NY Gov Goes Down: Client 9, meet Girl 6
Or, the Emperor has no clothes…
Spitzer Is Linked to Prostitution Ring
Published: March 10, 2008
Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times
ALBANY – Gov. Eliot Spitzer has been caught on a federal wiretap arranging to meet with a high-priced prostitute at a Washington hotel last month, according to a person briefed on the federal investigation.
The wiretap recording, made during an investigation of a prostitution ring called Emperors Club VIP, captured a man identified as Client 9 on a telephone call confirming plans to have a woman travel from New York to Washington, where he had reserved a room. The person briefed on the case identified Mr. Spitzer as Client 9.
Fembot Fatale
Those lips, those hips, those – microchips!
What’s better than one hot Bionic Woman? Two hot bionic women, of course! If they’re wet and angry and locked in a stormy rooftop death-match – all the better!
And that, in essence, is what the new Bionic Woman is all about. Unlike the sun-kissed New Age tennis pro that Lindsay Wagner made famous in the 70’s empowerment parable
, this 21st century fembot’s dark and aggressive with enough issues to match her circuit-to-cellular ratio. Whereas the old well-adjusted Jamie made serving the man seem like fun, these two bitter bots make it look like a pain. The old one smiled; these two pout and scowl.
The fact that the two fembots seem to take Sapphic comfort in each others’ blows above all others’ adds a Gen XXX charge absent in the disco-era original. These robo-ladies may have been made faster, stronger, better at the hands and behest of men, but once they awakened to their powers, men became completely irrelevant. All, except the gay ones like Terre and me hooti
n’ and hollerin’ at the telly.
Adjusted for inflation, Miss Thing is now worth $50 million. I’m all for campy cat-fights, but hopefully some of that will be spent on the missing and sadly missed trademark sound effects and dialog that avoids lines like, “I just think it’s cool a girl can do that.” Of course we do! That’s why we’re watching.
(Meanwhile, down the dial, another kind of antisocial beauty goes for Tyra’s Top Model Prize; her name is Heather and she’s got the body, face and Asperger’s syndrome to make her my early favorite. What is it with me and hot, twisted sisters?)
Larry Hearts Men, Larry Hearts Men!
Public I-da-ho-an gets some Minnesota Nice!
Flip it any way you wanna – another politico, aflame betwixt his blue balls and red neck, done gone and freed a big willy, almost right into his Neo-con pie hole. As everyone knows, Republican Senator Larry “quite contrary” Craig pulled a George Michael, not just soliciting – but getting stung by a tea-room squad. (Really, this is where my tax dollars are going?) Busted allegedly slipping twin-ply valentines and playing footsies between toilet stalls, the Senator has been flailing in the same same-sex sea of sin he was so hot and bothered to pull the plug on. Pardon my dangling preposition.
Tea room trade, while inevitably the result of (all) men being dogs (“sooner or later, they all start barkin” quoth Venus Extravaganza), is also the product of a negating culture that forces men who love men (or just No-Strings-Attached quickies) into tunnels, parks, alleys and restrooms to speak in their native tongues. Not that priapic opportunists wouldn’t have found their way there anyway, but still. Practicing and professional homo-sensual bush buddies alike inevitably compensated for the dark, developing a unique night-vision that pierced into the fluid truth about the human libido. With typically camp elan – what other elan is there? – we called it Gaydar.
While this Greco-Romanesque tradition can occasionally have unsavory consequences, frequently it can, as it has for countless generations, provide a valuable coming-of-age experience for many precocious, curious, adventurous and – gasp, egad – horny young queers. Whether under-stall groping and partitioned coitus should be illegal – I don’t know. It can be unsanitary, and in mixed company “un peu plus que gauche” but unless junior’s splashing around in the baby gravy, there’s not much threat, at least not to the body. I mean, some heteros freely indulge not-so-immaculate conception in broad daylight, before god and country without fear of retribution. So, clearly our dubious, transgressive shenanigans are an affront to some other sense – a moral one.
That moral superiority has been at the core of the right wing is a given; everyone knows how the Leviticus-lovers love to hate love in the name of, uh, love. It doesn’t take a million-dollar talk-show host to see how that poison riddle is the root of homo-hating evil: the harder you push down on something, the harder it pushes back. Until one day you find yourself debating the finer points of tea-room etiquette on CNN under a phalanx of K-lights. In case you missed it, then, here are the more sensational tidbits from an otherwise humdrum police interrogation. Considering how dull the transcript is, does this queen really deserve to be called Mary?
Investigative Sgt. Dave Karsnia #4211 and Detective Noel Nelson of the Minneapolis Police Department intert 1162
(NN) INTERVIEW WITH Larry Craig (LC) Case 07002008
DK: Okay. I don’t want to get into a pissing match here.
LC: We’re not going to.
DK: Good. Urn,
LC: I don’t, ah, I am not gay, I don’t do these kinds of things and…
…
DK: All right, so let’s start from the beginning. You went in the bathroom.
LC: I went in the bathroom.
DK: And what did you do when you…
LC: I stood beside the wall, waiting for a stall to open. I got in the stall, sat down, and I started to go to the bathroom. Ah, did our feet come together, apparently they did bump. Well, I won’t dispute that.
DK: Okay. When I got out of the stall, I noticed other other stalls were open.
LC: They were at the time. At the time I entered, at the time I entered, I stood and waited.
DK: Were you (inaudible) out here while you were waiting? I could see your eyes. I saw you playing with your fingers and then look up. Play with your fingers and then look up.
LC: Did I glance at your stall? I was glancing at a stall right beside yours waiting for a fella to empty it. I saw him stand up and therefore I thought it was going to empty.
DK: Okay. And when you went in the stalls, then what?
LC: Sat down.
DK: Okay. Did you do anything with your feet?
LC: Positioned them, I don’t know. I don’t know at the time. I’m a fairly wide guy.
DK: I understand.
LC: I had to spread my legs.
DK: Okay.
LC: When I lower my pants so they won’t slide.
DK: Okay.
LC: Did I slide them too close to yours? Did I, I looked down once, your foot was close to mine.
DK Yes.
…
DK: I saw, I saw
LC: I don’t do those things.
DK: I saw your left hand and I could see the gold wedding ring when it when it went across. I could see that. On your left hand, I could see that.
DK: Okay. You, you travel through here frequently correct?
LC: I do
DK: Um,
LC: Almost weekly.
DK: Have you been successful in these bathrooms here before?
LC: I go to that bathroom regularly
DK: I mean for any type of other activities.
LC: No. Absolutely not. I don’t seek activity in bathrooms.
DK: It’s embarrassing.
…
DK: I am trained in this and I know what I am doing. And I say you put your hand under there and you’re going to sit there and…
LC: I admit I put my hand down.
DK: You put your hand and rubbed it on the bottom of the stall with your left hand
LC: No. Wait a moment.
DK: it’s not that hard for me to reach. (inaudible) it’s not that hard. I see it happen everyday out here now.
LC: (inaudible) you do. All right.
DK: I just, I just, I guess, I guess I’m gonna say I’m just disappointed in you sir. I’m just really am. I expect this from the guy that we get out of the hood. I mean, people vote for you.
LC: Yes, they do. (inaudible)
…
DK: Was your gold ring on your right hand at anytime today.
LC: Of course not, try to get it off, look at it.
DK: Okay. Then it was your left hand, I saw it with my own eyes.
LC: All right, you saw something that didn’t happen.
…
DK: Embarrassing. Date is 6/11/07 at 1236 interview is done.
Stacks of Life
Just in time for the latest STH (#66) party, this bit of news from Andy.
Speaking with Fox Spinmeister B.O’Reilly, Ft. Lauderdale Mayor Jim Naugle “claimed a new library opening plans to have a special section for gay pornography right next to the children’s section. He then corrected himself saying it wasn’t all porn, just some of it. O’Reilly didn’t ask for a better explanation of the so called porn.”
Throwing support in their corner was, of course a concerned Christian.
“I thank God for this mayor who is sticking up for children who, after playing a game of soccer, may wander 50 feet into the library to ask the following questions:
Q: “Mommy?” Why is that part of our library closed off?
A: Well, Johnny, Fort Lauderdale Commissioners Cindi Hutchinson, Charlotte E. Rodstrom, and Carlton B. Moore voted to take out the books that everybody can read and replace them with homosexual pornography.
Q: Mommy? What’s homosexual pornography?
A: It’s what you saw in the public restroom earlier.
Q: Mommy? Why are those people so angry at the nice mayor?
A: Because he wants to protect you from all of it. “
Well, I can only speak for myself, but first I will say – how does she know what’s going on in men’s rooms and on boys’ fields? Then, I will say “Thanks” indeed – but not to anyone in Florida. No, my gratitude is reserved for the tiny public library that sat on the other side of the Hollywood Freeway, connected to Echo Park by a short tunnel. It was in this library that I freely explored books like “Numbers”, and “City of Night” by John Rechy, “Forbidden Colors” by Yukio Mishima, and of course, all the Anais Nin and Oscar Wilde a sensitive, alienated, restless, budding young perv egghead could absorb. One of my book reports in Jr. High was on “Story of O”.
Weeknights after school and weekend afternoons, I spent hours in the stacks, on the floor, back to a wall, reading and finally checking out these blueprints for my coming of age. I studied the books as primers for all the spot quizzes that I was sure awaited me as I grew from precocious young slut to jaded middle-aged monk.
Eventually I moved on to the “Different Light” bookstore at the Sunset Junction and their racier content – including STH, Nambla, that odd series of gay “Romance” Novels that were popular in the mid-80’s. For better or worse, many of those narratives informed my instinct, my internal road map. They may have piqued my curiosity for risky business, but they essentially tutored me through an adolescence that otherwise would’ve been doubly, and unnecessarily clumsy – and possibly more dangerous because of the very naivete these concerned citizens seek to protect. When we deny kids a chance to explore their identities and exercise their imaginations in a safe, sanctioned environment, we may as well just ship them off to the next Straight to Hell party.
Wait – come to think of it….
STH
WEDNESDAY, AUG. 29th
we SLURP
@ The COCK (29 Second Ave.)
HO-sted by Linda Simpson
music by Michael Magnan & Telfar
w/Special Guests & Surprizes!
10pm – ?
Hustlers’ Republic
Yesterday I took a break from packing and cleaning—which has effectively reduced my “baggage” significantly—to go down to Chelsea and pick up my meds. Although I am open about my status, I always dread running into someone on 8th Ave. or behind the pharmacy counter that I know from the old cruising days.
A couple weeks ago, I was on instant mess(enger) with one of my buddies who told me about his recent adventures in an adult booth store with a hot Dominican that penetrated deep into his Israeli territory. He piqued my libido and nostalgia enough that I stopped into one near the Times Square office, only to run into a certain downtown gossip columnist for an alternative weekly and someone else who looked like someone I’d known online. Those sightings, the memories of previous Industry sightings (including the encounter with the GM of the two top Spanish radio stations in NYC), the combined effect of the bleach and poppers smell, the disembodied video moaning, and the dim red and flickering blue lights in the darkness of the back room gave me an anxiety attack—so I left, paranoid of being spotted by the papparazzi dancing in my head. All I needed was a bus to drive by with my face plastered on its side pimping some pharmaceutical regimen. It’s always made me intensely claustrophobic and not because I feel there is something inherently bad about the cruising which defined most of my youth, but because growing up in a house with no privacy planted some antisocial tendencies in me. And because in my bipolar delusions of grandeur this could have an adverse impact on my (surely) impending celebrity status, aka the Vanessa Williams factor. (Although, things turned out quiet well for her, didn’t they?)
As I was mulling this over, Andy called. It’s been a while since we got together and bitched about the freelance hustle in the music biz, so we met at Republic in Union Square for lunch. We sat at the counter, and while we sipped basil lemonades and I nibbled on my watercress salad, I listened to him bemoan his own living single status. To which I could only reply, “Well, stop looking for one man to meet all your needs. Take what’s good from each and leave the rest. One person—including you—can’t be all things, all the time. I certainly can’t and don’t want to.”
I rattled off a few examples, including the Croatian surgeon and why I still keep him in the mix a year into our initial encounter. “He’s not American, he’s uncut, speaks several languages, loves Spics, Dj’s, and gets off on playing Daddy to a bright young thing like me. But he’s got an ex-wife, an ex-boyfriend, and a demanding career, on top of some suspicious OCD tendencies. I would’ve written him off months ago, if it weren’t for the fact that he’s such a computer geek and audiophile and we can talk for hours about bullshit in Spanish, English and French. That, and I’m determind to get the keys to that Hummer.”
I also mentioned the 18 year old from Canarsie. “Total Brooklyn Italian, precocious, restless, demanding and very high maintenance; kinda like I was at the age.” Between the two of them, I’ve got a Daddy sandwich going on. It’s not entirely filling, but it’s a good for a nibble now and then. Neither one satisfies me completely, but together the experience feeds both my needs: being pampered and being a mentor. I mentioned the ego boost I got from the guys that wanted to photograph and draw me, and the ones that offered to wine me-dine me-69 me when they (or I) come to town. But I’ve recoiled so tightly into workaholic denial and I’ve become so provincial that trucking from the Upper West Side to the Bronx, where alot of these Down Low papis live, seems like a long way to go for a pain that would most likely wind up in my ass, since most of them are also looking for butch bottoms, a criteria I only halfway meet. “But,” Andy pines in between bites of his salmon, “don’t you just want to be held and be kissed and make out with someone, without having to keep slipping dollars in the machine?” Um, yes, I guess I do, I nodded as I slurped up my cold Vietnamese noodles.
After we had compared blue balls, the subject switched to his PR and my editorial projects and how we could help each other. We swapped horror stories about dealing with editors and artists and a fickle market that is advertiser driven, the ongoing slow “Death of Print” and the difficulty of making money online. We laughed over that ridiculous incident with OnBeat.com and Bob Sinclar, one of Andy’s clients. The editor (who recently made Andy wait while he finished his workout at Crunch) not only asked to see my resume, he then offered me $10.00. Andy let him have it:
Offer my boy $10! You muss be crazy. He’s a seasoned, published writer and the $10/ho’in for exposure days are long gone. Plus he’s a marketing exec and only writes when the money or the music moves him.
I told him about my fight with the Spongebob Squarepants director who made the terribly disappointing indy flick “My Life with Morrissey” about the SoCal Latino fetish with el Moz. Andrew, the director, accused me of being too East Coast and not “getting it.” Me, the Spic from Echo Park who grew up listening to KROQ, with the same birthday as Morrissey—who knows better than to count life’s complexities when the leather runs smooth on the passenger seat in the car of yet another “Charming Man”?! “What I don’t get,” I said “is why I was the only one left in the theatre by the end of the screening.” Ditto for the guy who made “Is it Really So Strange?”—clearly just so he could have his honky pompadour stroked by a rockabilly homie.
After listening to Andy vent on another editor for the San Francisco Weekly who refused to receive his packages because of his Penetration Inc. logo, I told him about the difficulty I was having dealing with Remix magazine, Rhino records and Pet Shop Boys, possibly the jewel in my wee crown. The same publicist at Rhino gave him the run-around about another project. After we finished eating and chatted in Union Square as early fall announced its overcast and blustery arrival, I returned home to continue packing and cleaning. I checked my email and found a cluster-fuck of CC’d emails between Rhino and Remix.
Editor:
Remix gives a lot of love to Rhino…and I was really counting on getting at least some response from one of the Pet Shop guys. Aside from the cover story, “Respect” is really our highest honor to artists, and we require getting at least a couple quotes from artists (as long as the artists are alive). We are shipping the magazine next week, and it would be a real disappointment to readers for us not to deliver with something straight from the band.
Publicist:
I promise you that I am not holding out on Remix at all. I’d love to get this for you. My understanding from my last conversation with the PSB manager (yesterday) is that Neil and Chris are on vacation right now and even he is not getting any response from them…I’m very sorry that I haven’t been able to make this happen as yet… but please let me assure you that it has nothing to do with Remix.
###
