THE SUPER ELEGANTS

the question was whether the pills could make other people depersonalize, because there didn't seem to be any question that every one else was acting. "the liberated homosexualities of the new century." in costume, at the café, to get up and talk about writing at the other tables. the one proclaiming perpetual boot weather doesn't look nearly as good in his pants, but i think of the panadero from that morning in jerez. and now here he comes. look. someone's poetry something or other. statement of purpose. ?

HOW TO LIVE THE DREAM ONCE YOU'VE LET THE DREAM DIE

the hairdresser is almost certainly in the pocket of the gaming lobby. they pay the rent at her salon loft, for the big flat screen tv and the cable, and for her shelves full of only the best from j beverly hills. they pay for my decaf and the assortment of creamers in the mini fridge, and over my hour (and the two hours on either side of mine during which a friend of mine occupies the gaming lobby sponsored chair) the hairdresser drops that, yes, it couldn't have been more than two days since she was last at the casino, and that the tarzan machine was paying out big. not more than two days ago she won over twelve hundred dollars in not more than an hour. the day before that she hit the triple seven with her first pull at the lucky 7 slot machine. and did we know that there were specials on tuesday mornings? a fistful of free play for the early birds on tuesday mornings! and sure, that pull at the lucky 7 had cost her three dollars, but that three was two hundred no sooner than her hand was off the lever. she could tell us more on the boat at buckeye lake.

the gaming lobby does not, unfortunately, pay for my haircut, which is understandable, because they wouldn't want to give up, so to speak, the game. but they've chosen their representative wisely, and she does good hair. i want her to shave the part to look like a portuguese soccer player, nothing of the shoddy spanish imitations, and she understands exactly what to do.

then there's nothing to be done the following monday. the beginning of the work week has been postponed until we can charge our cards with our free play credit on tuesday morning, and the doorman in front of the spanish renaissance revival building of the athletic club of columbus doesn't open doors to portuguese soccer revival haircuts. they say that the place is family oriented, but we all know what hides behind those unopened doors in the midwest. for the exception of that coveted entry the work week might have been allowed to start early.

and they say too that when it rains it pours, and now it's pouring and there's even less to be done about the monday. but then the post knocks, and there's a letter. an update from fort freedomland. the vintage airstream has found a home in southern oregon. it has a deed, but it can still only be reached at general delivery, cave junction. nearby, she writes, there's a swimming hole for sasquatches. they will work on an outhouse for visitors. i will learn how to shoot. it's been a while since she's asked at the post office, she apologizes, so she doesn't know if i've written. for that matter, she doesn't even know if she's reached me. more likely i'm in baltimore or somewhere making rich men delight in drinking my urine (even if not at the athletic club of columbus). with the rain outside and the grind not set to restart until tomorrow, i just wonder: if she hasn't actually read any of my letters, then how did she know?

COFFEE TALK, YOU'RE SUCH A FAG (WARS)

it's in. "flag wars" is an eighty-six minute lesson in the contradictions of columbus, ohio. the 2003 documentary on the gentrification of olde towne east won a peabody award -- as well as the esteem of all of the queers who rented at video verite on mississippi avenue in portland after the surrounding neighborhood had been gentrified -- but nearly a decade later it doesn't even seem to have made it onto the radar map of the city where it was shot. it is -- and anywhere -- as the (increasingly drunker) real estate agent who is depicted as the flag bearer of the charge to move the homos into the neighborhood says: it's about money. and the african american homeowners who were left in the neighborhood after the white flight of the mid-twentieth century don't have it. in other words, they do own their big, old houses, but they can't pay to fix them up and make the neighborhood expensive again like the homos.

[a pause to appreciate the ironic timeliness of the release of "premium rush" as the trailer speeds past the cops on tv.]

a longer pause. because i'm thinking again about having heard that the drag shows at the gay bar on parsons (the one that was featured in "flag wars") are getting more and more popular with the fixed gear kids that hang out around impero and one line. columbus is progressive, they say, and i think that i probably would have agreed until a year ago. the capital is definitely the most progressive city in the state. but the city that once joined new york and san francisco in protest of the police invasion of the stonewall inn in 1969 appears still to be only the follower, but now not even occasionally in line with any radical minority. columbus, says a recent gay transplant from raleigh, is remarkably segregated. and of course it's no longer a question of gay. or, rather, it's the gays that have been the first wave anywhere (and the richer the better). and as "flag wars" does well to point out, it isn't as if neighborly concord is furthered by the anti-gay religious values often shared among the "indigenous" population of olde towne east. but maybe it's all been moot since "flag wars" got popular out of town(e)...and maybe it's just a matter of time (and gentrification) until the movie gets in with the cool crowd in its hometown. then again, for a city that is home to one of the top interdisciplinary art centers in the world, there persists a resistance to art at the fringe (and all that leaves is a bunch of mediocre middle west stuff).

but then there's also that one line i overhear at one line (and i'll admit that i would probably be at the new bakery on oak in olde towne east if they had decaf). yoga pants and louis vuitton asks the urban outfitted barista (complete with republic bicycle locked outside) which coffee bar in new york this reminds her of. "you know, that one in new york," she says before she wanders to the back of the place to wonder what the roaster is for. "i couldn't say," comes the response. "there are, like, hundreds of coffee bars in new york. it's a really progressive city." so excuse me. because apparently i'd confused my terms. good thing i'll have a chance coming up to visit and get back behind the curve. start spreading the news. it's in. that's why progress invented 4g. just don't ask who lived here before that.

it's time for a new cool, faggots. but it absolutely won't help if we tell each other where to look.

KNOWLEDGE OF HELL, part 3

she offered to drive me the block from where she was parked on race and west 15th to the corner of the recently refurbished and reopened washington park in over the rhine, and it was dubious as to whether her offer was the result of the condition of that block of race street (still on the wrong side of the or my shortness of breath, which had been explained just before the coffee emporium. it was, however, undeniably nice of her to have come, although it was dubious as to whether her reason for coming late was a reason at all.

"i have an appointment," she'd said. "at twelve."

"what kind of an appointment?"

"[so and so] has a massage, and i'm going with her."

"that's not a thing."

"no...but i have a a massage too."

"maybe."

and it had been dubious too whether or not it had been a friend of mine in that sex dream with the hermaphrodite. no. in fact i suppose that it would be impossible to say that it had been her. (dangerous writers write somethings like "penis" -- although it was much more than that in the dream -- he thought through the dizziness before the next one.)

escape, escape, escape, escape, escape.

"why are you hiding?" she asked first thing in the morning. and i thought that i'd been sleeping, but it was her house so i thought that maybe i should take the toddler's word. the other one had her massage appointment some hours later, and "the neighborhood slumbered in the peaceful climate that precedes tragedy: FUGITIVE FROM PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL KILLS TWELVE IN BEAUTY PARLOR." dangerous writing? probably not, but far more dangerous still than that block of race, even without any lofts.

OLD WORLD UNDERGROUND, I NEVER KNEW YOU

there are just over three miles between the gutted and rebuilt main library at the university and the gutted and rebuilt main branch of the metropolitan library system downtown. the coffee roasters, the custom cosmeticians, the gourmet ice cream parlors, the salons, the taprooms. (past the barnes and noble on high street that bought the street sign from what was once the university's largest independent text book vendor, not a single book store between the libraries.) the "upscale" thrift store and the one not afraid to charge even more to call itself vintage. taprooms and taprooms coming soon. the boutiques and, of course, the bike shops. (the boutiques.) if the people who have been moving to the short north wanted to be a pantomime of portland five years ago, why didn't they just move five years ago to portland and become mimes while there was still american money to be had in street performance? (the ice cream is, we all know, moving to portland now.) and with the third wave, the trashier bars of the homo ghetto (which, of course, the new new wavers call an arts district) are gone.

"it's an unmistakable part of the same trend that has been taking hold across urban America for years," writes jonathan mahler about the anarchist spirit of the occupy oakland movement in "the world capital of anti-capitalism," which ran in the new york times magazine this past sunday. "there is," his sentence begins, however, "a distinctly oakland character to many of these businesses." outside of the ice cream, which, it's only fair to admit, does certainly have its special local flavors, commentators here should find it hard to say the same. the sad looking occupy columbus half-tent in front of the ohio statehouse appears to be unoccupied. and it's ironic -- or exactly not -- because it's not far from the statue of william mckinley, the ohio grown export to washington who was the american president actually assassinated by an anarchist.

and it's insult to injury (or another irony?) at the main branch of the metropolitan library where, after removing the hold on my library card, i not only have to put my own hold on "flag wars" and for an email telling me when a copy of the dvd has been returned, but i also find out from the millions that i should probably have migrated to tumblr some years ago. there's no one can stop giving that platform book deals. and it's probably going to be days until i find out about that dvd (although the millions doesn't need to tell me that i could get netflix). i search for a half dozen other titles, and they're all in the system...but wouldn't you know? they're all far away from downtown at branches in the suburbs.

OLD WORLD UNDERGROUND WHERE ARE YOU NOW?; or, TEA FOR ONE

the tallest building in mansfield, ohio (going by my floor count), which used to be the farmers bank building (going from the stone relief above the building's main entrance on park avenue west), now belongs to jpmorgan chase. and to say so was going to lend support to my cynicism about the city, about the resurgent sociopolitical polarization of america between town and country, and thereby lend weight to my eventual revelation -- or to what it was that had been revealed to me yesterday when i had been trying to suss out mansfield's gay bars.

of course, i knew that mansfield wasn't entirely what i might have liked to think about about a little city at the edge of the middle west that was famous for its meth and heroin problems. the city, at least as far as the inhabitants of its surrounding villages seem concerned (and they are, and they'll tell you), should be famous for its art center as well. i didn't know. but i did intend to visit. and even if that white building among the trees on marion avenue hadn't been the center, i would have gone back afterward to photograph it. and i don't know if people in mansfield would consider their city to be generally progressive, but that building did win a progressive architecture award when it was built in 1971. even if the mansfield art center isn't quite famous, don hisaka, its architect is. i mean, i didn't know who he was, but the man at the gift shop whom i asked about the center's funding (who maybe misheard "founding" -- although that's impossible because what i asked was if the center was supported by the city) wrote hisaka's name on the membership application he gave me. the center, he told me, had recently done a retrospective of the architect's work in photographs.

the current retrospective of the work of henry melroy was over, in the process of being taken down from the second floor gallery, and i wasn't going to be allowed upstairs. this i was told at the foot of the staircase by the woman descending it. the majority of the melroy works looked still to be on the walls, but she'd already begun unpacking the next exhibit. but i didn't much care. i didn't know anything about henry melroy, and i had already decided that i'd come out ahead after only putting three dollars in the donation box (it turns out that the center is an independent nonprofit) after assuming i would have to pay at least five for what i assumed was a municipal museum before arriving. i don't know why she eventually allowed me up.

i didn't know anything about henry melroy, but that's why art centers like the one in mansfield (like the local literary museums that still survive all over japan) are treasures. it's beside my point to describe his art. and besides, the retrospective included a work entitled "the determined blind critic" which featured in its foreground a top hatted figured holding a brush full of white paint and poised to something devious; and although i wouldn't normally be dissuaded by an artist's attempts at dissuading a critic by means of criticism, i doubt that in my descriptions i'd say anything particularly revelatory, and it was time that i started seeing to my revelation. what the hell would trying to describe something like, i don't know, surreal fauvist irrelationshipism sound like anyway? and the effect of the relationship of the title of a work like "desert fairy massacre" to the faceless rag doll in the painting that held a pistol extended in one hand in front of a field of nonparallel cacti whilst being beset by a volley of shooting stars would be as impossible to express as the much simpler but also necessarily total effect of seeing that the sketch of audrey hepburn as holly golightly as a shredded flesh zombie that was easily the least conspicuous of the pieces on display at the coffee shop downtown was titled "you look sexy." maybe it's just beyond me, but that too is beside the point.

and beside it too (almost literally, there on main street downtown) was that café. i don't know if it makes the city any more progressive, but mansfield is not entirely without, i don't know...cool. and next door, there's a chalkboard sidewalk sign exclaiming in blue and pink that president obama has the support of mansfield's artists. the independent book store across the street should be an encouraging surprise for anyone troubled by the purportedly short life expectancy of the old fashioned book tour.

and up the street there's the squirrel's den, which is where i bought my faux vintage cards depicting the demolished richland county jail and the mansfield commerce building and was given both a tour and a business card that got me into the city income tax offices on the seventh floor of the municipal building to appreciate the view. ladonna also told me how she always tells young people (which in our conversation apparently meant me) to keep chasing their dreams. her dream of opening a confectionery wasn't realized until she was fifty, and she had had to work a night shift elsewhere for its first three years to keep her new business open. she had told president obama the same story.

so my cynicism had been tempered by the time i got back to central park, which occupies a handful of blocks between main and diamond streets, one block away from the chase tower. in 1962, the bodies of two girls were found dead in a mansfield creek, and in the ensuing investigation, the police learned about an underground public restroom where men met for sex. "tearoom, mansfield surveillance" by william e. jones is a film that consists only and entirely of fifty-six unedited minutes of surveillance footage acquired by the filmmaker, footage that was taken in 1962 by the mansfield police and the highway safety foundation from behind a two way mirror in that restroom. at the end of the clip that i found online, a strapping motorcycle cop -- whose resemblance to something out of tom of finland is a sadly ironic coda to the outrageously sad sex footage that precedes it -- delivers a citation of a much portlier mansfield joe. each of the men filmed was given between one and twenty years imprisonment or confinement in a state hospital. the restroom was filled after the sting.

i don't know. i tried to find that above ground shot. i even allowed for a reversal of the image. but it's been fifty years. i'm sure the park, like the city, has changed. today there's a martin luther king jr. memorial, and the trees that now provide abundant shade to the lawn areas on either side of park avenue wouldn't have been so large and relaxed in 1962. that public gentlemen's restroom may not even have ever been there. and the city has surely changed. but it's been fifty years, and that tearoom is still the only gay bar in mansfield, and so even without much hope of finding it, i figured i would see what i could find. that restroom might not have ever been there at the park, but until yesterday i hadn't even known that it could have been, and i wonder how much of its american history a president obama knows when his campaign makes a stop in mansfield, ohio, main street u.s.a.

but i'll admit again that mansfield had tempered my cynicism. the people there today are as fine, diverse and eager as the men in that surveillance footage. and i can't help but want to come back, especially as i suspect that the manager of the book store will probably be starting her own brewery, but suspecting as well that maybe it's the rest that have had the wool pulled over their eyes. i drive through the park again on my way to photograph the grain silos and the state reformatory and appreciate the banner signs along park avenue one more time: "visit downtown mansfield. 'cruise in.'" don't mind if i do.