Song of a Reformed Headhunter

 Two full days on Malecon Beach, the first spent finishing Duras's The Easy Life and drinking too many margaritas. The tripartite structure of the book is interesting. The social trigger on the farm, the psychic unravelling by the sea, and then back to the farm again to re-immerse oneself in social life. Too neat an organization perhaps? Part 1, the longest part, is gripping, but Part 2, the second longest part, is the most experimental of the three parts. Part 3 skirts the danger of feeling like a letdown, with its happy conclusion.  On Wednesday evening, we went on the "art walk" in Puerto Vallarta. Some lovely works, particularly ceramics and photography. On both Wednesday and Thursday nights, we walked by the sea, swallowed by people in the Historico Centro, around the Arches and the Sail, and then spat out into silence and solitude further south. 

  The flight from CDMX to Puerto Vallarta took one and a half hours. Our Airbnb is on Pilitas, in Zona Romantica, the gay part of town. Had lunch at Cafe de Angel, walked about in the afternoon, and then a dinner of whole red snapper in Joe Jack's Fish Shack, which was not a shack, but a popular restaurant. The server deboned the snapper expertly in front of me. After dinner, went to a bar called La Noche, recommended by Bench. On the rooftop, talked to a young server who came from Venezuela. On the ground floor, a drag performance dragged out for one and a half hours. We were seeing many older gay men with other older gay men. Guy remarked accurately that PV, with its cheaper rents and drinks, seemed to be a haven for retirees from California.

When we arrived yesterday, the Pyramid of the Sun was covered in fog. The misty cover disappeared in the course of the morning, by the time we took our photo in front of the Pyramid of the Moon. The whole complex was truly impressive. What we did not expect was the colorful murals in the complex and surrounding residential ruins. In the murals, the liquid-shaped things coming out of mouths are speech bubbles. Can you spot the "football player"? Our guide Rogelio from With Locals was excellent. He was informative and skeptical at the same time, very unusual for a tour guide.   Back in the hotel, started watching The Witcher: Blood Origin , with Michelle Yeoh in it. Then found out on IG that Henry Cavill has been dropped from both Superman and The Witcher. When Guy joined me, we watched Glass Onion , with Daniel Craig as the detective and Edward Norton as the Meta-like CEO. Not brilliant by any means, it was worth watching.

  On Christmas Eve, visited Museo Mural Diego Rivera, and saw "Dream of a Sunday Afternoon at Alameda Central," his highly personal and political mural. Then walked through the park itself, the oldest public park in Latin America, to Constitution Square, or Zocalo. Lunch at the lovely Cafe de Tacuba. Back in hotel, watched Isi and Ossi , starring a delicious Dennis Mojen and Lisa Vicari who played the innocent rich girl well.  Late start on Christmas Day. Continued reading Duras's The Easy Life Part 2, where the female protagonist goes to the beach and falls apart. Then went to the Museo Nacional de Anthropologia. Very impressive buildings housing an impressive collection of pre-Columbian artefacts. Rainy day. Back in hotel, watched Men in Black: International starring Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson. Hemsworth in bed with an octopus-like alien, but because it's a family movie, he does not even show his butt. Then repeat-watched Lewis on Youtube with Guy: "W...

  Yesterday, visited a place that I had always wanted to visit since I heard about it: Frida Kahlo's Blue House, or Casa Azul. It was a beautiful compound of house and garden. The great paintings were not there, as they were scattered in the world's museums, but the material remnants of one's life were. The wheelchair in front of the easel in the artist's studio. The mirror above the beds in the day and night bedrooms that enabled the artist to paint while lying down in excruciating pain. The artist's ashes in an urn in the shape of toad, to recall Diego's nickname for himself, the toad-frog. The corsets—medical and decorative—that held the broken body straight. The song written by Patti Smith, painted on the garden wall, inspired by Noguchi's gift of a display case of butterflies to Kahlo. Famously, when Kahlo had to remove her gangrenous foot, she said, "Feet, what do I need you for when I have wings to fly?" After Casa Azul, we walked to the lov...

Five of my "Ungovernable Bodies" poems have just appeared in Five Dials, a literary magazine published by Hamish Hamilton, together with work by K. Busatto, Helon Habila, Annie Katchinska, Mattie Lubchansky, Ben Miller, Tommi Parrish, and Binyavanga Wainaina. The issue is themed Unfettered Joy and Freedom. You can download the pdf for free here , and read about my shenanigans with Leroy, Carlos, Brian, Antonio, and Antonio again. Yesterday, flew with Guy into Mexico City. Five-and-a-half hour flight.  Checked into Galleria Plaza Hotel at Reforma. Met Tim for dinner at a Japanese restaurant, Wanwan Sakaba, and then got a drink at NeonSoulRave. Cute boys, but we were too tired to wait for the drag show to start at 10 pm. We are here until Tuesday. 

Weekly column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . In downtown Santa Fe Plaza, surrounded by trees draped with Christmas lights, a plain woooden box squat oddly in the center. Here for the first time, on a short vacation, I found out from a local resident only two days ago what the box had replaced: an obelisk honoring Union soldiers, "heroes," according to the plaque, who died in battle with "savage Indians."  In October 2020, after many peaceful protests and much foot-dragging by the mayor, Native activists and their allies took things into their hands and dragged down the obelisk with ropes and chains. Photo credit: Luis Sanchez Saturno / New Mexican file photo  KRQE I was familiar with the image of the American Civil War as the war to end slavery. I was ignorant of the fact that Union forces consolidated Northern control over New Mexico by massacring its Native peoples and dispossessing them of their homelands. "When is an obelisk no...

 Read three novels during our one-week vacation in Maine. A very believable romance lies at the heart of Martha Cooley's new novel Buy Me Love , but in the depths lurks the tangled bond between brothers and sisters, and into the air rises an aria of love to Brooklyn. As for Alan Lightman's Reunion , the minor style cannot save a slight plot and slighter characters. Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita is a literary masterpiece. The floating point of view is a tremendously flexible and exciting device. The imagination at full stretch, whether revising the crucifixion narrative, inventing the Devil's ball, or describing the feeling of flying just above Moscow. Simultaneously profound philosophical and ethical questions are posed, such as cowardice and compromise while living under a totalitarian regime.

Weekly column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . To send this dismal year off, we are taking a break from New York to stay for a few days in Mystic, Connecticut. This old shipbuilding and whaling village has many delights to offer, including our rented cottage built in 1770 by one John Denison. Another is the river, whose scale-like appearance when brushed by the wind justifies fully the name of the village. The name "Mystic" is derived from the Pequot term "missi-tuk" describing a large river whose waters are driven into waves by tide or wind, as Wikipedia informs us. The best part of our stay, however, is away from the village, from its historic seaport and shops. Barn Island Wild Life Management Area is a 1,013-acre wildlife conservation site offering hiking, bird watching, fishing, and deer hunting. You emerge out of hardwood forests to see large tracts of tidal marshes that drown in Little Narragansett Bay. The...

We were in Italy for GH's 60th birthday for two weeks, from August 3-17. Venice was definitely the highlight of the trip: the magical canals and floating palazzi; the modern museum Punto Della Dogana restored from an old custom house by Tadao Ando; the moving works of Arte Povera artist Jannis Kounellis on show at the Prada Foundation; the dramatic works of Tintoretto decorating the Scuola Grande di San Rocco; the first-time visit to the Biennale. Unplanned were pleasant meetings with Filipino servers at one Italian restaurant and a Bangladeshi server at another,  beyond San Marco Square. Our hotel Pensione Accademia was perfect. Florence was too crowded with tourists. Returning 29 years after my first undergrad visit, I explored the Basilica di Santa Croce (E. M. Forster!), with its tombs and memorials for Michelangelo, Dante, Galileo, Machiavelli, and Rossini, and its perfect chapter house designed by Brunelleschi. The Bargello Museum was less impressive than I had thought. The...

Weekly column for Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . Is there really a spirit of writing here, in Dumaguete, the sea-facing capital of the province of Negros Oriental, in the Philippines? My guide, fiction writer and heritage activist Ian Rosales Casocot, thinks so. He teaches creative writing at the oldest writing workshop in the country. He has seen many writers, new and established, discover that spirit in their time here. Yesterday I broke my dry spell in Asia and revised a poem that I had shelved. Silliman University, where Ian teaches, is the oldest private American university in Asia. It is a living part of the country's colonial history. As Ian wrote in his blog, when the victorious Americans took over from the Spanish, they imposed English on the country to transmit their values. Ian remembers having to speak English only in grade school. To enforce the rule, the students were made to play a "game" called Badge. Whoever forgot himself and spok...

Spent yesterday with PYR who brought me to see the magnificent Croton Dam. Then a drive through the miniscule downtown of Croton-on-Hudson and lunch of home-made siew mai and popiah at her place. Lovely day, which ended with a Gaudy Boy team meeting at Rasa back in the city.

Wed, Aug 10 - Arrived in Phnom Penh. First tuk tuk ride from airport into city. Stayed at Patio Hotel., just off 51 Street, also called Foreigners' Street. Construction booming in the city. The skyline is blocked by buildings clad in green netting. Visited gay bars in the evening. The best one was Space Hair, which doubled as an hair salon in the day. The servers, tall and hunky, unlike most Khmers, were trained to sit and chat with customers. Ours moved to Phnom Penh from a village on the border with Thailand. Thu, Aug 11 - Walked along the promenade adjacent to the brown Tonle Sap River and around the palace area. Had a gin and tonic at the Elephant Bar at Raffles Hotel. Had a nice massage in Patio the day before, and had another one, two hours, that day. Stress relieved! Fri, Aug 12 - Van to Sihanoukville, where we took the boat to Koh Rong. Rough ride. It lasted an eternity. A skiff greeted us, and we finally arrived at the Lonely Beach, run by a Frenchman called Danny, who...

San Francisco is a palimpsest of memories for me. Visiting the first time with my first boyfriend WL, I was so excited to stroll down the famous Castro, browse at City Lights, and then, less usually, have dim sum in Daly City with WL's friend D. My second visit was with TH, my second boyfriend, who loved walking about the city too. The sharpest memories of that trip was dancing at Badlands and the tour of Napa Valley in a mini-bus, returning to the city on a ferry. I flew out a third time, on a crazy impulse, to meet someone whom I got to know on-line. JES managed a cafe in Westfield Shopping Mall, and I read a book in the cafe until he knocked off from work. He drove us down the coast where I saw seals playing in the Pacific Ocean. The fourth visit was with GH. In the city we visited art galleries, hotel lobbies, and a great architectural bookshop, and out of the city we stayed in Napa Valley, a first for me. I visited SF for the fifth time with a decided mix of emotions. I was ...

So I returned from my Thanksgiving getaway to learn that my book Steep Tea has been listed by the Financial Times as one of four best books of poetry of 2015, along with the new annotated Poems of T. S. Eliot by Christopher Ricks and Kim McCue; Horace: Poems ed. by Paul Quarrie; and Citizen by Claudia Rankine. Completely unexpected, completely floored. "The Singapore-born poet’s first UK publication is disciplined yet adventurous in form, casual in tone and deeply personal in subject matter. Koh’s verse addresses the split inheritance of his postcolonial upbringing, as well as the tension between an émigré’s longing for home and rejection of nostalgia." - Maria Crawford in UK's Financial Times The time away was otherwise dominated by reading Amy Sueyoshi's study of Yone Noguchi's romantic relationships in a book aptly titled Queer Compulsions . Through the study of the correspondence between Yone and his lovers, Sueyoshi persuaded me that his most passiona...

Things about Costa de Barcelona I Will Not Forget  Not the taste of paella marinera but the taste of anticipation. Anchovies. Beach that smells of cigarette ash. Men, like so many beaten up luxury boats, cruising in the lap of the Mediterranean. The water is so clear off Platja des Cavallet that I see the ghost of the fish that I ate last night. Eight years ago, you treaded the narrow walkway around the construction scaffolding inside the Sagrada Familia. Now the nave is polished to a shine, the light streaming through the stained glass windows as if through water. It’s all too bright and clean to you. When the church is finished in ten years’ time, it will be just another church, Gaudi dead as a saint in the basement. What chance! Meeting B and J on the train to Sitges. I first met them in Madrid a month ago, when we were standing still. Lying in an enormous bed with our new friends, in a restaurant overlooking the sea, we drank too much. Nothing happened, but a morning ...

Guy visited Desperate Literature Bookshop, where I read from my book STEEP TEA. He took these photos. When you are in Madrid, be sure to visit this lovely bookshop and get a copy of STEEP TEA from Madrid! We're leaving for Barcelona tomorrow morning.

Things about Andalusia I Will Not Forget  So many palm trees, shooting up like fireworks. A courtyard of orange trees. After harvest, the sunflower stalks stand alert as otters. The Alhambra is a mosaic of not two, not three, but four dimensions. After moving through its fountains, gardens, and palaces, I see on the way home the tessellation of leaves and the space between leaves. I see the tessellation of leaves and the time between leaves. Riding pillion behind my host on a motorbike and slipping through the streets of Sevilla. In Murillo’s great painting, the child gives his coin to his mother, with a look of tenderness that only a child can give, just as the towering saint gives his money to the beggar man. Outside the cathedral, one night, the guitarist waved away the coin proffered by a child. He did not want charity but to sell his compact discs. Mecca is east-southeast but the Mosque of Córdoba faces south because its royal builder was homesick for Damascus. Repre...

At the Plaza de Santa Cruz, I watched the Los Gallos (The Cocks) tablao flamenco last night. Great singers and guitarists. The male dancer was terrific, as was one of three female dancers. The oldest one, of course. Loud as castanets the dancer snaps her fingers— fish, fowl, and flesh

Things about Madrid I Will Not Forget  So many sex workers. South of Gran Via, the women are mostly white, north they are mostly dark, or trans. A melon is called melón but a watermelon is called sandia. In the morning, when the day is fresh, I love running shirtless along Gran Via and all around Retiro Park. Given the wrong drink and too shy to ask the muscle waiter to change it. Tinto de verano, con limón. In a plaza chanced upon one night, Chinese schoolchildren kicking around a football and speaking Spanish, of course. Which of them will be the next David Villa? Which the next Lorca? Who will come first? Woken up at 4 am by the cigarette-edged talk of kids outside the club opposite my apartment. The dark pearl on the outside of razor clams. A cruise club called Organic, equipped with a cross, resting horizontally, and revolving, on one leg. Goya’s Black Paintings. ¿De donde eres? The same younger Asian with the older white man sighted in Buenos Aires, London, Paris, and...