CALIFORNIA DREAMING II...
Well, it was the best of times. To begin with, it was the first time the Goat and I had ever been together for more than four days [and four days only happened on the trip to Cape Cod before Halloween] and it felt fine.
We have three weeks together coming up in March, and I am sure looking forward to it. If all hell doesn't break loose at his vacation spot, I will begin the wearisome project of pulling up stakes again and moving out to the Big Woods.
But in the meantime, back to California.
We have three weeks together coming up in March, and I am sure looking forward to it. If all hell doesn't break loose at his vacation spot, I will begin the wearisome project of pulling up stakes again and moving out to the Big Woods.
But in the meantime, back to California.
Friday afternoon, I traveled a couple of hours to his place, had a torrid dinner, and spent the evening alone with my free-lance work, which worked out rather well; the following morning I no longer had the energy for it, and finished a book I had borrowed from him instead. That was good, too. When his Saturday classes were over, he showed up and got ready to go with what I would describe as "all deliberate speed." As we finally started rolling off toward the airport, I realized that we were never going to make our flight, that I was going to have a melting-down Goat on my hands, and that I was going to have to make the best of it. Then he had me call the airline to see if the flight was still leaving on time, and it was -- two hours later than I had thought [2pm, not 12pm]. Oh, well. Hand-wringing never really gets you anywhere, anyway.
We checked in; we seemed to have more left over after we checked our big bags than we did before. I had a briefcase full of work to lug, along with my overnight bag that contains the necessaries that lost luggage might leave me depending on: my shaving kit with meds, a complete change of clothes, a second pair of shoes [don't ask]. I felt as if I had never traveled with three things before [bag, briefcase, coat], but I know I have. It just seemed awkward. At our connection hub he parlayed some credit card credits into a couple of passes to the Snootereeno Insiders' Club, and we had a free glass of bad red wine and stocked up on stale crackers and pretty good cheese.
Then it was off for the coast. Maybe it was the wine, but I found it almost impossible to do any reading, so I bailed out and we played pinochle instead. Then I slept, which was a good thing, because when we arrived [midnight our time, 9 pm on the coast], we were picked up by our first West Coast hosts and whisked off to the bars. This is where it got weird for me, but weird in a good way.
First of all, I knew that one of our hosts, call him "Atticus," had been one of the Goat's first lovers after his coming out thirty-odd years ago. So not only had he known the Goat about forty times as long as I had, but he presumably learned more about him in the four years together than I have picked up in nine months. His current lover had gotten used to the Goat's annual visits, so I was the only one new to the mix.
Second, it was my very first trip to a leather bar, not to mention to three of them in succession in one evening. And it was the first time in years that I had gotten that stoned in public. The bars were visited in a specific order, apparently Atticus' regular Friday night rounds repeating on Saturday. The first was famous but rather dull so early in the evening; the second had a little more going on, including my getting REALLY stoned on top of the beers I had already had, and suddenly finding myself unable to think of much else except the fact that the Goat and I had not "been together" for some time.
This feeling became quite overpowering by the time we got to the third bar. Here, it was finally late enough for action to be underway; I have no idea what went on anywhere else on the premises, but where the four of us wound up standing, myself doing my best to climb into the Goat's clothes, we were only a few feet away from several very enthusiastic sex acts. The Goat, by the way, claims not to have noticed any of them, because he was so worried I would be freaked out by the general atmosphere. It is true that the general atmosphere was "raw sex." But so was the immediate activity. I just decided not to freak out about it -- I was probably too stoned to freak out even if I had wanted to. I had a good time, and even after I realized that everyone who squeezed by us [and our athletic neighbors] to get to the alleyway outside was rubbing up against me as they passed, I stayed cool. I was stoned enough, and horny enough, not to care much. That was pretty amazing, and I was just conscious enought to realize it...
None of the above would be so extraordinary if this very experience had not been the precise thing that I had denied myself for over thirty years. I may have been stupid, but by the time I walked away from half of my inclinations, I was far from innocent; I knew what I was avoiding, and I knew [on some level] that I was avoiding temptation because I did not have a snow ball's chance in hell of resisting it if I really had to face it. And here I was, basically ignoring it so I could play tonsil hockey with the Goat. The final analysis? It was weird, yes, but almost ridiculously anti-climactic. Heavy atmosphere of raw sex, people going at it mere feet away from me, and it seemed to be less a baptism by fire than by "@#$% it." Who cared? Not me.
Now that was mind-boggling.
I am, however, glad that I was not there alone. One of the main reasons I did walk away from that particular half of myself was the whole meat-market aspect of "hooking up" (not that we used that term in those days, of course), and everything that came with it. I'm still not sure that I would be able to handle it all, if left to my own devices. But then, left to my own devices, I am in bed by midnight, so, as one of the recurring mantras has it, what the hell do I know?
We slept really well that night, for some reason, and woke to a late "breakfast" that featured most of the imaginable variations on dead pig, along with a small mountain of eggs. Heaven, in its own way. We took off to pick up our rental car and set off for the Goat's daughter's home at the other end of the earth. A pot-luck dinner was scheduled, and the Goat had plans to put together a seafood dish; much energy went into finding absolutely the right things along the way: trying to please Herself, her vegetarian artist husband, and their... gifted daughter, was not an easy undertaking. But we are talking about the Goat here.
We arrived on time, dinner got made and eaten, the guests came and went; we all survived. The following two days we spent not-a-baby- anymore-sitting the Goat's granddaughter, which was a lot of fun almost all the time. The next night the Goat did his magic with fish again, and the following night we went out to an incredible tapas restaurant and ate ourselves silly. I am relieved to say that I did not have to pay for that one. I spent my days playing with clay, playing silly games, making tea, making conversation, catching the new Disney movie, Enchanted, which I, for one, found enchanting, though it did lead to a tiny tantrum when we had to leave... in spite of which [and that's a pretty small "which"] it was all grand. I left feeling that it was utterly unimaginable that I had not known these people a really long time -- and, well, I hadn't. But it felt like I had.
Back into the car. Off to spend Thanksgiving with more friends from thirty years ago. This involved another trek, broken by an incredible meal at a boutique vineyard run by friends of the Goat's: it was all simple, and all simply incredible. The wine, which I don't otherwise drink in the middle of the day, was good enough to make it really hard to stop drinking, and was, I am sure, not cheap. Another one for the record books: great food, good company, a beautiful setting [and what could be more beautiful than eating in the middle of a vineyard in the middle of mountains?]. We did make it to our final destination by suppertime, which was a minor miracle, to my mind, but then, the Goat is not as blind by night as I am: I navigate by landmarks, and when I can't see them, I tend to get hopelessly lost, and then panic. But he has a sense of direction, and we got there in good time, though we traveled the last bit by smell more than by navigation.
It was a strange thing, having just been on the Atlantic coast with the Goat, to suddenly be on the Pacific coast, and have the sun meeting the ocean at the other end of the day...
That night we wound up going to a real hole-in-the-wall taquería, and had very cheap but terrific food. [I paid for this one...] It was apparently the only place open in town on the evening before Thanksgiving, and it was jammed. Home, more wine, then out to sleep in the back yard, in what was probably once a tool shed, and was now half storage room, half guest room. It was the end of November, and the night was clear and @#$%-ing cold. We had more blankets than we knew what to do with, but that didn't take the edge off getting into bed or make it any easier to deal with getting out of bed in the morning. Luckily, there was hot tea and coffee-cake in the main house -- not to mention central heating. God, how grateful I was for that. And isn't that what Thanksgiving is meant to be all about? [First and foremost, there is life as it is, no matter how it is, of course, but that is operating on a somewhat higher plane...]
We played hookey for most of the day; there was a beach not far away that the Goat wanted to show me, so we drove and drove again, hiked down onto the beach, walked around enjoying the incredible spectacle of high surf and high tides [the full moon was apparently driving everything, and everyone, a little nuts]. On the hike back up the cliff, I got pretty warm and took off my sweater, which seemed like a good idea at the time. It was only once we were hot-footing it back for dinner that I realized that I had had my glasses hooked into the neck of the sweater on the way down to the beach, and that they were now nowhere in sight. And speaking of sight, I am nearly blind without them, at least as far as print is concerned. Luckily, after a recent visit without glasses to the Goat's domain, I had thought to bring along an old but serviceable second pair, so I just slung them around my neck, and all was pretty much well.
Thanksgiving dinner...
More people who had known the Goat since the dawn of time, or at least since he came out; Atticus and his new lover were there, which gave me a foothold socially; my tendency in a large group is to find myself a corner near two or three people I know, and not move all evening. More and more people kept arriving, all of whom the Goat seemed to know well. Many of them were discussing their HIV treatments, and what had worked for them when; a couple of them seemed to have suffered neurological damage. I just sat there near the Goat, wondering what all these people had been like before the plague moved through, and began to wonder where I was and what I was doing. More wine, and more weed. Some of these guys seemed not to really ever come down... And I seemed to be becoming one of them...
Well, in Mary Poppins' uncle's words, "too much is as good as a feast." We certainly proved that one. We had been cautioned to show up at 4 for hors d'oeuvres, and that was my downfall. We hadn't had lunch on our outing, and I was ravenous. I sat next to a plate of polenta with pesto and roasted peppers and did my best to finish it off single-handedly. Then at some point, some wise person whisked the hors d'oeuvres away. Unfortunately, they proceeded to bring one of the largest turkeys I have ever seen to the table. Mashed potatoes, risotto, collard greens, stuffing, gravy, vegetables, candied sweet potatoes... and then the desserts started coming out.
I am by nature a salt person, and so I tend to pack in as much as I can in the main event, and pass on most desserts. But after listening to all the fervent enconiums about various pies [always a problem for me in the "not eating dessert after eating as if you were'nt going to have any" department], I had a couple of small slices. Then another.
In a matter of a few hours, I was drunk, stoned, and stuffed to the gills, and while everyone else seemed to be glued to the [very large] television, I was profoundly grateful when the Goat suggested that we head out "to make the bed." That was in fact necessary, as I had spilled the contents of a bud-vase thoughtfully placed on the night-table onto the sheets while trying to negotiate some clean clothes out of my suitcase in the chilly morning air, but it provided a cover for going out to the shack in back and not coming in again. There are some pleasures that in the final analysis are not really meant as social endeavors...
though God knows... and I know... there are a lot of people who feel differently...
Up and off the next morning to get the rental car back all the way back to its point of origin again. Back along our trail, dinner with the Goat's daughter -- a fabulous Thai dinner, which I did pay for, for a change -- and then back to Atticus and the bars. I was ready to crawl home after Bar Number One and a very short visit to Bar Number Two, and the Goat went along with it, and I thought nothing of it. I was just too drunk, too stoned, and too stupid. But it turned out to have been a real sacrifice on his part -- what he really wanted to do was go out dancing. I am not a great dancer at the best of times [something about not really hearing the beat or knowing any steps] and this was not the best of times. The Goat is a really good dancer. Just physically graceful, which I have never been, and never will be. It seems all the more incredible that he should put up with me, though of course there is a flutter of surface "oh, you're no clumsier than anyone else" in circulation most of the time -- until I do something [again] like knock a vase over onto the sheets...
Anyway, back home, to bed, and up with the West Coast birds to catch our flight home. More endless cramped sitting and bad food [one can't help wondering what someone who hasn't flown for a decade or two would make of what counts as "service" these days -- must be something about how hard it is to get "good help"] and pinochle. More sitting around the hub connector, this time without any access to the Snootereeno Club, and several hours of delay to kill. I had a beer. The Goat had a sip, but passed otherwise, as he was driving us back to the Big Woods. As it turned out, he could probably have drunk the keg dry, as by the time we finally got off the plane at our final stop and got back to the Park-n-Ride lot, there had been time to drink, get drunk, sleep it off, wake up, and start drinking again...
Well, almost. We made it back to the Big Woods by a perfectly reasonable hour, on West Coast time, anyway, and I got a good-bye kiss or two then, and in the morning, which was particularly delightful, as I had to take off for Nowheresville before too long. And that is where I am today, avoiding as much work as much of the time as I can, and generally wishing this vacation could have gone on forever.
Nine whole days with the Goat. What's not to like about it?
I got to meet his daughter and her family, and got to know a couple of the people he has kept in touch with in all the years he has been back on the East Coast. Not always easy, but hey, what is? And the next visit is bound to be easier...
One of the things that I have been made aware of recently [over and over again, really] is how many things had to fall into place for the two of us to get together. We both had to leave our marriages, I had to be holding out for Mr. Right as opposed to Mr. Right-Now, the RBF had to organize the leather night in a city I otherwise rarely visited, the Goat and the RBF had to be on the outs, or skating towards it...
Any number of things could have turned out differently. I might even have found that spending more than four days with the Goat made it clear that things were never going to work out. Instead, I am deeper in than ever.
And I think that's a good thing.
Here's hoping that similar good things come to all who wait.
And that, my friends, is what Advent is all about.
Check it out, starting next Sunday...
Oh, did I mention that one of the lenses fell out of my second pair of glasses somewhere between our last airport stop and our falling into bed in the Big Woods? This prescription dance may yet turn out to be the most expensive part of the whole trip...
Oh, well...
Hang in there, all.
C
We checked in; we seemed to have more left over after we checked our big bags than we did before. I had a briefcase full of work to lug, along with my overnight bag that contains the necessaries that lost luggage might leave me depending on: my shaving kit with meds, a complete change of clothes, a second pair of shoes [don't ask]. I felt as if I had never traveled with three things before [bag, briefcase, coat], but I know I have. It just seemed awkward. At our connection hub he parlayed some credit card credits into a couple of passes to the Snootereeno Insiders' Club, and we had a free glass of bad red wine and stocked up on stale crackers and pretty good cheese.Then it was off for the coast. Maybe it was the wine, but I found it almost impossible to do any reading, so I bailed out and we played pinochle instead. Then I slept, which was a good thing, because when we arrived [midnight our time, 9 pm on the coast], we were picked up by our first West Coast hosts and whisked off to the bars. This is where it got weird for me, but weird in a good way.
First of all, I knew that one of our hosts, call him "Atticus," had been one of the Goat's first lovers after his coming out thirty-odd years ago. So not only had he known the Goat about forty times as long as I had, but he presumably learned more about him in the four years together than I have picked up in nine months. His current lover had gotten used to the Goat's annual visits, so I was the only one new to the mix.
Second, it was my very first trip to a leather bar, not to mention to three of them in succession in one evening. And it was the first time in years that I had gotten that stoned in public. The bars were visited in a specific order, apparently Atticus' regular Friday night rounds repeating on Saturday. The first was famous but rather dull so early in the evening; the second had a little more going on, including my getting REALLY stoned on top of the beers I had already had, and suddenly finding myself unable to think of much else except the fact that the Goat and I had not "been together" for some time.This feeling became quite overpowering by the time we got to the third bar. Here, it was finally late enough for action to be underway; I have no idea what went on anywhere else on the premises, but where the four of us wound up standing, myself doing my best to climb into the Goat's clothes, we were only a few feet away from several very enthusiastic sex acts. The Goat, by the way, claims not to have noticed any of them, because he was so worried I would be freaked out by the general atmosphere. It is true that the general atmosphere was "raw sex." But so was the immediate activity. I just decided not to freak out about it -- I was probably too stoned to freak out even if I had wanted to. I had a good time, and even after I realized that everyone who squeezed by us [and our athletic neighbors] to get to the alleyway outside was rubbing up against me as they passed, I stayed cool. I was stoned enough, and horny enough, not to care much. That was pretty amazing, and I was just conscious enought to realize it...
None of the above would be so extraordinary if this very experience had not been the precise thing that I had denied myself for over thirty years. I may have been stupid, but by the time I walked away from half of my inclinations, I was far from innocent; I knew what I was avoiding, and I knew [on some level] that I was avoiding temptation because I did not have a snow ball's chance in hell of resisting it if I really had to face it. And here I was, basically ignoring it so I could play tonsil hockey with the Goat. The final analysis? It was weird, yes, but almost ridiculously anti-climactic. Heavy atmosphere of raw sex, people going at it mere feet away from me, and it seemed to be less a baptism by fire than by "@#$% it." Who cared? Not me.Now that was mind-boggling.
I am, however, glad that I was not there alone. One of the main reasons I did walk away from that particular half of myself was the whole meat-market aspect of "hooking up" (not that we used that term in those days, of course), and everything that came with it. I'm still not sure that I would be able to handle it all, if left to my own devices. But then, left to my own devices, I am in bed by midnight, so, as one of the recurring mantras has it, what the hell do I know?
We slept really well that night, for some reason, and woke to a late "breakfast" that featured most of the imaginable variations on dead pig, along with a small mountain of eggs. Heaven, in its own way. We took off to pick up our rental car and set off for the Goat's daughter's home at the other end of the earth. A pot-luck dinner was scheduled, and the Goat had plans to put together a seafood dish; much energy went into finding absolutely the right things along the way: trying to please Herself, her vegetarian artist husband, and their... gifted daughter, was not an easy undertaking. But we are talking about the Goat here.
We arrived on time, dinner got made and eaten, the guests came and went; we all survived. The following two days we spent not-a-baby- anymore-sitting the Goat's granddaughter, which was a lot of fun almost all the time. The next night the Goat did his magic with fish again, and the following night we went out to an incredible tapas restaurant and ate ourselves silly. I am relieved to say that I did not have to pay for that one. I spent my days playing with clay, playing silly games, making tea, making conversation, catching the new Disney movie, Enchanted, which I, for one, found enchanting, though it did lead to a tiny tantrum when we had to leave... in spite of which [and that's a pretty small "which"] it was all grand. I left feeling that it was utterly unimaginable that I had not known these people a really long time -- and, well, I hadn't. But it felt like I had.
Back into the car. Off to spend Thanksgiving with more friends from thirty years ago. This involved another trek, broken by an incredible meal at a boutique vineyard run by friends of the Goat's: it was all simple, and all simply incredible. The wine, which I don't otherwise drink in the middle of the day, was good enough to make it really hard to stop drinking, and was, I am sure, not cheap. Another one for the record books: great food, good company, a beautiful setting [and what could be more beautiful than eating in the middle of a vineyard in the middle of mountains?]. We did make it to our final destination by suppertime, which was a minor miracle, to my mind, but then, the Goat is not as blind by night as I am: I navigate by landmarks, and when I can't see them, I tend to get hopelessly lost, and then panic. But he has a sense of direction, and we got there in good time, though we traveled the last bit by smell more than by navigation.It was a strange thing, having just been on the Atlantic coast with the Goat, to suddenly be on the Pacific coast, and have the sun meeting the ocean at the other end of the day...
That night we wound up going to a real hole-in-the-wall taquería, and had very cheap but terrific food. [I paid for this one...] It was apparently the only place open in town on the evening before Thanksgiving, and it was jammed. Home, more wine, then out to sleep in the back yard, in what was probably once a tool shed, and was now half storage room, half guest room. It was the end of November, and the night was clear and @#$%-ing cold. We had more blankets than we knew what to do with, but that didn't take the edge off getting into bed or make it any easier to deal with getting out of bed in the morning. Luckily, there was hot tea and coffee-cake in the main house -- not to mention central heating. God, how grateful I was for that. And isn't that what Thanksgiving is meant to be all about? [First and foremost, there is life as it is, no matter how it is, of course, but that is operating on a somewhat higher plane...]
We played hookey for most of the day; there was a beach not far away that the Goat wanted to show me, so we drove and drove again, hiked down onto the beach, walked around enjoying the incredible spectacle of high surf and high tides [the full moon was apparently driving everything, and everyone, a little nuts]. On the hike back up the cliff, I got pretty warm and took off my sweater, which seemed like a good idea at the time. It was only once we were hot-footing it back for dinner that I realized that I had had my glasses hooked into the neck of the sweater on the way down to the beach, and that they were now nowhere in sight. And speaking of sight, I am nearly blind without them, at least as far as print is concerned. Luckily, after a recent visit without glasses to the Goat's domain, I had thought to bring along an old but serviceable second pair, so I just slung them around my neck, and all was pretty much well.Thanksgiving dinner...
More people who had known the Goat since the dawn of time, or at least since he came out; Atticus and his new lover were there, which gave me a foothold socially; my tendency in a large group is to find myself a corner near two or three people I know, and not move all evening. More and more people kept arriving, all of whom the Goat seemed to know well. Many of them were discussing their HIV treatments, and what had worked for them when; a couple of them seemed to have suffered neurological damage. I just sat there near the Goat, wondering what all these people had been like before the plague moved through, and began to wonder where I was and what I was doing. More wine, and more weed. Some of these guys seemed not to really ever come down... And I seemed to be becoming one of them...
Well, in Mary Poppins' uncle's words, "too much is as good as a feast." We certainly proved that one. We had been cautioned to show up at 4 for hors d'oeuvres, and that was my downfall. We hadn't had lunch on our outing, and I was ravenous. I sat next to a plate of polenta with pesto and roasted peppers and did my best to finish it off single-handedly. Then at some point, some wise person whisked the hors d'oeuvres away. Unfortunately, they proceeded to bring one of the largest turkeys I have ever seen to the table. Mashed potatoes, risotto, collard greens, stuffing, gravy, vegetables, candied sweet potatoes... and then the desserts started coming out.I am by nature a salt person, and so I tend to pack in as much as I can in the main event, and pass on most desserts. But after listening to all the fervent enconiums about various pies [always a problem for me in the "not eating dessert after eating as if you were'nt going to have any" department], I had a couple of small slices. Then another.
In a matter of a few hours, I was drunk, stoned, and stuffed to the gills, and while everyone else seemed to be glued to the [very large] television, I was profoundly grateful when the Goat suggested that we head out "to make the bed." That was in fact necessary, as I had spilled the contents of a bud-vase thoughtfully placed on the night-table onto the sheets while trying to negotiate some clean clothes out of my suitcase in the chilly morning air, but it provided a cover for going out to the shack in back and not coming in again. There are some pleasures that in the final analysis are not really meant as social endeavors...
though God knows... and I know... there are a lot of people who feel differently...
Up and off the next morning to get the rental car back all the way back to its point of origin again. Back along our trail, dinner with the Goat's daughter -- a fabulous Thai dinner, which I did pay for, for a change -- and then back to Atticus and the bars. I was ready to crawl home after Bar Number One and a very short visit to Bar Number Two, and the Goat went along with it, and I thought nothing of it. I was just too drunk, too stoned, and too stupid. But it turned out to have been a real sacrifice on his part -- what he really wanted to do was go out dancing. I am not a great dancer at the best of times [something about not really hearing the beat or knowing any steps] and this was not the best of times. The Goat is a really good dancer. Just physically graceful, which I have never been, and never will be. It seems all the more incredible that he should put up with me, though of course there is a flutter of surface "oh, you're no clumsier than anyone else" in circulation most of the time -- until I do something [again] like knock a vase over onto the sheets...Anyway, back home, to bed, and up with the West Coast birds to catch our flight home. More endless cramped sitting and bad food [one can't help wondering what someone who hasn't flown for a decade or two would make of what counts as "service" these days -- must be something about how hard it is to get "good help"] and pinochle. More sitting around the hub connector, this time without any access to the Snootereeno Club, and several hours of delay to kill. I had a beer. The Goat had a sip, but passed otherwise, as he was driving us back to the Big Woods. As it turned out, he could probably have drunk the keg dry, as by the time we finally got off the plane at our final stop and got back to the Park-n-Ride lot, there had been time to drink, get drunk, sleep it off, wake up, and start drinking again...
Well, almost. We made it back to the Big Woods by a perfectly reasonable hour, on West Coast time, anyway, and I got a good-bye kiss or two then, and in the morning, which was particularly delightful, as I had to take off for Nowheresville before too long. And that is where I am today, avoiding as much work as much of the time as I can, and generally wishing this vacation could have gone on forever.
Nine whole days with the Goat. What's not to like about it?
I got to meet his daughter and her family, and got to know a couple of the people he has kept in touch with in all the years he has been back on the East Coast. Not always easy, but hey, what is? And the next visit is bound to be easier...
One of the things that I have been made aware of recently [over and over again, really] is how many things had to fall into place for the two of us to get together. We both had to leave our marriages, I had to be holding out for Mr. Right as opposed to Mr. Right-Now, the RBF had to organize the leather night in a city I otherwise rarely visited, the Goat and the RBF had to be on the outs, or skating towards it...Any number of things could have turned out differently. I might even have found that spending more than four days with the Goat made it clear that things were never going to work out. Instead, I am deeper in than ever.
And I think that's a good thing.
Here's hoping that similar good things come to all who wait.
And that, my friends, is what Advent is all about.
Check it out, starting next Sunday...
Oh, did I mention that one of the lenses fell out of my second pair of glasses somewhere between our last airport stop and our falling into bed in the Big Woods? This prescription dance may yet turn out to be the most expensive part of the whole trip...
Oh, well...
Hang in there, all.
C
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