Tag: Anne Rice

Posted on

“Most Unusual, So Peculiar”

The weekend, which was quite sexy, featured some reconnecting with some friends (via text), uploading lots of older poems (about 100 I think), creating and posting several more Jason collages (which makes me feel very vain, even if I’m cutting else out to protect them) and finally watching 2 major finales: “Heartstopper Forever” and the Season 1 finale of “The Vampire Lestat (S01E07 “The Failures”) – both had me crying.

Aaron and I watched “Heartstopper: Forever” on Saturday (after finishing Season 3 on Friday). We both felt the film served as a very good series finale, which are always very difficult to pull off in a satisfying way. We felt that it wasn’t quite perfect, but again, was better than average – or – one of the better series finales that we’ve ever seen. I was impressed by several elements, including a powerful scene calling out the rollback of trans rights, and also how the film (and the series in general) did a really good job of giving everyone a moment to shine before all was said and done.

The season finale of “The Vampire Lestat” was weird and a little disjointed, but similar to “Interview With the Vampire”, this feels like the first half of a larger story, even if the next half is a different novel, “The Queen of the Damned” – but that’s how the books felt too. The story for the episode gave rise to adaptations of several moments from the novels, including a horrific aside from “The Vampire Armand” and what I think was a reference to “Memnoch the Devil” – but I read both of those books when they were new and haven’t ever read them again – more than 26 years ago? So I’m amazed that I remember these things. I should reread them all. A few years ago I reread the first 3 and started the 4th + I reread “Prince Lestat”, “The Witching Hour”, “Lasher” and part of “Taltos”. I’d like to read all of Rice’s novels someday. I read nearly everything up to “Blood Canticle” but there are several after that which I never even owned, so there’s a lot left to explore.

As I mentioned briefly, there were some sexy shenanigans this weekend, which I won’t share here. And there were also plans for more, which is exciting.

Edit: I lied, as I feel I won’t remember what the fuck I was talking about if I ever read this again. lol There was a threesome. I don’t need to go into the details because I’m sure I’ll remember those. lol I have an odd history with threesomes, actually. There were several in the 90s, but I was always the third and most of those were boy / boy / girl. But in my current relationship (which has lasted nearly 15 years so far) I’ve had 3 threesomes (all men), all of which have been spectacular in very different ways, though not without consequence. Still, overall, the experiences have been extremely positive. That should do it.

I might be going on a trip back to the Florida house. But that remains unclear. If I go, it would likely be over a week from now. I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about that, but maybe I’ll talk about that more when I’ve decided.

This week will mark the beginning of the penultimate season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, which I’m mostly excited about. I didn’t actually love Season 3 (which I’ve never rewatched) and I feel like I don’t really want to rewatch it or Season 4 until we have Season 5, which won’t likely arrive until next year. I hope the series ends well. But also, I’m curious to see how this season plays out. And despite how it might sound, I do look forward to seeing the entire series in context – I’m just a little sad that we only have 16 episodes left and that it might take a long time to get those last 6.

The other big news coming this week likely has to do with Marvel. Tickets for Avengers: Doomsday go on sale this week and Marvel returns to Hall H at San Diego Comic Con this Saturday – so the first trailer is likely imminent. There will also likely be news of other Marvel programs on the way; Spider-Man: Brand New Day opens next week, but there other projects in the pipeline like Avengers: Endgame Encore, VisionQuest, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man Season 2, Daredevil: Born Again Season 3, Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse, X-Men ’97 Season 3, Marvel Zombies Season 2 and probably others, so there’s a lot that could be discussed. Personally, I’m hoping for news about VisionQuest which is what I’m most looking forward to – and nervous about. But…keeping in line with tradition, we have something scheduled during the panel, which means that my plans to sit at home reading the news as it pours in, are unlikely, unless I’m not feeling well that day or just decide otherwise. We’ll see.

Today’s journal entry title song quote is from “Status Report” which a song on the soundtrack to a musical episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (S02E09 “Subspace Rhapsody”) featuring the cast discovering that they are all singing for some reason. I love this episode.





Posted on

“I’m a Lonely One”

Sunday and Monday I watched more television. I also had my teeth cleaned. The above image is of me in my dentist’s office at 827 11th Avenue in Manhattan. I slept well the night before and dreamed of Lestat, which I caught up on the day before and I’ve come to the conclusion that I love it. I also caught up on X-Men ’97, continued where I left off with X-Men: The Animated Series and watched 2 episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation with Aaron.

Here’s what I watched:

Star Trek: The Next Generation S03E06 Booby Trap
Star Trek: The Next Generation S03E07 The Enemy

X-Men S03E08 Savage Land, Strange Heart – Part 1
X-Men S03E09 Savage Land, Strange Heart – Part 2
X-Men ’97 S02E03 Rise of Apocalypse – Part 1

The Vampire Lestat S01E04 The Devil’s Road
The Vampire Lestat S01E05 New York

TNG S03E06 “Booby Trap”. I had remembered this episode as a bit cringey as Geordie LaForge stumbles in love and forms an odd and nearly romantic relationship with a hologram, but I remembered nothing of the rest of the episode. Aaron said the same thing and we were entertained by the episode. It marks the first appearances of Julie Warner as Christy Henshaw and Susan Gibney as the holographic (and later real world) version of Dr. Leah Brahms; Gibney also later portrays Commander / Captain Erika Benteen in 2 episodes of DS9.

I always remember TNG S03E07 “The Enemy” as an episode that my sister Janice saw before I did, and how she spoke of it. The episode marks the first appearance of Andreas Katsulas as Tomalak, who later returns in the role at least twice, though they’re not really him, per say, if I remember correctly, one being an illusion and another being an alternate future take. Both of these episodes feature Colm Meaney as Miles O’Brien. It’s nice to see the recurring cast start to come together here and Season 3 really does feel like where the series starts to gel. And while that’s the common wisdom among fans, in retrospect, its insane that it took more than 50 episodes for the series to really get reliably good, especially since most of the series of the current era ever reach that number of episodes at all, with only Lower Decks and Discovery making 50 or more; Lower Decks ended with 50 while Discovery ended with 65.

The X-Men episodes, the “Savage Land, Strange Heart” 2-part story is unlikely to be anyone’s favorite, but I thought some of the writing was really clever (“Who died and made you Cyclops?”) and I appreciated the explanation of Sauron’s origin. I just don’t care about the Savage Land in general.

The X-Men ’97 episode continues the winning streak of this series. I’ve never X-Men stories featuring Apocalypse, so I’ve been dreading this new season, but so far I’ve loved all of it. If it were only Apocalypse, I’d probably be bored, but the thing about X-Men ’97 is that it feels like the big payoff for all the stories that came in the previous Animated Series – with fewer episodes, they don’t seem to hold anything back, and it’s all the better for it.

The Vampire Lestat episodes really knocked it out of the park for me. Things that I doubted about the season came into focus, both with the parts that were adapted from various Anne Rice novels, and others that are wholly original to this interpretation of the material. Very impressive. This season, and the series as a whole is probably best in a binge model vs. a weekly layout. I believe the Immortal Universe shows play out like this:

01 Interview with the Vampire Season 1: Part I
02 Interview with the Vampire Season 2: Part II
03 Mayfair Witches Season 1
04 Mayfair Witches Season 2
05 Mayfair Witches Season 3 ?
06 Talamasca: The Secret Order
07 Interview with the Vampire Season 3: The Vampire Lestat

The present day scenes in the first 2 seasons of Interview seem to be set over 11 days in 2022, ending shortly after the publication of the book in 2023. Season 2 of Mayfair Witches references the publication of the book and features a guest spot by a vampire introduced in Season 2 of Interview. Talamasca is set after the publication of the book with guest spots by a few characters; a later episode may feature a Lestat tune. Season 3, The Vampire Lestat seems to be set 2025.

Having said all of that, the only series I can wholeheartedly recommend is Interview / Lestat. Talamasca comes close to being very good at times but never quite arrives IMO, and from what I’ve seen of Mayfair Witches, it is a horrible adaptation of The Lives of the Mayfair Witches series (which are my favorite Anne Rice books, along with “Cry to Heaven”) and the series also features some truly dreadful “acting”. I may go back to it at some point, just so I can say I saw everything.

Today’s journal title song quote is from “All Fall Down”, theme from “The Vampire Lestat”, performed by Sam Reid as Lestat de Lioncourt.

Posted on

The Whale Trilogy

1

Pain radiates
through smoothly shaven flesh,

Unseen skull
in burning wrapping paper,

I skitter to share
what it seeks to prevent…

The years are a bitch
and I ache to betray her…

For words in this gloaming
are enabled by night…

Even when tinged
with the heartbreak of sorrow…

Thoughts freely roaming
until morning sight…

Might seem unhinged
come the light of tomorrow.

2

There was a morning, a day, a hot afternoon
where I thought my life would change…
where my wandering
had finally altered my direction…
but it wasn’t meant to be.
Perhaps every day is like this for others…
but the day I am thinking of,
the day of sex before the sermon,
I believed that I’d finally arrived
somewhere I was meant to be,
only to learn across the years
that I would seldom ever return,
and I wish I would have known
how special that time was,
how precious those moments.

It’s altogether different
yet somehow the same
when watching you
watching whales…
when the music you share
nearly kills me with it’s mournful beauty –
giving me fever chills and death spasms
before my fever breaks
and I’m allowed to dance
in the trance of our shoegazing
dream pop.

In the fever
all that could comfort me
was the seemingly old
but younger woman
with the ghost on the porch…
An echo of that first reading
joining my pain across two different eras.

3

The first would have been discovery,
and on the very brink of puberty
as I stumbled through that sea of trees
to find a validating fiction.

And now the feeling: brotherly,
yet still cherry stink of nudity
as I’m humbled by our deities
to bind an animated friction.

And the proof
it is not fair
but the truth
is he’s out there
begging for money,
trading sex for drugs hungry
while the whales circle round us
tasting sweetly table scraps.

And the lie
if there is one
is that life
is a shotgun
because life hasn’t drowned us
baby please don’t go like that.

Written by Jason Wright
April 19, 2018

For Sean (Mobley) and Steve and Anthony.

Posted on

Cetacean Sadness

Our shared experiences in the past
seem to mean nothing to those reflected
in the world’s window screen.

I watch them all
hoping for recognition / reconnection
while sister hurts and Sean struggles.

Steve is happy listening to sad songs
which make me weep.

I want to tag myself in a million posts
in every place I’ve ever gone.

Fuck this song.
Fuck this.

Life changes us
and you’re a stranger that I once knew
or at least I thought I did.

I have pictures but they don’t seem to matter;
they don’t seem nearly as real as yours.

I tell you the secret in the past
but you are blind.

I dive for real love
at the beach house
with men that I trust
while Lauren Moloko Hatchie St Vincent
(actor out of work in the radio Dept.)
decides the time is now
to try to speak your true name
amidst disarray antidotes,
preoccupations with daysleepers
and their creation…
and now the meaningful
nonsensical rhyming must begin
as we fade away to nothing important:

I get a little blue
as I listen to your tunes
as I Facebook stalk your trek
across the place I never knew…

And Sean is turning tricks
paying rent by sucking dicks,
and nothing really matters
if our lives are candle wicks.

But I want to visit woman
with the ghost out on the porch…
want to live my life again
when I am out of sorts….
want to read of witches
as my fever threatens soul…

Your aura ghost echo
(lost orca in ghetto)
and only espresso
can make us both whole.

Written by Jason Wright
April 19, 2018

Posted on

Sean’s Junk

I’m wearing Sean’s Tori Amos shirt
which he gave me 16 years ago…
yet it always somehow remains his.

Maybe because he lost his mind
again
last year,

He tossed me to the proverbial curb
as if I were the junkie that he confessed to be,
though who the fuck really knows?

Not that it doesn’t make sense…

It actually explains a lot –
actually connects many dots –
solves so many mysteries
when combined with our own histories
only we’re all addicted to something, aren’t we?

Alcohol, as a drug, betrays you very quickly.
Anne Rice said something to that effect once,
which I’ve always remembered though I can’t find the exact quote.

I can’t tell if I’ve been addicted to food…but if I have,
then it is a drug that has betrayed me all too quickly.

Perhaps this is why he shivers inside me;
not “Long Gone Sean”,
but that child version of Jason Wright
who whispers always beneath my skin
and behind my eyes.

I struggle to feed him
but his pained and palsied
nearly lifeless form
rejects the medicine he both craves and abhors,
never knowing which decisive reaction is truly best
after our fucked up father ripped his world inside out…

Sean’s biological father (“Ted”) was rock solid awesome
while his step-father was less so;
addicted to pain pills, he gave me my first tab of Xanax
after I fucked his son in Sean’s gay, white trash,
St. Helen, Michigan bedroom.

I reached my hand up to cradle his head
to prevent it’s rhythmic bruising crash against the wall
and I felt his confusing reaction as it quivered down
from his brain, down along his spine, back through
his blissfully tight asshole around my hard and horny thrust.

Later he told me no one else he’d been with
would ever consider such a kindness…
his stories were always so wondrously sad.

That 2008 reunion was nearly 10 years ago
and apparently wouldn’t last the decade to come.

I wonder where he’d be today
when this shade of Jason will struggle
to jam a needle in his arm
and feed our craving
without judgment or rejection.

“We all have our junk and my junk is you.”

Junk: What William S. Burroughs was high on
until he woke from “The Sickness”,
when secretive Not-Dr.-Seward
was cavorting with his Mugwumps.

Junk: The so-called yards where I played
to escape the insanity of my own brutal
“Protoplasm Daddy” complex.

Junk: The word is now forever associated
with the 16yo boy at safe sex instructional
who was the first I’d ever heard equate cocks, dicks & pricks
with an addictive substance.

My so-called junk
relieved Sean of his unwanted virginity,
while his Naked Lunch variety
relieved us of our treasured friendship,
filled his veins with human immunodeficiency virus
and bubbled out of him in a hateful madness
which I will never allow to murder my love for him.

Written by Jason Wright
March 22, 2018

Posted on

Northbound (NSFW)

On the one train in Manhattan a song,
a lyric makes me think of San Francisco.

I’m shaving in Paul’s bathroom
while man I met at Radical Fairy drag party is watching me.

I’m nervous.
He’s so beautiful
and several years older than me;
he’s 30 & I’m 26.

It seemed like a lot then.
Maybe because the last guy I loved
was 9 years younger than him;
they had the same name.

I cut myself as I often did back then.
A tear of blood dripping down my face
and before I can react
blonde ken doll man moves in
and purposefully licks me clean.
Sacrament.

I remember wondering if he was crazy.
Blood. San Francisco.
I want to throw him against the wall
so I can penetrate him and understand.
Is there pain in his eyes or lust?
Possibly both.

I don’t remember what happened next
but the next song is beginning
and I imagine kissing him,
shaking him…

“Are you crazy?”
“Do you want to die?”

A side thought where I’m less sympathetic
and I give him the degradation I imagine him craving.
Strip. Kneel. Baptism in piss and cum.
Fucking him mercilessly.

The thought passes and I wonder at his state of mind.

He was newly out then and haunted by his past;
“But I’m a Cheerleader” was the wrong movie to watch;
it filled him with memories that made him sad.
I think he was reading “The Vampire Armand”;
I was reading “Merrick”.
His parent was seemingly gravely ill.
They called during our first sexual encounter
to request his presence at the hospital.
He talked them out of it.
I tried to talk him into it,
but instead he said “Damn” while I bit his nipple.
I remember telling him that his asshole tasted amazing
and then him asking if there were any that didn’t…
and I wonder if he ever found out?
A taste test with naked men all standing in a row.

He fucked me in that livingroom.
It was days later.
After he’d taken me to a leather bar and spoke of dangerous sex,
but nothing about the boyfriend he’d confess to later.
Devastating at the time.
I wanted to be his.
Just a crazy dream I guess.
Lies and dreams and strange encounters that I still cherish.

We’re friends on Facebook.
I don’t think of him often
and I’ve not seen him in person in over 14 years.

I’m 40 now and I’ve been fucked at least 6 times in the last week.
My partner is curious about why I’m so frenzied of late and I honestly don’t know;
I’m sure it’s nothing to do with this…
but past sexual encounters fill my thoughts of late.
This is but the latest example.

Walking from the train I ran up to my place to write this down.
I don’t know why.
It seems less important now.
I need to get groceries.

Written by Jason Wright
January 8, 2015

error: Content is protected !!