AND NOW THIS...

Not that this is exactly news, but I have spent a lot of time over the last few years composing posts on various topics and it has struck me more than once that the compulsion to "share" tends to turn up when I have work I really should be doing, and on a deadline. Back when I had a kitchen, I would suddenly decide that it was more important to clean the stove or the fridge than it was to get the files sorted out for delivery to the printer. The closer the deadline gets, the more the siren song of other things makes itself heard...

Chaos begets chaos.

So, here I am, with departure for my half-a-week-in-two-LONG-days job looming, digesting the Goat's latest joke about how it's not work at all, but early retirement; I'm not packing, not doing what I otter, but thinking about the Goat and the way he simultaneously drives me crazy [ragging me on the all the points at which I'm already somewhat sore] and drives me crazy [you know what I mean]. What am I doing? Mostly, I am reflecting on the way his long and convoluted sex career has taught him how to please: what to do and how to do it. The other night I actually told him that I should write a thank-you letter to all his former boyfriends, especially the ones from his hot and happening years, all those years ago, out on the Other Coast; it's really a wonderful gift they have given me. And I am profoundly grateful.

Yes, I am the same person who can barely cope with the fact that he doesn't seem to have many local gay friends who aren't also former lovers [I once advised him that he might as well tell me when I meet someone new if it's someone he hasn't slept with; it would save so much time...]. But it's the "formative" years learning to put particular tabs into the available slots that boggle my mind. I mean, it's not something you can get a diploma in, as far as I know, though of course I'm the guy who can count on the fingers of half a hand all the people he has slept with in the last thirty years. But for my money, he's a black belt. He says with touching modesty that he's only doing what he's found he himself enjoyed over the years... which means if nothing else that our bent and kink align to a staggering degree.

Who says there is no God?

So, what's the fly in the ointment? Well, it's me. I am naturally clumsy, while the Goat is the kind of person who takes his unusual skills so for granted that he actually believes "anyone" could do what he does. Minds out of the gutter here, guys: I'm talking music and dance--which he not only teaches, but which are his natural element. As far as I can judge, he seems to have gold-medal potential, whereas I can't hear the beat, and I don't move from the hip well unless tabs are, or are about to be, inserted in slots. It's not for lack of trying, either.

This leads me to where we were the other night. The Goat owns a sofa he claims to have bought on sale at a "Scandinavian" furniture outlet solely for its looks [and I have to confess that the black leather upholstery adds to its considerable appeal in the comfort department]. Even taking him at face value--something I sometimes have trouble doing--if he bought it for its looks, he has since learned a million different ways to use it, and is limber in ways that make using it not only possible but mind-boggling. It sometimes makes me wonder what's wrong with me, since even when I try to follow non-verbal instructions [even when not too stoned to follow much of anything] I don't seem to be able to get where we're trying to go. Purely physically. I don't bend there, I don't balance that way, and, I guess, I'm just not very good at taking wordless suggestions.

So, there we were, with me having finally attained something like the yoga position requested, holding myself in a peculiar but peculiarly stable position, and it suddenly occurred to me not just how long it had taken me to comply with a relatively straightforward request [or at least, with a relatively straightforward set of nudges, prods, and scoots], but how long it take taken me to get here.

Not in the last twenty seconds, but in the last twenty months. As the pols sing in Fiorello: "it mounted up your honor bit by bit." There I was, with body parts angled every which way, in a moment of suspended animation, of equilibrium both physical and mental; and what did I do, as the Goat's next move hung fire for a few moments? I thought: how exactly did I get here? It was one of those [rare] moments when I suddenly see myself where and as I am, when I realize just how time has passed, and particularly in the last year or so--although we are either approaching or have just passed the two-year mark, depending on how you count. [I usually stick with Easter, but there are arguments for July as well as February.]

I'm not complaining, I'm just amazed. And glad that we don't try this in the dorm, where the sofa is considerably less welcoming, and the "car alarm" factor leads to some pretty narrowly circumscribed activity. Nice, but not the wall-banging experiences that make the Little House in the Big Woods such an amazing place: a sort of a tantric shrine transported to a decidedly non-Asian location.

So here's my motto for the week: be grateful for what you've got while you've got it. No matter how far it may be from what you wanted. I am grateful on so many fronts, I can sometimes hardly think. And God knows I'm only truly limber from the neck up, so that is saying a lot. So here's hats off both to creative thinking and to the accumulation of ideas and technique over the years--what a blend!

Who wants to prepare for work when you can look back on the last bacchanal at your leisure? Maybe that's what "whistle while you work" really meant all the time... Sometimes, life is just a beach.

Hang in there, guys.
C