2006-07-07 - 10:50 a.m.
Outfest began last night with their opening film and party. This was held at the Orpheum Theater downtown, a huge, lovingly-restored, beautiful film palace from the heyday of film palaces, the 1920s. As it's in a pretty bad neighborhood downtown, though, I doubt if it is regularly used as a movie theater, but more for special events such this one.
The weather has been blazingly hot, although I am enjoying it. However, it made me debate what to wear to this event; I even contemplated shorts, but then, fortunately, nixed that idea as this is, I suppose, a pretty major event on "the gay annual calendar", so dressing more up would be better than way down. I ended up wearing a white linen short-sleeved sport shirt and soft, brushed-cotton Navy blue pants, sexy in a kinda dressy, kinda casual way. Upon later reflection, I laughingly realized I probably more looked like a Mormon missionary, which is, actually, though, a kind of gay fetish (gay Mormons are a surprise package of peculiar delights that some are eager to upwrap, the homosexual equivalent to the heterosexual Catholic school girl), although not with someone my age who would more likely be some kind of a "Temple Elder" instead of a cute twink missionary.
However, it more or less must have worked, because many of the hot guys whom I couldn't help but look at actually made, instead of quickly avoiding, eye contact, and some even spoke to me. One guy, who claimed to be "documenting the event" asked to take my picture, which I let him, although I would be amazed if I found it decorating their website or some other publicity.
The temperature inside the theater was delightful to the point that I had to comment on it, just perfectly cool without being chillingly noticeable.
I got there pretty early, so I sat down on a huge couch in the lobby and watched the parade of people going to the VIP pre-party, which was available to you if you bought the top level ticket, $135, which also got you orchestra seating in the theater. I had upped myself this year from the basic price of $40 to the middle level of $65, which got you the center front section of the balcony. All three price-levels get you the after-party, which, in a way, is more a point of the ticket than the film.
It was really fascinating people-watching, seeing all the diverse types and also the gamut of clothing styles from elegant suits and cocktail dresses down to jeans and leather. Most, however, were in dressier pants and some kind of sport shirt. To my taste though, the hottest guy was very "preppy" in look with a pink polo shirt. Of course, it helped that his body was my idea of lean perfection. He was relatively young, though, probably somewhere in his 30s, so I figured he wouldn't be interested in me (that is to say, based on whatever he would be able to experience of me at a loud, crowded party, he wouldn't have any way of getting to know me), and that expectation of rejection does besmirch a person's beauty somewhat. Still, I did hope to at least get a good look at him again later at the party.
But, true to my form of always being attracted to people who in no way would be interested in me, the hottest people were lesbians. And not necessarily the "lipstick" lesbians, either, but I wouldn't go so far as to say I found the "Tugboat Annies" "attractive", although to be fair, those are usually the friendliest and most fun, and most wonderful to actually get to know, so I end up making friends with quite a few of those types during the 13 days of the festival. So what does their sexual attractiveness to me, or lack of it, mean, anyway...they're not going to go to bed with me one way or the other.
No, the kind that I seem to find hot seem to fit into a category where they are "tall, lean, boyish-looking, blue-collar-agricultural-laborer types" (and with whom I wouldn't have one single thing in common). I don't know, they seem to look like they are horse wranglers or in some other way "come off the land" and do tough, physical work. I don't view them as an urban phenomenon at all, all "art gallery and coffee house", no. They look more like they come from Montana or Wyoming, or maybe just did a stint in the Army. I feel like they are the female equivalent of the kind of man that Walt Whitman described in Leaves of Grass, to whom I admittedly am also very attracted, although I don't think we have anybody LIKE that in the country anymore--a salt-of-the-earth, honest, reliable, work with their hands type. Not since Of Mice and Men have there been that type of male roaming the U.S.; instead all that work is done by illegal aliens from Mexico.
But lesbians seem to have them, or at least that's how they look, and they come out of the woodwork at Outfest. Maybe I'll have the nerve to talk to someone like that in the upcoming festival, and find out how they tick.
Okay, I know I'm weird, but it is fun to freely analyze what my interests were telling me about myself as I watched the people parade past. There must be a quality in myself that I wish to develop and I see it projected onto the persons of these people. Unlike so many of the gay clones, who seem to want to pair up with somebody who could be their twin, I always want somebody who absolutely is NOT like me. It's part of the "hetero-", "homo-" conflict I feel streaming within me, i.e., where do "different from me" attract and where do "same as me" attract? Apparently I don't apply it (or limit it) to gender, and interestingly, there was a little of that in the movie we saw.
Puccini for Beginners was primarily a lesbian movie (to the disappointment of many of the guys I talked with at the after-party, one of whom said the film put him to sleep so he really couldn't comment on it), but it was also about a desire some people have for settling down that overcomes sexual orientation or preference. It features an attractive lesbian woman, a novelist, whose lover broke up with her because the novelist couldn't commit to her. Instead, the lover decides to accept the offer of marriage from a man.
The novelist then meets a man at a party whose girlfriend of six years finally broke up with him because he wouldn't commit to marrying her. So they're both in the same boat, sad at losing a lover because they wouldn't commit, so that common ground makes them hit it off and, gosh darn it, they both realize that they are strongly sexually attracted to each other and pretty soon get involved in a hot and heavy sexual relationship.
But still, the novelist is still a lesbian and wants a woman, and ends up meeting a very sweet and attractive woman who had just broken up with her boyfriend because she wanted to get married and he didn't. She's fascinated by the novelist's lesbianism, saying to her, "You're so lucky to be a lesbian, because guys are such jerks." Well, the novelist is quite happy to bed this woman and the woman tries it and likes it a WHOLE LOT. She decides that she has "turned lesbian."
Well, it ends up, you've probably already figured it out, that the man and the woman that the novelist is sleeping with were the ones who had been involved with each other but had broken up, and the whole thing comes to a head at the engagement party of the novelist's former lover who is now marrying a man.
I have not given any spoilers here, only told you the set up of the movie that any of their advertising media would let you know.
The film was brilliant and funny and also insightful, and, I think, did a very good job of blurring the distinctions of gender (which is the one thing that homosexuals have learned) and how it is simply all about kinds of people. This is the more mature theme I have been seeing in Outfest films for the past several years, and while it confuses the heterosexuals, I think lesbian and gay viewers are happy to see these deeper truths starting to come out. It really is more complex than a simple division between "gay" and "straight".
The film was good, the after-party less so. I will say that the weather outside was outstanding, one of those temperatures that feels to the body like "no" temperature at all. (I guess that means the outside air is exactly the same as the internal body temperature?) Just based on the weather alone, I could have stayed out there all night--the party was in an empty parking lot surrounded by downtown buildings.
I had prepared to enjoy all the food and drink they were going to offer. I had had only a zero-point dinner (lettuce, tomato, mushrooms, and non-fat dressing). But the set-up wasn't good. The place was so crowded you could hardly move, and tables of food were placed along two of the walls, but with no lines or any other way to organize getting your food, it worked more like getting a drink at a crowded bar, you had to push yourself in and catch the attention of the servers (and, of course, getting a drink at the bars there was the same way). People weren't too happy about this and were getting kind of ornery over it. As for me, while I did manage to get some food from some of the tables, the effort required was far greater than the results. Not that the food wasn't good, it was just too hard to get and the quantities they served were too niggardly.
As it so happened, the first table I picked to go to offered from an Italian restaurant, the Fabiolus Cafe, which is very close to where I live, but I have never eaten there. I was just about to achieve some success in getting IN there to the front of the crowd, but my forward progress was now blocking the progress of a guy who had managed to get some food, but was now trying to push his way OUT (but armed with a floppy paper plate dripping with tomato sauce)--it was the hot guy in the pink polo shirt whom I had hoped to see again. But this was a very bad circumstance for seeing him again; it made us into opponents in the achievement of each one's desired progress with the food.
I naturally flashed his beautiful face a friendly smile, and then understandingly backed out to make him some room so he could get out of there, but he only looked at me angrily and pushed his way forward, probably not even understanding what I had done for him. Upon my letting him out, about five others then pushed their way into the void, so I lost the advantage that I had gained in my progress. I turned for a moment to give a final glance back at him, expecting to see him disappear off into the distance, but instead, oddly enough, he stopped just beyond the outskirts of the crowd and simply stood there eating his food, facing in my direction, almost as if he "knew" that I wanted to look at him and therefore cooperated by presenting himself to me.
However, I returned to the task at hand and finally managed to get a plate filled with a very small quantity of two kinds of pasta dishes. Then I pushed my way out and was surprised to see the pink-shirted guy still standing there. I almost felt as though he was standing there for me (because in my view, I was the only person in the vicinity who had demonstrated any awareness of him), but the other side of my brain laughed off that suggestion, so I just moved on out of there. He never once glanced in my direction...all he had to do was look up at me and I would have spoken to him, that tiny opening would have been all I needed, but as there hadn't been even that small chink (why waste time with a person who either utterly failed to notice your existence, or else is working hard to make it look like it), I just left him alone. I did notice, though, that he was completely alone, which I thought was peculiar for somebody who was that attractive, those types NEVER appear in public as a single. Maybe we know, though, why he was alone.
Fortunately I did run into several other people whom I knew from other Outfests, and so tried to speak with them, but the music was too loud and I quickly got too hoarse to even be able to make myself heard with shouting. And the music wasn't good enough for dancing anyway, so it was more of an obstacle to a good time than making the good time.
I decided that the time had come to leave. I went out the party's exit and found myself back on Broadway, which is the street the Orpheum is on. I now had to face the walk down to the end of that block, and then go all the way around the block to the other side. Just outside the perimeter of the party where there was security, it was a different world--a dark, nearly abandoned (but not entirely) downtown neighborhood. There were a few groups of leaving partiers, about half a block ahead of me, being hassled by a couple of drunken blacks. This worried me, as I was completely by myself, and obviously coming out of this very clear and obviously gay party. If somebody didn't know what it was, the banners everywhere made it a loud proclamation, so it was no secret.
I know from other experiences that skid row drunks are not really dangerous, they can hardly even stand up, but you don't really know if the people up ahead of your walk are that type or not. Instead, they could be aggressive gay bashers or muggers and maybe even armed. Well, there was no way around it, it was face them or wait until a crowd came along.
I put on a tough and resolute demeanor and pushed my way on. My progress was too fast for the drunks who had given up on the people ahead of me, but when I came around the corner, I faced another black man who said, "Sir, can I ask you a question?" Rather than fall for that stupid trick (what "question" can you possibly ask me except "I need to feed my wife and children, can you spare a couple of dollars?"; yeah, right, I'm going to stop, make myself vulnerable, pull my wallet with all its credit cards out of my back pocket in front of you, letting you know where it is and what I've got, look through my several 20 dollar bills and whatnot, and then hand you a dollar). Instead, I didn't even slow down, but as I passed, I said, "No, you can NOT." He didn't follow me, although he did call after me, "Please, I only wanted to ask you a question." I kept on going.
I passed a couple of toothless homeless men pushing carts filled with junk and then reached the end of THAT block. Now I had one more wide street to cross, the parking lot I wanted was just across the street, but the light was red. I contemplated just continuing on across the street against the light (there wasn't any traffic), but that would have demonstrated fear, I felt, so I was held there waiting for the light to change as several zombies from various directions began their descent upon me. I kept my peripheral vision on them, guaging their speed while waiting for the light to change, and it changed before they made it all the way over. The minute I stepped off into the street, the zombies backed away, and I got out of there.
Once I was home, I prepared myself some food since I was still hungry, and then went to bed.
After this evening, I decided that going to this opening event next year will be based entirely on whether I want to see the movie, or not. The after-party wouldn't be enough to draw me, and walking these streets around midnight as I did last night is something I will consider avoiding. However, next year will be the festival's 25th anniversary, so I am sure they will hype up THAT celebration.
Tonight's two films will be in a completely wonderful venue, the the Director's Guild, which is in West Hollywood. The Director's Guild is the Hollywood film directors' "union", so it's quite a nice place with wonderful theaters, especially the main one. Plus, the whole place is ground zero for Outfest during the rest of the festival, completely given over to all things "Outfest." In a way, tonight is the true opening of the festival for me.
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