QHereKidSF @ Tri-Life: I TRY – UMPH!? – to triumph, even if victory means to fall flimsy forward on high-wire shaky strings. Gladly, I would step sure-footed onto a straight wrought-iron rope to delight in ecstatic acrobatics... There! Where skyward heaven-sent, my mindflux, mayhem, and moribund monstrosity ne'er do not matter more – QHEREKIDSF.COM!
Years before a corrosive, killer HIV/AIDS and Crystal Meth Combo cut a gaping hole in the middle of my face, stealing of me my beauty in one nightmarish turn of a page, a more curious and less caustic HIV/AIDS Crystal Meth Combo calamitously curtailed my intellectual and creative development.
The first chaotic combo interrupted and/or either suspended my bright young life for a good long while by stealing of me my sanity, my serenity and by forcing me into a manic messianic schizo-delusional psychosis.
Coincidentally, while my second doomsday downfall damn near destroyed all realremnants of my tangible, physical beauty, the AIDS & Crystal Meth Combo of my first foray with death through delusions brought be into a celestially sublime connection with the pure essence of beauty.
Back when the better bastion of boyhood me beamed smiling and sexy, you would have heard me brag in brash whispers of secrecy that my unmitigated drug dependency, coupled with my not-yet-medicated, unmonitored manic depression and HIV/AIDS disease likely stole a few good inches from my inseam and waist line. Drugs, depression and disease had turned me into the tweaked-out top-hungry twenty-something twink slut barebacking bottom boy I was better off born to me. By God!!
With legs freshly shaven, I used to like to try my way at prancing and dancing in heals. I had the posture of a princess back then, or better yet, of a QUEEN!! Taut, toned, tender and tanned, my thighs tightly tucked into tawdry, sultry, see-through silk-striped stockings, topped with frilly, flamboyant, fluorescent pink tutus & leotards, a black leather-laced bodice and breasts of bagged basmati. I dreamed of doing DRAG!!... And, my delusions brought me as close as I'd ever be to a diva's starlit status.
What are the odds that a poor, sorry, solitary, sad, sick, insane queer kid for sale on the streets of Skid Row, new to San Francisco, might remember in rich vivid clarity, in multi-dimensional Technicolor timbres and tonalities, his actual psychological demise from climax to cure, from onset to overture? Well, I do!!
I recall with great delight the drug-induced, yet truly transmundane delusionsthat seemed — For six months, let's say! That's a safe bet. — more reasonable and real, more true to me than ordinary and onerous everyday life, thanks to the immaculate bliss and beauty that back-lit every waking instant of my insanity.
Yet I couldn't, wouldn't waiver on the whims of consciousness long enough to remember much the long stretch of days three years ago that would prove to be so much more dramatically life-changing for me: twelve days of comatose confinement caged up in my stuffy, sterile studio, asleep, unconscious. My face pressed flat onto a putrid, pestilent pillow, under the heavy weight of my aching, dying brain. Saliva dripping down my cheek and chin to the sullied, soiled, sickening sheets only to invite infection in!!
Context may help! ... Here goes!! Far before October 2007, when I was found alone, half-dead in my apartment; on the brink of dehydration, starvation and brain damage; desperately in need of dialysis; having survived only by some heavenly happenstance the devastating detriment of PCP pneumonia and a necrotizing poly-microbial bacterial infection of the face... Far before a team of California's leading diagnosticians, doctors and surgeons attempted valiantly yet albeit failed so sorely to salvage my once so cute and charismatic, gorgeous gay boy grin...
Far before I woke from coma to gasp and gawk at my godforsaken, gruesomely grotesque, ghastly, ghoulish gaping hole of a grimace, I was so long ago quite blessed — Or cursed? However the story goes! — to have had a right entrancing, sexy smile.
Before my brutal, bestial, ferocious fall from grace and yet thanks still then too to drugs, depression and disease, I could boast the beauty of a primped, polished pansy boy physique made potent by the unrelenting rush of salacious, sex-crazed hedonism which happened to hammer out haphazardly into hormonal hot flashes and "meth'merized" highs.
Oh!! And shan't I forget the illicit, alluring beauty of my tight little tush and thighs that tempted and fed far too many a head-spun, tail-furious tweaker top tucked away either between the bathhouse backrooms of Berkeley or beneath the bent, broken branches and burning bush there best past bedtime in Buena Vista Park.
Now, today, post-op eleven-fold with twelve more surgical reconstructions on the books, I'm nothing but a torn, tattered tapestry of scars, skin grafts and flaps of flesh festooning my funny, freakish face.
My legs, once softened and smoothed by the razor's edge, are now covered in patches of naked, hairless, flimsy flesh only a few layers fine. Coincidence now predominates, for the large surgical scar that defiles to devastating depths my sorry specimen of a lower left leg seems to be far smoother and softer, far more delicate and lady-like that it e'er had been before, despite the patterned ripples of a serrated texture that rises and rolls along the "miscontours" of my crippled calf.
I should be thankful then that hair still groups from the pair of embossed rectangular skin graft scars that are slowly fading from the front of my lower left thigh. But, I'm not grateful to have my torso tarnished by the twisted pucker of a scar in the middle of my gut where a G.I. tube once hung for fourteen months, two weeks and five days past the point it first proved futile at feeding me.
I call it my "Octo-Orifice!!;" although, it's shut tight & leaks no more. I call it also my "Second Bellybutton," because in all actuality, that's exactly what it is. Yet, instead of being nourished by placenta pumped to my stomach through an umbilical cord, I was this second time around, at the moment of my rebirth, fed synthetic, high-protein, carb-loaded "blender'ized" slop seeped into me through a twelve foot long number three plastic tube that hung between my belly and an upside down bottle of so-called sustenance like a drip-line. In all actuality, that's exactly what it was...
Moving onward and upward, we arrive at the loosely bandaged, still wide open hole in my neck, where my tracheotomy tube once hung. Honestly, I don't know whether or not I am more grateful to be rid of the tube that took so much time and attention to tend to, or if I am madly resentful of my own eight layers of healthy, still living skin and of the thick musculature of my tender trachea for taking so long a time to heal up and seal up.
So, still I wait... Committed to a daily ritual of stripping Xeroform®and four-by-four gauze sponges from the sweaty, scratchy hole in my neck, still I wait... I wait only still to be enslaved to a stolid, chin-strapped schedule for showering, in which I must each morn tightly velcro a water-hazard choke-guard security-sheath above my shoulders and below my chin, before stepping in to let my cleansing begin.
No wonder that I avoid the shower spigot like SARS or Swine Flu: the plagueswhich passersby suppose sicken me. ME! The sorry, sad face behind the surgical mask who meanders mindlessly, miserably amid mankind's miscreant misjudgments of much of my own mad, mad melancholic misfortune.
And, By God!! I sure as hell am not one infinitesimally small grain of grit grateful for this muddled mutant monstrosity of a quasimodo mouth I've been melded into for the moment. I don't have enough fingers or toes or hairs growing from my forehead flap of a nose... There are a lot of them; mind you! Bet your life on it! Hairs grow hoggishly long and hamstrung from the impenetrable depths of my makeshift nostril, nose and septum to curl down the coarse discolored curvature of my leg flap look-alike lip. And, Hell Man!! Fuck!! Do they itch or what??
Truth be told; I don't even have enough holes, appendages, protrusions, flaps of flesh, scars or skin grafts on my body to be able to begin to count the magnanimous mind's eye momentum of hatred and disgust that I have for this gruesome, ghoulish, ghastly grin of mine!
And, Yet Alas!! I've stayed safe, sane and sober over one full year, and for what reason? Because despite the ubiquity of my bitterly unbecoming and brutish ugliness, I've somehow retained remnants and remembrances enough of a time in my life when in my bitterly unbecoming and brutish insanity, I discovered the true meaning of beauty.
Beyond the awkward, obtuse, abstract, anthropomorphic aesthetic of the Tina-torn, AIDS-quilted, quizzical contours of my monstrosity of a mouth, I seen endless opportunity for elaborate beautification and solemn self-betterment. Buried not too deeply behind the dug-out disfigurements of my blasphemed, begotten, brutalized body and face — For sure! I'm certain. — there lies alive immaculately innocent, blessedly beautiful baby blue boy eyes...
Respectfully Submitted, Matt(e)o | QHereKidSF Matthew D. Blanchard San Francisco, CA USA [2010.07.14@20:29PST] AIDS IS A PERVASIVE PANDEMIC THAT BLEEDS THROUGH
THE LINES OF COLOR, CREED & CAPITULATES TO NO ONE BUT
THE POSITIVELY AWARE & PREVENTION-MINDED SURVIVORS. — Matthew D. Blanchard
THE SUBJECT NO LONGER HAS TO BE MENTIONED BY NAME.
SOMEONE IS SICK. SOMEONE ELSE IS FEELING BETTER NOW.
A FRIEND HAS JUST GONE BACK INTO THE HOSPITAL.
ANOTHER HAS DIED. THE UNSPOKEN NAME, OF COURSE, IS AIDS. — David W. Dunlap
OVER & OVER, THESE MEN CRY OUT AGAINST THE WEIGHT OF
SO MANY LOSSES — NOT JUST A LOVER DEAD, BUT FRIENDS,
AND FRIENDS OF FRIENDS, DOZENS OF THEM, UNTIL IT SEEMS
THAT AIDS IS ALL THERE IS AND ALL THERE EVER WILL BE.
— Jane Gross
People like to tell me that I am a gifted writer; however, more often than not, I dismiss the compliment as shady, insincere flattery, nothing more than a mere measly attempt to win over my good graces and high esteem. I'm not easily moved to accept such praise as genuine; instead, I seem to enjoy being so cripplingly self-critical that I find flaw in nearly all of the creative work that I produce. Flagrant masochistic introspection and judgment are the most debilitating characteristics of my intellect.
Recently, I've gained a very acute, salient awareness of this fault of mine when I sat down to begin laboring over the writing of a narrative for the experimental documentary short film in which I will be featured as part of The HIV Story Project. As soon as I put pencil to paper, I arrived at a major road block. As Daniel Cardone, the director of my documentary short, expressed in his proposal of narrative beats for the film; he said (I paraphrase, albeit only slightly!), "How 'bout you tame up on the emphatic use of alliteration?"
YUP!! Semantic syncopation of syllabic constructs seems superficially smart; although, aggressively assertive, obtuse alignments of the Anglican alphabet in alliteration are ever so much more unabashedly awkward and asinine than astute or impressive. Alliterations heavily harangue the human ear e'er so often in my hand's writing as to be yet another aspect of my aimlessly affected artistic arrogance. AWFUL! I am more than mindfully aware...
So, I have to harness the potency of my "emphatically alliterative" writing style to produce something coherent yet stylized enough to sound like spoken word when read aloud, when performed as narration. The challenge has proven ever so garishly gargantuan and heavy-weighted that I've been more apt to toss my text o'er my shoulder and shudder in exacerbated ennui than to scream excitedly in the act of forcing a fluid flow of whimsically written word on whatever pad of paper presents itself to me so pleasingly to be prettified by my elaborately eloquent enunciation.
YIKES!! There I go again! Can't you see? If crippling not be my self-criticisms then these confounded constructions of collected consonants ought clearly be called out as such: CRAP!!
Failing at first to find a friendly unfettered flow of thought from my fabulously and freakishly flamboyant frame of mind to a much more mellow, mundane manifestation or monstrance of my mind's majesty e'er writ in words of wistful wisdom, I set out alternately to ponder and play with possible themes, motifs and concepts that could in effect guide my writing away from excess and more toward realism, or at least toward naturalism.
After speaking at length with Nomy Lamm, the Artists In Residence (A.I.R.) Program Director for Sins Invalid, about my background, back story, and of the context in which arose the opportunity for my story to be featured as part of a compilation of short films commemorating the thirtieth year of acknowledgment of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), I discovered my own overriding affinity for an idea that I had been incubating ever since said opportunity presented itself to me.
Today is a very important milestone for me. The Fourteenth of July (i.e., Bastille Day!) marks the anniversary of my sobriety (i.e., my CLEAN DATE!), and to celebrate, I'm a convening the production of my experimental docu-short, lead by a superbly talented team of queer film production professionals all associated pro bono with The HIV Story Project. In fact, there only remains a few more than thirty minutes before their arrival to my home to begin shooting.
As I celebrate today my one-year anniversary of sobriety, I have all but been able to ignore the crescendo'ed confluence of my creative energies and impulses around the progress of both my recovery and my reconstructions. All is explained in lucid detail by the video blog I posted to YouTube.com about ten days ago, entitled "Language Or A Kiss" after a beautiful acoustic ballad I discovered that morning, only after more than a decade of listening, on Indigo Girls' album 1200 Curfews (Live).
The ten minute home-made webcam movie features "yours' truly!" pontificating the plentiful platitudes and prettiness of a poignant, powerful idea: that of using the foreboding, intimidating, meaningful act of kissing (Romantically, that is!!) as the central motivating action of my docu-short film narrative. The YouTube.com video explains in detail the significance of this convergence of energies and ideas. The webcam movie monologue also describes the profound meaning behind this particularly challenging choice around which I hesitantly aspired to shape a cinematic sketch of my life. My aim would have been to create a piece that might have touched, moved and inspired an audience perhaps to live safer, healthier, more sane and sober lives be they suffering or not from either HIV/AIDS, drug dependency or disfigurement.
Language Or A Kiss: QHereKidSF (a.k.a Matthew Blanchard) contemplates the
convergence of his creative energies around his one-year anniversary of clean
time. With sobriety comes sanity and surety enough to explore either
"language or a kiss" both in experimental theater/film performance.
(i.e., http://sinsinvalid.org/; http://thehivstoryproject.org/; etc.)
[TIME ELAPSE] » As I type, my production team is shooting extreme closeups of the interior textures of my apartment. The cinematographer has just lifted himself from the crouched near-fetal position he took to "get lost in a bunny" rabbit knitted Christmas ornament that hangs from the cord of my venetian blinds, swaying ominously in a shadow of light just in front the sullied, dirtied retractable screen that props my window open. I'm not sure what they're filming now, as my back is toward them while they traipse around my studio capturing the phenomenally complex idiosyncrasies of my mundane, boring abode.
Turns out that my director, Daniel Cardone, hasn't yet had a chance to view the YouTube.com video I've posted above; so, in all likelihood, there will be no true central motivating action for this film narrative. We have no plans today to shoot me kissing anyone, and it is far too late in the game to go out on the street to find some random Polk Street callboy we could pay twenty dollars to try their damnedest at getting romantic while maneuvering their lips gently and with compassion onto my muddled monstrosity of a mouth. HAH! Could you imagine?
I've never simulcast the writing of a blog entry with live action. To be frank and forward, it's quite nerve-racking and unsettling. I wonder whether or not anyone in the room knows that I am writing about them as they toil around my studio on a voyage of cinematographic discovery
As I type, the warmhearted, bundled-up in a sweater and gloves, uber-zen sound technician is recording "room tone" with his boom microphone perched as ominously as my bunny rabbit just over my shoulder, so as to capture the sounds of my fingers tap, tap, tapping away on the keys of my laptop. I am terribly conscious of the fact that I tend to backspace a lot, which probably dashes his hopes at capturing a cohesive rhythm. Alas! Oh well...
"Alright! Stop. I've got another idea now...," says Daniel, the director, as our cinematographer completes a rack-zoomed extreme closeup of the grains of wood on my floor. Now, the production team is duplicate-framing a similar shot of the MUNI Metro & Busline map than hangs on the wall in the hall way next to my front door.
It is indeed a very good thing that as an artist, I've learned how not to be too utterly disappointed when one's vision is not wholly and fully adopted by every member of a production team. Blame the absence of a ironically romantic kiss between tweaked-out twink Polk Street callboy and my still quite sane and sober Skid Row mutant, monstrous, alien, Audrey II-like lips on the capricious whims of the film artist's mind. Although, unlike the sound technician's hopes which fizzled with the realization that I am not quite such a melodic typist, my dreams have not yet been dashed.
You see! I still have the theatrical medium with which to toy around salaciously and sexy-like. The kiss could still come to pass as I see it! I've got six long months to workshop scenes for Sins Invalidwhich perchance could center around this challenging, compelling, confrontational act of compassion and enduring, caring love. Those who follow me in the blogosphere must just wait patiently to hear word soon of the developments that unfold with my experimental ensemble performance work.
And in the meantime, both all of you and I must also patiently await the post-production work on and premier of my experimental documentary short film, entitled "(TBD)!" If the work we have completed already today is any testament to the quality and caliber of Daniel's artistic vision, then I'd have to say that we are surely heading in a "positive" direction (pun intended!). A thousand thanks to Daniel, Jörg, Josh, and Doug: my production team! It's been a real joy working with you all. And so the work continues... Who's a Movie Star? I'm a Movie Star!!
