Eric Scott Matthews

Curse of the Wereboy

Brad: so... i think i caught something from you.

ganymedeEM: could have been from anyone, you work a place with lots of people milling around

ganymedeEM: but could have been me as well

Brad: no.. this boy thing

ganymedeEM: In that case it could have been that trick you went home with

ganymedeEM: OH you mean “boy thing”,  ok I do not have a thing for “boys”

Brad: ever since I have started to hang out with you... younger and younger boys are contacting me

ganymedeEM:I’ve dated like one and a half young guys

ganymedeEM: oh, yeah them contacting you

ganymedeEM: yeah that’s a kind of a curse, like with warewolves

Brad: LOL...

ganymedeEM: i caught it from tom

ganymedeEM: blame him

Brad: well...

ganymedeEM: hes the original werewolf in this one

Brad: hahahaha

ganymedeEM:so you may have to kill him

ganymedeEM: thats the only cure

Brad: so.. .this smoking italian kid, 19, goes to BU, emailed me on a site.

ganymedeEM: he smokes?

Brad: no

Brad: OH...

Brad: OHHHHHH

Brad: OHHHHHHHHH

BOO

Great now I am tempted to get HBO again.... or maybe I just will wait till its on dvd like I ussually do.  This new six feet under could totaly be my dream series!!

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GTFOOMW

Music:  Underground (From Labrynth)-- David Bowie

Maybe it’s the weather or all that racket from all my neighbors building arks, but I have been awfully cranky lately.  Ok maybe that’s not exactly true, impatient is more like it.  My coworker and friend, Jessica (of Jessica Hoar has Acute Angina fame), has also been easily peeved as of late.  And we got together at lunch the other day to discuss this all-important sociological issue.

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After a very scientific exchange of notes we hypothesized a theory about frustration and interpersonal communication that shall hence forth be known as the Theory of GTFOOMW.

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Simply stated we theorize that most, if not all, conflict can be boiled down to one simple motive:  get the fuck out of my way.

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For example;  Road Rage: Jessica wants to get home in time to see Martha Stewart’s The Apprentice, but she can’t.  All these other cars, SUVs, ice cream trucks, and wide load modular homes are blocking traffic because some guy got into a fender bender with a Hummer.  Everyone slows to a crawl.  WTF!  Hi, GTFOOMW!

But this doesn't stop with the physical need for people to GTFOOMW.  This can be applied to all manner of situations.  Say you're having a girls-night-out poker game and Tina decides to bring her boyfriend, and then Cindy hears about this and decides to drag in her husband who would rather be on Manhunt anyway.  Next thing you know single girl you is stuck at yet another date night with your friends and thier significant and insignificant others watching The Notebook or some shit instead of taking thier money like you planned.  GTFOOMW!

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So next time your feeling particularly frustrated, maybe if you remember that this is all GTFOOMW, maybe you’ll realize that it isn’t that big of a deal.  Who knows, maybe it will even help you find a solution to your frustrations.

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Words of Wisdom

So Saturday night Tommy asked me if I had any words of wisdom, which I should have expected.  I’m never prepared for him, even though I should know his little traditions by now.  So days late...

This year I spent a lot of time observing.  When I turned 30 I promised myself that it was time for me to focus on learning from other people in addition to learning from my own triumphs and mistakes.  And a year later, it turns out, I have learned a lot.

Things I have learned this year:

1. No matter how fucked up you think your life is, there is always someone out there even more fucked up
2. You wouldn’t ask a person who hasn’t kept a job for more than a month for career advice, so why ask someone who has never had a relationship for more than a few months for dating advice?  Don't ask someone who doesn't drive for directions.
3. Everyone thinks of themselves as the protagonist in thier own life, even the ones who are the villans in yours. 
4. The people I dislike the most really are the people who most resemble the parts I hate about myself.
5. If you’re going and storm out of a threesome in a fit of drama, be sure you get off first.
6. The best liars lie to themselves the most.
7. Fear and Pride can destroy almost anything.

8. Exectations really are the cause of most pain

9. No one person can ever love enough for two

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P.S.  Some of these are meant to be tongue in cheek.  But clearly some will miss that point.

Ghost Peep Graveyard

Music:  no music PLEASE!

You know you have been hanging out with gay men too much when you forget what chicken skin tastes like.  But last night I tasted chicken skin... and shrimp, and chocolate covered strawberries, and brownies, and baked brie and all the other fattening foods I have been avoiding the last few weeks.  Today I am breakfasting on chocolate cupcakes with canned frosting and ghost peeps.  Today I feel like a hung-over Violet from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Today my place is sticky with pomegranate and gold sequins.  My counter tops feel like chicken skin.  My place is a left over ghost peep graveyard.  And the ghost peeps are hung over.

But it was a blast, despite the chaos and the minor dramas that erupted throughout the evening. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera, so I only have pictures of the aftermath.

I just wanted to give a quick shout out to my friends for making me feel special, especially Sam and Alex who put so much work into this.

Thanks!
e

The Hunger

Music:  Bela Lugosi's Dead-- Bauhaus

Ok not so much horror, but this 1983 movie is one of my favorites.  For those of you who are star watchers this B-movie has a surprising cast: David Bowie, Susan Sarandon, Catherine Denuve.  You Goth queens out there already know this movie ,of course, as Bauhaus opens the movie with their most famous song Bela Lagosi’s dead.

The Hunger is particularly queer not so much because of the famous blood tinged lesbian scene between Susan Surrandon’s innocent doctor character and Catherine Denuve’s vampire to the sounds of Viens, Malika— the famous flower duet from Lakmé, which was known as the “Lesbian Theme Song” to many from that point on— but also for the themes involved.  This movie is about our twin obsessions with beauty and youth and the nature of love.  It is about the price one is willing to pay for each of those fabulous things and the ways in which we lie to each other and ourselves.  And all of it laced in a vampire morality cocktail.

This movie is not particularly gory, nor does it have scenes of cats jumping out of closets (or half naked boys for that matter) or other devices created to make you jump out of your seat.  It’s effect is slower, subtler, a kind of haunting that one doesn’t notice right away, maybe not until years later. But it is there.

A great adult movie for Halloween, with a bit of 80’s chic nostalgia tied in.

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P.S. Skip the book and the books' relativley recent sequel unless you're a real vampire fanatic, or what to know what Whiltey Striber was writing before he broke down and "admitted" to those alien abductions.

Spindles

Music:  Your Cloud-- Tori Amos

Ipod Minimalism Tip:

You can store old Cds (and maybe some other things) on spindles.

Last night I stayed home and went through my drowned CD collection, looking for survivors from my basement flood.  My life is that interesting lately.  I keep all my music on Precious and the Ipod, but I like having the CDs too.  Sort of the way I feel about reference books.

Friend: Do you really need 5 dictionaries?

Me: Some of them are thesauri.

Friend: 5 of them?

Me: The others are in my bedroom.

So clearly even pretending to be into minimalism is a bit of a challenge for me.  But I live in a pretty small condo, so I don’t much of a choice.  I finally tossed all the cd cases and liner notes— a large garbage bin full.  And all of it was reduced 3 tall CD Spindles.  They look kind of cool, and take up almost no space at all.

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Rumor

At work the subject of rumors came up today.  Who is sexing up whom?  Who slept thier way to the middle? And just like in my social life, I see rumors creating drama, mistrust, and all around bad morale between the people involved.

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It has always been my theory that the absolute best way to combat rumor is to simply tell the truth.  The real truth.

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No one is completely transparent, of course, but often our first reaction to “rumors” is to tighten up, close down, and the hide hide hide.  Yet, no one wants to be a secret.

The problem with all this lying is that the lies never really go away.  Lies gather around us like thin layers of wispy cloth, gaining weight without us noticing until we are suffocating and can’t move. We give ourselves away when we gasp for air.  Or other people who know about the lie do it for us.

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I’m pretty sure most people have no idea how easily what they are really thinking is hinted at through a facial expression, a pause in conversation, a glance, the way they phrase something in an Instant Message, or the questions they ignore and hope will go away.  Few people have the convictions to lie boldly.  We get caught.  We feel guilty.  We hurt ourselves in ways we can’t even see at the time.

We hurt people almost invariably when we lie to them. 

They expect one thing.

They get another.

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I think people have an innate need for honesty.  That’s why so many of us have body language that is easy to read, unless of course we work hard at becoming better liars.

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I have dealt with personal rumors for what seems forever.  We all have. I found that my policy of consistency works best. If I have a date with someone, I call it a “date”.  If I have casual sex with someone, I don’t pretend that I don’t know that person when I see him later in public, nor do I pretend he’s my new best friend.  To be honest, in most cases, there is no real reason to lie, except to protect someone’s fragile ego or their reputation.  Often it is one’s own.

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And, of course, if you know someone’s secret, you hold a kind of power over that someone.

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But often what we perceive as protection is simply denial, simply an inability to let go of that control, and simply a way to hide from ourselves.

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So, instead of teaching myself to lie better, I am trying to unlearn all that civilization has taught me about hiding the truth to protect myself from some imaginary harm.  Unleanring how to lie to others.  And to myself.

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I’m not always proud of what I have done, but as I learn to be more and more honest, I find that I am less and less ashamed of things I have done.  You can’t learn the lesson if you're too busy pretending something didn’t happen.

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And as an added bonus I’m less and less afraid of rumors.

e

Another gay horror Film

Cthulhu. 

With such a heavyhitting name, a juggernaught of the horror genre, the filmmakers take a big risk by trying to add a gay spin, but one that feels natural.   Lovecraft's paranoia for everything different is key to understanding his work, and the gay point of view, that of being different, might just lend a very modern twist to this ultimate in wierd horror, the cthulhu mythos.  Clive Barker did the same thing with his grounbreaking short story, "In the Hills, The Cities" in the 80's, so certainly there is potential to this revisionist concept.

With a minor reawakening of the cthulhu-type horror story (renewed interest in the Evil Dead series as well as new films clearly influenced such as Relic and Hellboy) it is appropriate that the one of Lovecraft’s most famous stories is finally being put up on the big screen (there have been others like Reanimator, but with dismal budgets and terrible story).  Personally I think the title is unfortunate if they focus solely on "Shadow over Innsmouth", but then again, if they can manage even a fraction of the type of special effects a real Lovecraft story deserves I will be happy.

I have hope for this film because its gay element is only part of the story, not the focus excluding all else, which is the grandest mistake most gay-filmmakers make.

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Um Hellbent is the first Gay Horror Film, NOT

With the release, and completely predictable panning (that means everyone hated it), of Hellbent, billed as the first gay horror film, I figured I should post about a little about gay horror.

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And, of course, the season of the witch upon us.

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But first I just want to kill this whole idea that there has never been a gay horror film before. If one more of my friends tells me I should be excited about this “first gay horror” movie, I may just stab them with a mascara brush.

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Horror is specifically about hidden things. That’s the point. It’s about fears, denial, repression— that’s why almost every horror film revolves around a secret, guilt, or some kind of human weaknesses that is normally buried in the subconscious. Monsters are released by greed, or curiosity. Sometimes the person who releases the monster seems well-adjusted, but never is in reality. That’s the point. It’s about hidden, in the closet (Skeletons in the closet is where that metaphor comes from, btw). So while queerness is a prime subject matter of horror, it is also meant to be hidden within these films (and literature), and that’s why you don’t normally see a bunch of homos running around in the Castro in horror films. Instead you see a closet case running around, and he’s usually the one with the knife.

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I will get into this more in future entries, but for now, my point is merely to show that Hellbent is not the first; and that if you want to find some queer films to watch in celebration of this Halloween season, there are PLENTY of choices.

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We will start with a basic list, and a bit of variety.

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Here is a list of queer horror films that predate Hellbent. By a lot.

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Arguably the first is Bride of Frankenstein (1935), in which two men discover a way to create a man, who turns out to be a misunderstood misfit, hated by society is the very first queer horror movie. Ok it is not overt, but the queerness is clearly there. The first Frankenstein is queer too in concept, but this movie was made gay. The director, James Whale, is a famous queer. If you’re not convinced that it is gay after watching it, then follow your viewing with “Gods and Monsters”, a brilliant film based on the questionable biography of James Whale. There is no question that Bride of Frankenstein was made by a brilliant, decidedly queer team, and that much of the movie is a collection of queer codes and inside jokes. Oh and “Gods and Monsters” features a humpy Brendan Frasier at his physical prime, and garnered three Oscar nominations (one for Frasier for leading man). Why have all you queers missed this one!

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There has been a lesbian in every movie version of Shirley Jackson’s classic haunted house story the “Haunting of Hill House”, the first of which was on screen in 1963. Sure you don’t see a bunch of hulking gay boys getting stabbed, but it is queer.

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Fast forward and there was a spate of bad gay movies in the 80’s, alla Hellbent. Most of them include a misplaced female character that supposedly gives the clearly homo characters and situations a beard, but when you watch any of these (all of them bad) as an out of the closet man, there will be no doubt who the audience for these films are, and what the stories, bad as they are, say.

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   The Rocky Horror Picture Show, 1975 (um HELLO, longest playing movie in the theatres ever, which explicitly makes fun of the queerness of horror movies like Frankenstein.  If you didn't know, the plot revolves around a transsexual who creates a gorgeous man to be his sex slave-- just about everyone dies.   But somehow this most most infamous camp movie ever doesn't count as gay horror to the marketing team on Hellbent)

   Sleepaway Camp, 1983 (Jay Davidson makes a surprise appearance, if you've seen it you will get the joke)
2. Nightmare on Elm Street 2, 1985 Freddy (and his teenage victim) is queer, queer, queer
3. La Cage Aux Zombies, 1985 (imagine some Tina Freak tries splicing The Birdcage with the first remake of Night of the Living Dead), Yeah it's that bad.
4. A Polish Vampire in Burbank, 1984 (homophobic)
5. Monster in the Closet, 1986
6. Queerwolf, 1988
7. The Killer Condom, 1996 (This is what happens when straight people try to make a bad gay horror movie and get all Lovecraft on us)
8. Voodoo Academy, 2000  (Half naked boys, bathtub penetration. The gay stuff is veiled in the same way that guy you met at a gay bar who claims he is straight while you are taking off his clothes claims he is gay. Pic to the right is from Voodoo Acadamy during a scene where the guys are all having pretty wet "nightmares")

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So here’s a start folks, have fun. I’ll review some better gay horror films in the coming days, they deserve more space. BTW, Netflix has many of these films.

e