Well that was fast, wasn’t it? Just over a week after I took The Grandmother to the emergency room, we placed her in a hospice care facility yesterday. At the hospital when the case manager told me they were able to place her, I cried tears of relief. I get a little bit of my life back while The Grandmother will be looked after by nurses 24/7.

I’m so tired, though. Days of being right next to The Grandmother for over 12 hours at a time, changing diapers, trying to get her to eat when she couldn’t even lift her head up much less sit up. That is done. I guess now I just have to brace myself for the inevitable family fights, but that I can just ignore all of that nonsense.

Ever present in the back of my mind is the fact that The Grandmother is going to die soon, and that is okay. She is 87 and led a full life. She got to see her great-grandchildren, she traveled all over the world, she accomplished a lot for someone who was sickly her entire life.

But last night I really needed to let off steam, so my Wifey Daniel and I went out barhopping in DTLA where 3 gin-and-tonics really got me very happy especially with all my pent-up horniness. Hell, I haven’t even talked about having sex with a 23-year old several weeks ago and all of the existential questions it brings up for me.

Regardless, I needed to let off some steam last night, and I was very happy it was with Daniel.

I want to thank all the well-wishers out there, both public and private. One of the private messages I received said that I deserve to with the grandson of the year award. While this is sweet, I replied that this is not an award I want to win. Lay of the Century? Sure, I’ll take that.

The Grandmother is back home — the hospital released her on Saturday after two nights which is an important fact to remember. She still doesn’t have the strength or the energy to use the bathroom on her own. Even with the portable commode we bought for her next to her bed, she is unable to get up to use it. So we have her in diapers.

Of course, The Grandmother still thinks she is able to do use the bathroom properly. Yesterday I caught her trying to crawl to the bathroom which is on the other end of our apartment. She didn’t make it that far, and her shit oozed out of her diaper and leaked through her pants and onto our carpet.

All of us are agreed that she needs to go to a nursing home since we cannot take of her. She had a doctor’s appointment yesterday, and I couldn’t get her back up to the apartment by myself. Thankfully there was a kind neighbor nearby to help me.

The problem: Medicare won’t cover the cost of a nursing home unless she was hospitalized for three nights. They only approved her for a two-night stay. They are so clever.

So we don’t know what to do. Her doctor said we have to wait until her next hospitalization and hope we get lucky.

Saturday morning as I was cleaning the apartment up a little, I thought about how I miss my carefree life of my 20s and early-30s. I miss the wild days, the booze the drugs. The sloppy kisses, the desperate tongues. The moaning and groaning. The sweat, spit and cum.

On second thought, however, most of that never happened. There were a couple of nights of boozing and drugs, of course. But there I was in the kitchen reminiscing on nights that never happened. And that realization brought a wave of regret over me. Here I am now living in regret.

What you see here is an empty bed. Well, not a bed proper, but this here in the living room is where The Grandmother sleeps/lives. She’s an old-school Korean, and old habits die hard. (So if anyone wants to know why I don’t have anyone over, c’est la raison.)

Recently The Grandmother has been weaker than normal, and gradually her appetite left her. I couldn’t figure out what it was, but on Wednesday night she started having to go to the bathroom a lot. Like every 30 minutes or so. That’s when I knew she had a bladder infection.

I took her to the nearest urgent care yesterday afternoon, and she couldn’t urinate. No sample, no prescription for antibiotics. And for some strange reason, they couldn’t use a catheter at that facility. So we had to go to the emergency room.

But The Grandmother was really wiped out from all of this, and by this time it was 6 pm and I still hadn’t eaten. At 7:30 I tried to get her to go to the hospital, and she physically couldn’t. For the very first time in my life, I had to call 911.

The Grandmother was pissed at me. The whole time in the ambulance she kept glaring at me saying, “Are you having fun? Are you enjoying this?”

Irregardless, she did have a bladder infection, and she will be all right. There’s also an issue with opioid-caused constipation that gives her hard stools which is what is leading to all these bladder infections.

She’ll be in the hospital for another night at least. I’m not feeling any of the emotions I felt last year when she was going through all of these problems. Since I know what they are, there’s not too much uncertainty in my mind.

But I do know that the family will need to start thinking about professional care, because it’s pretty damn expensive to have to call an ambulance each time The Grandmother needs to go to the hospital.

I left the hospital at 11pm last night since I was having trouble forming words. My aunt-by-marriage took over the overnight hours. I came home to an empty apartment. Not since I’ve moved back to The Pedro have I had an apartment to myself.

It was odd and liberating. I remembered what it felt like to be living by myself. Then, of course, I remember why I had the place to myself, and the pangs of guilt started to creep in.

When I heard the little asshole deliberately went into a gay bar to shoot it up because he didn’t like boys kissing boys and girls kissing girls and undeclared kissing everyone, I went past sadness and grief to anger. Fuck this little asshole who wants my fellow fags to live in fear.

Fuck the glad-handing hypocrite politicians who send their “thoughts and prayers” but privately are jumping for joy and screaming hallelujah because 50 fags were killed.

Fuck G4S, the privatized militia, jailors, etc. who employed this little asshole and who I’m convinced helped the little asshole believe that violence is good, violence is capital.

Fuck all of the gun apologists — I’m tired of hearing your equally tired excuses gunsdon’tkillpeople thegoodguyswithgunswilltakecareofthings.

Fuck not being able to donate blood because I’m gay.

But then my life went on. I had an apartment to clean, laundry to do, groceries to buy for the Grandmother. Now the anger has dulled to sadness. Hopefully tomorrow will be a more uplifting day.

Hirsute Pursuit – Every Fiber of Your Being Says, "Thank you, sir." from Harley Phoenix on Vimeo.

Thanks to Spotify, I discovered the band Hirsute Pursuit last week. Holy shit if it’s everything I wanted in a music group. Beats reminiscent of Coil and Throbbing Gristle with explicit gay sex layered on top. Whereas Coil explored the mysticism behind gay sex magick, Hirsute Pursuit is all about the carnal and the power dynamics of gay sex.

After discovering Hirsute Pursuit, I Metroed to Santa Monica to see the 30th anniversary screening of David Lynch’s Blue Velvet while listening to them. As the train passed Santa Monica College, I was presented with a certain dilemma. With beats, moans, groans and mutterings of “Thank you, sir,” and “Open your pretty pink hole,” happening in my ear and these college-aged lads entering the train, I was quite aroused by the time we got to the terminus.

Goddamn, that was a great train ride.

From the auction block to the wrecking ball, our house is sold to the dozer. Our house is dust, wait for the wind to sweep it all away. Our house is dust, we never held the deed anyway. — Milemarker, “The Installment Plan”, Anaesthetic, 2001.

I always thought Milemarker referred to all-ages clubs when they sang about their house in “The Installment Plan.” These clubs were their homes, their families, their livelihoods. But with gentrification these clubs were eradicated and the families were forced to look for other places to live, to breathe their music.

I was at the Smell a lot from 2003 to 2006, nights filled with watching the Mae Shi, Manifolds and whatever local noisy band was playing. Hell. A night’s worth of entertainment for $5 was a helluva bargain. Even though they were strict about their no-alcohol policy, there was a dive bar next door The Jalisco Bar where you could get cheap beer to fuel a night of manic convulsing dancing. Even though I hadn’t been to a show there since 2006, I still consider it close to my heart, a place where I grew up musically in my 20s.

So when The Smell owner Jim Smith posted this demolition notice on Facebook this past weekend, it broke my heart a little:

It’s like “The Installment Plan” coming to life. The Smell is started a GoFundme campaign to help fight the demolition. Perhaps now the chorus of the song might come true?

Now I stand atop a rubble pile that once was my home but I have saved a brick each time I watched a building fall to dust. And I will build my own house with the bricks I’ve kept throughout the years, on the installment plan.

Apparently the owner of the buildings don’t want to demolish them right away. He just wants that option just in case in the future.

What you see here isn’t merely a blob of darkness. Look closely, and you will see an empty movie theater.

I saw the new Yorgos Lanthimos film The Lobster, and I guess thanks to A24 Distribution it was being shown at a cineplex in Torrance rather than me having to schlep to some art film house in Hollywood or Santa Monica. It was pretty jarring and fantastic, not as disturbing as Dogtooth. Although the final scene really had me squirming in my seat.

It’s a far cry from the mess that was X-Man: Apocalypse I saw Friday night. It is not a good movie, and the fact I saw it in 3D which caused the images to lose their sharpness made it even more disappointing despite not expecting much in the first place. Michael Fassbinder and Jennifer Lawrence were pretty bad in it, and the awful dialogue they had to recite was even worse.

IKEA is filled with ghosts, ghosts of furniture past with a reminder of former lives and former homes. It’s not that old furniture I once owned are there — those items have long been discontinued and what remains on the showroom floor have those ghosts that creep into my mind. There is the discontinued coffee table I had in my old Los Feliz bedroom, a glass-top rectangular table with rounded edges that was discontinued about a decade ago. Now they have a smaller circular table that I never would have bought in the first place. There is the small table lamp that looks like an ice cube, the particular duvet cover design from the Echo Park house.

That Los Feliz house was amazing. My bedroom big enough to fit my twin bed, a couch, coffee table and my desk. The Echo Park house up on the hill with the great views.

Walking through IKEA I was filled with thoughts of what was and regrets with where I am now and what could have been. What more I could have done with those spaces, with that life and what is glaringly lacking right now. Maybe it’s appropriate that off to the side on the way to the As-Is section right before you get to the cashier is where you can pick up some rope.

Then she went upstairs again, locked her door, put coal on the fire, and, swooning from the heat, felt the boredom pressure down heavier upon her. She would have gone downstairs to talk to the maid, but decorum would not allow.
— Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert (tr. Geoffrey Wall), Penguin Classics, p. 60.

Puis elle remontait, fermait la porte, étalait les charbons, et, défaillant à la chaleur du foyer, sentait l’ennui plus lourd qui retombait sur elle. Elle serait bien descendue causer avec la bonne, mais une pudeur la retenait.

Chatting with Madd today, and she told me to play the lottery so that I can win next week, so we can go shopping. I would shop exclusively at Alexander McQueen and Rick Owens and be a walking avant garde canvas and look ridiculous to people walking by but they have to take me seriously because I will say, “It is art.” We will buy a house along the ocean in Malibu, and when a storm tears the house in half we will move back to our loft in Downtown LA eating cakes while working with our trainers and wearing ridiculous shoes and eat everything in our way. Und vacation in Berlin und play wit all ze pretty boys und girls.