Scott Capurro

I’m hungry, so I’ll make this fast: It’s not like I’m not attracted to women. I am, but I don’t feel romantic toward them. I don’t want to go on a date with a woman, but I do fantasize about everything. And women make me feel safe. Oprah would say I’m self hating, but I actually hate Oprah. She’s not a woman. She’s the beast.
Enjoy.

Gay Times
May 2008
Scott Capurro

Yoga brings out my hetero side. I don’t mean my arrogance surfaces, nor does my hair thin. Instead, my body becomes less ornamental and more functional. Attention leaves my dick and travels to my outer extremities, as I balance, in handstand, staring out, facing Annette Benning. We smile at one another, or frown, since we’re upside down. She wears white tights and a light blue v-neck jumper. I happened into the workshop she regularly attends in LA, and she has lovely, small, very pale feet.

Asanas, or poses, are sensual, in that the practice wakens the senses. They’re not sexual, because when challenged, students fart and cry. And in that warm studio, where erotic touch has no agenda, I comfortably flirt.

Classes are filled with women. Many are fit, having been athletic and suffering an injury, which is the reason some show up. They’re healing and vulnerable. Aren’t we all?

In fact, I went to Hawaii recently with some Iyengar acolytes from San Francisco, because my knee was becoming intolerably painful. A car hit me while out jogging in 1989, which my leg’s ligaments sometimes remind me of by tightening or wobbling, depending, it seems, on my flailing career.

I needed this trip to Maui, with the discipline of five hours of yoga a day and spiceless vegan food. I could feel the brick of candy I ate at Christmas, the well of booze I gulped at the New Year and the strain of a fight I had with a close friend, all locked up in my bloated belly and tightening calves. I hadn’t breathed deeply since Nixon resigned, and I wanted a full release. I got one, unexpectedly.

When I arrived at the renovated pineapple factory, now a retreat center, I was told I’d be sharing a room with a woman. Arabella is an electrician by trade, and has a soccer player’s body. She’s 5’6”, with strong arms, sinewy, smooth legs and a subdued six pack. Her eyeteeth protrude a bit, and her dark eyes are almond shaped and very bright. We’ve spoken, usually about yoga, in hushed tones before and after class. Arabella’s often accompanied by her recently acquired boyfriend, who’s tall, thin and has a wide smile and big hands. Genetically, they’re the type of couple that should be procreating. Emotionally, she’s demanding and he’s in San Francisco.

Whilst unpacking in our tiny bungalow, Arabella takes a call. Her beau, it seems, misses her and after hanging up she stares at the floor, her freckled forehead wrinkled.

“He’s just broken up with me,” she finally admits. “He does this all the time.”

I stack t-shirts, not remembering what I’m meant to say. Gay men dump each other habitually. After two martinis and a flick of the ‘update profile’ button on Gaydar, they’ve moved on. It must be different for a 36 year-old woman, no matter how hot, with all that ‘clock ticking’ mythology I’ve seen on Trisha.

“Maybe I should be gay,” she moans, as she lies back on her bed, her back arched.

I alert her that lesbians can be just as moody as jealous boyfriends.

“No. I mean, maybe I should be a gay man. Gay men are always attracted to me. Why is that?”

“Because you seem fearless.” I can feel my cheeks warming. “And you have a tool belt.”

“Wanna have sex?”

I’d barely unrolled my denim.

“Let’s pace ourselves,” I say, jokingly.

Arabella giggles and rushes off. When she returns with green tea, she praises my neatness.

“How do you fold everything the same size?”

“They teach you that in prison.”

“You’ve been in prison?”

“No. But I can dream.”

She tosses her pile of sport wear into a corner, and leaps onto her mattress, resting on her stomach, her ankles crossed, her feet pointing, like an anxious teenager. She’s wearing burgundy lycra shorts and she’s reading Kierkegaard. I swoon, theoretically.

Later, our first grueling yoga class over, we gnaw on lettuce and stumble off to our cabin. Arabella, prancing from shower to bed, slips between her sheets, removing her white towel. The night’s very dark, and devastatingly quiet, except for her throaty breath. I shut my eyes tightly like it’s Christmas Eve.

The warm hand I feel must be hers.

“You trim,” she says, as she sinks below my waistline. Her hair is thick, her lips very moist, and her nails soft, as she rummages inside my digestive canal. I grab her bicep and lift her as she pulls me to face her. We kiss. She bites. I get nearer.

And my joint pain goes away.

I suppose the complainers are miserable twats, sure, but worse, they’re uninformed and unevolved. I thought they’d appreciate the recognition, most people walk by or over trannies and hope that they’re an imagination’s figment. I instead paid them respect through recognition, but frankly, like the Diana inquest or the war in Iraq, I fear time has been wasted.
But I do love this piece.

GT Magazine,
April 2008
Scott Capurro

What does one do about trannies? One must do something because they’re using our NHS. One should have a stance. The new trend is the transition from male-to-female, both the unresolved pre- and the braver post-op, with their shiny, pubescent facial hair and round, soft features. With innocuous names like ‘Bob’ (once Katherine, a sweet local actress) and ‘Roy’ (previously a macrobiotic mother of two), they’re even employed by my gay sauna, manning the front desk, offering locker keys and coy, chubby smiles.

Gender lines blur as sexuality takes a back seat. Let’s face it - these days, being gay is as common as poverty. Queers are everywhere, doing everything. I never thought in my lifetime I’d see homos behaving normally, raising monsters and appearing on Judge Judy, but then who could predict Labour’s collapse? Perhaps an evolutionary scholar who understands that liberal politics, when successful, has no common enemy and so nowhere to turn except down. The Greeks should’ve despised the Romans more, and Gordon Brown should bomb Sheffield, although with one eye I fear he’ll miss. And I have friends in Derby. They’re not good friends of course, but they are a potentially rarified breed known as ‘birth males’.

Are men, we, I, even you, so successful, even in Sheffield, that everyone wants to be us? Perhaps because women make less money and in exchange get raped and beaten a lot more, many real chicks are molding their clits into cocks. Which seems odd, since boobs on a girl are hot, but man boobs on a tranny man are definitely not. And all the trannies at my sauna have moobs. Floppy piles of sweaty flesh, sticking to their black t-shirts, leave a bottom rim of moist for one to gawk. Where else should one look? Their eyes are feminine, giving them away, leading me to say ‘Thanks, ma’am’ when grabbing my white towel. And ‘ma’am’ in a gay sauna is as welcome as, frankly, a ma’am, which is to say not at all.

One assumes the sauna owner, perhaps a recent cock convert, prefers his trannies matronly, but when I’m banging away at an out of towner, I don’t want to be stared at by my mom. Like lesbian wardens they peruse the hallways, denim-covered thighs whooshing, replenishing condoms whilst checking for unsuitable sexual behavior, ignoring the fact that their being there is most inappropriate. Because no matter how many male hormones they consume, they’re still full of, if not femininity, then female power, which is infinite and, if one is at all perceptive, distinguishable.

I stare at the porn to distract, and there are more trannies, three in fact, on all fours, being fingered by someone off screen. Like Mark Twain, I’m deluged and slightly nauseated. I stumble into someone bald and small, flat chested and tattooed, bent forward and orally available. I run my hand over their smooth white ass, then reach between their pale legs, expectations lowered by circumstance, and I discover that yes, less is sometimes less. Not bad. And in fact, the mouth is expert. But I can’t suspend my cravings.

When leaving, the same little tranny, now back in uniform, giggles.

“You’ll never guess what happened,” he says.

One shudders, imagining the surprises that might unfold.

“I saw someone I liked, and he passed right by me to have sex with you. Can you believe it? I’m never turned down.”

Pity soars. The blatant hatred and mock disbelief, even within his community, that this person faces must seem insurmountable. I place myself, momentarily, in his tiny shoes. Cock, whether bought or not, doesn’t make the man. Unabashed competitiveness can, and he has that in spades.

I leave, loving my penis. Mine’s not big but it works, and it’s sort of pretty, or so I’ve been promised. But if I were having something surgically sewn to my groin, something that would make me feel more valuable, I can think of so many better options. Like, I dunno, a bottle opener. I’d be the life of any party. How about a Nintendo game, for long flights? Or a cash dispenser, saving me the torture of stumbling through Soho late on a Saturday night. Although for the delivery of bills, a slit would have to be added, which seems to defeat the purpose, unless dropping cash out of my ass is more than just a metaphor for my mortgage. Maybe I’d have a mirror glued to my pelvis, since all anyone really wants to see is a reflection of themselves.

Gay Times
March 2008

The script I’ve penned for my show at the Soho Theatre (March 21/22, 25-29, if you’re interested) has set off warning sirens at my management’s office. Apparently some of my jokes might incite cultural racism and homophobia, which is now, in London, illegal.
“Homophobia is illegal?” I coyly ask my agent, attempting to cut the tension I so gravely admire. “There goes half my act.”
“This is serious Scott.” From miles away, and with British telecom between us, I could still hear Brian’s squeaky black marker editing my words. “If you perform this show, (squeak) we’ll find it very difficult (squeak, squeak) to get you on Jonathon Ross.”
How could I have forgotten? Heterosexuals want a makeover, not a migraine. After ridiculing George Bush for using the word (squeak) to describe Pakistanis, I was asked to tone it down in Sheffield. ‘Look around,’ I replied. ‘Clearly I’m not the problem.’ We didn’t see eye to eye, because mine are parallel.
My politics? Not wet enough. My sex life? Far too wet. What’s left? Censorship. Or mincing. Nobody minds if Alan Carr is gay, because nobody wants to (squeak) Alan Carr. I get laid all the time because I’m tall and because I never say no. Never! That, I suppose, makes me scary, and J-Ross nervous.
In Cape Town, I was asked to not discuss the Koran. ‘Even if I (squeak) up?’ One can discuss these issues, but only if one is black, supposedly. Their answer: ‘What about your hair?’ South Africans are without irony, but to their credit, extremely practical. In the end, I wore a yarmulke and told the gags. After all, I’d read the Koran out of respect, because I wanted to write some jokes about it. And the audience was filled with male to female trannies that’d survived (squeak). How frightening could I be?
As for homophobia, I’ve earned my wings by taking cock(squeaking) to its limits. Or so said the Brazilian whose (squeak) I tried to pack like a drug mule. Talk about liquid bombs. But all he wanted was my cock in his mouth. And that’s ALL!
“Don’t (squeak) in my mouth,” he kept chirping, in a high, bird-like pitch. “Don’t (squeak) in my mouth. Don’t (squeak) in my mouth…”
“I won’t (squeak) at all. It’s like (squeak)ing a doorbell. Ding-dong my dick is dead. Why is your voice so high?”
I made the mistake of telling a hot, closeted Nigerian that my grandmother is from Virginia. He almost lost his mind, so excited was he of my racist lineage. My family is racist, but not because they’re from the south. It’s because they’re cunts. Sorry, (squeak)s. But that’s not part of his fetish.
“Call me your black (SQUEAK).”
I didn’t want to say it. ‘Black’ and (‘squeak’) are redundant. However he was a guest.
Shyly, I said, “You’re my (squeak).”
“Say it with a southern accent!’
He was raised in France and he’s in the British military. How he came up with this craving is anyone’s guess. But aren’t we bombing Iraq so he can be called whatever he wants? I just don’t want the terrorists to win.
“You’re my (SQUEAK), so you’d better do me, my (SQUEAK)!’
He shot like a wildcat. I didn’t do so badly either. White (squeak) on a (squeak) belly. Very Diane Arbus. While he slept, I asked myself, why are some black men so angry? Is it bad P.R.? I’d seen them floating facedown through New Orleans, and even then I wondered, is a repressed black men’s self-hatred, his internalized homophobia, like my (SQUEAK), merely disgust toward a hardened system that predicts they’ll fail?
Speaking of women, I prefer ladies stop appearing in public. Their breasts, it seems, threaten most of the world.
I used to think comedy audiences moaned their disapproval when a woman’s name was announced because, frankly, they were worried that the lady would discuss being fat or having a (squeak). Or having a fat (squeak). But now I know, audiences are concerned for our national security, and their own safety. Why risk our lives in comedy clubs when chicks aren’t funny and most should never wear a bikini in the first place?
Women should stay indoors, whilst men work out this democracy thing. Confinement is a sacrifice, but everyone is making sacrifices – women, black people, women – because what price freedom?
Anywhere between 10 pounds and 17.50, depending on which show of mine you see at the Soho.

See Scott Capurro squawk away in Laughtershock at the Soho Theatre, London, March 21/22, 25-29. For tickets: www.sohotheatre.com

Oh, and here’s the Time Out piece.

Scott Capurro on the right to be offensive
Wed Mar 19 2008
Time Out London

Headline:
At a time when many comedians are becoming increasingly conservative, American comic Scott Capurro stands up for his right to be very offensive, outrageous and fabulously filthy.

My bit:
It’s as sad a fact as ‘Big Brother’ but we have to face it: most alternative comedy is mainstream now. Audiences are less interested in social satire than they are in a comedy club’s late drinking licence. Uppity, arms-crossed Brummies pay for chicken in a basket with a side order of dick jokes. Anything peculiar, different or challenging is circumspect and met with stares. Backstage it’s crowded with comics, yet as silent as a glory hole. We’d all rather be somewhere else fulfilling our true potentials but the harsh reality is we all have a mortgage to pay. I’m as bad as the rest. Uninspired gags from long ago appear in my act, as I struggle not to lampoon the kind of embarrassed IT failures sat gormlessly in the front row.

What’s even worse is that, since 9/11, everyone’s opinion is meant to be of equal importance – except, of course, those voiced by the working classes or, apparently, me. At a recent gig in London I was not only labelled a Holocaust denier but, to add insult to injury, the club manager informed me that veering away from my gay sex material was dangerous.

‘Flirt with the front row, that I can defend, but leave the Holocaust alone.’ So I can talk about cocksucking as much as I like because that’s as common as poverty but if I stray off that well-trodden path I’m in trouble?

A case in point: my set in Sheffield. Admittedly, it was doomed long before I stumbled on to the stage, but that’s not the point. The host, Toby, warmed up the crowd with several ‘poof’ jokes. That’s not offensive though, because as the whole world knows, we gay men have learned to go to Ikea and to dance our troubles away. Kick, two, three, four. However, when I mentioned the time George Bush had nonchalantly mumbled the word ‘Paki’ in front of the Queen – while Prince Philip, on hearing it, beamed with envy – I was labelled racist. That’s right – I was the one labelled a racist.

Racist? Did you hear the gag? ‘Nope,’ said Toby. ‘But I heard the word, and we’re funded. You’re fired.’

Fired? I was actually fired, for the first time in my whole career. Fired for being, as Jade Goody would say, ‘racial’? But how can I be racial? I’m a gay, black Jew from San Francisco. I’m every minority. At least, they’ve all been inside me.

I’m not a racist. I’m an American. Race doesn’t threaten me. Nor does graphically discussing the Palestinian I met in Cardiff (or the Arab, or whatever they’re calling themselves this week – ‘the enemy’) fill me with any of that prissy middle-class trepidation. I merely avoid labels, as would any other classically educated, world-travelled, erudite social commentator who not only has a keen interest in political theory but also has a bevy of Muslim booty calls he can make any night of the week.

However, I myself also have beliefs, and what I firmly believe is that good comedy is boundless and I’m prepared to prick audiences’ sensibilities because a) they’re strangers and b) that’s my fucking job. I didn’t tick ‘mime’ as a career choice, I ticked ‘clown’. So, I’m loud, nasty and annoying. Otherwise why would I be risking my life in my set by ‘joking’ that when I get an Iraqi into bed, they’re so desperate to have sex they’ll do just about anything? Like most religious extremists, fanatical Muslims spend so much time imagining what fucking a clean, crying virgin might feel like, anything I can do would only be anticlimactic.

In case you hadn’t realised yet, I don’t recognise taboos. Apparently Brighton does though, which strikes me as a little odd. All I said was, ‘People only really care about Maddy because her mother is hot and white, right?’

‘Too soon,’ a male impersonator growled. Then the other lezzies banged beer bottles to silence me.

C’mon ladies, I felt obligated to point out, admit it: black girls disappear all the time without anyone noticing, and not only because it happens at night.

You see, when an audience pushes, I pull hair. For instance I’m not a paedophile – in fact I hate children, they’re so needy – but I am an equal opportunity offender, and any resistance from a cautious crowd reveals a gold mine of comedy material. To me, whatever transgressions someone feels offended by are their issues. I’m not a therapist or a babysitter.

I might be comically autistic but, surely, if one lives in Britain shouldn’t we accept secularism as the norm and immunise ourselves from censorship. Otherwise, move to America, where everything, even healthcare, is suspect.

Diana was only funny the moment after she ate cement. And Aids jokes are hilarious if HIVIPs are lolling in the audience. Comedy is scary: it’s artistic cliffhanging, because a comic takes risks. Just because those drunk cunts at Jongleurs Bow wouldn’t know a political punchline if it raped them, does that mean I should whip out a guitar and sing a happy song?

What tune would I strum anyway? What would alert those queers in Croydon that feigned religious tolerance is misguided and, from an American perspective, 500 years too late? Wasn’t it the English who expelled the Puritans for wearing buckled shoes? But when someone kills their daughter to save the family’s status, we have to incorporate the misguided ‘honour killing’ tag into our vocabulary? Can’t we just say, or sing, ‘She was murdered by a bigoted, misogynistic, medieval old fuckwit’? What? That’s going too far as well? Really? In that case I fear the terrorists really have won.

Scott Capurro will be appearing at the Soho Theatre, Mar 21-29.

GT Magazine
Scott Capurro
February, 2008

Surely we’re not still celebrating Valentine’s Day. Lovers dancing in the streets whilst tossing rose petals over one another is at best gloatingly showy and at worst environmentally unsound; and Hallmark cards that read “I love our kind of love” are as embarrassing as right-wing Zionism.

On February 14th, can’t we just say ‘well done’ after an efficient blowjob, and return to the Guardian? Regular, expedient sex is the most decent gift one partner can give another. So who needs cupid?

There are simply far too many problems to read about, and romance, according to Rachel, the dwarf hooker working outside my building, is a big time waster. Speaking of ‘big’, she’s tiny, or, as Oprah might claim, a person of restrictive growth. Vertically, Rachel is 34 inches, but she’s packed a whole lot of love into that diminutive frame. In fact I’ve seen her in action.

One day in October, while dumping my rubbish, I came almost face to face with a tall man standing behind my buildings’ large, round, metal garbage bin. His eyes were closed, his head tilted back, so he didn’t notice me, and I thought, oh great, another taxi driver with a bladder problem. Then I spotted, peeking out from behind the bin, two small, curled up lady shoes. I thought, ok, either the sky has fallen and we’ve lost another wicked witch, or this dude is getting a hummer from a mini-me. Happily, the witch and the munchkin were one and the same.

When returning late from a gig, I often see Rachel tugging on her denim skirt and readjusting the black wig she wears to make her look less like a little girl, because pedophiles are scary. But cruising for cock on the desolate streets of East London? “I can take care of myself”. She’s from Swansea, and high above from my living room window, I’ve witnessed her doing pushups. She’s 37, has diabetes and Hep C and a child in care. There are two Christian girls that bring her coffee sometimes. “The nice side of Christian”, she tells me, as she checks her phone for messages. Who’d be calling her at 3 am, I have no idea, and I ask if her phone ever rings while she’s fucking any of the dimly lit businessmen into whose cars I’ve watched her crawl.

“No. I don’t fuck. I’m too compact.” It’s true, she is. She can’t clap. Her hands don’t reach each other.

“I use a stick to wipe my bottom.”

What kind of stick? Birch? Walnut?

“I don’t fucking know. It’s made for me. Being the NHS, it’s probably pulp.”

She owns a very long dildo that she’s personalized by engraving her nickname, Bullet, onto the side.

“In the crap place where I live, the other girls steal everything.” She shares a room in a hotel in Hackney. “And really, that dildo…sometimes it’s me only friend.”

I supply her with small, square bars of gourmet chocolate, because she’s the kind of diabetic that needs sugar, and I don’t know what else to do. I always buy from this charming shop in Spitalfields, where they stack the bars, then tie them together with a thin red and black bow. I’m sure the shop girl thinks I have a sweetheart. Or that I’m very sad. I suppose both are true. And whenever there’s a holiday, I stop by with Rachel’s favorite, chocolate with streaks of raspberry.

John, my ex of seven years, was born on February 14th. Thus the holiday was doubly special, or, as our relationship withered, doubly trying. John is short but still normal size – I know what you’re thinking and no, I don’t have that fetish - though he is strong and a dancer and so, yes, I suppose he’s compact. He’s 46 and on stage in the city of Chicago, shaking his money-maker in a musical about naked boys singing, and apparently, the show plays as the tin reads: He’s actually unclothed, every night, singing gay love songs for, mostly, cheering, screaming straight females. The Valentine’s Night show is their most attended.

Over tea in Styrofoam, Rachel wonders why married women love looking at cock.

“I have to see it all the time, and really, once you’ve sucked one…”

“Yeah,” I gobble down some skittles, “but they’ve probably only seen one. Or maybe two.”

“I’ve seen one too many. I’m calling it a night.”

After she’s gone, I take her position, perched on a cement wall. Cars drive by, slowly, and then race off when they see it’s me.

Columnist Scott Capurro
Subject Sore Spot

PQ “I was sure that by 45 I’d be a huge international success, loaded with plaudits, wearing tweed blazers and seducing 19-year-olds at book signings”

As a youth, I looked forward to my 40s as my semi-retired, mostly vacationing decade. I was sure then that by 45 I’d be a huge international success, loaded with plaudits and far too recognisable to journey from my mansion in daylight hours. My fame as the world’s greatest novelist would be both a blessing – allowing me to wear tweed blazers and seduce 19-year-olds at book signings – and an albatross, robbing me of Sample Sale shopping. Secretaries and stylists would whisk in and out of my vestibule almost daily, my life a whirling dervish of lecture tours, literary discussion programmes (in French, of course) and dinner parties in my ‘modeste honneur’.
A sophisticated slip-on wearer, my intellect would be both praised and less competitive, having achieved professional goals far beyond my family’s anticipation. Compared to two Pulitzers, an Oscar for ‘Best Screenplay Adaptation’ of my own Man Booker Prize-winning novel would seem rather gauche. I’d be brave for my fans, donning the mantle of a fine sportsman, sliding into a slim, classically-styled black evening suit, revealing my jauntiness and, to only the cleverest of acquaintances, my disapproval, with brightly colored Art Deco cufflinks. Oh, such a cad am I, I’d whisper to myself, holding my statuette high.
However my domestic life, I assumed, would surpass my laureate success. At 25, I’d ended a seven-year long relationship. I was sure, while driving to San Francisco to start my creative career, that only a better, longer relationship would follow. I considered myself a monogamous monologist, and I imagined someday reclining on outdoor furniture, petting a puppy with one hand as I gestured wildly with another, my doctor-lawyer-lover rotating a roasting animal. Many loyal friends would surround me as we’d laugh, lie and lisp our way into a mulled wine-induced dither. Their shoeless children run quietly through the house, while cats hiss, phones ring, singers sing and helicopters hover overhead, trying unsuccessfully to snap lurid shots of my warm, supportive extended family. It’s a scene as kind and affectionate as a modern-day, mildly camper Jimmy Stewart movie – with me in the Lana Turner role, naturally.
So then why, on the eve of my 45th birthday, am I travelling Standard on a lurching train somewhere between Hull and Grimsby? Stoic England rolls by, grimacing passengers resting their tired faces in poorly manicured hands. A cool reception last night in Edinburgh left me feeling abandoned on stage, and I’m wondering, have the sacrifices been worth a two-bedroom flat with wood fiber floors in East London? After 12 years of telling dick jokes in every shithole off the scenic route, I terrify TV people, I make Christians tremble with resentment and, apparently, as I was told by a pale, small Scottish creature in the front row, I’ve ‘denigrated the memory of Anne Frank’. Had I that sort of power, I’d have used it to ascend and fly away. But to where? An empty nest overlooking a few stumbling prostitutes in E2 is not my idea of a safe place.
I’m doing all this alone. I’ve lost so many friends in the last few years. Not to Aids – that was in the early ’90s. Now I’m being discarded. Good friends, some of whom I’ve known my entire adult life, have changed locations or changed their minds. Suddenly, I look around and find my ‘mansion’ devoid of any camaraderie. Not only do I travel too much to have a pet, but apparently having a pet name is too demanding. Everyone refers to me as Mr Capurro, because I only meet hotel clerks.
My ex-best friend Julie, whom I’ve known since I was 13, cut off communication because I’m told I was once dismissive toward her oldest son during a meal. Lee, a bookshop owner I lived with nearly 20 years ago, decided that, offstage, I’m too much of a performer. Richard, an actor, just never returns calls. Never. And lately, Mark seems very angry. That one I halted. The list goes on and bloody on, and I’m isolated, with very few good mates left, and my immediate family, never the easiest companions, 5000 miles away.
I know the New Year is about the metaphoric peeling of skin, refreshing one’s life and discarding what is unnecessarily heavy. Perhaps, like Jesus, in the flurry of youth I made poor character judgments. Maybe I’m inadvertently tripping into a second social life; Spartan in number, but the friendships I do make will be deeper and even longer-lasting. But making new friends? At my age? Prostate cancer seems more likely.

Scott Capurro
GT
December 2007

Because I’m a male cocksucker, I get invited to all sorts of liberal events. I suppose lefties mistakenly assume that fucking boy butt means I share their views.

For example, when I think animals, I think yummy, what’s for dinner?

“You can’t boil a lobster!” I was told, at an animal welfare benefit in Amsterdam. “Lobsters have feelings.”

“Well I’m feeling hungry,” I told the crowd, “so jump in little buddy, the water’s fine.”

“Oh no! Crustaceans are good problem solvers!!”

“But not good solution implementers.” The audience stared. “Can you open this ketchup bottle? No you can’t, because you’re a lobster. So boil up, Daddy’s starving.”

Later, at a subdued Vegan banquet, I was served something akin to a bowl of pubic hair and a scoop of cat litter. I felt so punished for volunteering my time at a function soaking with concerned support, that all I wanted to do was roast a small child. How do liberals expect to win elections, when conservatives are eating red meat and beefing up for the war on terrorism? As a female whispered to me, whilst swallowing something pale and dairy-free for ‘dessert’, “I’d like to save the world, but I’m lactose intolerant.”

At least those fretful Dutch were polite. The lesbians of Brighton are a different matter.

At a queer comedy show at the Komedia one recent Sunday, I was asked to go on first. And though my act is slightly confrontational, I agreed because I liked the idea of returning to London - a town where people read - early.

However, the moment I set foot on stage, I felt tension. After a joke about Welsh lesbians being too large to fit in their own clubs received an audible moan, I realized it was a room full of muffers, with the occasional dicksmoker for good measure. There was a penis shortage, and a shortage of irony and any sense of humor or even awareness that this was a comedy room.

My act tripped along, but while I made fodder of Bush’s racism, South African homophobia and small-minded British PC behavior, I felt the tension increasing. Chairs were shifting and pockets of the room grew very quiet. As a single trickle of sweat slid down my spine, I realized I was making fun of the kind of middle class white fucks who were sitting watching me. The types that think they’re hip and have no ethnic friends and wonder why blacks are so angry. Self-conscious and victimized, these women think they have to defend everyone they’ve never met, including missing children; and by making fun of the media frenzy around Maddy the room had a reason to turn on me, and they did.

A lady stood up and told me she was offended. I pointed her toward the exit, and the booing became uncontrollable. But I wasn’t leaving the stage. I’ve never been booed off, and I wasn’t going to let a room full of scary power dykes do the job. Some of the huskier, more fascistic women were frightening and quite loud, banging glass bottles whilst singing some sort of hooligan football song to silence me. Perhaps I should’ve played nice, Brighton lesbians, like their crunchy Sapphic sisters in my hometown, San Francisco, have a reputation for being dull-witted and humorless, and responding badly to challenge or change, but I gave them my respect by performing in the same way I’d play the straight room two floors below. I don’t babysit, and if they wanted daisies they should’ve hired a fucking clown.

When another woman brayed, “Can I ask you a question?” I knew it had all turned into a process, an Oprah episode, and my act was over. I left the stage, barely having finished my last joke, assuming book burning would be next. Would mine be thrown in?

I wonder why some people leave the house. Or why I do, if this is the sort of bigotry I have to tolerate from “my community”. Really, were I freshly out, those Brighton psycho bitches would push me way back in the closet. Why is it the only really bad response I get is from queers? The San Jose Gay and Lesbian Centre in California tried to have me banned; at a private function for gay swimmers last month in London, they merely gawked because I wasn’t in drag; and now this. Maybe we gays are our own worst enemies. Maybe I should fuck women. Quiet women. Would that make me more marketable? I guess I could ask George Clooney.

Scott Capurro
GT
November 2007

Whilst heading for the last empty seat on a San Francisco bus, I stumbled over a rider’s white sneaker, and apologized.
“That’s alright,” he said, “don’t worry. I know you. You’re that man from the store.”
I wasn’t sure which store. I’m always in search of the perfect cashmere V-neck, but this guy didn’t look like a retail clerk. First off, he was missing teeth. Lots. His dental history appeared checkered. Also, he had a crew cut, which would’ve been hot were he young and slightly fascist; but he was older and a bit doughy. His blue chambray shirt was tightly tucked in and he was wearing his name on his breast pocket, like he’d been to a seminar. Only his name – Paul – was scribbled with different colored pens.
“Have we met?” I asked, shyly. The other riders looked down at their Sudoku.
“Yes. You’re that man. From the store. The big store. Do you know me? I’m Paul. From the store.”
“Oh. The store.”
“Yes. You know me.”
The dialogue was driving deep into David Mamet country, and I’m not a huge fan. I detoured.
“I don’t think I know you, but have a nice day.”
I looked down at my Vidal memoir. I could hear Paul watching me. He was throwing audible sounds my way. Sounds like “Uh huh” and “Oh” and I think I heard an “Oh no”. My palms were sweating. One never knows in America. Some psycho who seemed nice two minutes ago might whip out a rifle and open fire. There might be bodies everywhere, but at least this bus would arrive on time. Death is such a small price to pay for punctuality.
“I’m sorry.” Paul was breathing loudly. I didn’t want to look up. Don’t psychos often express regret before they gun down the innocent? “I’m really sorry.”
I looked up. He was staring at me.
“It’s alright.” I attempted the calming voice of pure middle class reason. “I’m just reading.”
“Oh. I’m retarded.”
Well that explains everything, I thought, as I stifled a laugh. I held my breath, and my eyes welled with tears. I had four stops to go. Could I hold out? I feigned a cough. That helped a bit. I released a giggle. My head was hurting.
I wasn’t not laughing at Paul, although his contrite tone over his handicap sounded almost self-parodying, the way someone who’s not retarded might claim “I’m so retarded” after doing something mildly stupid. What amused me was that, on a bus full of insular, isolated commuters who years ago traded in their brains for Madonna music or a ridiculous mortgage, Paul is the only one willing to admit his hindrance. I’ve had my head banged around a few times. After three concussions, maybe I’m the retard, still dreaming, even while 44 and on a fucking bus, that some day I’ll play Wembley, when Paul’s the only sensible dim wit in this lurching piece of metal who knows and accepts his limitations.
I actually envied Paul. He has a clinical excuse for his shortcomings. And being retarded is like surviving the Holocaust, or crying on demand. Genocide or tears wins every argument. Even Paul knows that if he mentions his impediment, the conversation ends. When I was young, if my older sister had her period, she got to ride in the front seat. I remember begging for my period. I was too little to realize I had other options. If I’d lost a few too many brain cells, I could’ve picked the movie every Friday night. Understanding the movie would’ve been challenging. Easier than being old and Jewish; and every time I tried to force tears, I pooed. And I tried, often. That’s how important winning an argument was to me, even as a child.
Later, on the morning radio show I’m co-hosting, today’s celebrity guest/fuckwit has such a piercing, relentless tone to his voice that I have to remove my headphones. He was on the American ‘Queer As Folk’, and he’s rattling on and on about how “groundbreaking” his work was.
“I’m straight, but playing a gay character, which made other straight people much more likely to watch the show.”
Since when is homophobia inventive, I ask myself. But I ask him how he stays fit. The next half hour is spent with him billowing about Karate.
“So you’re both a trained killer and a homophobe? Shouldn’t you be stationed in Iraq?” I can’t help myself. The actor stares at me, incredulously.
“Sorry,” I tell him, my head tilted, “I’m retarded.”
You can’t blame me for trying.

Scott Capurro
GT
October 2007

Hotel rooms are a cock magnet. Even this traveling tanned carcass can lure away from their offices married men seeking a quick fix in innocuous surroundings.

My room is a model U.N., proving the cultural diversity of Toronto is no myth: Every country, it seems, has been through my door. Most often, however, I’ve entertained black men, many Jamaican, and all ‘discreet’, because they’re cheating on their wives. They lay back in casual business attire while I drain their ballpoints. I watch their faces, eyes closed tight, big smiles, and I wonder how often they reflect on their choices. Maybe, I muse, silently, being gay isn’t just whom one sleeps with. This guy I’m sucking might even make fun of queers with his mates. Am I ingesting self-hatred, masked as pre-cum?
Oprah would weep, and my dick feels hard as a tombstone.

Then his is up my ass and there’s no time for thinking.

One sunny day, I give in to the droning pull of the notorious middle classes and indulge in public transportation. The black youth seated opposite on the subway seems intently submerged into his headphones, head bowed. Thankfully, he’s keeping his rap backbeat to a bare minimum. But he can’t stop himself from mouthing words. He has the music in him, but more importantly, he has a rhythmic story to tell. His feet tap, his head swings, as fellow Canadians look on, or don’t, smiling, or not, in the friendly yet cool demeanor this hinged nation presents.

I understand rap as much as I understand any contemporary music. That is to say, very little. To me, anything recorded after 1985 sounds like screaming children crashing canned hams together. Yet the furor I find impossible to avoid is that so much rap is violent misogyny cradling homophobia. But then so is everyone’s favorite musical, Oklahoma. What makes rap different is that this time, the black man has the gun.

I watch this teenager on the train banging his fists against his knees, settling his scores and expressing his angst with his furrowed brow and I think, but why here? It’s Canada, where ‘fair’ isn’t just a four-letter word. In Toronto, there are more soup kitchens than there are slurping poor people. Canadians actually chat with the homeless. I’ve witnessed a businesswoman discussing the ebb and flow of magazine sales with a vagrant. The conversation lasted longer than my cappuccino.

There are fewer than one thousand gangs in all of Canada. One can actually COUNT the number of gangs thriving in Canada. Nationally, there were 151 murders here last year. And most of those were domestic disputes. The point being: So you’re black, gay, bi-racial, Indian, from Indiana, indigenous, or orange with one leg, a vagina and a penchant for eating pussy – who cares? How’s the weather? Oh god, did ya’ really move all the way from Calgary cuz’ of your allergies? Need a hand with your shoelaces? What the heck, let’s all rap together, seein’ as the winters last nine months and there’s nothing else to do, darnit!

Later, five male police in black shorts ride by on their bikes while I smoke pot. I’m between shows, and I’m working up an appetite. One cop with a mustache sniffs the air, mocks a clownish frown, then waves his index finger at me as if I’m naughty. I wink back. They ride on. I get higher, and the comedy club manager asks if I want a three-way with he and his girlfriend. I swoon, because he’s Jewish; and because I can’t imagine a more progressive society.

That night, my audience is so supportive. I feel cheerful, like Julie Andrews. I want to run through the streets, singing about my favorite things, one of which is a comedy room with visitors from as far away as Chile, China and Chad. It’s a gold mine for a comic who rants about race. They’re laughter feels like flying.

Until I casually mention my penchant for black cock. But I’m white and gay and that gives table seven in the back the license to mutter, “Someone’s gonna get shot tonight.” Then she repeats herself, this very angry black woman. “Someone’s definitely gonna get shot tonight.”

Naturally the room grows silent. I’m quick to the draw.

“What makes you think it won’t be you?”

She and her three friends walk out. Stressed and grasping for irony, I might have dropped the n-bomb, but I’m on anti-depressants, I can’t recall. And I’m not famous enough to be videoed on a mobile. But I am tall enough to be hit by a ‘random’ bullet, so I’m escorted through the service entrance, back to my hotel.

Once online, I sail to the West Indies. Hair of the dog…

Scott Capurro
GT
September 2007

I’ve never been single. As my mother’s only gay son, I’ve been her constant chaperone, confidant and admirer.

We’ve weathered job loss, divorces and drug use. In the early 80s, she was my preferred cocaine dealer. And in 1982, during my first summer home from university, Mom outed me, to myself.

“Honey,” she purred one afternoon, while refilling her white wine mug, then readjusting the bra strap of her black bikini, “we can play this game, but I know you’re gay. Let’s talk about it when you’re ready.”

After I confessed, she removed the burden of revelation with five strategic phone calls. Suddenly, in less than an hour, my entire family knew I was queer. Homing pigeons gasped with admiration.

I notice my skin wrinkling, like hers. From too many years of sun abuse, my pressed belly becomes a series of vertically woven strips, and I think of my mother grabbing one of her three deep, parallel c-section scars and telling me, probably on my birthday, “This is you. This is what you did to me.” She wasn’t accusatory. She was actually bragging. Like the time she told me, drunk, “Your father has a huge cock and he cums buckets. Merry Christmas.” I was eight.

I think we’ve watched Funny Girl together a thousand times. Streisand live, once. In ‘94.

“I prefer the film,” my mother later said, over pie.

She reads veraciously, and without a high school degree she raised three kids, mostly on her own. She’s been punched, hard, by men for mouthing off, and she falls asleep in the cinema, and then pretends to have seen the movie. We just have so much in common.

Mom has a very impressive vibrato, and modeled when she was a teenager. She wanted to perform, or fall insanely in love. She did the latter. He was a popular math teacher, and I was still young enough to wish he were my Dad. But he was ill, and he ended his own life; Mom still speaks softly when Bill’s name comes up.

I like her dog, not because it’s a corgi, which actually is a bit of a fucking pain in the ass with its dwarfish legs and neediness, but because she sees qualities in that fat ball of hair I’d never see.

“Look how Gracie loves you.” Gracie stars out the car window. “She adores her Uncle Scott.”
As if she doesn’t express her love enough, Mom offers more, through her pets. She a Pez dispenser of affection, it flies out of her and sometimes it buries me a little.

Donna, my mother, has asthma. It’s become emphysemic. Her lungs are basically gone. Last month, her doctors gave her a sell-by date.

“Ten years?” She asked. They shook their heads.

“Five years?” They shrugged.

Nature is mean, but medicine is much, much meaner.

I’m not prepared to lose her. Even now, I can’t write ‘die’. It seems insane. She’s only just driven me to the airport, she seems to warm, so full of gossip and innuendo. We hate the same people, and while discussing my brother’s first wife over lunch, she’s full of oxygen.

In fact, I can’t get off the phone in less than thirty minutes. She does go on, paying an obsessive attention to schedules. I hear about her entire day, probably because she feels isolated, living on a golf course, with, some days, only that shitting sausage on a leash to keep her company. A while ago, she told me she was lonely, and asked me to call more. So I do.

“I spoke to Karen (her best friend) and Fred (Karen’s husband) has a nephew who…”
And I think, what the fuck? Why am I learning about someone’s nephew? Unless she’s fixing us up. I listen. Nope, she’s just telling me about his eye surgery. Health, poor or otherwise, is always at the top of Mom’s chatty agenda.

I sigh. It’s sunny outside. I’ve got writing to finish. She asks how I’m doing, then cuts me off with a story about my slightly arrogant, but lovable, niece.

And I wonder, Jesus Donna, why haven’t you married a man you like to talk to? Then I think, why haven’t I? If I weren’t talking to my mom right now about my humdrum life, who would be listening?

I’m just not ready. She can’t die. If she goes, then my lifeline to my family disintegrates, maybe slowly, but inevitably. I’ll lose my feeling of permanence. I’ll disappear. Hers is the only Valentine card I’ve received for the last ten years.

Even Hallmark will mourn the loss.