated the umbrella because the guy had started beating a car with it. The umbrella is now in our front entryway, safe from violence. And still, this job is less emotionally demanding for Shawn than being a server. The lines of acceptable and unacceptable behavior are clearer. He's not dependent on his customers supplementing his paycheck with tips anymore. But he longs for it. I made two pies today, and he said he missed selling them to people.
After I got the vaccine, my pandemic stress all but disappeared. I've been able to draw again and consistently. The new series I'm working on is a further exploration of what I think of as the voyeurism of acceptance. For at least half my life, gay intimacy meant secrecy. We hid that world for our own safety, but it was also hidden from us to keep us from embracing it. Now, people are more accepting and curious. As gay men, we use social media to perform for those who want to see us, even as we ourselves want to be seen. For me, there's a tension between what I continue to keep private and what I share openly to help normalize gay desire, sex, and love. I see it in my drawings. There's often a simple scene of male intimacy that exists both in the world of the image and outside of it. The men in these scenes hide nothing from each other and are unaware they're being watched, usually by supernatural forces like ghosts and UFOs. I'm after what I consider the most important project of adulthood—the validation of the self. Representation is a legitimate aim, but corporate entertainment, while financially powerful, lacks true potency. Disney will not help you love yourself or help you decide the life you desire is indeed worthwhile. That power is yours alone. You are the point of creation. They will watch you and steal from you and sometimes even employ you to help them do it. But please, I beg you, don't ever wait on them to tell you your own story.
On a walk the other night, an animal larger than the usual cats and rabbits ran across the street in front of Josh and me. It stopped in a yard and stared back at us like we should follow. It was a fox. I don't see a lot of foxes, and never in our neighborhood. Of course, we knew better than to follow it into the dark. Appreciate beauty when you see it. Never trust it.