(More) Unabashedly Butch Barbies

A softer side of Rizzo in her flamenco-style prom dress.
Two, count 'em, two, Cha Cha Digregorio Barbies! And one complete with a side-swept hairdo?! I like to think of Cha Cha as Rizzo's femme girlfriend. What a sexy couple they would make. Kudos to you, Mattel, Inc.

Unabashed Post-Op Homo-rrhage

The walls of my Ear, Nose, & Throat doctor's office resemble those of the Hard Rock Cafe, complete with framed gold records "in honor of ten billion, trillion records sold" from random artists like Tom Petty and Meat Loaf to Clay Aiken and Carrie Underwood. I studied the wall and read the personal notes made out to my doctor with things like, "Dr. N--You saved my voice! xoxo, Jordin Sparks." It might have been a dry-cleaners in North Hollywood with autographed headshots, "Thanks Ming! Love, Tawney Kitaen."

My doctor and I are very chummy. I have seen him for the past five years and he instantly took a liking to me. Like many Beverly Hills boutique doctors, he doesn't take insurance but he gave me a big discount on my tonsillectomy and always half-off on my visits. Like the father I never had, he would always instruct me not to suck dick while battling a case of tonsillitis. When I came out of my tonsillectomy surgery, I told him not to sneak a peak under my gown. We have that kind of relationship.

Doc comes into the room interrupting my wall-reading and pulls out his tongue depressors. "Say ah, ah-ah-ah." He says it just like Madonna's doctor said to her in Truth or Dare when she had laryngitis. He began fiddling with something where my left tonsil used to be and his assistant gave me cold water to swish in my mouth. He had cauterized one spot behind a blood clot on my tonsil. I wasn't bleeding very much but he told me I would have to hang around for an hour just to make sure there was no bleeding.

He came back to check on me about ten minutes later and his energy became frantic. He was telling his assistant to get him this, get him that, hurry, hurry. "You're going to feel a little sting," he said and stuck more than one needle into the holes where my tonsils used to be to numb them. It hurt. "You're doing great, Matthew," he whispered to me repeatedly. "Swish this and spit into the cup." I watched slow-moving, black-red blood flow from my mouth. A lot of blood. "Nancy, cancel all my appointments and tell them I have an emergency. Call an ambulance." He made several calls to Cedars Sinai Hospital telling doctors he had a post-tonsillectomy hemorrhage and he needed an operating room immediately. "Matthew," he said in a very direct, wannabe-calm voice, "we have to go back into the operating room. We're going to take an ambulance to Cedars." At this point my hands began shaking and I started to freak out silently. "Do you have a xanax or something you can shoot in me," I asked the doctor's assistant. They didn't.

Being carried out on a gurney, covered in blood on Bedford Avenue in Beverly Hills, gets a lot of stares. I texted my friend Brooke on the way to the hospital, "emergency surgery come to cedars now." She texted me back immediately, "What?" Ugh GOD, I can't be more clear. On our way into the Operating Room, I reminded my doctor that I had left my car in the parking lot on Brighton Way to which he just stared at me and said, "We'll take care of that later."

I hate waking up from anaesthesia with all those people around you cheering you on, "MATT, MATT, YOU'RE AWAKE. THE SURGERY WENT WELL. MATT." I'm like give me a fucking minute, I just woke up. Shit. "You peed yourself in surgery," the recovery nurse appropriately named Ruby (she was a fuckin' gem), cheerfully informed me. I guess that was in case I was wondering where my undies had gone. She presented me with my boxer briefs in a ziplock bag with moisture bubbles all along the plastic. "No thanks, Rubes, you can throw those away." Ruby kept the Dilaudid flowin' in my I-V. Dilaudid is my new favorite painkiller, allegedly ten times stronger than morphine. That little factoid came courtesy of Ruby who told me as if to say, this is the good shit.

I really liked my room on the 8th floor of the north tower which is the spinal floor. It had high ceilings and spacious with enough room for friends to lounge around. There was even enough room for me to dance with my I-V stand for my friend, Kate. The TV in my room was on at all times and served as a comfort during my morphine-hazed stay. With 60 channels, how a hospital named for a Hebrew could manage to have every Christian network on earth but not have Lifetime is beyond me. And to my dismay (and that's putting it lightly), I saw SNL alum, Victoria Jackson, on one of those stations talking about how she loves Jesus in that squeaky voice of hers. I thought I had had too much morphine or was watching an old SNL Church Lady sketch but it was real.

The nurses were weird and alternated so often, that the minute I got used to one, she was gone. I actually found the male nurses more comforting than the women which was surprising to me. One crazy nurse, Veronica, insisted that she watch me take every medication she gave me. Keep in mind that pain medications were administered through I-V, otherwise it was thyroid meds and anti-depressants--nothing you'd want to hoard. I swear to Christ (and my friend Adriana can verify this), she brought me a suppository so I could have my first BM in a week and told me she was going to put it in me. If only their had been photographers to capture my expression. I said, "Veronica, dear, I know how to put a suppository in" and she looked shocked and dismayed telling me that she has never had a patient do it themselves. Maybe that's because the 8th floor is typically the spinal floor but with a fully functioning spine, I was the only one who was going to insert anything into my anus. But the real humdinger was when Veronica insisted upon watching me insert the suppository. I kid you not (Ask Adriana). I said, "Well, how close up do ya have to get?" Veronica said that I didn't have to be rude about it and as she stood in the doorway watching me stick my finger up my ass I explained that I wasn't being rude, I was joking. Sensitive nurses.

This was my first time in the hospital and I deduce that it is one step above county jail. Not prison, but county jail. You get TV with limited channels, shitty food, people watching you while you're on the toilet, and I would liken my I-V to a set of handcuffs. At least in jail you can get laid.

Unabashedly Butch Barbie

Somebody please purchase me this Rizzo Barbie Doll. With her Elvis hairdo, she is possibly the most butch Barbie to date. I don't know if I wanna fuck her or be her.

Be her.

Unabashed Pain: Night 2, post-tonsillectomy

Well, I keep hearing that days three to five are the most painful so I'm gearing up emotionally, reminding myself that I can take that next sip of ice cold water; the pain is not bigger than me and my extra-strength Vicodin. But it is proving itself a worthy opponent, that's for damn sure. As I pee my life away (staying hydrated is of the utmost importance, pain-wise), I think about what a mind-fuck all of this is. I have to talk myself into the next thing I will swallow, wincing the entire time. I am afraid to go to sleep for fear of what it will feel like waking up with a dry open wound in my mouth.
Who wants to make out?

Unabashed "Star" Fucking at the "No on 8" Rally

I ain't gonna make this long cause I'm on Vicodin for the tonsillectomy I had yesterday. I stood strong among the over 12,000 people at the "No on 8" protest march thing last Saturday. I was especially interested in hearing the speakers before the march began, but to my chagrin, instead of having a great line-up of gay rights advocates with something to say, the organizers brought out F-List celebrity after F-List celebrity. The emcee of the event even introduced two of them as celebrities which they weren't -- they were just tacky actors. Actor on tv show does not equal celebrity. And who cares what some shit actor has to say, give me someone real. So after listing several people's IMDB credits as if that lent them any knowledge about anything, they brought out an actress from fucking General Hospital. A fucking soap opera actress. So I started chanting "Susan Lucci! Susan Lucci!" which all the fags around me ate up. We don't need another broke-down celebrity; what we need is another gay civil rights leader like Harvey Milk. Don't waste my time with this bullshit. LET'S MARCH.

Unabashed Teenage Whore: My Labor of (Courtney) Love - Part I

Lisa was a jappy but sweet Sephardic jewish girl, who, when we took a 3-family trip to Disney World, kept on being mistaken for a Latina, with people speaking to her in spanish wherever we went. She got to wear the cutest tacky outfits like a lime green top with matching spandex pants and dice glued all over it. I usually only saw Lisa on Hanukkah when our dysfunctional families met at her house to light the menorah. A screaming fight between her father and older brother would inevitably ensue at these gatherings. After potato latkes and dreidels and screaming, Lisa and I would retreat to her luxurious bedroom suite in the huge finished basement for playtime.

As a 12-year-old, I had never been exposed to even a semblance of punk rock. My musical taste at the time was more Madonna, En Vogue, and Tina Turner just like all the other boys my age. Not. So G-d help me if it wasn't dice-laden-outfit-wearing Lisa herself, who would be the one to expose me to the comparatively hardcore, screaming, yet melodic music of Courtney Love and her band, Hole. It makes sense in retrospect, Lisa was on the cutting edge of fashion and she had just been Bat-Mitvahed.

Lisa handed me the album, Live Through This, like she was passing me a joint. "Shhh...just inhale..." I was instantly intrigued by the cover which depicted a post-win beauty pageant contestant with feathered blonde hair and running mascara, cradling her bouquet of flowers like a baby. The music began and I heard a desperate, angry, somewhat frightening voice coming from a woman. I had never heard anything like that. The songs managed to be melodic and surprisingly appealing to my 12 year-old feminine sensibility. I convinced Lisa to let me borrow the CD knowing that I wouldn't see her until next year's gathering and she wouldn't want it by then. Anyways, I needed the music more than Lisa. I was troubled and misunderstood--her biggest challenge was being mistaken for a Latina which was quite a compliment because it meant she was non-Semitic and exotic looking.

This contraband became my favorite secret gift of the evening. I felt a certain power finally having music my mother wouldn't want to hear in the car. Was this puberty? Live Through This became my floor-rattling anthem after door-slamming fights with my parents. Even if I didn't understand all of the lyrics (and I certainly didn't), the tone and intention of Courtney Love's music was crystal clear and gave voice to my mind-boggling rage and isolation.

New York Times Rock Critic, Neil Strauss, reported in his 2003 year-end wrap-up that his editor had asked him months earlier to prepare an obituary for Courtney Love. The Courtney Love who formerly entranced me, died in 1997. That year, after costarring in The People vs. Larry Flynt, Courtney made a concerted effort to go the straight-and-narrow, beginning (and ending) with her physical appearance. Courtney finally succumbed to the kryptonite of Hollywood ideals of beauty which she fought for so long. She underwent plastic surgery to “correct” her hook nose and traded in vintage baby-doll dresses and dark roots for Versace gowns and perfect make-up. She spearheaded a campaign as “The New Courtney Love,” posing for multiple covers of stupid magazines like US Weekly. She waxed poetic about the “old” Courtney Love, herself only a few years earlier; like an elderly woman reminiscing about her crazy teenage years: When Hole was first playing, I was embracing my life fully. But there was a later period when bad things happened. Someone should have locked me in my damn house. You just don't go through something (Cobain's death) and walk out onstage. It's too much. I think it was amazing performance, because you can't get any more real...To them [my fans], I represented whatever female form of freedom that Patti Smith and Exene represented to me, and that's great. It's a part of me that didn't care about anything. But that's not for me."

Courtney Love was most fascinating on stage. Say what you will about who actually penned her music and lyrics, her guitar skills, breaking up Nirvana; her charisma was undeniable. She borrowed a mostly underground female punk performance aesthetic from her predecessors, such as punk icon Lydia Lunch and Exene (mentioned above), and mainstreamed it. Screaming until she was hoarse while simultaneously glaring up at God and the heavens, she would often end up stage-diving into the crowd. She was the Bad Seed all grown up; a real-life version of Pizzazz from the 80’s cartoon, Jem and the Holograms. Kathi Wilcox of the ferocious female group, Bikini Kill, likened watching Courtney perform to a religious experience. Her off-stage antics only enhanced her onstage persona. Who else would have the audacity to turn down a record deal from Madonna’s label, and shortly after, throw a compact at her on live TV? Jesus? Mary Magdalene?More to come...