Deutschland uber ElvisDeutschland uber ElvisTeaching the Germans to party since 2007--no, not THAT party. Personal blog of a late-out gay guy posted from New York to Munich. Juggling a lover in Tokyo and family in Australia. Organised religion pisses him off. 
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A few snaps from the office Christmas party
2007-12-14 17:44:00 Dateline New York. The Office Christmas Party 2006. Beer, pizza and DJ in the office foyer. Yeah, it's OK.Dateline Munich. The Office Christmas Party 2007. Each colleague and his or her partner invited to spend the night at a mountain lodge in the chic Austrian ski-resort of Kitzbuehl. The morning following the party, we can ski out the front door.Do I miss New York? Let me think about that for a nanosecond... More About: Living
Smokyo
2007-12-12 15:46:00 Where is he gay today? TokyoOn January 1, Germany will outlaw smoking indoors in bars and restaurants. In a typical perverse fashion, the various municipalities which make up metropolitan Tokyo have begun to ban smoking outside. It kind of makes sense. Japanese streets are crowded. If you've ever stopped at a pedestrian light in Tokyo, you'll know that the throng of impatient salarymen puffing away can create a toxic cloud. From now on, they'll need to duck into a handy bar or restuarant for a quick fag, or saunter up to one of the ventilated outdoor smoking stations, kindly sponsored by Japan Tobacco. JT also provides helpful pro-social messages about how to smoke politely. That's all very well, but why is he in Tokyo again, I hear you ask? I'm just swinging by on my way home from HK to pick up the lad. We'll travel back to Munich together, for Christmas and new year, and then he'll return to Tokyo to sell the apartment. Thereafter, we'll be able to live together again, at...
Taking comfort
2007-12-07 18:03:00 Where is he gay today? Hong KongDiana Krall sings East of the Sun, West of the Moon on the sound system in a bar in Wan Chai. The track comes from her Look of Love CD. Master Right and I joke that The Look of Love is our number three Desert Island Disc. The first two are slushy jazz as well. Our domestic moments are horribly predictable.After a long trip and a tough business meeting, the music comforts me. It comes as a shock. I?m comforting myself.Last summer, I hit the big Five?Oh. At the big forty-nine, I doubt I would have been able to do it.Certainly not without a quick call to Master Right. He?d do nothing special?we?d speak of small details of our lives; how we slept (a problem for me), what we ate, which of our relatives or friends committed the most amusing outrage against good taste. Ya know. That kinda stuff.We men are very, very bad at comforting ourselves. We tend to do it with a bottle, a cigarette, a ready sexual tryst or a quiet funk.Women can teach us men much about... More About: Taking , Comfort
Dickmilch proves irresistable
2007-11-29 14:17:00 Look, I get fuck-all traffic to this site. A few faithful readers, friends and a lot of people googling the word foreskin. So you can imagine my surprise when I discovered that I'd been violated! Er, copyright-wise. Look, AcidJasmine...there's one of those fucking Creative Commons links to your right. It says that you can quote with attribution, like Nick has. So be a gentleman, and tell the world where you palmed your dickmilch. And until then, keep your paws off my pixels, poof!
Just sit tight
2007-11-18 23:17:00 Where is he gay today? Under the English Channel Bonjour and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Eurotunnel, the fastest and easiest way for the sea-sickness-prone to travel to the Continent. Please switch off your engine, and place the car in first gear or park. Please lower your windows halfway and open any sunroofs or vents. The tunnel and train carriages are airtight and may be subject to changes in pressure--closed windows may result in your being unable to open your door in an emergency or the bursting of your eardrums. We realise that many of you with modern cars may need to start your engine to use your electric windows. If this is the case you may start your engine long enough to operate the windows, but not so long that you can recharge the Blackberry through the cigarette lighter. Please do not use your mobile phone in the tunnel as it may interfere with cockpit navigation systems. In case of claustrophobia, your Eurotunnel representative in carriage three has ...
Sho Us Yer Po
2007-11-18 18:51:00 Munich has been a-twitter for weeks.The office was in a funk for days. My colleagues couldn?t get tickets for the MTV Europe Music Awards, this year held in Munich.It used to be a slam dunk. If you worked in an ad agency, you could snap your fingers and get tickets to anything. Media organizations (especially TV networks) entertained you lavishly, since you controlled your clients? advertising dollar.Alas, times have changed. Media placement is now handled by independent companies, and besides, nobody watches TV any more.The comeuppance is, that the likes of me has to buy his own drinks. This makes no difference to me personally, nowadays. My hard-boozing years ended quite some time ago. But many younger colleagues have seen open bars ripped out from under their elbows while still in their prime.I tried to console them. ?Here?s an alternative. You could probably still get a ticket to the Europe?s Best Butt Competition. It?s the night before.? Using German slang for butt, the press h... More About: Living , Munich
The Utch
2007-11-13 19:29:00 Where is he gay today? Amsterdam.Hieronymus Bosch Antiquariaat, in the Leliegracht "I call them the Utch," said the Diva, "because after a year, I give my host culture a D-Minus." As if to confirm her judgement, our drug-fucked waitress sloshed a cup of Douwe Egberts fakeaccino across the table without a word of remorse, nor an effort to wipe it up.The Diva does the same thing I do for a living, only better. A perceptive and articulate woman of Mexican stock, we used to work together in NYC, before her fortunes took her to Amsterdam, and mine to Munich."Weeeelll, maybe once you get to know them you'll find they have hearts of gold, deep down.""Deep down? You mean among the swanshit sludge at the bottom of a canal?" she sneered. "You should try being a Hispanic in Holland.""What's wrong with that?""Nothing, except that everyone mistakes you for a Muslim." she sighed. With her long dark hair and light-coffee complexion, the Diva looks ten kinds of exotic. She might be Brazilian beac...
At least it doesn't suck
2007-11-09 10:12:00 And it loooks like they're encouraging you to use the back door, too.When will I tire of this sort of stuff? I guess about the same time as I stop snickering over car park exit gates that wish me a good fahrt. More About: Suck
Oktoberfarce
2007-11-08 00:49:00 Ordnung ist das halbe leben, goes the old German saying. Order is half of life.The other half is Oktoberfest.Three weeks when evil beer-mongers thrust a carefully-engineered monkey wrench into the precision clockwork of daily Germanity.Oktoberfest, to borrow an expression from queerspeak, is Drunk Pride. The cocktail hour starts promptly after breakfast. It finishes, oh, I dunno. Christmas, maybe, if you allow for hairs of the dog. Folky meets HokeyMany towns hold a jolly harvest-cum-folk festival around this time of year, just to let their hair down a bit.Munich , however, doesn?t just let its hair down. It drops its pants and wags its dick at you. What is already the most alcoholic city on the planet, warps into Chaos Central. Bavaria on steroids, with just a trippy little touch of LSD. Salzburg Oktoberfest vs. Munich Oktoberfest. You get the idea. Throw on your lederhosen. Throw down a few brewskis. Throw back some schnapps. Throw a quick paw or two on a beautiful young maedchen?s...
A poor grasp of the penis, if you ask me.
2007-10-23 12:50:00 I've already observed that when an English-speaker listens to German, it sounds all warm and squishy and arousing. That feeling disappears when you actually try to converse on the warm, squishy topic auf Deutsch . Then you just get confused. Lucky I found the Alternative German Dictionary.Testicles are reasonably straightforward. We call them balls, the Germans call them eggs. Unless some language refers to them as sugared almonds (Italian, maybe?), I guess German is the most accurate.The penis poses a challenge to the German tongue. We often call it a cock?probably because, as Andrew Dice Clay observed, it wakes up half an hour before you do. But the common German word for the penis is a schwantz, semantically related to the word for tail.Now, liebschen, that?s just plain ass-about. Obviously, the Germans must have a very poor grasp of anatomy, or at least certain bits of it.The Yiddish form of German, of course, keeps things in much better perspective. The American expression "sc... More About: Penis , Poor
Teaching irony to the German police
2007-10-23 12:16:00 Like all modern German s, my car can't quite bring itself to utter the H-word.This really happened. Sometimes, you get caught at exactly the wrong moment.?Bitte, lassen Sie mich das Gerät leiser machen, so dass wir zusammenscprechen kann," I explain to the young police officer who pulled me over. That means please let me turn down the stereo so we can talk, and I was rather proud of myself for managing the sentence.I needn't have felt so smug. The guy picked my accent, and replied in English, ?Routine license check, sir. Your licence, please."I handed him my New York license, he noted the number and expiry date, and reminded me that I only had six months grace to change to a German Führerschein.I thought I would be on my way. But he had one more question."That music you were playing?what is it?""It?s the soundtrack to a Broadway Show?The Producers. " One of the few gay stereotypes I uphold is a fondness for musical theatre."And that song?How does it sound again?" I turned up the vo... More About: Irony , Teaching , Police , Munich
I knew they were gay friendly, but this is just too kind.
2007-10-21 10:10:00 In the men's room at Ikea Brunnthal, next to the rather suggestively-named wickeltisch. More About: Munich , Friendly , Were
Beer is Hell
2007-10-16 13:43:00 There's a special kind of Hell . A Hell which preys on your mind and messes with your brain. A Hell in which everything is bright, sharp and clear. In Munich , I practically swim in such a Hell.Of course, hell is exactly that: the German word for bright or clear. The estate agent said my apartment was hell. People who sit through my PowerPoint presentations proclaim them, loudly, to be hell. Over my first few months in Germany, I've had day upon day of pure, sheer, constant hell.Mostly, though, we apply this all-too-fitting word to beer. Helles Bier is the most popular Bavarian brew, outselling dunkel (dark), and hefe-weiß (yeast-white) by a considerable margin. In the most profound way, Munich is a hell of a town.Given the high Nebenkosten (water rates), beer is actually cheaper than water. If I were on Bavarian food stamps, I'd make Helles my staple source of nourishment."We drink always Helles," said Zero, the office fixer, "because you can't get drunk on it.""The stuff is 5% a... More About: Beer
Far Out
2007-10-12 08:09:00 Where is he gay today? London.I was in my thirties when I came out. No, scratch that. I was in my thirties when I stopped living in denial. Afterwards, coming out was simply a matter of course.Rather, it was a matter of a course, since I did a course in it.So National Coming Out Day poses a challenge. There's nobody left.But as the HRC reminds us, the simple act of being public about one's homosexuality is one of the most important contributions a gay man or woman can make to the cause. The more homophobes see the sheer number of gay people living lives of dignity and purpose, the less tenable their hatred becomes.Besides, it's good for the soul. To paraphrase an Al-anon slogan, healthy people have privacy, unhealthy people keep secrets.Sharing something personal about yourself to a stranger shows that you're secure and confident. Generous of spirit, even.But sharing too much, in the wrong place...well, that just turns kinda icky. The literature refers to it as inappropriate int...
Funny, it doesn't taste like any I've ever swallowed.
2007-10-10 20:48:00 Still, I'd love to visit the factory. More About: Funny , Munich , Taste , Swallow , Allo
Financial Theocracy
2007-10-09 14:43:00 "Christian Folk! Will you let the Spartacists (Communists) destroy your church? Give your answer on election day! The Bavarian People's Party" (1919) The BVP is a precursor to the modern Christian Democrats. Hat tip to Religionskritik.When applying for my resident's permit (catchily called a Niederlssungserlaubnis), my friends coached me on the form."When they ask your religion, make sure you answer none," said Zero, our office fixer. "That way, you don't pay the Kirchsteuer.""Kirchsteuer? You mean there's a church tax?" I was shocked to learn that when you're baptised, your church sends a record to the government. They out you as a believer, and when you earn your first buck, the government extracts the church's tithe.They also track who takes the sacraments. The church reports brides, grooms, commmunicants and the recently deceased to the taxman, to make sure no-one basks in god's grace without coughing up.Many pious skinflints declare themselves atheists to dodge the colle... More About: Atheism , Financial , Secularism , Munich , Theo
Freudianslipstrasse
2007-10-06 09:39:00 Isn?t it neat how Swinger Street and Wife Street intersect? Note that they only intersect once. More About: Munich , Slip
A Message from the National Kindness Movement
2007-09-09 07:45:00 Where is he gay today? SingaporeThe doorman at the Raffles, and an unidentified guest.In these days of highly scrutinised business travel, it?s unusual to find oneself in a city with a whole day of nothing to do, on the company dime. Just my luck, it happens to be Singapore.Now, I shouldn't dis the Island Republic. I have splendid friends and business associates here, and enjoy the cuisine. After living in Munich for a while, it?s good to get some decent Asian food?Singapore has the best.But the reason I sneer at my good fortune is that I?m stuck here for Singapore National Day. Everything?s closed.The Nation al Day Parade was a sad little affair. It took a route so short that they had to limit the number of spectators. TV screens in public places gave crowds the impression that they had come together to celebrate something.Marching bands played the winner of the annual National Day Song Contest, There?s No Place I?d Rather Be (than Singapore) which might betray lack of ambition as... More About: Message , Kindness , The National
Sürf's üp, düde!
2007-07-29 12:17:00 This is one of the coolest things on the planet. In the 1800's, German engineers tamed the fickle Isar River. Before, it would meander unpredictably through the centre of the city--not dangerous, but prone to annoying floods and unsightly dry patches. The city engineers sent the flow through two watercourses; a wide, majestic stretch above ground, and another in a narrow channel under the city. The narrow channel would flow faster, and prove useful to power a mill in the centre of town. Where the narrow stream emerges from under the city, the it flows over a trench. This causes the water to double back over on itself, creating a decent-sized wave. Quite a surfable one, though the sensation must be odd, I suspect. When one falls off, one is carried backward (downstream) rather than forward (beachward). The urban surfer's dream: Convenience surfing, right in the centre of town--under a bridge on the historic Prinzregentenstraße, just next to the Haus der Kunst. Many stop for a quick... More About: Munich
The Local Tongue
2007-07-15 09:18:00 Foreigners who have lived in Japan marvel at the way English is used there. We?ve even given it a special name?Engrish .Apart from the obvious howling mistakes, we chuckle at the innocent vacuity of what?s said. If one translates Japanese directly, it contains exactly that?nothing. Nature abhors a vacuum; the Japanese abhor a social vacuum. They seek to fill it with manufactured politeness through meaningless words and gestures. If you?re talking, it means I?ve noticed you.The Germans have no truck with that sort of stuff. They like a social vacuum just fine, thank you very much, and think that if everybody would just shut up and scowl, the world would be a better place. Especially Schwabians.Nonetheless, English as it?s spoken in Germany?let?s call it Englisch?has a certain charm. The quaint old-fashioned word order and strong verbs, for example. The routine confusion of mustn?t and don?t have to. It warms my heart to hear them throw in an already or actually when I know they really... More About: Local , Tongue , Tong , Loca
Munich is comfortably gay. But discomforts can be arranged.
2007-06-04 11:58:00 Ah, to be gay and live in a European city! Men holding hands in the Marienplatz. Ogling the Jungen at the Englischer Garten. Gay unions at the town hall. No evil eye from Bundescrats when you ask about permanent residence for your partner. Few other places does being gay mean so much, and matter so little.Germans tut-tut about hung-up Catholic Bavaria. But as far as I can see, Munich ers let it hang out with the best of them. The picture above, of two gay couples lounging naked outdoors, was not snapped at some all-male nudist resort. It was taken on the banks of the Isar River on a Sunday afternoon, in the centre of Munich. Gay, Schmay!Mind you, the schwulen may be gay, but they?re not always lighthearted. Bavarians invented leather pants, and some riff quite elaborately on this theme.As any gay male with broadband and a right hand knows, the German leather-bear scene is formidable (especially in Berlin, whose municipal symbol is the bear.) The picture shows a retail outlet for a la... More About: Comfort
Princess Grace's First Foreskin
2007-05-22 07:49:00 No it's not like a banana. Everybody expects a goddamn banana.Princess Grace of Pittsburgh, my cousin and #2 fag hag, was on the phone, sizing up her latest prospect for happiness. He is a French gentleman with, it seems, a foreskin."I'd never serviced an uncut man before. With the top up, it hardly even looks like a penis." She spoke like she'd just discovered a box of stale Pop-Tarts, remembered an errand, or got the wrong frappasomething at Starbuck's. "Hey presto, he gets excited and it disappears. Where on earth could it go? Does it just, like, fall off?""Yes," I said, "It falls off and a new flap of skin grows before the next boner.""Get outta here! Really?""No. Just pulling your...uh, it simply retracts.""I thought you had to peel it like a banana." she continued. "That would be logical.""C'mon. Imagine sticking it in with shreds hanging down the sides. And when the cock deflates, what does a guy do? Zip up the gussets?""Gussets! You're so funny. I bet you call your bon...
A very hearty welcome
2007-05-11 20:34:00 This woman greeted me as I emerged from customs at Munich Airport. Well, she didn't actually greet me personally, since she was there to meet someone else. Still, I took it as a good omen.From that, you may gather that I have arrived in my new home town, and am very, very happy to be here.
Shampoo as a Sign of Derangement
2007-05-08 10:48:00 Let?s be blunt. The Headbang clan lives in junkyards. None of us can throw away a damn thing.Clinicians look for hoarding as a marker for family dysfunction or mental illness. When you grow up amid chaos, never quite certain that your home is secure, the instinct to hoard against catastrophe is palpable. Even if the gestures are largely pointless, they hold great symbolic power. A teetering pile of wood scraps, too good to throw away, englfed half my father's workshop in the basement. He got rid of some when the oldest scraps began to rot. My mother kept the ends of balls of yarn with the view that they should be used one day. They were, knitted into one long crazy-quilt scarf that nobody wore. Speaking of crazy-quilts, my sister took up quilting and became quite good at it. She had ready access to scraps of material that were?you guessed it?too good to throw away. My brother and sister-in-law once invited me to help them sort out their attic. They disinvited me after a morning?s... More About: Sign , Shampoo , Sham
Bavariations.
2007-04-17 09:10:00 Kandinsky: Houses in MunichNews: I'm trading in The City That Doesn't Sleep for A City That Doesn't Smell. Many of you may know that my partner (who, for the purposes of this anonymous blog, is called Master Right) and I have been servicing our relationship long-distance. Me in New York, him in Tokyo. That's about as long a distance as you can get and still remain on the same planet. The villain of the piece is the American Theocracy. Almost everyplace else on said planet, the immigration laws will either recognise us as a couple, or give us an easy work-around. But not in the good-old US of A. Homophobia is alive and well. So, I've taken some time to look for a job abroad. And I found one. From mid-May, I'll be moving to Munich, where I will hold, perhaps, one of the grooviest jobs in all of adland. I'll be the Global Strategic Planning Director on a Very Prestigious German Car Brand. No, not the one you're thinking of, but one of the other ones. Is that sufficiently inform... More About: Bavaria
The price men pay.
2007-03-08 08:54:00 I post in an online community that deals with men's issues. A member?a female member, interestingly?raised the topic of men and their tears. Many men wrote of crying for lost loved ones, or the pain of separation. Posters spoke of the funerals at which they cried, and how it put them back in touch with the emotional depth of which they are capable. Losing the one you love gives men a license to weep, it seems. I commend my fellow men. On the other hand, I feel a bit sad for us. What a barren emotional life, if you need to wait for funerals and divorces to show emotion! How do we expect men to keep their hearts closed for so long? Some men boasted how easily they're re moved to tears. Several admitted that they cry more often and more fulsomely than their wives and girlfriends. Are men really heartless droogs, as so much modern discourse suggests? In his indispenable book on male depression, I Don't Want to Talk About It, writer and clinician Terence Real quotes much fascinati... More About: Price
I'm a cheaper drunk than I thought.
2007-02-25 09:35:00 The second annual NYC Blarg Hop turned out to be a smashing success. Well, I got smashed, in any case, and did so rather early in the evening. Four beers, and I was a train wreck.Now, there was a time when four beers were just an appetiser. My working-class bohunk liver metabolised alcohol like a blast furnace eats pig iron. But with the big five-0 a mere five months away, my liver has stalled. Of course, one could opt for lite beer, but that means the terrorists have won. You can cram a lot of conversation into those four beers. All of it interesting, witty and smart. Plenty of blogging tips to go around (special thanks to futurejunkie for moo). Warm, wet love to all my fellow bloggers for a great evening, and of course to Joe for being the chief catherd. That is, the guy who tried to herd the cats from one bar to another. Get it? No, I didn't think so. One thing became abundantly clear last night. Obscure jokes just don't work. About one person in five got the High Maintenance H... More About: Drunk , Thought
Smutty bars. And the butts who smut them.
More articles from this author:2007-02-23 10:20:00 I was discussing weekend plans with a colleague."What do you mean, you're going on a pub crawl with a bunch of bloggers?" she asked. "I thought blogs replaced social life.""Not necessarily," I corrected her. "In my case, melancholy, ennui, self-absorption, business travel, and curling up in the foetal position amongst the bedclothing for hours on end have replaced social life. But I don't have too many business trips this month, so I can squeeze in a pub crawl."Of course, my fellow revellers won't be short on self-absorption. It's the JoeMyGod New York bloggers' second annual Blarg Hop; a schmoosh-word that combines blog and bar. I imagine we're only doing it to blog about it later. Yes, blogs do replace life, but a successful blogger needs to keep a few organic processes going, in order to have something to blog about. You can tell we're mostly gay bloggers, too. Bars include Dick's Place and The Cock. I haven't seen such a list of suggestively-named bars since I left Japa... More About: Butts , Smut 1, 2, 3 |
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