A Troll At Sea

I'M NOT DEAD YET!

2010-04-16T20:49:00.031-05:00

As Mark Twain once remarked, the rumors of my demise have greatly exaggerated. I'm not dead yet, fellas.

But others are now. Others who have meant more to more people than I could ever hope to.

Soon after New Year's, my grandmother finally gave up the ghost [or, to make it sound less familiar, yielded up the spirit, though it does live on in us]. My other grandmothers died many years ago [in 1959, 1974 and 1981, and yes, that makes four of them], and her life for all the years since has been nothing shy of a miracle.

Anyone who is closing in on 100 has a right to die whenever she damn well pleases, but the fact is that we had been preparing ourselves for the possibility of her death for so long that we no longer really believed it could happen. And then it did. Almost three months ago.

Many, many things have changed since then, some at a dizzying speed, and not just the fact that she's not here to watch over me while I slave away at the project that keeps on giving.

Things long held back as the private things in her life are now laid out in the open; people, especially those she put up with out of politeness, people I could never stand and still can't now, feel free to talk about her as if they had known her better than anyone. Or, more galling than that, they fix me with an "understanding" look and tell me that my loss must be dreadful. It is, but to tell the truth, there are people who don't know what truth is, even when they utter it. And there are people from whom you don't want to hear the truth unless they do recognize it when they see it. What is it about those people, and why do they always have to wade in and weigh in with their grating goodwill? The people who really have something to offer are the people who listen first.

Here's a truth for you: Truth is never a platitude dressed up in a veneer of apparent goodwill. It's harder and hurts more than that. I don't think it's just me and my experience; I think there's some kind of law at work there...

But life does go on.

Deadlines do not move around just because the life of the someone tied to a project has fallen apart. So I get up, I drive back and forth, and live on the goodwill of the Goat, who has risen to the occasion in the most commendable way [wine, cheese, food, bed--see below]. It is strange, when my world has been shaken to its foundations again, that the outward appearance of my life has not changed much in the last four months at all--I am still driving up and down, spending two nights on my own, a night or two with the Goat, and then starting all over again by driving up again at 6 on Monday morning. But it's beginning to get old.

The Powers That Be seem to have realized that there was no way we could make our deadline with just me beavering away at it, so I now have a staff of five part-timers moving in and out of the office all week long, which makes it harder for me to get anything done, but does move things along at a better clip. And makes life for me less lonely. I meet new people, some of whom--even if they have no power to do me any good--really like what I've done. The Powers, though clearly not to be numbered among those new people, did decide to come up with the extra cash to finish the project RIGHT, rather than pulling the plug on the whole thing in April.

Other things have happened as well: I've been to Vacationland with the Goat and spent the entire three weeks as sick as a dog. As a result, however, I had an unimpeachable excuse to lie around once I got a little better, and inhale the sequels to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I don't know what your tolerance for trash is, but The Girl is Great Trash. Really the best. And the sequels are, I think, maybe even better. Like Toy Story and Toy Story 2. And now I'm back, trying desperately to get things polished off by Thanksgiving. What I am going to live on and how I am going to find health insurance after that is anyone's guess, but it will bring a two-year stint to an end, and that's probably a good thing. It all feels different now...

By then the Goat will have had a few months to get used to retirement, if he does indeed retire as he keeps threatening to do, and maybe we can do something really frivolous like buying a house big enough for all our, ahem, "stuff."

You know what I mean... or at least I think you do...

I have spent so much of the last four years watching the world as I knew it fall apart, only to see it take on a new and unexpected form. It's happened over and over again. Death brings many things in its wake, including new beginnings, if you can see them when they come. So far, all I can see is that most things are suddenly different. But it's pretty clear that death doesn't get the last word.

So we tiptoe along while Easter comes pressing in on us, and wait to see what it brings. Maybe that's why Easter itself passed me by this year--I'm not in a place where any regular calendar makes much sense to me. I just have to take the truth as it comes...

Hang in there, all of you. I'm still here, I'm just up to my ass in alligators for the next six or seven months, and will not be posting much. But maybe you noticed that...
C

FIVE GOLDEN RINGS...

2009-12-16T22:25:00.021-05:00

You would think that after four months without a post here, people would have stopped worrying about my ragged-ass life and moved on, but apparently that's not the case. But then, I was the Nervous Nellie who would e-mail people who hadn't posted anything in a month or two all atwitter with concern--now I know: sometimes life moves on, and sometimes it just gets a little too hectic. Since the summer, I have been working out of town four days a week, and usually commute up one day, down the next, to get my Goat fix. Every once in a while, I just can't face the drive, so I stay up "thar" four days in a row and turn into what my hero Betty MacDonald called "a Big Saddo."

What really gets me down is that most weeks I don't spend any two consecutive nights in the same bed. I hated living out of a suitcase when I was being paid a ton of money to do it... and now I'm definitely not being paid a ton of money.

The One Called Bigg, who seems to spend most of his spare time reading my mind, has hit me up with a "meme-thingie." Now, I'm not really into memes, or, for that matter, the word "thingie"--it's one of my little crosses to bear these days, as the Goat is constantly using it or other shorthand language like it... However that may be, I owe Bigg a lot, and meme-fulfillment doesn't really seem like that much to ask. It's kind of the least I can do, if you know what I mean. So here goes:

1. Number One is not something I now have to enjoy.

But it sure as hell is something I look forward to having: a place big enough for both the Goat and me to live together, and not a hundred miles from where I work. We currently have three places all within a fairly short distance of each other, and none of our "places" is big enough for two people. Well, I could fit in, around the edges, at least, but there is no room for any of my "stuff." Moral of story: get rid of your stuff... I haven't quite managed to pull that one off yet.

2. Number Two is: spending time with my grandmother.

There are not too many 58-year-olds who still have a grandmother, let alone one who insists on cooking for them--and who cooks really well. What can I say? She can't drink anymore, but there's always a bottle of wine out, and we sit and talk, or just sit and "be" with each other. There's something wonderful about having a 98-year-old friend to hang out with... and this gets to bump #3 only because every time I leave her house to head "home," I realize that there is a perfectly good statistical chance that she will not be there when I get back.

3. Number Three is: sharing a meal with someone I love, or even just enjoy.

Now I realize this bears a striking resemblance to #2, but that's just the way it is. The Goat often yearns for his days in the restaurant trade [the fact that those days were in his freshly "out" youth is the only explanation I can think of] and so sets out to welcome me home from my days away with a good bottle of wine, good cheese, and, usually, a great meal. We have been known to take some herbal supplement and some strenuous exercise before starting dinner prep--OK, that's pretty much the standard set-up, I confess--but that doesn't impede our appreciation of food, wine, or each other one bit.

It works just as well without the "happy hour" ingredients, of course, but they don't do any harm. I can enjoy most food and most people on their own, let alone the Goat... and I am nearly as fond of having dinner with my mother or my kids or several of my very good friends or, in days gone by, with the One Called Isis. It has been my fate throughout life to land in relationships with people who love food, which even if it has ruined what was never a terribly good figure to begin with, does make me think [a] that God exists, and [b] that he loves me...

4. Number Four is: sharing a movie with someone I love, or even just enjoy.

My Favorite [and only] Daughter and I have a bad habit of running off to the multiplex to catch whatever piece of silliness has just come out. We saw both Public Enemies and District 9 this summer, and will probably pick up where we left off while she's home from college in early January. I am praying she will forgive me for planning to catch Avatar in IMAX-3D on the Goat's Christmas vacation before I see her then... and if she doesn't, that's OK, too. The Goat and I try to watch a lot of movies together, but our taste only overlaps so far [what is it about people who use "Hollywood movie" as a putdown?] and he has trouble staying awake through anything I want to see. To be fair, he has trouble staying awake through anything he wants to see, too, so I can't bear a grudge.

5. Number Five is: taking the time to curl up with a good book.

Or with one of the Approved Magazines [I have been a New Yorker fanatic since before I understood anything between the covers beside the cartoons]. The Goat is a guy who has to spend a lot of time outdoors doing stuff, and unlike my previous partner, has no trouble doing it on his own. So we both often get what we want... which is not to say that renting the wood-splitter and chugging through a winter's worth of wood in a day wasn't a blast--it was. It's just not something I lie around wishing I could be doing. For him, it is. I guess opposites attract.

Followers of Bigg's blogs will note that there is no mention here of making a home for my lover, or laying out outfits for him every day [though I do wash and fold all the laundry and wash almost all the dishes, unless he's decided it's "relaxing" to do it himself]. Or about work or learning. I'm not a home-maker, but give me the choice between a chain saw and a Cuisinart, and I don't go play lumberjack. I'm still "OK"--I'm just the Great Indoorsman. The positively amazing thing is that the Goat doesn't care. When we first got together, I was a complete mess; I am still something of a mess, but then I was a real mess, and he said quite placidly that he loved me just the way I was. I used to think it was just something he said to all the girls, but it has been borne out over time, and he finds the most astonishingly attentive ways to make it clear that he means it. Anyway, aside from the commuting, my life looks pretty good right now.

Thanks to the Greedy Maelstrom for this link: I liked it a lot, though it took time to wade through it all...

Hang in there, guys.

We must all hang together or we shall most assuredly hang separately...

BACK on the EASTERN SIDE of THINGS...

2009-08-23T22:25:00.012-05:00

We're back on the East Coast, and we had a wonderful time.

It did involve seeing more people than I could really handle in two weeks--new faces almost every day, usually at lunch, and then off to one show or another most evenings--with the result that I came home exhausted from vacation, as I tend to be, and really wanted to take a week off to recover, as I tend to do.

I also lost my temper with the Goat on the last day, for something that was only partly his fault, and which I should have been able to deal with, but I had just walked into what I had thought would be a lunch on a lake and had turned out to be a work-day at the lake with a lunch break...

So I wasn't at my best...

And then yesterday morning, as I drove north from the Big Woods, I realized that I had just let my sense of responsibility towards my mother and my daughter lead me into spending the last weekend before school starts away from the Goat. Which I would never have done if I'd thought it through. When I finally got around to calling to grovel and humbly abase myself about it--not really something I could do with either of the ladies around--he seemed pretty calm, but I could tell he had not been too pleased to begin with... He deals with things better than some people I could mention.

I had a really vivid dream the night before I left the Big Woods: all that happened in it was that Isis had a perfectly friendly, normal conversation with me. However, when I swung by to pick up the Favorite Daughter, she and Isis were loading a half-size refrigerator onto the top of the cellar stairs. I got out of the car to help when the FD went in to get her things, but Isis had gone down the stairs into the cellar as soon as I drove in, and stayed there until I left.

There are dreams... and then there's reality...

I did get things done around the place for my Mom this weekend--like beefing up her screen doors to keep the squirrels out of the birdfeed--but if nothing else, I saw to it that my daughter spent some time with her, as she has been promising to do all summer, but hadn't done yet. But none of it weighs very heavily in the balance compared to how terrible I feel about not having been there for the Man I Love.

Why am I so consistently stupid?
Is there something to do about that?

Well, there's always the next time. So far, at least, he seems to find it all worthwhile. I guess we all take some putting up with.

Hang in there, all.
C

PARALLEL LIVES...

2009-07-31T06:30:00.015-05:00

One more proof that geometry does indeed have some kind of real-world reflection: parallel lives? parallel lines? Well, in any case, though Bigg and I have never even tried to meet, we just keep walking along side-by-side... which is a long, round-about way of saying that I am finding, yet again, that everything he posts [click here] seems to have been written about me. First there's this:

I have less than nothing to say. It's hot for the first time all summer. Everyone around me groans about how cold and rainy it's been and mutters darkly about global warming. I LOVE it. I am happiest hiding in the dark like a slug under a flat rock, so this entire cool rainy summer has been marvelous to me. The minute it went over eighty degrees I started to suffer...

I was sitting with my guy just watching some random show we downloaded... when I looked over at him and was struck by how beautiful his profile is, how very well drawn his features are... And I felt this huge surge of love for him that frightened me.

That's funny enough. But then there's this, and frankly it begins to creep me out a bit. OK, so we both have a narrow range between unbearable cold and unbearable heat where we can bear anything at all. OK, so we both are batty about guys though we can't quite understand how we wound up with them. I can live with that, but then there's this:

I've come to see that the world is just like that: we're happiest when we accept that we're just broken, fallible creatures who are only here for a little while, and that's the only basis you can accept someone on if you don't want to get hurt by your expectations. My children are less than perfect, my friends are less than perfect, I even fall short of perfection although of course by a smaller degree than the rest of you grubby mortals.

This has been on my mind for a long time, as some of you will know. Though maybe there is a difference there: Bigg goes on to declare his lover the perfect one, and I still think, much as I am drowning in gratitude for the Goat in my life, that he's no closer to it than I am. Maybe it's because the Goat isn't the same age as my children... who knows???

Actually, it's cold this morning even for my understanding of the proper balance of nature. And it's been raining forever--we had over two inches the other day, and I could feel every millimeter of it drumming down on our heads (we sleep right under the roof, out in the Big Woods.) On the other hand, today is my last day of work before we take off for the West Coast, so I am happy as a clam and not particularly focused on the things I should be wrapping up before I go. That Friday afternoon feeling, starting at 7 in the morning.

Hang in there, guys.
It's cold outside.
C

WHEN YOU WISH UPON A STAR...

2009-07-10T06:28:00.016-05:00

My old buddy Bigg [now at Bigg on Life, click here] posted a wonderful contemplative piece about the feeling of going through the Looking Glass--or at least, that's how it hits me. It includes his wish that he could in fact spin straw into gold, and a wonderful hymn of gratitude for all that he has, which he celebrates as only someone who has once lost everything he held dear can do.

I resonate to all this like a tuning fork [just as I do to UP, with its story of adoption and the appearance of a mysteriously loving grand- parent] and I don't have to go far to find the reason: we both had a lot invested in what we thought our lives were about, with marriage and fatherhood pretty far up the list. I can't speak for Bigg, who seems to have figured things out a little earlier than I did.

But I do know that when I left home I fully expected never to feel the kind of love that had made my life worth living for so many years. And here I am, so deeply in love that it's hard to keep my eyes from crossing.

Things are different: I once made the mistake of thinking someone had no faults or limitations, which was unfair to both of us, and I won't [can't] make that mistake again. I once thought I knew what made me tick and what made me sing; I now wait to find out what else I don't know--a very weird feeling now I've reached the Heinz old age of 57. And I find that I am at odd moments so grateful for the reappearance of love in my life that I can hardly breathe. Yes, the sex is great, and God knows that helps smooth out some of the bumpier bits.

But it is the infinite tenderness that completely undoes me, and has from the beginning, when the Goat reached out and offered what amounted to a one-night stand for what was left of a man.

What strikes me is how what I had really lost was my faith: I knew what God wanted, and I had walked away from it. How could I not pay a price? Well, the answer is that I did pay a price, and as Bigg says, it was giving up everything I held dear, including my idea of myself, at which I had labored so long. Where my failure to believe comes in is that I could not believe that God had something good up his sleeve for me, several somethings, in fact. There was the not inconsiderable item that He [sorry, girls] really did love me exactly as I was--"without one plea." Now I had never doubted that, but I had never experienced it in such an obliterating, vivifying way. And there was the idea that He could grant me the one thing I thought I would never see again: a love worthy of the name.

Having had it and having walked away from it when I felt the price demanded for its continued life was too high to pay, I thought for sure that I lost all claim to love at all. Sure, I set about trying to remake myself as a gay man, down to furnishing my bedroom with two bureaus, two bathrobes, all the stuff the Ann Landers contingent advised in making a man welcome in your home as well as your bed, and then some--I have never done things by halves. But I never expected to find anyone as beautiful, funny, talented in the kitchen as well as the bedroom as the person I had had and chosen to leave. How could I "expect" to be struck by lightning twice in my life?

And yet, the thing I have to admit, the thing that drives my gratitude into high gear, is that I have been continually struck by lightning, my whole life long. From the moment of my birth, I have been loved by somebody or other--I have never had to live in the awareness that there was no one who cared for me. It makes a pretty big difference in the way you walk through life; yes, you can ignore how lucky you are and take it all for granted, but I rarely [dare I say never?] fell quite that low--it was all just to clear to me from the way I reacted to others: I responded with affection when in fact little or none was on the table to begin with. I got kicked in the pants a few times, but who doesn't? The fact is, I have always been blessed, and most of the time have managed to be grateful. That makes walking away from the sources of that blessed happiness all the harder, and makes imagining happiness on the other side of it nearly impossible.

Other than all the above, what struck me about Bigg's post is the way Walt Disney's heavy hand has landed on all of us. It's nothing personal, it's just that he roots in the real American religion that substitutes hope for faith, and nature for God--even priests and ministers in America wax eloquent on nature to the point that you wonder if it has ever occurred to them that the God of the Jews created us in time, not space. Look at the images Disney chose to accompany "Ave Maria" in Fantasia: shapes that look like nuns in habits but aren't walk through a grove of trees whose limbs somehow form Gothic arches without being them. And then there's the poisonous drivel that makes us all think that we wish for something hard enough, the Blue Fairy will deliver it. Ha!

That would make as cynical a sentence to post over the gates of Auschwitz as the actual "Work will set you free."

Hope requires you to know what you wish for; faith hopes for things "unseen," things undreamt of, unwished for yet. Faith calls upon the future to break into the hell which half of the present always is for some of us, and redeem it. Wishing upon a star means that if you know what you want, and want it hard enough to "deserve" it, you'll get it--but I would not advise most of you to hold your breath...

God's grace, on the other hand, which is the response to any degree of faith [and I mean faith in anything, my agnostic friends, even faith in a Disney song], is always undeserved. Which is what makes it so overwhelming if you open your eyes to see that is not your wishing that "makes it so."

So here I am. My comment in response to Bigg's post was not as eloquent as it should have been, and while I can't exactly improve my eloquence, I can at least fiddle with the words. What I came close to saying was this:

Everything of value can be lost; everything that has life will someday die. The only things that cannot die are those that were dead to begin with. Real life begins when you take that on board and live in the knowledge that everything you treasure will, indeed must, at some point slip away. So, live life while you can--make life worth living. Know what you have been given, what you can give in return.

Or, as the Goat is fond of saying: carp that diem.

That's my message for the day, guys.
In fact, it's my message for pretty much every day:
Carp that diem.
C

A LITTLE CRAZED...

2009-07-02T21:00:00.011-05:00

I haven't posted anything recently.

It's partly that it's been raining since the dawn of time and my chlorophyll levels are down to nil, which means that I barely have the energy to get out of bed in the morning.

It's partly that I am now working out at the college job four days a week and commuting back to the Big Woods to sleep four nights a week, and keep thinking I am going to meet myself coming and going on the highway.

It's partly that what between the wedding and trying to meet a few deadlines on time before the Goat and I take off for the West Coast, I feel like I don't have the time to breathe. I do, I just feel like I don't. I waste enough time on the internet to get most everything done; guess how I spend the time...

New deadline on semi-new job next weekend... aaaaaaaaaaaaargh!

Anyway, it's not that life doesn't go on. It's just that as it goes on, I get shorter of breath all the time. Must be something about being Beyond Fifty-Five...

We had dinner with a bunch of very nice thirty-somethings the other night, and I felt like such a geezer I probably made more than one remark too many on the subject. Also tried to explain things to people who knew more about them than I do--and how I HATE it when people [no names, please] do that to me.

Do you think I could still turn into my mother before I die? God help us all.

I went and saw "UP" again this evening, after dinner with the Favorite Daughter. I still laughed out loud. And what I really love is the way Pixar stories are constructed down to the millimeter.

As Ibsen is said to have said: if a gun is hanging over the mantle in the first act, make sure it goes off in the last act; and for God's sake, if a gun is going to go off in the last act, make damn sure you hang it over the mantle in the first act...

"I do not like the cone of shame."
That about sums up my life, come to think of it.

Hang in there.
And keep breathing.
C

SECOND THOUGHTS...

2009-06-25T09:09:00.023-05:00

I realize that the last time I ran posts about having “Second Thoughts,” I was quoting advice from www.gayhealth.com [not around any more, and what does that mean?] about the reality of gay sex, and how the [male] human body is not in fact built for either of the classic items at the top of the menu.

Something about a gag reflex at one end [click here] and involuntary clenching of muscles at the other [click here]… you know what I mean.

[In actual fact, the first is only a problem when one of us gets carried away, and the second, I am constantly assured, takes years to overcome—another cheerful note from my “little Goat music.” I’m not entirely sure I look forward to life without a functioning escape hatch, but at the rate I’m going I’ll only have to worry about it for a few years before I die, at which point lots of things don’t work. And to be frank, nothing has really functioned at 100% since I turned 40…]

This time, however, my ruminations are on a plane more metaphysical than merely physical: I have [no surprise here] been thinking about the wedding and its fall-out.

There was only one thing that made the wedding a sad experience for me, and that was Isis’ inability to treat me like a human being. Now, I know I am a rather impatient person, and that I was ready for everything to be just fine between us a year after I left home. I know that was premature. I almost knew it at the time… But not even being able to say “hello” after three years seems a little much; she avoided me so assiduously all afternoon that I didn’t even try to say goodbye. My little attempt at congratulating her on a wonderful event produced only the well-known facial paralysis and the shortest possible reply.

Well, much as she may not have wanted me or my family there, she rose above all that and invited us anyway. Gold Star Number One.

And she, who had so carefully kept my family at bay for three years had to see all of us not only back at the house after three years of exile, but cheerfully reunited with the surviving members of her family; the Happy Event ensouled what might have been only chatter, and the good cheer was palpable. It’s true that everyone was on their good behavior, on better than their good behavior:

I just found out that Big Brother had sat down with the weirder of Isis' Three Sisters, who would usually [in Lewis Carroll's immortal words] “try the patience of an oyster,” and not only managed not to lash out at her, but was actually nice to her. Gold Star Number Two and wonder of wonders!

Aside from the beaming happiness of the newlywed couple, and its reflection on the faces of everyone else, but especially Son B’s two beaming siblings, and the presence of all Isis’ family after years of internal strife, the fact that the two families sat down in happily unarranged confusion and just had a good time together in the mingled seating was the thing that moved me most. It bowled me over, actually. What a happy event, and what a happy outcome!

So, I’m not complaining. I got to talk to Son B’s godmother, who has always taken Isis’ part like the mother tigress she otherwise does not in any way resemble, and she seemed genuinely glad to see me. I got to talk to Isis’ eldest sister, and she seemed either glad to see me or just very good at maintaining a professional exterior. If that’s what it was, I took it as friendliness, which I am quite unable to do with Isis’ professional exterior, which is all I get to see. [Now, I’m not stupid. I know that she is using her shell to protect herself from feelings that are still too close to the surface to tolerate; I saw that all too clearly when I met her at her office in town.] I got to talk to most of my nephews and nieces, including the ones that are supposedly no longer mine.

I guess what moved me so much was that we all got back together, not as though nothing had happened, but as though we still belonged together. Poor Isis. It must have been hard to sit and watch: despite all her best efforts to retroactively deny twenty-five years of belonging together, those years rose right over those efforts and put everything in a very different perspective. No one asked for forgiveness, no one granted it. But there was a clear understanding in the air that twenty-five years is too solid a foundation to yield to even the most determined efforts. None of it would have been possible, I think, had I showed up with the Goat on my arm. I understood the fact that he was not invited, even if he did not; Isis’ ability to give had limits, and opening her gates to the enemy as she did by inviting us all to the wedding probably pushed her as close to them as she could bear.

I said as much to Son B’s godmother, who is one of my favorite people in the world and someone I had been shy of contacting—after all, she had spent plenty of time taking me to task over my shortcomings as a husband long before things finally came apart. She could obviously see how happy I was that the event should have come off at all, let alone so well, and how hurt I was that Isis felt the need to continue stonewalling me [now there’s an irony of language for you]. With the remarkable gentleness that marks her, she said that things would have to get better now: surely this was the hardest event for Isis.

I should have nodded and smiled and called it a day; instead I demurred and admitted that the Goat might come along for the second wedding day at the bride’s home next year. You could almost hear the thought arriving in her optimistic nature like the stink-bomb it was. Oh well. Telling the truth has gotten me into plenty of trouble, but nothing has ever gotten me into so much trouble as lying. So, I just put it out there. To her credit, she was still friendly when we said goodbye.

On the other hand, after my attempt to make sure that Isis and I weren't talking to each other for the first time on the wedding day, and the subsequent awkward--not to say "dreadful"--meeting in her office, Isis never spoke to me at the wedding at all, except once in answer to a direct question and under duress.

You know, if I had been clever enough to consider the high probability that she would not have budged much since Son B's college graduation two years earlier [when I first got the full Mount Rushmore treatment], I could have saved both of us a great deal of pain. But that's me all over:

always trying to do the right thing and winding up with my foot in my mouth or flat on my ass, over and over again. It makes you think.

You know, sometimes things do just go on getting better.
Sometimes things turn out to have been darkest just before the dawn.

If I could just learn how to be patient, my life would be easy.
Easier, anyway.

Hang in there, guys.
I’m doing the best I can.
C

THAT HURT...

2009-06-23T07:29:00.004-05:00

It's true I came home high on the event,
My heart so brimming full I had to speak,
But I had left that place where my poor heart had filled,
And drove away to be with you.
I'd hoped you could come with me but I went alone,
Found pain and joy both at their peak.
I called to have your voice at least take part,
Then left my children to give you your due.
Forgive me: in my joy I was relentless,
Little thought your own soul was so bleak.
I talked on till you loosed that little dart,
Hurt me as I unwitting had hurt you.
My heart again grew full, but now with tears unwept;
My love, let love drive out our fears...
C

LOVE and OTHER DANGERS...

2009-06-22T15:19:00.011-05:00

You may remember that although I asked my son twice, he held to his position that the Goat was not to be invited to his wedding. Given that the wedding was being performed by his mother at her house, that all made sense to me, but not, needless to say, to the Goat.

Isis agreed that I could contribute to the wedding as well as attending; I offered to provide the alcohol, an offer which was--wonder of wonders--actually accepted. A similar olive branch was offered my mother, who paid for the cake and the flowers. But otherwise, Isis did it all herself and took no offers of help until the weekend of the wedding, when her best friend and the members of the younger generation arrived, and they all pitched in to pull off the last minute food prep.

I never got a final head-count from the Happy Couple, who were presumably too busy with other things to keep track, so I was left buying wine and beer and hard cider and prosecco for an indeterminate number of people. The best estimate Son B could give me was that forty people were coming, and thirty of them would drink; but Isis had said there might be as many as sixty people coming. What to do?

I finally decided to take the number of guests posited by Son B and treat it as the potential pool of drinkers in a crowd of indeterminate size. So, how many out of forty will drink wine and how many beer? [The hard cider was there for the bride, as was the prosecco, though the quantity of prosecco had been somewhat expanded to allow a general toast.]

I dithered this way and that and finally bought beer for two thirds of forty, and wine for two thirds of forty, in hopes that it would all work out, splitting the wine equally into red and white. I had no idea what sort of food was being served, or I might have done better at divvying up the wine. What I might have thought was that all the meat would be cold, and in fact in turned out to be salmon and chicken. No one in the know would drink red wine at a reception where chicken and fish were the only meat served, and even for those of us not in the know, cold white wine would be more appealing on a summer's day. But then, buying without knowing what was being served, I rather overdid the red and fell a little short with the white wine--but only because I thought I had bought way too much white and held a few bottles back. Well, I almost got it right.

The story of my life...

I also asked both Isis and Son B if it were allright if I might speak at the wedding, though true to form I did it backwards, and asked Isis first. Her response was to point out bitterly how little right I had to speak on the subject of marriage, as though failure were not as demanding a teacher as success. Another wise female friend was of the opinion that I had forfeited not only the right to speak at this wedding, but at any wedding. That seemed a bit much to me. Son B, once I got around to asking him, was more congenial, but I was left with the dilemma that I had to make sure not to mention marriage, and a number of other topics, to keep the lid on Isis' displeasure.

It's hard to write a speech when half your functioning brain is busy censoring the thoughts that are slowly coming together out of the other half. My wise if censorious friend suggested a way out of the dilemma: I should just write down what I want to say, and ask a few trusted people what they thought of it.

Most people are rightly wary of offering advice, but the three good friends I asked were receptive, as they could see I was clearly in over my head; I got some great advice, but it only added to the censorship problem. In the end it was the Goat, bless his heart, who cut the Gordian knot: he simply said that I had the option of writing in metaphor--once the message moved onto a poetic plane, it could easily become vague enough to mention all the things I wanted to touch on without naming names or events that were Beyond the Pale at this wedding, at least. And I did find that as soon as I started trying to craft a poem, which became two sonnets in harness, all the earlier anxieties fell away. The need to maintain rhyme and meter offered ways around a lot of the thornier issues. I was rather proud of it once I was done. It was another acrostic poem, with the names of the happy couple threaded through it, or I would post it here...

Writing it made clear as little else has, just how liberating restraints are to me--in this case, figuratively, though the literal bears some weight as well... but even I could see that the literal was truly not a topic for a wedding.

So when the day rolled around, I was in fact nervous as a cat, but prepared. The Goat had made other plans for the weekend so that he wouldn't have to be sitting at home feeling sorry for himself; he went to a good friend's Midsummer Bare-ass Bear, Beer, and Booze party up on a mountaintop. Once I realized that I was far too nervous to concentrate, I drove over to meet him, and spend the night, which forced him out of the little tent he had brought along and into a motel room. Getting slightly stoned and slightly drunk and slightly @#$%ed took a lot of the tighter winding out of my mechanism, and I drove off after a ridiculously late breakfast, back to what had been home and the Happy Event, part I.

It was a beautiful day, warm but not so hot that standing outside made you want to crawl under a nearby rock, and everyone was in a good mood. Her family and my family were already mingling when I arrived a few minutes early--I had been given strict instructions that no one from my family was to arrived before the appointed hour, and I had passed that info on to my mother, who presumably had passed it on to my local siblings. Nevertheless, all but one of my family were already there mingling away when I arrived, and my mother was nervous about the last missing member of the clan, who arrived exactly one minute past the "not before" hour. I decided not to point out to my mother that he was not late; it was the others who had come early, in spite of specific instructions not to do so. I also decided that there was a little piece of my little black heart that rather liked the fact that the rest of the world was not overly concerned with any lines Isis might decide to draw in the sand.

It was a lovely ceremony, with Son B's siblings and the bride's foreign friends all taking small ceremonial parts. After all the limits imposed on me, it did surprise me a little bit that Isis chose to go on at some length about the importance of home, how this had been B's home, but that his bride's had been far away, and now they would have to find their home in each other. But I guess she felt no need to take any reciprocal heed of my feelings; it did seem that more than one line of her lovely speech had a barb or two in it just for me. I can't say it was intentional, but they lodged anyway.

And, you know what? I didn't really care.

Aside from the fact that Isis made her face a mask and backed off out of reach whenever I got anywhere near her, neither greeting me nor addressing me in any way except when asked a direct question [and then only once], I had a wonderful time. Her sisters were more than welcoming [the one who has the hardest time in life held my hand to her cheek and wouldn't let go, as the tears streamed down her face]. The three children on that side of the family were universally forthcoming; I suppose it helped that I actually still liked their lunatic father, whom their mother had divorced years before.

I made the tactical error, seeing the head-table layout, of assuming the groom's family would be sitting there, and asked Son B if I could sit with him. I turned out to be the only person over thirty at the table, and only one of two who actually spoke English during the meal. All around me the two families were mingled and chatting away as if there were no shadow on the proceedings, and I longed to be at one of the tables where English not only could be, but was, spoken.

Be careful what you wish for. It would have been far wiser to wait until the last minute to sit down, but that would have entailed making sure I was far enough away from Isis for her comfort, and close enough to either of my other two children to feel that I had sat with them.

Finally the prosecco was handed 'round. I made my little speech, and got a very nice response, especially from the happy couple. They really were happy. What I could not mention, of course, was how happy I had been on the same day in my own life, how my love for Isis filled me to the brim; how I was flush with the certainty that all but the very last chapter of my story had just been written. Well, everyone had told me I couldn't mention my own wedding, and I guess I see the wisdom in that.

The newlyweds were smiling so hard they were practically past ear-to-ear, and the happiness seemed to broadcast itself over the whole assembly. For me, the only exception was the grim determination of her who had been my wife, right there at the next table, not to look my way. She was certainly aware that I was aware of her, as the occasional flush beyond the general happy one betrayed.

What the hell! I had a wonderful time, and by the time I left, the last of the guests not spending the night to depart, I had been able to have a talk with just about everyone.

I was so high on the positive aspects of the event that I called the Goat just to let him take part a little bit, to let me have his voice, if not his presence, at the feast. I dearly wanted to stay and hang out with my children, but I wasn't sure that it would have been considered a friendly gesture by the Lady of the House, and my heart was pulling me away toward Goatville. So I made my rounds, saying goodbye, not getting even the grace of a farewell from Isis, then hopped into my car and headed for the other set of hills.

The Goat was seated on my sofa in his living room--it's one of the many pieces of furniture I had no room for in my rooms, and on which he had agreed to take pity. I was so full of my own happiness that I sat down with him and just rattled on and on. I had his head in my lap, and caressed it while I told him all that had happened, how dazed I was at the friendly conversation I had been able to have with Isis' best friend as well as her eldest sister, and on down the line to Son A's very silly toast.

What I had failed to notice in my joy was the downward spiral of the Goat's mood. By the time I got to the end of my story, and let him know that I had been cautioned to be ready for some whiplash once only one of us was working--a situation we will enter in a year, in all likelihood--he must have been feeling pretty low, because his retort was a pretty nasty put-down. And I was completely unprepared.

It was like being kicked in the stomach. I sat there, still caressing his head, as all the joy of the day drained from my heart, and I felt it fill with the Goat's bitterness. I had been so eager to make him partake of the event, I had completely forgotten how much it had hurt him not to be invited, and how uneasily he had pretended he was over it. So, in return for my eagerness to share my joy, which I could see had brought him none, he now let me share his devastation. I couldn't believe that he could be so cruel. But then, I suppose he had thought I had been so first.

I see that now. All I saw at the time was his displeasure and anger. And all I felt at the time was that the joy of the day, which despite all the tension and pain of being a guest where I had long hoped to play the host, had been extinguished. I crept home and went to bed more miserable than I have been for a very long time.

The next morning I wondered, not for the first time, whether I had not made a terrible mistake in aligning myself with the Goat. I had spent the previous day having my nose rubbed in everything I had lost by leaving home, and roughly, too. Now it appeared that the only thing I had in the world to counter that dreadful loss was turning to dust in my hands. I wrote a poem for him [my way, as you may have noticed, of coping with the need to reveal my emotions, especially when they are high] and e-mailed it to him. I tried to recognize his sadness and my thoughtlessness, but also to remind him that I had called him from the wedding to hear his voice, that I had left my children and the long evening around their bonfire to be with him.

And got no reply. Under the circumstances, I didn't really see how I could drive out to his House in the Woods until I was sure he wanted me to be there. And until he could tell me that he wasn't as angry and displeased with me as he had been the night before, I wasn't about to go.

I left phone messages for him, asking him to let me know if he still wanted me to come; and asked myself what conclusions I should draw if he did not. As the hours wore on, I got sadder and sadder and got less and less done, aside from literal and figurative hand-wringing. At the very end of the afternoon, he called after finally getting one of the messages, and couldn't understand my reservations at all. It was as if the night before had never happened, as though I were crazy to have taken it to heart. And surely I knew that I had subjected him to worse, and he had bounced back without the need for reassurance. Or so he said. I got ready to go over, but my heart was still pretty heavy. All the way up the mountain, all I could think about was the way he had managed with one or two short but mightily bitter remarks to completely unseat the joy that reigned in my heart. How could he?

Well, when I finally arrived at the cabin, all was sweetness and light, and I was the one with the problem for being upset. That rather dazed me, but to tell you the truth, the main thing was that my question about how much he cared for me was taken care of as soon as we stopped talking. I rather think that talking is actually a trap for him. He is remarkably capable of expressing all kinds of emotion [and content] in the way he makes love.

And I found myself lying in his arms after he had done so, completely happy, completely at rest. As sure that he had forgiven me for whatever I had done to him as I could be without the two words that unlock my heart ["I'm sorry"] being spoken. And as sure that I had forgiven him. I suppose it is technically possible to lie while lying with someone, but it is a horrible art, if a high one. The Goat's talent is rather different, and it leaves no doubt about what moves him to make his moves. Once again I was overwhelmed by the fact that one [I] could experience something so utterly new, so utterly overwhelming, at the ripe old age of 55, and have it borne out week after week, leaving me just as week in the knees at 57.

It's a mad world, my masters.

Oh, and the funny part:

At the Goat's mountaintop Bare-ass Bear event, I ran into someone from Nowheresville. It was the Alaskan Brown Bear I had taken out to dinner when he came East to look for a house a year or so ago. The one who made me realize how much a certain kind of vulnerable glance coming out of a face covered in fur turned me on--that impossibly powerful particular blend of the masculine and feminine... ah, fur! In any case, we chatted for quite a while, and I admired a new tattoo he had gotten on his first trip back to the Other Coast since he and his partner had pulled up stakes for the Bay State. It was great to reconnect. I came home to a rather embarrassed e-mail from the ABB, who remembered our conversation from long ago, and my tale of my coming out again, and how coming out for leather had been so much harder for me than what I had done in college--it was actually leather rather than gayness I was working so hard to overcome, not to have to accept.

Well, it turns out that my little Alaska Brown Bear has discovered something new about himself, and it made him realize that he really only knew one other person who had at last embraced leather rather late in life--although the ABB and I do part company as to when "late" sets in, as I don't think forty qualifies--and that maybe the two of us might have some things to talk about. I hastened to reply that I was sure we did, but that he should not regard me as having any particular expertise--I just knew what I liked. He said that was just what he needed; he had plenty of black belts around, and what he needed was more of a worm's eye view of the undertaking.

That I can certainly offer. So the next time I drive up to my mother's, I get to make a side-trip to the ABB's front porch, and a view of someone else's confusion, for a change. Just another little adventure waiting to happen.

We just keep on keeping on.
Although the devil does generally take the hindmost...
C

HIGH AS A KITE...

2009-06-18T19:35:00.021-05:00

And then some, even without the herbal supplement or wall-banging sex this time. We were staying at my mother's, and our room was right under the bedroom of the upstairs apartment--and there's not a whole lot that goes on in either room that the people in the other don't experience with almost the same immediacy...

The Goat drove in from his house and met us halfway between my work-haunts and my mother's for lunch; there we were, my mother, my daughter, my lover, and me, and we had a lovely time.

A lovely enough time that my mother forgot her purse in the restaurant, and as we swung away to head out of town, my cell phone rang. It was the hostess calling, and she had something for me. It was the best phone message I think I've ever received:

"The gentleman in the red hot-rod has the lady's purse."

And so he did. I swung around and got back to the parking lot before he took off--in fact, I nearly clipped one of his lovingly restored headlights in my eagerness to relieve him of the extra burden... and then we all drove up to my mother's house by our own routes: I wanted to get there, my mother wanted to get there, and the Goat wanted to have the maximum amount of scenery for the distance.

It was a beautiful day...

Later that afternoon, we added Big Brother's rather odd daughter, to the mix and drove into Town to see UP in 3D, in spite of all the critical noise about how the 3D got in the way of the movie [and it did apparently give my niece a headache, but then, we all do, to some degree]. I loved it.

And as I drove in to the "cinema," I thought: here I am in my car with my mother, my daughter, my lover, and my weirdest niece, and we're all off to have a good time together. My niece even consented to stay after the movie and play cards! She comes from a household that disdains games of any sort, and here she was, throwing her lot in with the B-Team. We talked of almost nothing but the movie all evening. And the following morning we were still quoting our favorite bits, among them: "I do not like the cone of shame!"

My question is, what's in the water in Emeryville, CA? Because whatever it is, the rest of the world needs some of it. I realize that part of the appeal of Pixar is that there's only one of it, but don't you wish there were more? At the very least, I wish there were more than one movie a year...

I can't wait to get my paws on a DVD of UP and run it until it's worn away and my eyeballs are dribbling down my front... And the best part? My mother is already talking about going to see Ice Age III with me. I know the movie is going to be a let-down, but it's in 3D, and it has Scratt in it. How not worth ten bucks could it be? Then there's the new Harry Potter movie, and then... well, we all have the first Pixar live-action hybrid movie John Carter of Mars and Monsters, Inc. II to look forward to.

Some days I'm so glad to be alive I can't see straight. That actually has more to do with the Goat than it does with the spate of 3D movies, but you'd never know it from the way I've been running on recently...

I had a long talk with my Favorite Daughter on the drive back to her mother's house [and it seems quite incredible to me that I can call it that without any reserve, these days]. It was all about what marriage was and wasn't. The FD is only 21, and has all the idealism of youth bearing her up; the thing that worried me was that she seemed so invested in how things should be rather than how they tend to turn out, given the flawed nature of human beings. I admire her spirit, but I did have to say that I hoped she found a way to forgive people more and advocate cutting the offenders out of her life a little less.

I wasn't exactly arguing my own case, and she wasn't exactly, either, but it did come up a couple of times. I have to say: if I've learned anything in life, it's that life isn't as neat as you think it should be, and it's better to be prepared to cut people some slack.

As I have often said, some of the scariest words in Western civilization are: "forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us." Anyway, we listened to each other, and tried to avoid each other's sensitive points, and still have an actual reality-based discussion. I loved it. I love her.

I love them all, really. How can you not love people who play cards and go to movies and are willing to go on and on about them for hours at dinner afterward?

Damned if I know.

THE BEST LAID PLANS...

2009-06-12T19:46:00.026-05:00

I knew it wouldn't be that simple.

Isis has invited one of her Canadian cousins to come visit on Monday, and since my Favorite Daughter doesn't often get to see her or her family, she wants to stay and enjoy the visit. Never mind that we had arranged weeks ago to drive up on Sunday and stay at my mother's until we needed to be back on Wednesday night. Never mind that her grandmother's nose is now definitely out of joint, and will now take it out of me from Sunday evening through Tuesday morning, when the FD will arrive by bus.

Mind you, she will only talk about the fact the FD won't get to see my loopy eldest Sister from the South, who is In Residence with her über-patient husband at my mother's this weekend. It's always indirect misdirection up there: Heaven forbid that she should admit to being disappointed--it must be my sister who will be... or her husband. I hate to complain, but this habit of my mother's drives me a little crazy.

My grandmother wouldn't dream of playing a tired old trick like that: making a federal case out of my sister's supposed fondness for my children, which I've never noticed, personally--none of my multiple grandmothers would have. But then, it takes all kinds to make the world go 'round, doesn't it? Hey, as long as it takes my kind as well, it's OK by me.

You know, I can't really tell them that if I had a choice, I would spend the day with Isis' cousin myself--though I would, gladly. Isis' cousins were one of the best things my marriage brought me. It would be nice if my daughter had put her grandmother first, but she didn't. And that's that.

So now the FD is planning to take a bus to my mother's on Tuesday, and I will drive her home to Isis on Wednesday, when I make my way back to my work hang-out at my grandmother's, where I will have to share the house with a niece [no relation of mine] who is flying in to visit for three weeks. At least I'm only there to queer the punch a couple of days a week, so nobody needs to punch the queer... When I was really worried about my grandmother's health recently, I relished all the company that passes through the house. But now all I see is how the extra people insist on doing things their own way, and force a very self-sufficient person to become their guest in her own house. She would rather eat oatmeal for dinner in peace than have her life turned upside down for veal cordon bleu.

I've gotten rather fond of the fact that my grandmother does the absolute minimum to keep the ball rolling [who wouldn't at 98?]. She teases me constantly about my habit of actually washing the dishes until they are clean. Her standard line once I have polished off and polished up a set of pots and pans is: "Well, that will keep them for another week or two." I've gotten used to it, and I just do what I can to keep the blood-hounds at bay: things could get ugly if the visiting nurse, or the more "helpful" of her other relations, should see things approaching a train wreck in the kitchen...

The Goat doesn't think I get things clean enough, so as I'm getting it from both ends, I figure I must have reached some kind of happy medium...

While the FD and I are at my mother's, we will lure her out to see Pixar's "UP" in 3D. I have to say that it can't be as good as "Coraline" in the 3D department, but it is a Pixar movie, and I'm really going for all the non-3D elements, anyway. Then it's back to the Big Woods and trying to find a movie on Netflix that the Goat is willing to watch for more than ten minutes. It's harder than you think.

I just had to write a progress report on my little job for the College, and the gist of it was that it's all going to take about half again as long as we had estimated at the beginning, and that somebody is going to have to come up with the money to make it happen. Not my department, luckily-- I just work here.

But I do figure I should warn people lying on the tracks about the freight train coming around the bend...

Actually, it's not even so much the money as the fact that it's going to take a lot more time. The whole project is about a deadline, and that's why they hired me: Mr. Deadline. But more time on the project automatically means more time away from the Goat, unless he decides to retire early, and more time being a leech on my grandmother, unless she decides to kick the bucket. Actually, another scare like the one we had last month and the whole family would be after me to spend seven nights a week there... Me, I just generally try to fit into her way of life.

In the meantime, it's back to the Big Woods tomorrow to get a Love Fix before taking off to my mother's.

Now that the Goat is off the hook for the summer, things should get a little easier around the edges. Unless he loses it again next weekend, when everyone else is off at the wedding... Well, here's hoping we've been around that topic often enough to wear it out.

Did I mention that the wedding is next weekend?

That I'm nowhere near ready, that I'm still trying to figure out how much booze to buy, and how to speak at the wedding without making an ass of myself or creating a scene without meaning to...

Hang in there, guys.
You know in your hearts it's all you can do.
C

DOING WELL by DOING GOOD...

2009-06-10T12:11:00.019-05:00

By late afternoon, the Goat had finally finished a long day of faculty meetings and frantically squeezing in the last reports, and he immediately took off for the cabin. He called to say he was there and it seemed to the naked ear pretty clear he was in a state of near-total stress. So I let him stew in his own juice for a while--chill out, as it were--before driving out myself to give him a little of what he always gives me:

A listening ear, some slow caresses to the head and shoulders, a polite shove to get upstairs, a gentle nudge to get out and partake of the Hitler's Birthday Herbal Supplement. Then things got nasty, as they usually do, and I think I can say a good time was had by all. He said it was just what he needed, and it made me feel pretty good, too.

Amazing how that works, sometimes. It won't tonight, when the Goat comes up against the very last of his deadlines, and just has to plough through; and it won't tomorrow, when he has to mud-wrestle with the rest of the faculty for the very last time. But by then I will be off to the races, back at my grandmother's house for two long days of work, and then taking my daughter up to see her grandmother, if all goes to according to plan.

It may not; things so seldom do these days. I'm making spaghetti with clam sauce tonight, and wondering why the white wine is all out at the cabin...

But back to last night for the time being:
Here's hoping you too are getting your share of whatever you need.
If not now, then soon.
C

END of the YEAR BLUES...

2009-06-09T09:37:00.020-05:00

I don't have the End of the Year Blues, because my year is not coming to an end, but the Goat is in a complete nail-biting frenzy trying to finish up the meetings, grades, reports, advisee letters, and everything else in the ongoing paper war here at the Academy. Everyone looked so happy at graduation, and now the heat is on for the rest of the week... and tempers are fraying ever so slightly.

Last weekend we had a dinner for friends who came to watch a nephew graduate, which grew to accommodate a dozen other people, mostly faculty members. I did my "hide in the kitchen and help make it happen" thing while one of our guests relieved the Goat at the grill station. It was a great party until a couple of the other parties on campus closed down and we acquired the remaining party animals up on the hill...

One woman was quite drunk, and she is a bit of a motor-mouth even when sober. Under the influence of altogether too much juice of some kind or another, she proceeded to lay out in no uncertain terms just what she needed [a man] and why she wasn't getting it [the men at the school were wusses--read: "put off by loud- mouths"--and the school was in the Middle of Nowhere--and, come to think of it, she may have a point there]. I took advantage of the general departure for a cigarette break out on the deck to quietly tuck into the bathroom to brush my teeth, sneak into the bedroom, close the door, strip down, get horizontal, and start sawing wood.

She apparently closed the party down about an hour later when she started making remarks about particular single men in attendance...

She still has another year to go on her contract, and she seems to have set out to piss the whole community off before she leaves... there but for the grace of God go I. It was great to see our friends, and give the nephew a proper send-off. And until it was highjacked, it was a wonderful evening. I ate too much, but that's not exactly news, is it?

Now it's time to clean up and button up all the paperwork, and my plan is to be simultaneously as helpful as I can and as inconspicuous and as absent as I can until it all settles down... at which point I hope to get another good weekend out of what's left of the Goat... my own most precious non-renewable resource.

Hang in there, all.
C

THIS JUST IN...

2009-06-08T14:20:00.007-05:00

Someone I met at the cocktail party [see below] sent me this link on the latest wrinkle in the gay marriage debate [click here for the whole thing]:

Neither side of this debate has been true to their professed values. The “rites people” do not really care about the sanctity of marriage and the unconditional love and commitment to family values that such rites express and witness. They are “freaked out” by the love shared by two people of the same gender, so they offer a hysterical, angry view that gay marriages will somehow undermine heterosexual marriages and family values. If the “rites people” really believed society was better off when people committed to stay together, they would celebrate that more people in this country want to be in binding monogamous relationships.

On the other hand, the “rights people” are equally hypocritical. Rather than worry about the label of marriage, which evokes fiery opposition, the “rights people” should concentrate on ensuring that every single legal right straight married couples share is mandated for similarly committed gay couples. But as much as they care about rights, they are really “freaked out” by not having the affirmation of those who oppose them. They believe this affirmation will come with obtaining the legal right to call their relationship “marriage.” Instead of fixating on the rhetorical victory of the “marriage” label, they should focus on emptying the label of its content.

Rabbi Irwin Kula is the author of “Yearnings: Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life.” He is currently the president of The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership in New York City.

The BIG 35...

2009-06-08T12:53:00.031-05:00

I went back for my 35th college reunion a couple of weeks ago, and it was a very odd experience. Those in the know, and in the cash flow, stayed on through the weekend. I could only afford to stay one night, so I drove out early on the first day of the reunion, spent the night, and drove back late on the second day, so I could be with the Goat at graduation at the Academy. That left me from noon one day to after dinner the next. The first day, I had scheduled a lunch and a dinner with two old friends I hadn’t seen for a long time: a recently widowed rabbi and a philandering architect who lives in town.

I hadn’t planned on attending any of the actual graduation ceremonies, partly because I only do so well with crowds, and partly because I guess I tend to shy away from things on principle. It's some kind of in-born inclination to the negative—I always used to hesitate to go skiing as a kid, for instance, but always had a good time if I did—aside from the frozen extremities, at least. But after lunch with my rabbi friend and his college roommate—who were so glad to see each other you could easily have mistaken them for lovers—they dragged me over to the class day events, which included some very funny student performances and a high-profile speaker. I enjoyed it all, but especially seeing my friend again.

It's been a while.

After that I was expecting to go to dinner with my architect friend, so I had not signed up for the [incredibly expensive] reunion class dinner. I had e-mailed K earlier in the week to reconfirm our appointment, and had never gotten an answer; after the class day antics, I tried calling him, and left messages at his work and home numbers—no one answered in either place. By the time 4pm rolled around, I was fairly sure I wasn’t going to see him at dinner, so I wandered by the reunion office and inquired how much a last-minute ticket to the dinner would cost, and it turned out it cost even more “at the door” than it had on-line.

So much for that idea.

So, I decided I would just treat myself to dinner. Then I remembered that the fledgling gay alumni group had scheduled a couple of events; I had planned on attending the free cocktail party the following day—in fact, it was the reason I had decided to go ahead and spend the money to overnight in town—but I had forgotten that they were having a “warm-up” drinks event that day at one of the pubs downtown. So I put on my walking shoes and wandered down.

One of my rules of thumb back when I spent a lot of time on the road was that you should never eat or drink in a place you can’t see into from the outside. This pub qualified for avoidance on all counts; not only was the door the only thing at street level, but once you did get downstairs, there was almost no light worth mentioning. I finally summoned up the courage to ask where the gay alumni were gathering, and the hostess directed me to a room, more like an alcove, really, off to the side, with the same ennui she might have summoned up if I had asked where the monthly Elks gathering was happening. In fact, if there had been any light in the place, I could have found it myself, but there wasn’t…

Once my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I could see right away that there were quite a few people from my class there, none of whom I knew well; there were more from the younger years, but then, isn’t that always the case? Once I finally managed to flag down a server and get a beer, I wandered over to where the food was and ran right into someone I had known—we had taken a lot of the same art courses, though we was really a theater person—a stage manager, I think—and I was only doing posters. He did the whole “mingling at the party, welcome the nervous stranger” thing, introduced himself, and I said “Good to see you again, Joe [not his name, mind you]; we actually know each other.”

That brought a complete blank stare, but once I had filled in enough dark details, the pennies began hitting the slots hard and fast. He’s now an oncologist, and he and his partner have a house in the Big Woods, of all places; but aside from a little dusting of gray, he looked exactly the same—and how I wish I could say the same of myself.

Today I am easily twice the man I was then, and I haven’t gotten any taller…

Joe introduced me around, but what was so weird was the fact that we were now so completely casual about being gay, which was certainly not the case on campus in our day—at least, not on ours. Of course, now I could look back and say of those people I had known slightly or at least recognized, “Well, of course. Why didn’t I know?” [as they would have been quite right to say of me]. Over the course of an hour or so, I found the courage to talk to a number of people, and began to feel at home. It was a lovely hour, but then they all took off for the class dinners, and I found myself eating a burger on the sidewalk and wishing I had not been stood up by my friend K. I called the Goat and made little whimpering noises which he found rather silly; in retrospect I do too, but at the time I was definitely being what Betty Macdonald called “a Big Saddo.”

I went back to my lonely dorm room and read a book—thank God I had brought one! I didn’t have my computer or any of the five million things I need to do for work with me, so it was either reading or tearing my hair out. After the dinner was over, I sauntered over to see if anyone was sticking around for the free end of the event, and got to listen to my ex-Air-Force-captain friend “Jay” brief me on the current student issues while the sophomore whose issues he was cataloguing smiled rather tightly. Jay is a bit of an ass, but he was a long-time leader in the alumni association, so it caused rather a stir when he came out… He dealt with it really well, making it a “teaching moment” for the college, and many of the rest of us—at my 25th reunion, I spent much of my time talking to Jay and his lover about my planned going public as bisexual, and they were both pleasantly supportive.

The next day I met Jay for breakfast and he dragged me to graduation, which turned out to be quite a gas—mostly because of the ways students were serious and silly, and the way the adults reacted to both. The people getting honorary degrees were pretty impressive, including one Gay Superstar who will remain nameless. It turned out that Jay’s lover N was completely obsessed with this guy, and had prevailed on Jay to crash the post-graduation cocktail party for the honorees at the president’s house so they could meet him… and they invited me along.

Jay easily took command in the approach to the president’s house. “Stay right behind me and let me do all the talking,” he said. We did an amazing “flying wedge” assault, slipping in through a side entry to the establishment [as they were checking invitations at the front entrance]. Jay charged, and we trotted along behind, trying to look as determined and entitled as he did. From his years raising money for the college, he knew everybody in the Inner Circle we were entering here, and he covered everything [hanging up our coats, grabbing a glass of wine, wading through the crowd to get to the room where the honorees were decompressing] with an amazing volley of greetings and handshakes, keeping everyone who might have stopped us off balance—until we actually got to the Decompression Chamber. There the Cerberus would brook no interference, so we waited for N’s idol to exit the room.

I would have missed it, but N caught him on the threshold [I personally expect he was headed off to take a leak]. N announced his fan-aticism in rapid shorthand, and then asked if his lover Jay could take a picture of them. Jay took two while the poor Gay Superstar smiled rather tensely, and then the GSS sprinted up the stairs, which only confirmed me in my understanding of why he had left his safe haven in the first place… we dawdled out the front door towards lunch.

And there were pre-lunch cocktails! I had paid for lunch, so I took a wine spritzer onboard and after chatting up another four or five people I hadn’t seen in ten or twenty years, breezed into the dining room and found that the only empty seats were with the other members of my class who lived in my Former Hometown, now Isis’ Hometown. That went off pretty well, though I was careless enough, once again, to drop the reason for our split-up, which I am pretty sure Isis is still stonewalling. It gets too complicated to avoid the truth, after a while, and I stopped lying in response to direct questions a long time ago; I don’t volunteer the information, but if someone asks, I’m not going to prevaricate.

After lunch I put in some more time in my dorm room with the life-saving book, and then took off for a Gay Studies discussion and the Main Gay Event, the all-classes, all-gay cocktail party. I wore my new motorcycle boots; I had my jeans over them, so they were a rather subtler announcement than usual, but they were still there to give me a bit of a lift and anyone who was interested… a bit of a lift. The Gay Studies discussion was amazingly self-referential and lame. The students and the faculty who spoke were so tied up in discussion of theory [OK, it's Queer Theory, but does that make it any less irritating?] that I wanted to bolt for cover, and would have. But the room was set up in such a way that I would have had to parade before the panel to make my departure, and that seemed a little ruder than even I was feeling…

Once four or five others had packed up and left, I followed with a profound sense of relief. If there were ever any doubt in my mind that I couldn’t live in academe, it sure got nailed this time. What a lot of hot air! To my delight, one young man did ask if they weren’t all losing sight of the meaning of their own lives in all this convoluted theoretical discussion; I almost kissed him…

Anyway, I finally made my escape and found my self under a tent soaking up gin and lime juice, trying to contact the guys I had met the night before [including an incredibly hot Dutchman whose lover was in my class, I think], and trying to make the extra effort not to let the chance of talking to new people go by me, as I usually do. I did talk to some very nice people I hadn’t known until that moment, including one poor guy whose lover of five years had just been murdered two weeks before. That certainly put the tone of the “cocktail hour” in perspective. But there were what seemed like hundreds of people there; I guess I file the place under “Far Away," but it's close enough to several larger cities to attract a respectable number of alums of all ages, and then there are the Homintern among the faculty and the student body. Nice to see so many of “us” in one place without trying to pick each other up, in any case.

I voiced my amazement at how many guys and gals had shown up, and was then informed that this was just the run-up to the [third? fourth?] big annual dinner of our little wing of the alumni association. Silly me; this was another expensive dinner I had failed to buy a ticket to, so after some very pleasant conversations over the course of an hour or so, I once again watched everyone file off for salmon and asparagus [or whatever the well-heeled are eating at dinners these days] and I wound up back on the sidewalk looking for something that wasn’t a burger…

Once again, after the dinner there was free admission again for the program, but when I showed up the dinner itself was just getting underway, and I realized that if I stuck around for the “program,” much as I would have liked to, I wasn’t going to get home until long after midnight. So I said my goodbyes and took my leave. And drove and drove and drove. The following day I was completely incapable of focusing or getting anything done at all.

It was partly that, at 98, my grandmother has, suddenly taken a downward swing, and you have to assume that there’s little likelihood of an upswing to follow it. Since she has been my main support system for the last six months or so, that kind of took the stuffing out of me. But there was something else… And I tried hard to put my finger on it. I spent more of the morning than I meant to jotting down the names of the people I had met, sending little “nice to meet you” e-mails to the ones I had enjoyed speaking to, and trying to sort out my emotional response to the days’ events. [I couldn’t really contact the Dutchman, as he was only along for the ride, and I had been unable to get his alumnus partner to recognize my existence—oh, well.] And the more I think about it, the more I think it comes down to this:

After I came out to my family and close friends, I skipped town and started a new life as a gay man. [OK, OK, bi, but looking for a guy this time—let’s not squabble about terminology.] Now I had spent time in Nowheresville as a child and as a “youth,” but did not make more than an initial effort to get in touch with the people I had known then who were still in the area. Then I took off for the Big Woods, and was pretty much known as the Goat’s latest squeeze and not much else—though I did mean to contact an old friend of my parents who lived in town, I haven’t. And thereby hangs a tale: I think I was still trying to keep the “gay” and the “straight” sides of me in separate compartments—it does make life easier, as the demands made on both sides of the street don’t really fit me very well. The days at the reunion were the first time, since coming out to my family, that I had to let the two worlds meet in a significant way, and it rattled me.

Everyone was very nice. Anyone who had read my alumni notes knew my story—not to mention the fact that my Christmas letter goes out to my 300 closest friends—it’s not like I was withholding information. Everyone knew. But it’s one thing to tell people, and it’s another thing to be with people who knew you under one set of circumstances and are now seeing you in a whole new light. A few people—there are always a few nitwits in the crowd—had made unpleasant remarks or veiled put-downs, but that’s not my problem. I really think it was the acceptance of the nice people that had set off the emotional alarms: for the first time in quite a while, I was meeting people who had known me for a long time but who now were looking at my sexuality as the first thing they had to deal with rather than the last thing. And that was weird to me. As was the contrast between then and now...

That’s just the way it is.
More later, maybe.

Hang in there, all.

C

MORE of the SAME...

2009-05-31T20:17:00.016-05:00

I know that you are all getting tired of this topic, but it continues to astound me how closely the Goat and I seem to be aligned [as the Chinese fortune-cookie ending goes:] "in bed." Saturday nights are usually the points where this is brought home to me in no uncertain terms, and this Saturday was no exception. It was mind-boggling. Who knew one could generate that much heat and not set off the smoke-detector?

I keep wondering where this part of me was for the first 55 years of my life. Well, we all know the answer to that question: under wraps. I knew only too well what was going on out on the piers, in the backrooms, in the trucks in the meat-packing district, and all the other bits of NYC geography that had become the subject of the gay knowledge grapevine that had shoots in every other city in the US, even in the rinky-dink precincts of my so-called Big City--and even of the leather knowledge grapvine, though the Goat claims that anything remarkable or important about leather happened in San Francisco first, and in his corner of the West Coast second.

But, as the Goat also points out, if I'd waded in to the melee then, I would probably be dead by now. I'll take alive over dead any day. But there was no way to know that then; it was just a question of knowing what called out to me loudest. But it's one thing to know what represents temptation to you--and to know how people who show up in it unexpectedly get talked about, as I heard only too often--and it's quite another thing to wake up one day and just give temptation its head, as the saying goes. It may be my imagination, but things seem to just keep on getting better. At this rate, when I do die, I am going to die very, very happy.

We were even able to talk about the future today for the first time in a long time; Son B's upcoming wedding had put a lot of issues out of bounds for a while, but had also crystallized things for the Goat. The non-invitation had made him question how much he belonged to my family [bad] but had led him to actually spend time thinking over the last few weeks about a lot of the issues he has been finessing before then, or putting off until they landed on the front burner all on their own [good].

Such as:

What is going to happen when he retires? how far away would he be willing to move? I have to say that after what will be at that point two years living in several places at once, I really want to find a place we can both fit in within a reasonable travel time from the work that I do have. Short term. And it probably means several years of being ready [or at least willing] to move around a bit--I've got some eight years of work left before I can join him in retirement--if I live that long... He went through a lot of forced relocations out West, and that's one of the reasons that he is so tied to his cabin in the woods now. But today he seemed willing to at least contemplate moving a couple of times to allow us to be together wherever I was working.

That sure sounds like progress to me.

But to return to the opening thought of this post: the really nice thing is that what is sauce for the goose seems to be sauce for the gander--or at least, they both seem to get what they need from the sauce they're cooking up--or in--together. What a gift to get so late in life. Not exactly a free gift, but a great gift nevertheless...

Hang in there, guys.
It beats the alternatives.
C

NO HANDWRINGING... THIS TIME...

2009-05-29T07:21:00.019-05:00

I just noticed again this morning--definitely not the first time for me, and probably not even for you, gentle reader--that my blogroll is populated mainly with defunct or long-silent blogs. That is the price you pay for continuing to blog but not really continuing to spend the time to read a lot of other people's posts.

When I started out in Blogworld, I started by reading whole blogs at a sitting; I was even stupid enough to cut and paste the entries so that I could read them like a book. [I was even stupider: I gave the books and URLs to my wife, but I'll pass over that one for the moment.] Now, I check in with my still-posting regulars and whatever other blogs they send me to, but I basically don't read much.

I don't post much, either.

There is clearly a similar dynamic at work across the board. People who are conflicted and in the middle of an intolerable mess, or just plain crazy from not having anyone to talk to, talk on and on and on. People who have sort come out the other side and get their lives in order stop blogging and get on with their lives. Good for them.

[And since I should be in the same boat, the question really is: why am I still blogging? I've asked this question a number of times before... It can't be because I am that dependent on my seven followers and the five or six other humans who occasionally drop in to see what's going on.]

But I can't help wondering what happened to my BlogBrothers once they stopped posting. It's the "vampire in me"; I got used to knowing about their lives, and now I don't. Their gain, my loss.

In some parallel universe, I would be working on my counseling credentials by haunting all the new GMM blogs and offering sage advice. The problem is that I don't have the time. Well, no--the problem is that I really only have one thing to say: no one but you two can figure out where this is going and how to get there. And having once said that, I quit.

But I no longer feel that's the whole story. I still have the scars from all the well-meaning but hateful comments assuring me that there was only one possible ending to my own story. But now I am inclined to believe much of what my vulture-readers told me. Nine times out of ten, they are probably right: eventually, things will reach the point where even the most accommodating woman will decide she's had enough, and if you [we] have any heart at all, you [we] will see that it's time to cut her losses [not yours] and make up your mind one way or the other.

But I insist that either option is feasible. And that one time out of ten, a couple may in fact find a way to cope with what seems like an essentially intolerable situation. In at least one case I know, it works because the wife doesn't want to believe what she really knows in her bones, and as long as it's not said, she can go on living. And her husband loves her a lot--so he wants her to go on living, and wants to go on living with her. I understand all of that; I just don't have the intestinal fortitude to cover up [deny] the truth like that. I suffered enough when my in-laws all refused to acknowledge that my father-in-law was dying--everyone in the family but Isis refused to recognize what was visibly, tangibly, incontrivertibly going on in front of our eyes, and it drove the two of us to the brink of insanity.

I couldn't live with that inside a marriage...

So here I am, giving the vultures their due. I just don't want to be one.

Hang in there, guys.
What else can we do?
C

AND NOW THIS...

2009-05-27T09:21:00.016-05:00

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

THIS JUST IN...

2009-05-25T09:57:00.005-05:00

Over at "Center of Gravitas," [click here] GayProf is offering a tidbit of wisdom to queer job-seekers which I think is good advice to all of us, of whatever rainbow hue or degree of black-and-white thinking:

Never attribute to malice
what can be explained by incompetence.

I don't think I could better encapsulate my response to people who are convinced without evidence visible to the nonparticipant that they are the victims of racism, homophobia, or the rest of the laundry list. Most people are unthinking and uninformed more than they are motivated by hatred.

So, if we can accept that, it means that we in turn don't have to get down into a gutter they're not even aware they're in... and that will save us all a lot of heartache. By the way, GayProf's post on academic job-seeking for queer folk would be good advice to queer folk seeking any form of employment, which, until we actually start buying the lottery tickets we all talk about, most of us are; and it's amusing as well as informative.

As he himself puts it,

Assuming that you are going to insist upon living indoors, any job offer is going to seem preferable than nothing at all.

C

MEANINGLESS NUMBERS...

2009-05-22T20:51:00.009-05:00

While there is a decided and significant difference between what happened three years ago, say, and what happened two years ago, there are other numbers that don't mean much.

We've moved on in the course of the day, but when I checked my StatCounter this morning, I had had 22,222 visitors since the last time it reset itself...

When numbers catch your eye like that, they're generally meaningless.
C

POST from an ARCHEOLOGICAL DIG...

2009-05-09T13:02:00.037-05:00

A long time ago, I had a chat with a friend who was on his way out to his family. It brought up so many issues for me, who was in the middle of my descent into the vortex that is life with the Goat, that I thought I would make it into a post, but I never got around to it. Then, recently, while trolling through old posts, I found a number of other drafts I had never posted, and decided to haul them out and make one big post out of them. Here it is:

If gay man make up three or four percent
Of all men, and about the same proportion
Of gay men are into leather, and
The chance of love returned in kind is small,

The chance as small of an aligning bent,
Our chance was close to one per million. Lord!
It seems you're one of five men in this grand
Bayed state who could have made me burn and crawl.

In other words, you're clearly heaven-sent,
And we both miracle and monsters, and, what's more,
Although we build our house on wind and sand,
The sun shines down on us where we lie sprawled.

All this to say that I aim for an attitude
Of the profoundest, constant, humble gratitude.
C

You’ve proven tender, patient, sweet and gentle,
But there are other shoals than those we’ve passed.
You know my weakness [physical and mental];
You know my struggles and don’t stand aghast,
But end them with redeeming close embraces,
In which safe haven I may rest at last.

I thought I’d laid bare all my blemished traces,
Been ruthless, spared no vanity or pride;
I thought indeed I’d shown you all my faces.
But now a dread befalls me: though I tried,
There is one sordid truth that’s accidentally
Gone unsaid, so in the end: I’ve lied.

I see so clearly now what love demands:
Again you’ll hold my heart in your two hands.

But now, on to the Far-Flung Voice, and our conversation of some two years ago:

In the middle of what one can only describe as a nasty divorce, he suddenly found himself in bed with a married friend who lived about a quarter of an hour from his house. What sort of blew me away was the fact that my friend had been quite vocal about not @#$%-ing on the first date, should one appear. I accused him of using that disavowal as part of the seduction process; I was beginning to believe that that was how it was perceived by others when I made it, and I was getting a bit queasy over it. He admitted that he had shed his sense of guilt in about 15 seconds after the first embrace and kiss; I suggested that what he had shed was his sense of shame, which was not quite the same thing...

and welcomed him to the state of shamelessness. I softened it for a lapsed Catholic by saying that it might well be the living in freedom beyond the law promised by the Gospels, which always looks like sin to the casual observer...

Though there are probably still limits to what we will do, we seemed to keep moving ours, and I am afraid that we will not find out what they are until we reach them. That is why living in freedom is so terrifying--not because of what may happen, though there is that, but because of what you will discover yourself capable of. That is FAR more disturbing. As, it seems, we had both found out. I am quite sure I have some surprises left in store, whether it is the Goat who takes me there or someone else. I am still sort of hoping it's the Goat at this point, just to keep things simple enough for me to deal with, but... you never know.

Living in freedom is the real "journey of discovery" that all the books and movies are about, though most of them stop short of exploring the ... adult ... nature of stepping beyond rules into freedom. But the journey is always a journey to discover yourself: The Wizard of Oz, The Lord of the Rings, etc, etc. One of the things that infuriated me about the LotR movies was the way they left out the end which is almost the whole POINT of the book [along with the necessity of Gollum, without whose greed even Frodo would have failed]: once you set on that journey, you can't just go back to where you were before. In the movie, the hobbits all come home and it's all just the way it always was; in the book, Saruman has taken his revenge in their absence by destroying the Shire, and it takes them the rest of their lives to restore it. Which is what makes J.R.R. Tolkien a Christian and Peter Jackson a nincompoop.

I reminded the FFV that it had taken all of one embrace and one kiss to send ME over the edge on my first "date" with the Goat, so I had a pretty good idea of what went on in his apartment after he asked his friend up for coffee [as if they didn't both know what was going to happen--what did he THINK "come up for coffee" means, anyway?]. He simply said that by the time he invited him for coffee he was pretty clear about what he was hoping would happen, but he couldn't think of too many times in life that he had gotten what he wished for and found it to be what he actually needed or wanted. Now he had.

It seems not to have occurred to my friend, who was my first and only electronic relationship, that getting involved in his friend's divorce could be as ugly as the way my on-line friendship with him had featured in the lead-up to mine. Or that it would be one hell of a way to come out to his family.

My friend admitted that while he had initially gone in to the "relationship" for No Strings Attached sex, he had since been blindsided by the need to be there for his new buddy, who had as yet no one to talk to. He suddenly cared what happened to him. Well, I replied, at least he had discovered that he was human after all; the ability to divorce sex and feeling had always puzzled me. [I guess it's just my own shortcoming, but I don't see how you can do it without doing violence to yourself.] I asked him to be careful not to confuse his FRIEND's interest with his own... it would be unlikely for them be the same, and at some point he will need someone to talk to who is a little less... involved.

He wondered if having taken on two short-term relationships, he had become a slut. I replied that I didn't think "slutdom" was a question of numbers, but of a state of mind. And going from "thank God he wont @#$% on the first date" to "come up for coffee" MIGHT be a good sign that it applied in this case. I surmised that we both now knew ourselves better than we had such as short while ago... There is nothing like throwing yourself at a man you think is hot to redefine your idea of what you would ever think of doing. As I had found out myself not too long before...

Our conversation then segued into the matter of the Goat's Regular BoyFriend, who had assured me with a heartiness that I found quite creepy that their relationship was open, and I was part of the scenery as far as he was concerned. That glossed over a number of things, like the RBF's fury that the Goat had not canceled a third meeting with me when told to do so, and an ultimatum about time spent with him, which was never enough, and in fact, a number of responses to a number of things which added up to the apparent truth that the relationship was "open" only as long as his primacy wasn't threatened in any way.

Once again: human after all. I found that reassuring, actually, because I had been so startled by the idea that EVERYTHING was different on this side of the looking glass; now I could just relax in the knowledge that human feelings were pretty much the same no matter what the ideological convictions of their holders may require them to say. But I had every right to be worried. The rule in the marrying world, after all, is that men never stay with the Piece on the Side, which I most decidedly was, and they never stay in the Rebound Relationship, which mine with the Goat most decidedly was. From the Goat's POV, of course, I was if anything a Prebound Relationship, should it come to that.

Which, gentle readers, you will know that it has.

It seemed a little perverse that my friend and I had landed in the same boat at about the same time; it was beyond perverse that the Goat's RBF was a former seminarian, while my friend's sudden, unexpected lover was a youth minister at his church. If people only knew what the Catholic church had really meant to the rest of the world... I had essentially left my marriage because I couldn't live with cheating on my wife, and now I was being part of cheating on someone else's, so to speak, though we were all so "open" it hurt. I'm not. Apparently it's solid internalized homophobia inside me... and I thought I was just pure marshmallow.

This led me to the famous comment that an "open" relationship means one in which the parties pretend that other relationships don't matter. And the not entirely original thought that hell hath no fury like a faggot scorned. I had gotten a dose of brimstone second-hand, left over from what the Goat had gotten from the RBF, but suddenly the following week he was all sweetness and light and wanted to meet me for supper, as he was suddenly on my turf for a conference.

I got grilled for an hour or so, mostly on subjects like what the Goat's feelings were; as I had no idea myself--though I knew I was hopelessly in love, I really had no idea yet how he felt--I hemmed and hawed, and as a result was later accused of lying. But I didn't really see how I could divulge what little information I had on the Goat's frame of mind when he had obviously chosen not to share it with the RBF himself. Damned if you do, you know, and damned if you don't.

What was weird was that half of me hoped they would work it out, and half of me hoped they wouldn't. I was not at all sure that I was really ready to commit to the Goat myself; there is nothing like the sudden prospect of getting what you want to make you think twice about your dreams. His inability to be "together" for more than 24 hours, which he had freely admitted, was a bit of a problem for me. And I could see in his relationship with the RBF what the maximum I could expect from him would be. I wasn't sure it was enough for me, no matter how good the sex was. Or the food.

You have to decide whether you have crossed a bridge or burned one, and it's not an easy choice. If not for him, for whom else? Is it all comers--which does sometimes seem to be the gay standard,--or not? How do you make sense of life "through the looking glass" when suddenly none of the comforting restrictions are there? How do you stay true to yourself when you don't know who you are? There's the killer. Well, as they say, "coming out is a life-long process." I am getting so tired of that one I could spit, but there's truth in it. You are always finding out who you really are.

Most people never do.

One of the first things I posted here At Sea was a poem which contained the vow:

I will not live an unlived life.

That about covers it for me. I am not happy or proud to have left my family, but I simply HAD to know who I was. And if I couldn't do that inside my marriage, I had to do it on my own. I had sort of hoped to discover it inside, at first, though it's hard to imagine Isis and the Goat coexisting the way the RBF and I were asked to. The Goat actually told both the RBF and me that he thought we'd really enjoy sleeping together. Jesus!

That's where I began to wonder what kind of taste I have in men...

It is also, true, however, that I had had it up to HERE with the queens who ran the gay social scene in Nowheresville. The bears were OK, but the rest of them were pretty much impossible. I have had little tolerance for queens over the years, I'm afraid to say, drag or otherwise. It turned out the Goat, when he came out out West at 30, had lived with a series of black drag queens, which is just unimaginable to me. And yet here we were in at "one degree of separation." I suspect that my resistance was really to admitting that my famously Inner Girl had ANYTHING to do with their Outer Girls, which of course she does. Clear on the face of it, no? [Well, this is one I've been working on since...]

Now that my friend had bagged one, I wanted to know where MY hunky 32-year old bear was. My boss kept telling me about all these "cute guys" but the ones she thought "cute" were more often than not more feminine than I was, which is basically the opposite of what I wanted. In a moment of clarity a couple of years ago, I admitted to myself that all I wanted was to @#$% Marines. And then I remembered that maybe that wasn't all...

Oh well. Who knew I would turn out to be so versatile?
Me, that's who, once I could breathe deep and stop denying it...

But if everybody wants someone butcher than they are, and everybody wants someone younger than they are, as the internet makes perfectly clear, how can ANYBODY find anyone? I said and still say, look for something else, and everything will fall into place. I just didn't know if I could practice what I preached. [I rather think I can't.] Now that I have been struck by lightning twice in my life, once on each side of the street, I just hope I am never in the position of hitting the scene again.

Three strikes seems like more than one could ask, even of God.
"Till death do us part" seems more comforting every day.

It was the Far-Flung Voice who had pointed out to me that my watchword "like a dog to its vomit" is indeed scriptural. [This is why one needs Catholic friends, lapsed or otherwise.] And having now seen where it comes from, I have to say I find my repeated use of a little more of a coincidence than I am entirely comfortable with. Look at this:

From the 2nd Letter of Peter, 2nd chapter:

Many will follow their licentious ways, and because of these teachers the way of truth will be maligned. And in their greed they will exploit you with deceptive words. Their condemnation, pronounced against them long ago, has not been idle, and their destruction is not asleep.

For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of deepest darkness to be kept until the judgment; and if he did not spare the ancient world, even though he saved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood on a world of the ungodly; and if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction and made them an example of what is coming to the ungodly; and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man greatly distressed by the licentiousness of the lawless (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by their lawless deeds that he saw and heard), then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trial, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment, especially those who indulge their flesh in depraved lust, and who despise authority.

Bold and willful, they are not afraid to slander the glorious ones, whereas angels, though greater in might and power, do not bring against them a slanderous judgment from the Lord. These people, however, are like irrational animals, mere creatures of instinct, born to be caught and killed. They slander what they do not understand, and when those creatures are destroyed, they also will be destroyed, suffering the penalty for doing wrong. They count it a pleasure to revel in the daytime. They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their dissipation while they feast with you.

They have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin. They entice unsteady souls. They have hearts trained in greed. Accursed children! They have left the straight road and have gone astray, following the road of Balaam son of Bosor, who loved the wages of doing wrong, but was rebuked for his own transgression; a speechless donkey spoke with a human voice and restrained the prophet's madness. These are waterless springs and mists driven by a storm; for them the deepest darkness has been reserved. For they speak bombastic nonsense, and with licentious desires of the flesh they entice people who have just escaped from those who live in error. They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption; for people are slaves to whatever masters them.

For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overpowered, the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than, after knowing it, to turn back from the holy commandment that was passed on to them. It has happened to them according to the true proverb, "The dog turns back to its own vomit," and, "The sow is washed only to wallow in the mud."

There are a couple of things going on for me here: without wanting to get into an argument with the Biblical critics, this is for me the voice of my hero Peter, the short-tempered bastard who still turned out to be of use. And he seems to mince no words about people who seem mighty like, well, me. Especially the parts about "bombastic nonsense" and "licentious desire".

I am sure that most "God-fearing" folk out there would not hesitate to apply this passage to me, and my brothers along with me; I am equally sure that most of our orientation[s] would rise up in one body and denounce the authority of this scripture. But let's go slow and take it easy. I am going to think about this one, and come back to it.

The real issue is this: if they are again entangled in them and overpowered, the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than, after knowing it, to turn back from the holy commandment that was passed on to them.

Three years ago, I knew I was headed for the wallow again, for all my doubts about the actual eating of the vomit... and I am bold to say that I think it was my Master who called me to the wallow.

It's a mad world, my masters.
C

WHERE PUSH COMES to SHOVE...

2009-05-04T09:42:00.041-05:00

Well, it had to happen.

I was just hoping that a little more time would go by before we had to face this. One of my sons, whom I will call B (as opposed to, say, A), is going to marry his girlfriend this summer; the "real" wedding will take place in her far-away home country next spring, but in the meantime they are having a civil wedding to get the INS off her back. So far, so good.

However, having grown up watching his mother, a local officeholder and justice of the peace, welcome many couples to our living room in winter and garden in the summer-- even, irony of irony, gay couples after civil unions came in a while ago--my son is asking his mother to perform the ceremony. At what was until recently OUR house.

So Isis is going to have to say all those words to her son and his bride with her ex-husband in attendance, which is not going to be easy. It was originally a non-wedding with only seven people attending: one couple, two siblings, two parents, and the one surviving grandparent, my card-sharp mother. Period. That was good for Isis, and good in one way for me: it made it clear why the Goat was not being invited; I had asked right away, and the answer was "no."

It was good to have a reason, at least.

But now they have decided to invite some friends and some family, and my family at that. That is not going to be easy for some people; my family was in and out of the house for twenty years, but has not been allowed anywhere near it since I moved out. It's true I have occasionally gone in to use the bathroom, but I have also otherwise halted on the porch steps when I came to pick up my daughter for a visit. I figured I wasn't welcome, and I didn't have to figure it out on my own...

I decided that the best way to help make the day itself less stressful was for me to stop by Isis' office in town and speak to her well in advance, so that at least we were not doing THAT for the first time on our son's wedding day. It didn't go very well, probably because I said too much and asked her to say too much, but it probably also went as well as it could have. We are never going to agree on much of anything relating to our time together until I have stopped being regarded as the sole guilty party [by either one of us].

I asked for the interview because I knew my presence at the wedding was going to be hard on her, and I wanted to tell her that I was willing to do anything [within reason] that would make it easier.

I learned several things during our meeting: she is facing my family with as much trepidation as she is me, which would never have crossed my mind; and it is all going to be at least as painful for me as it is for her. I had somehow lost track of that. But it's true: I will not be in a position to welcome my family or my son's friends to the house; I will literally be a guest in my own house.

That is going to hurt a lot.

I have gotten used to driving by the house over the last two or three years--in the beginning, it opened up all kinds of wounds, but with time I made my home elsewhere and the house became a phantom limb with its disembodied pain, rather than an open wound--an old wound rather than an ongoing Civil War amputation with no anesthetic. But the fact remains that I have never really "been" there since I left, let alone for an event such as this, and my status is going to be brought home to me in no uncertain terms. It could be worse: at least she recognizes that I have a right to be there.

The person who apparently does not have a right to be there--and only because it's a house wedding--is the Goat. His reaction to not being invited was not volcanic, but certainly... strong. It is also certainly true that if I had told him the whole story at once instead of trying to shield B from any possible resentment, things might have gone better. As it was, no amount of persuasion could bring his dudgeon down to a level where logic could operate. Even after I told the whole story. Even though there were only going to be the couple, the two siblings, the two parents, and the one surviving grandparent in attendance.

He did eventually [eventually!] make his peace with that, but then the guest list opened up, and we started all over again.

The worst thing in that little snarl was the accusation that I was putting Isis' needs over his, which seemed a little over the top. It is true that twenty-five years will tend to trump two most of the time, no matter how wonderful the two have been. But that wasn't even the issue here: the issue was that Isis was performing the ceremony herself, and in her own home. The Goat seemed not to see that his presence would make it pretty hard for her to survive the event, let alone enjoy it. I was going to make it bad enough; my family was only going to make it worse; my lover might well have been the straw that broke the camel's back. And the camel was performing the ceremony. In her own home.

In a couple of years it might be OK, and I certainly hope that nobody else gets married for a while, because I am not backing down again. I asked my son to invite him, and he said he couldn't. Twice. I understood that; the Goat didn't. But to have him along on the first occasion on which I appear at all did seem to be asking a lot of a woman who has been doing her best to pretend I never existed.

The worst thing about my interview with Isis, though, was seeing how badly she is doing at pretending. My presence tore open all the wounds, even before I opened my mouth. She was more tense than I had ever seen her before, and she was visibly suffering. She could barely sit still--the woman I used to say was so even- tempered as to border on the bovine. She twisted her hands just the same way I did so long ago at Leather Night (when I came out in a whole new way just by being there, and saw the Goat for the first time). She and I had lived together for twenty-five years, and just having me in the same room now was almost more than she could stand. Anger I could have faced down and fought off; her anguish was something against which I had no defense. My own mouth went dry, and I began to realize that things weren't going to be easy for me, either, whether or not the Goat was able to come.

If I hadn't known I had to do it, I would have never been able to stay and try to get her to say what she needed from me to make the occasion one she could enjoy for its main component, the happy event itself. I wish the Goat could understand that. In the meantime, he says he understands, but still carries his bruised feelings about a millimeter below the surface most of the time.

When I heard about the expanded guest list, I had to call B and ask him again point-blank if he would be inviting the Goat. He said no, he didn't think he could. I had to say that I not only understood and admired, but basically shared his concern for his mother's feelings. But I also had to say that I hoped the next time he would show a similar concern for mine. It is my determination, my grim determination, not to let this happen twice.

Well, as I said at the beginning, I wish this had happened a few years from now, when the wounds might have been a little less fresh. But it might also never have come to that without the dread first meeting being required by the event happening now; I might be facing the same issues ten years from now, but with less of a leg to stand on in standing up for Isis' right to some kind of peace in her own home.

You know, I see many things more clearly now. I can see that the Inner Girl could only stay repressed for so long, and that the totality of her triumphal entry into the devastated remains of what had been the plainly male center of my being derived its power from the amount of time and effort that been spent on keeping her down and out of sight.

I can see that if I had ever had a lover like the Goat when I was young and less foolish, I might never have thought of marrying at all. I can see, now that I am desired for what I really am, how important that is to any kind of love. I was never able to give Isis that; I loved her to distraction, but I was not aflame with desire. I had never known what it felt like to experience that kind of love and that kind of desire at the same time. Now I do.

So I can see that I wronged her from the beginning. My only defense is that I had no idea I was doing it, and certainly never intended to. "I had no idea." Now there's a line the Goat and I can share... And here I am, the little boy who grew up between warring forces and is completely allergic to being caught in the middle of anything, caught in the middle again.

Between the only two people I have ever loved deeply.

Life just keeps throwing punches, and all we can do is roll with them.
Hang in there, guys.
C

A LETTER to the CHILDREN...

2009-04-29T10:53:00.024-05:00

Hi.

Recent events have forced me to reconsider the way I have been talking about my relationship with the Goat, and it has occurred to me that you are the people I should talk to first. When I called N recently, she asked whether the Goat and I might consider getting married; I made some non-committal statement about caution and marriage, but basically avoided the issue. There are a couple of reasons for that.

The first reason:

As you have probably heard all too many times, the issue of gay marriage is a bit of a cleft stick for me. I don't doubt for a moment that society should provide gay people (that is, the Goat and me) all the rights and responsibilities of marriage if we want it. Though there are conflicting estimates of how many of us do in fact want it, rights are rights, whether you choose to take advantage of them or not.

However, I also don't doubt for a moment that, however it may have ended, what your mother and I had was a marriage, and a good one. You yourselves are the best evidence: not only that the Biblical words "they shall become one flesh" are literally true, but that what we had was of immeasurable value and creative power. Whatever the Goat and I do, we will not be creating a family in that sense. And until technology altered what had been the obvious result of married life, it would have been clear to anyone that we could not.

And then there is the fact that what is coming into being as “gay marriage” is something profoundly new; it has literally never been seen before. Ever. Anywhere. I greet its dawning with enthusiasm, but I still resonate to the idea that as a new thing it should also take a new name. But that’s probably a lost battle, and I’m not going to waste any energy waging it now.

Marriage in any case is a strange institution. Much of the legal battle around it now seems to be about state recognition, which while it is highly desirable, misses the point by appearing to leave the definition of marriage to the state rather than to the free choice of loving hearts. Many things operate under the name "marriage" which are in fact anything but, and many true marriages live out their existence without ever achieving the right to take the name.

That will surely also be true of gay marriages, and I doubt that it will ever change on either side of the street—that is the sad fact of our fallen nature.

Marriage is first and foremost a commitment between two people. The tradition of Christian marriage was built on the elevation of free will; it created our certainty that marriage should be the result of free choice, and not of family, property, or dynastic arrangements—all of which it certainly had been before. The presence of witnesses was required to ensure that the partners, and particularly the bride, were entiring a lifelong commitment of their own free will. But the Church also taught that a marriage performed in the sight of God alone was as valid as one performed in the sight of all one's friends and relations, just as repentance before God was as valid as repentance within what was then the confessional.

It is the inner truth of the relationship that determines its validity, not its outward appearance. I don’t know whether the Goat and I will ever make a public declaration of our commitment. But that does not mean that the commitment does not exist, or that it isn’t as deep and as heartfelt as that of any couple who profess their love to each other.

The second reason:

I have fallen deeply in love precisely twice in my life.

I entered my marriage to your mother as a sacrament; you have probably heard me say that although divorce had brought me most of the things I valued most in my life, from my early years living in intimacy with my grandparents to the reality of my adoption and everything that has come my way from having joined your grandfather’s parents’ family, it was simply not an option for me. It came as a bitter shock to have to accept that a commitment made for life might not in fact last that long; you would think that I might have noticed that growing up in a blended family.

Apparently I didn't. Or didn't want to think that it could be true for me.

About two years ago, I fell deeply in love again. As you probably know, I left home in the bitter certainty that there was little or no likelihood of ever finding someone to love who also loved me. And I didn’t see much in my observation of gay life in Nowheresville to persuade me otherwise, though everyone was good to me—they very carefully left me alone to find my own way, for which I will always be grateful. So I was unprepared for what hit me when it came. You would think that I might have noticed, growing up in a family with your grandfather's parents in it, that life has a way of unraveling our certainties; you would think I might have noticed, having grown up in the knowledge that your grandmother's parents might well have divorced if she hadn't shown up on their doorstep with two small boys, that life lets things turn out differently than you expected.

Apparently I didn't.

The point here is that I have been careful—in retrospect, probably far too careful—about stating that I had in fact fallen deeply in love again. I have not wanted to raise anyone's hopes, perhaps mostly because I was afraid of raising my own. This is not the first time that I have entered a relationship in the hope that it would last the rest of my life, though I am now all too keenly aware of the small likelihood of that happening: if conventional marriages succeed only 50% of the time, the likelihood of two men pulling it off together is, certainly statistically, pretty grim.

And I have already failed once.

But hearts are not ruled by statistics. And whatever form it may take, and however long it may last, my relationship with the Goat is all that I have. I must live in the absurd hope that it will last as long as I do, because I can only love with my whole being. And I do, in fact, love the Goat with my whole being.

I once made the mistake of pretending someone had no faults, and I will not do that again—it's not fair to anybody. I'm inclined to see the Goat's flaws all too clearly, perhaps more clearly than I see my own, and I know I have to work on that. I am convinced that he sees my flaws all too clearly, certainly more clearly than he sees his own, and I hope he can work on that. I can only hope that my shortcomings, first and foremost among them what turned out at the crucial moment and to my great surprise to be an inability to forgive, do not doom this love as it doomed my first one. But in all likelihood I will make different mistakes this time around.

Marriage, or any relationship, is not to be judged by its apparent merits or its name, but by the fruit it bears.

You yourselves are the obvious fruit of my love for your mother, but I have to believe that there were others; for one, we made and shared a home that drew other people in—all kinds of people. I still treasure not only the three of you, but the memory of everything that was; knowing that I have lost it forever is still terribly painful to me. And I will never cease loving your mother, or being profoundly grateful for her love and patience and humor.

Twenty-five years is a long time, and roots grow deep in the course of them. The Goat and I may manage to spend the rest of our lives together, may even, on the outside ragged edge of probability, spend twenty-five years together, but I now know that it is foolish to expect such things.

We can only live our lives one day at a time, and be grateful for the good things that come our way, what in former times was called “God’s grace.”

If I were to die tomorrow, I would be as grateful for the Goat’s love as I am for your mother’s. It was the Goat who told me that he loved me just the way I was when I was a complete mess; I hope he still feels that way, because I still am, much of the time. It was the Goat who told me, in spite of all the messages I was getting from other people, that no one but me could tell me what kind of gay man to be; I hope he still feels that way, because sometimes I wonder whether I will ever really fit in, with him or anyone else. In many ways, I seem to have landed in a no man’s lands between warring parties, unable to accept the pieties proclaimed on either side.

This is all a very long way of saying that I ask you to judge the Goat and me not on the appearance of our relationship, or on its merits as you see them, but on the fruits of our love. I have to believe that just as any marriage bears fruit beyond children, our relationship will bear fruit in time as well.

G.K. Chesterton once wrote that faith was not a Christian virtue unless it were faith in the unbelievable, that hope was not a Christian virtue unless the situation were hopeless, and that love was not a Christian virtue unless it were love of the unlovable. I cite him not to say that my love for the Goat is love of the unlovable (I have never claimed any of the Christian virtues, myself) but for one simple reason:

A similar degree of paradox is necessary to express almost any profound truth. And that means that even a love which is apparently by its very nature sterile can also produce fruit.

My current happiness is the most obvious proof.
God works in mysterious ways.

A WARM GOAT???

2009-04-16T20:40:00.013-05:00

I am not sure I can define happiness, but I do know it when I see it. And I am happy. Over the last few days, I have been made particularly conscious of how happy I am, and how lucky I am. Some of it is being reminded of what life was like after I left home but before finding the Goat; more of it is being reminded by what life is like now that I have found the Goat--Monday night did a pretty thorough job there. And that's a lot to be able to say.

But beyond that there is the even more humbling fact that I have been lucky pretty much all my life. I fell in love with a woman who agreed to marry me, and we have three wonderful children. Our marriage did not survive the truth that set me free; I moved out, but within a year I had met a man who has made me almost as happy as I had been with my wife.

That's not a complaint: "almost" here is saying a lot. After I left home, I was convinced that I would never find a man I could love who would also love me; I worried that I would not in fact enjoy what I desired so much if I did find him; and I fretted over whether or not I would be able to live with myself if I did enjoy it. The Goat managed to clear the decks on all three points, and everything else is "the small stuff" we are constantly told not to sweat.

If he left me tomorrow, I would still be grateful for what we have had to date, and if this past week is anything to go by, neither of us is likely to leave tomorrow.

Which is not to say that everything is sweetness and light; as long as both of us are involved, sweetness and light are probably going to be thin on the ground. But what we have is so much more than I ever dreamed I would find, especially after the initial months of meeting people online and for coffee.

So here's what I have to say:

Don't go looking for someone; just try to live out your own truth and sooner or later someone will show up. If I can be struck by lightning twice in my life, once on either side of the street, you can certainly hope to find someone.

And I really do believe the trick is not to go looking for anything but the truth.

Here's hoping it works for you, too.
C

HOME for the HOLIDAY...

2009-04-14T10:44:00.039-05:00

I drove up to my mother's for Easter. These events can be stressful, as my mother insists on taking on more than she can handle in preparing for the mob, and sometimes gets pretty frazzled. That often translates into sulks or angry radiation of discontent. My eldest brother and his wife have a way of generating tension no matter what they do; he gets drunk, she remains loftily aloof.

Or is that redundant? Well, at the very least, they and their children provide a caustic soundtrack on the other people in attendance.

This time, things weren't as bad as I had feared, aside from the caloric intake, which was prodigious. It helped that Big Brother wasn't there, and his wife, with whom I also occasionally lock horns, was on her good behavior. So was I.

(It's too bad the Goat wasn't along for the ride, as this was a low-stress Family Dinner, as such things go, but he was busy shepherding his boys to church on Sunday. Can you imagine that? He goes to church, and I stay home. What's going on here, anyway?)

On the other hand, my youngest sister brought her two boys, who made absolutely no attempt to disguise the fact that they were there under duress and would in fact rather have been almost anywhere else. The younger of the two ate more like an animal at a trough than a human at a family gathering, and his mother said nothing. That would only have been a small problem, involving a few old farts like me who disapprove of parents who don't correct their children's bad behavior, except for the fact that my mother was furious; I don't know whether my sister was oblivious in general or not, but she certainly managed to overlook the increasingly obvious fiact that my/her/our mother was on the edge of explosion.

After dinner, I tagged along with the local teen-agers to see "Monsters vs. Aliens" at the multiplex [Time: "Another crowd-pleasing, expert-babysitting vaudeville turn." For Metacritic's choice of reviews, click here], and then came home to clean up and play cards. My mother was left with none of the leftovers she wanted [Big Sister-in-Law always removes her offerings as soon as other people stop actively eating them--it's almost as though they were not a contribution to my mother's dinner but merely a strictly time-limited offer...] and with a lot of leftovers she did not want, including a cheesecake that redefined "heavy." Despite a lifetime of trying not to waste food, there were a number of items she tacitly agreed to simply put in the garbage, much as she couldn't bring herself to do it herself.

All in all, it was a trying day for my favorite octogenarian, and then I beat the pants off her at cards. That was sweet, because she has beaten the pants off me the last several times I've been to visit...

So, between my work out of town and the Easter weekend, I had not seen the Goat for four days, and more to the point, four nights. This was a common occurrence last year, when I was personally burning a hole in the ozone layer commuting in and out to the Big Woods, but isn't so common now. And now that I don't have to do it all the time, it's gotten a lot harder to do. I miss him; he claims to miss me. ["Hit me! I'll miss you..."] Anyway, by the time I finally arrived out in the Big Woods at Goat Central, we were both ready to roll, the hay was ready to roll in, and the rolling in the hay was nothing short of spectacular. It was great not to be at his school apartment, too: not only does he live in a dorm with a lot of teen-age boys, which presents certain problems about privacy no matter who's involved, but I make a fair amount of noise--some people have made unkind remarks about car alarms...

It never ceases to amaze me how in synch we are in terms of our bent and kink; it makes love-making something of a volcanic event. And the event does remind me why I am here.

I have pouted and flounced a bit here recently over various elements in the Goat's make-up that seem less than ideal, especially when nostalgia for my former life overtakes me, but there is no gain-saying the kind of heat generated last night. In fact, Easter has been good to us in general; two years ago, it saw a similarly mind-boggling event, which provided me with a number of things to experience for the first time... I just consider it a lovely birthday present, even if it's either way too early or way too late for my birthday, depending on the date of Easter. It's one of our possible anniversaries...

Hang in there, everybody.
No matter how they're hanging...
C

IS IT SOMETHING in the WATER?

2009-04-09T19:50:00.024-05:00

You have to hand it to New England. The former home of Cotton Mather, the Salem witch trials, and Calvin Coolidge is now a hotbed of gay marriage. Our very own Bay State was the first state to secede from Bush America and join Canada, and now Connecticut and Vermont have gone the way of Taxachusetts. Even my own beloved New Hampshire ["Don't take us for granite!"] is now wobbling on the brink, unless Steve Swayne gets his way. Is it something in the water?

Much of the explanation, of course, could be found under the heading "The Revenge of the Summer People." But I have gone on about the Manhattanization of Vermont and the BayState-ification of New Hampshire at length before, so maybe I'll give it a rest for the time being. I can't even begin to use my hobby horse to explain what is up in Iowa; maybe this is what the Music Man meant when he got the town of River City to sing: "Oughta give Iowa a try!"

You have to hand it to Beth Robinson, no matter how much she may put my teeth on edge. When heads of LGBT organization semi-seriously asked whether one wanted to ask a gay man to do something and wait for him to finish carrying on and fussing about it, or ask a lesbian who could just pull up her pick-up and take care of it, I not only got the joke, I had to admit I kind of felt that way myself. But some of the gay vanguard just rub me the wrong way. Nothing against Ms. Robinson in particular [without her we probably wouldn't ever have gotten to civil unions in the US, let alone farther along], but the relentless relentlessness of it all sometimes made me want to lie down and put a cold compress over my eyes.

Well, I guess most people could have seen that coming a mile away once I admitted I thought that the energy going into pursuing the "M word" should be put to getting federal recognition of what we had, not going back to get more where we already got seven-eighths of the loaf. I do still hope that someone will get around to thinking about how to compromise to get what will really make a financial difference to gay couples out there inheriting and wishing they had survivor benefits NOW. Hey, isn't Annie Leibovitz glad that people are ignoring her problems for the greater good of one tiny missing piece of the alphabet?

Well, I guess I'm just a Steve Swayne kind of guy. He's been singing my song for eight years now, and my guess is that he is really not getting any R-E-S-P-E-C-T these days.

Since October of 2001, I've been proposing a different way to move forward in our struggle toward marriage equality. The dominant voices from our community have demanded marriage for gays, and marriage has been the rallying cry ever since we came so close in Hawaii. But some of us want to see something that is at once more radical and more conservative: civil union for all.
It's clearly more radical, because no nation on earth has ever abandoned civil marriage and adopted an alternative. In a debate with an advocate of same-sex marriage, my proposal of civil union for all was dismissed as being so much wishful thinking. We will always have civil marriage, I was told. Really? This same advocate cautioned against filing marriage lawsuits too soon, for fear of suits that may be unwinnable in the courts of law and public opinion. All the while, she cited Hawaii— the suit most gay legal thinkers thought was premature—as the beginning of the current push for gay marriage.
Fifteen years ago, few of us fully envisioned the possibility of gay marriage. Dismissing civil union for all out of hand similarly represents a failure of imagination on the part of leaders in the gay community and elsewhere. After all, civil marriage cannot trace its lineage to the beginnings of ancient civilization. So who's to say that a nation might not one day adopt civil union for all?
And what better nation to do this than the United States? American exceptionalism is part of our birthright. If any nation is poised to reinvent legal relationships on a large scale, it is our great and innovative land. Liberty, justice, and civil union for all....
Time for some self-disclosure. I was formerly the chaplain of a conservative Christian college. I know the religious right fairly well. For many Christians, it's not just the sanctity of marriage colliding with strictures against homosexuality.
Marriage is a mirror that reflects the relationship that Christ has with the Church. And if this metaphorical marriage consecrates two men or two women, who gets impregnated with the Spirit of God?
The religious objection is far deeper than simply maintaining the status quo. It subconsciously (and sometimes consciously) reaffirms the distinction between the sexes and the traditional subservience of one gender to the other. Who can forget how gender-bound our understanding of marriage is? Think of the sentences that are forever wed to the wedding ceremony. "I now pronounce you man and wife" (i.e., master and property). "You may kiss the bride" (more preferential treatment for the groom). For the life of me, I do not comprehend why gay people, of all people, want to buy into this history. Call one another "husband" and "wife" if you choose, but notice how straight couples are beginning to abandon this language in favor of something more egalitarian. There are no gendered expectations in civil union; it skirts the sex-specific baggage of religious marriage. In my book, that's an improvement.
Time for some more self-disclosure. I'm black. And am I the only one to notice that black clergy stayed pretty much out of this struggle until gays won the legal right to use the M-word? In Massachusetts, the Black Ministerial Alliance did not make their voice heard until after the advisory ruling that said that civil union would not do. That was when they stood in opposition, and not a moment before. Those of us who are black and gay often feel that we have to choose which community we will call home.
As the battle for the M-word escalates and as more black clergy speak out against same-sex marriage, I know of one black gay man who is feeling torn between two communities he loves and treasures.
Call me deluded, but I happen to believe that most of the black clergy who are rallying against same-sex marriage would give civil union a pass. We don't know if they would, though, because we haven't asked them. Instead, we cluck our tongues at these unsympathetic black leaders: don't they recognize prejudice when they see it? But maybe we're so blinded by our dogged pursuit of the M-word that we don't see there are other ways of securing equality for all.
So here's my pitch. Civil union won't work if it's only for gays and straights can get married. That's called segregation, and segregation is illegal in America. And I certainly am not opposed to marriage for all. I just happen to prefer civil union for all.
A straight woman asked me: what about straight people who want to say they're married? I asked her: who's stopping them? Gay couples have been using the M-word for quite some time now; we've not waited for the government to give us permission. No one is thrown in jail for saying they're married or civilly united or whatever they choose. Indeed, the champions of same-sex marriage infantilize gay couples by making us feel we are incomplete until Big Brother calls us married. Hogwash.
And to those who accuse me of harboring internalized homophobia, I say: look in the mirror, sweetheart.
I don't need the M-word; why do you need it?

Well, it may be lonely out here in the wilderness, but it's nice to know there is someone over there out of sight who might not think you are crazy. Well, we can hope so, anyway.

Iowa. What's next, Texas?

Hang in there, everyone.
C

VAMPIRES, NOT VEGETARIANS...

2009-04-08T07:51:00.021-05:00

On the plane back toward the Big Woods, we were treated to a chance to see an edited version of Twilight, which, at least in its edited form, is a pretty sorry excuse for a movie. It is somewhat redeemed by Robert Pattison's ability to act as well as look decorative, though even he could have done with less hair gel. On the other hand, it's always a pleasure to see someone do well twice in a row; his appearance in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire drew attention, and Twilight, for all its woes, proves he deserved it.

I have to say, I loved the concept of virtuous "vegetarian" vampires sucking only the blood of animals, but it does rather strike [in WS Gilbert's immortal words] "at the heart of the whole fairy system." I am not overfond of most vampire movies, with their tireless harping on sex and repression, but sex and blood is what it's all about, or at least it certainly used to be.

These are apparently vampires a la "abstinence only."

Well, who needs to have their blood sucked to get a kick out of sex, anyway? Yes, it worked for the Victorians, but they have been gone for quite a while. And why on earth do we still claim to be wrestling with Queen Victoria? The poor old soul has been dead for over a hundred years and we really should give her a rest. If the people who made the old-time vampire movies thought that Puritans, or orthodox Jews, didn't spend a lot of time enjoying "it," they should actually read some of their descriptions of the joys of married life...

But it does still seem that a vampire who refuses to do his thing might be termed a bit of a self-loathing plasmosexual; maybe it just strikes too close to home for me. Who knows? Oh, well. One of my mantras of the last few years is "who am I to judge?" So why not vegetarian vampires?

But back to the beginning: I have always identified with vampires. That is: I get a great deal of pleasure from following people's lives, from participating in them vicariously. I love hearing people's stories; I almost prefer author's biographies to their works. [Well, almost.] Other people's lives are, as the saying goes, "meat and drink to me." Isn't there something just a bit parasitic about that? I get to depend on the stories I am used to hearing, and I miss them when they come to an end. I always read too fast, and am distraught when I get to the end of a book I love. But who's to blame for it being over so fast? No one but me, of course. Anyone who has read this screed for a while knows that I wonder about people when they stop posting for a while, though I no longer assume something terrible has happened--I know there are lots of reasons not to post to a blog. Don't I know. But who wouldn't want to know what the further adventures of Drew, or Chris, or any of the various Joes, toasted or otherwise?

Not that they owe us anything. In fact, most of the Blog Brothers are probably desperate to find an excuse to quit. I would if I didn't also view this little postage stamp of the internet as an opportunity to let off steam and keep track of a life that doesn't make much sense. I know for a fact, having hit a certain age, that I will not remember much of what happens now in just a year or two--I can already see how my interim in the Weird Little House is beginning to get jumbled and confused.

Then there are the moments when the past comes blazingly alive.

The other night, as the Goat and I were lying in bed, the conversation wandered around to marriage, and Goat asked me why Isis and I had not been married in a church. And that perfectly innocent question suddenly brought many things that I have not dealt with on a day-to-day basis rushing back to the surface of consciousness with a burst of almost physical pain. I had a sudden insight into what I had not been able to forgive Isis for, no matter how much more she had to complain of herself--when my came to forgive her as she had forgiven me, I could no longer do it. Too much blood had flowed under the bridge.

I suddenly was aware in a way that I have not been for some time not only how much I had given up in coming out again, but how it had happened--much of it in terribly vivid detail. When I responded to the Goat's prodding by telling him what I could not forgive [which was probably not wise], he agreed that it was a terrible thing. What I have been sickeningly conscious of in the days since then was how little it was, compared to what Isis had put up with over the years, and in the years around the time of the "unforgivable sin" in particular. The Goat quietly remarked that he was a pretty flawed human being, and if I couldn't forgive, where was he going to wind up? That is of course the $64,000 question, but I don't have the answer...

So I have been living the past in an unaccustomed way the last few days. There is no going back to it, but I do yearn for the easy togetherness, for the comfort of common life once all, or most, of the rough edges have been worn down and you start to get comfortable with each other. I miss almost every moment of the two of us just sitting down together with our children, whether it was a weekday dinner or Christmas morning. It's gone, and it will not return. And the person who gave everything to give me those pleasures is the very person I have abandoned in pursuit of my self. Which, considering that my great religious "conversion" of so many years ago turned on just that issue of pursuing my own interests, sexual and otherwise, at the expense of others, is bitterly amusing. I have turned my back on putting myself first, and somehow come around back to it.

The Naz had rather angry words for those who put their hand to the plow and then looked back; one can just imagine how he would have felt about those who did more than look. [I spent years looking back before I went so far as to move back...] And the apostle Peter, as I have said before, wrote tellingly of those who return to their old ways like a dog returning to his vomit. It's great language, but it's not so nice to apply to oneself. Though I am a dog, and I have certainly returned to my former ways. I guess the word "vomit" does rather stick in my craw, to coin a phrase...

There are compensating features in my present life, but they are just that: compensating features. I have said often that the Goat and Isis resemble each other in lots of creepy little ways. One big way is that both of them are able to forgive. I may be more flexible, but once I am bent beyond a certain point, I break, and I apparently stay broken. Who would have thought it? I always thought I was pretty forgiving, but it turns out I can nurse a wound as well as the best of them.. [That is, of us.] I can only live in hope that the same is not true of Isis: I have never had occasion to find out until now...

And I have been painfully aware that crossing the street has not left me less riven than I was before. By the time I left home, I had no choice anymore. But I am still riven. And apparently covered in vomit on top of everything else.

Oh, well.
Thank God for love; I don't know how people face life without it.
Hang in there, everyone.
C

APRIL is THE CRUELEST MONTH...

2009-04-03T19:28:00.021-05:00

April may be the cruelest month, but maybe it just seems that way this year because it comes after March. As a rule, I think March is far worse than April, but this year I spent March hopping around, even catching some sun before shuttling back for a week of winter on the plains before returning to the Big Woods. Spring ain't here yet, though, which may be what the whole "cruelest month" thing was all about in the first place.

There is nothing like a little sun fix just when you thought it was never really going to come back. The Goat has a motor-bike out in Vacationland, though it's too small for me ride with him--besides, my hair is no longer blond and it's way too short to toss about while shrieking, "Oh, my God!"

So he went out zooming around on his own while I weighed down a deck chair in the sun and devoured five or six books, which always improves my outlook on life. It helped that we drank a lot of good coffee, found a local source of good wine, and generally enjoyed the fruits of warmer climes, all of which tends to induce a feeling of extraordinary well-being. I even thought about warming up to coconut and pineapple, neither of which have ever been particular favorites of mine. Take my advice, choose a guy with a house in the south somewhere...

For a change, it was the Goat, and not me, who got sick this time, and it happened right before we took off for the Frozen Steppes. So we spent the two nights we had planned to spend careening around his old haunts in gay abandon holed up in our little apartment, instead, watching TV and sleeping a lot. Then we took off for the actual Great Plains and spent a wonderful week circulating among friends so close they are better than relatives. The member of the family who had given me the most grief about leaving my wife was otherwise engaged, and her runner-up had actually divorced her husband and moved out of the house if not out of town, thus neatly making life easier both for him and for everyone else who wanted to hang out with him. I did notice that some of the tension and chaos in the house which I had always associated with her presence seemed to have survived her departure, so at the very least I had done her an injustice.

But I have to say I still had a better time without her around.

Maybe it's just gender solidarity, but some women can't seem to see beyond the fact of my actions to why it might have been a good idea... or that I did what I did at immense cost... but then, who can blame them? They have their POV, and I have mine.

I got to spend time in town, time out in the country, bounce around from house to house with the Goat in tow, and generally have a good time. Everyone seemed to get along, and if we did occasionally visibly make an impression of being a pair of dizzy queens, no one seemed to care. The Goat was recovering, and I was too happy to care, myself. We managed to make it back to the Big City for some museum-hopping and general sight-seeing after all; we just didn't have our own little black leather wrapper to do it in... and the Goat went to visit my friends' father with me, which can't have been easy. The pater familias was the first of the family I got to know, and he is of a generation that can't see divorce being worth it for any reason [on some days I'm inclined to agree with him].

I realize looking back that a lot of my panic about the trip had nothing to do with the things I was fussing about, and everything to do with having to take the Goat to visit him, and not knowing how he would react. It was fine, if not an easy visit; my old friend was past caring about most things, but at least the involuntary physical contortions that had been the signal torture of his old age so far had abated--he seemed quite relaxed mentally as well as physically--and the Goat just went with the flow. The visit to the mother of the family was a little more fraught, as she has lost most of her marbles and, after asking over and over why we were traveling together and being told over and over that we were living together, only needed the word "divorce" to declare over and over how it wasn't her part to judge anyone else's actions; that went on for about fifteen minutes.

Then we cut our losses and left. It just goes to show you: it's never the things you worry about that wind up making life miserable--it's the things that catch you unawares.

The last night the family invited us out to a concert Lutheran enough to make Garrison Keillor smile, and I have to say the music was wonderful, though I did kind of wonder whether any music written after Bach's time had made out to their community... and by the way, why are 99% of all organists so clearly gay? Having run around with a borrowed umbrella much of the week, and having gotten it home every day without incident, I left it on my seat at the concert hall, and someone took it while I was helping my friends chat up the conductor and other friends of theirs in the chorus.

The flight back was uneventful, if rather more complicated than necessary. Sometimes I do wish I lived in a hub city so that we could go places without all the puddle-jumping and waiting between flights that seem to make up air travel as we know it these days. And if I'm ever offered another package of "mini-pretzels" as if it were more than a salt hit in a well-sealed air pocket, I'll bite somebody. That feeling should have worn off by the time I get on a plane again, which, barring a funeral, is unlikely to happen any time soon. We arrived at our destination on time, our bags made it only half an hour or so after we did, and the Goat got home in plenty of time for his early morning faculty meeting the next day.

So, all around, a good time was had by all. I hope you can all say the same of March, and here's hoping April isn't as bad as they say. Now if I can just knuckle down and make my brain focus on things like work, I'll be all set.

Hang in there, everybody.
C

A GORDIAN KNOT... AND NO SWORD IN SIGHT...

2009-03-05T16:35:00.078-05:00

So here's the thing. We are going to visit some very old friends of mine and their extended family after our much abbreviated trip to Vacationland this year; a little sun, a little beach action, some more peanuts and soft drinks on another plane, and then I get to introduce the Goat to people who have known me well for well over thirty years.

So far, so good.

I'm out to them. Coming out to them was actually pretty painless--there are some thin skins around The Gay Thing and divorce in general among their siblings, but it was generally pretty painless, considering how long everyone had known me and Isis; they really watched our kids--and us--grow up. One of their daughters spent a year with us when she couldn't quite hack the Great Plains or the fossils she considered her parents to be. In case anyone is wondering, the fact that the Goat is willing to cut short his stay in paradise to plow back into winter on my behalf earns him all sorts of brownie points. As though he needed any.

Still looks good.

Here's the sticking point: we are actually arriving back in winter a couple of days before we're due at my friends' place, so that the Goat can visit some of his old urban haunts, and introduce me to some of the sites of his gayer days. At first, I was just going to pass over our preemptive arrival, and then I remembered both my Boy Scout oath and my inability to hold my tongue about anything for long, and decided it was best to admit that we were coming in early to hang out in the gay section of the local Big City before heading out to the actual plains.

Now, my friends are as old as I am, and they are not stupid, so they have a pretty good idea of what goes on in the lavender end of town, if not in our particular portion of it--it's probably one of the few remaining places between the coasts where the internet has not put nightlife out of business. They probably know as much as I do. Which, my friends keep telling me, is not much--I wasn't playing this side of the street in the wild and crazy years, though I certainly knew what I was avoiding, and where, and how.

What is weird, though only to be expected, on some level, is that I am glad to be there with the Goat and revel in what's left of his old Gay Life (both there and out on the coast) and am at the same time more or less in synch with my friends about what went on in the "good old days."

Yes, I know, I am once again projecting my fears and foibles onto others, and getting into a snarl over what I think they may think. What else is new? But I am also recognizing my own feelings and the cleft stick they put me in.

Let me make one thing perfectly clear (as though I had ever been able to do that): in all my homophobia, internalized and blatantly external, I am not sitting in judgment on anybody; my life brings me to one set of feelings, even now, and other people with other experiences have a completely different point of view. That's life. And I am certainly not about to start judging the Goat.

Where would that leave me?

I did what I did, and he did what he did, and there are things to be said for and against both of them; we meet in the middle. Our lives are built on what is, and it's only possible on the other side of what was. But I did have a moment of doubt when I told my friends. So many people don't want to have to think about what we do--even our friends!--and they really don't want to think about what the two of us seem to be proclaiming by announcing our local address for the days before we head out to their place. It's a little like leaving your porn out for the guests, which in my case would be extremely unwise. Yes, Tom of Finland makes me light up like a Christmas tree, but I am only too aware of its curious assumptions, and how it looks from an outsider's point of view... I tried to maintain one for long enough.

As Michael Alvear wrote in Salon.com many years ago:

Tom's characters are handsome and sexy but they're also grotesque and outlandish. He combines hyperrealism with garish flights of fancy, making his men ruggedly handsome but radically out of proportion. The Ford Taurus should have headlights as big as their nipples. And the National League should have bats the size of Tom of Finland penises. Every hit would be a home run.

The older Tom got, the more exaggerated his bodies became, to the point that author Philip Core once called Tom's work "macho camp." There's only a consonant separating leather from feather, and in many ways Tom's work blurred the distinction. He turned masculinity into burlesque and in some ways burdened gay men the way fashion burdens straight women -- by idealizing a body physically impossible to attain: massive chests, tiny waists and perfect hair...

"But is it art?" Tom himself didn't seem to believe it was. "Yes, I consider my work pornography," he once said. "My motive is lower than art. If I don't have an erection when I'm doing a drawing, I know it's no good."

...David Hockney, Robert Mapplethorpe and Andy Warhol were admirers of Tom's work. Not bad for a pornographer. None are having an exhibit at the Whitney, an auction at Christie's and a home in the permanent collections of four museums. While art historians debate whether Tom's fuck machines constitute art, the market seems to be making up its own mind. Everyone can see that the bubble-bottomed macho boys of Company Dick are hung. But now they're hung in museums.

But getting back to the subject at hand: I can't really say I think that everything the Goat did was a good thing, even though I know that if I had given myself my head (as the saying goes) I would probably have done the same. I don't think everything I did was great, either, and he certainly doesn't--so there are some things we can agree on. Our differences in point of view root in the complete difference of even our most similar experiences: five years and twenty-five years of marriage are two different things, no matter how you slice it. And, as the Goat has sagely observed, if I hadn't pulled up stakes and headed for the other side of the street when I did, anyone who enjoyed it as much as I do would probably be dead by now. And then, he asks, where would we be? Let's not think about that too closely.

I eventually made my peace with Isis' ex-boyfriends' presence in our lives, but only after a certain amount of hemming and hawing, and not with particularly good grace. If I had had any idea how many more ex-boyfriends I would have to take onboard as a result of getting together with the Goat, I would have been more welcoming to the two or three guys who were willy-nilly part of my family for twenty-five years. It all goes to show you that you do eventually pay for your shortcomings. Even dogma recognizes karma...

I am never going to be completely comfortable with much of mainstream Gay Life the way the Goat is, no matter how many times we go around the block together. Too much of it involves assumptions that I refused years ago, and certainly can't make now, given what I decided then, and how different my life has been as a result. Too much of my life has been about something else... It doesn't even matter much of what I left behind then is precisely what I'm up to now. My choices formed my life; my life formed me. I'm different; I'll probably always be different. Not better, just different. As I have often said, I don't fit in anywhere anymore.

And frankly, I have enough to do just coming to terms with who the Goat and I are together, without worrying about everyone else, and what they make of it, or of me. In our proudest moments, we all compromise our ideals; why should we give a hoot about other people's?

So I will remain the "good little boy," a mama's boy, or, what it really boils down to, my mother's daughter and my grandmother's grand- daughter--no matter what I may choose to do now. The power of such women puts City Hall to shame. You can rebel and set out to do the opposite of what you were told [who doesn't, at some point?] but you are just evading what you eventually have to face: your parents made you who you are, and you're pretty much stuck with it. Not that I'm complaining; I think I turned out pretty well, in the scheme of things; I'm grateful for most of what I am. I adored my grandparents. I love my mother, but of course she drives me crazy in a way nobody else can. And I can't fight back: she is so clearly the source of so much of what I do and say without thinking that taking her to task is a lot like taking an ax to my own arm.

Lots of things look different now that I am older; I can see how my grandfather missed the easy access to the company of men that his working days had offered him, and how he shrank when returned to my grandmother's realm--he was never entirely free to be himself. My mother and father eventually found themselves with a similar, if not identical, set of habits. No one set out to do anyone else wrong; the battle of the sexes is called that for a reason...

So many people, including the Goat at times, go on the assumption that any gay or bi guy who decides not to live a gay life is in the closet. Well, no--unless the Bard meant that all the world's a closet. Hey, Virginia, sometimes it is a choice. God knows I was out and about before--if I was in a closet, it was a freestanding one, smack dab in the middle of our house, and made of glass: my parents knew I was gay, and those of my siblings who didn't were either blind or not looking very closely. It must be said that it was mostly attitude and desire; I was not a wild child, just a weird one. What so many people seem to forget is that "man proposes, and God disposes." There is no planning falling in love; it just happens. In my own case, falling in love has been all tangled up in sex, which I suspect is true for most of us, but then, I've done it only twice, so what do I know?

It used to be assumed that anyone not visibly heterosexual, ie, not visibly getting laid, was queer. Flannery O'Connor found it rather annoying. So did I, but then, in my case, there is more than a grain of truth to it, as even I have to admit, in retrospect. How I hate it when "they" are right. Puts my nose right out of joint. Even Freud is right some of the time.

Oh, well. We take it a day at a time, if only because that's the way it comes.

Have you seen this? Box Turtle Bulletin offers a look at "the heterosexual agenda," and the dangers it poses for our children...

Hang in there, guys.
C

AN OLD FAVORITE...

2009-03-05T15:22:00.008-05:00

THAT RIDE

A roller coaster’s no place for a heart,
Yet love sends every heart off on that chase,
Dragged up by clanking chains to dizzy heights
From which there’s no way down except the one.

No mere descent that first, wild downward start:
The rushing speed begins a fearful race,
In every swoop and curve new fears, delights,
Momentum making madness of the run.

Each downslope drives the next ascent, and smartly.
Each ascent shaves minims off the pace.
Diminuendo all: the thrill, the frights,
And in the end you land where you’d begun.

Adrenaline recedes. Relief. And then:
One kiss, and God! it all begins again.

WHO PROMISED ME A @#$%-ING ROSE-GARDEN?

2009-03-05T10:17:00.041-05:00

I am having trouble sleeping these days, at least when without the Goat, that is, which is three if not four nights a week; the one way I can combat it (without chemical help not available in my own house) is to shut everything down and get into bed at 10 and read until 11. Then I can almost always shut the book, turn out the light, and hit the hay without any trouble, just like the old days. But otherwise I can lie there, doing deep breaths and tensing and relaxing my whole body, both of which used to work, and be just as wide awake after half an hour or an hour as I was at the beginning.

Last night it was about the Goat. Now it's not nice to get angry at someone who is really sick, but I was so mad at him that I just couldn't relax. It never lasts, thank God, but it was enough to keep me up. My last bout was a couple of weeks ago, when he "improved" something I had cooked for him, which he said tasted of freezer-burn [Problem #1], by adding ketchup and commercial tomato sauce to it [Problem #2, and a Big One].

For someone who claims to have the world's most sensitive palate, which I can certainly accept, having heard his withering criticisms of food that seemed perfectly fine to me, he has some strange ways of fitting food to his taste. I actually told him that night that I was about as mad at him as I had ever been. That put the fear of God in him, because I was practically, and probably visibly, steaming. But within a quarter of an hour, while he was still trying to pour oil on those troubled waters, I was over it. Aside from feeling that if he did half the thinking he had done about pouring oil on the waters before he got them all troubled, life would be a hell of a lot easier for me...

This was different--it was quiet and deep. It's an old issue, really: the fact that he often maintains two simultaneous but conflicting, not to say opposite, attitudes, in conversation or just life in general. He will complain bitterly about how one of his colleagues treats him, and then go on about how much he loves him or her. This drives me nuts, but as long as it's only description, I can live with it; I just listen to both statements, admit that it's OK to be ambivalent, and make the adjustment in my head that I wish to God he had made in his own before he opened his mouth. The problem is the time span between the statements: he can go for a week saying one thing, and then bounce back to the other. If you are a person who is inclined to take people at their word, this can be gut- and mind-wrenching.

The Goat has been sick, really sick, for about a week. For years now, I have listened to him hold forth all the time on how exhausting his job is, how he can barely handle the stress, how he is looking forward to retirement [God help me]. Now I know that all teachers sing this song, but if things were really that bad, they would all have baled out long ago, right? And he passes right over the fact that he has over sixteen weeks of paid vacation a year; he hasn't had a normal vacation schedule in ten or fifteen years. But OK, it's a boarding school, they do eat up many of his weekends and most evenings, and I can see how it would grind you down. I buy it.

Then, when he is really sick, he insists on teaching all his classes, doing all his evening duties, and running all his extracurricular activities. Suddenly, he can do it all and somehow "rest" in order to recuperate at the same time. OK, I could buy that, if it weren't for what I hear all the other days of the year. Choose one or the other, or admit you have to make the compromise yourself, for Pete's sake.

In his defense, there is a sort of competition among the faculty to see who can do the most and complain the least, so that everyone winds up overloaded to the point where they collapse. To my mind, that is a danger anyway when you work evenings and many weekends and have at most a day and a half off per week. He hates it in the others, but, surprise, surprise, here he is, doing it himself. I spent last night biting my tongue, and then finally said, with perhaps a hint of exasperation, "If you won't look out for you, who's going to?" All he'd let me do was buy some groceries when he couldn't even get out of bed. And he told me that he had driven over to take care of his own little house in the Big Woods' own little Temple of the Dahnse, and that, thank God, the wind had swept all the snow off the roof so he didn't have to shovel it off.

He was actually going to shovel the snow off his roof when he can barely walk around. My response was immediate and heartfelt: "It's a good thing you didn't, because I might have had to shoot you." And I meant it. I'm not sure he got it this time, though I asked on my way out at the end of the evening whether he was going to have any downtime to take care of himself the next day...

I knew going in that the Goat was not going to be my ex-wife--that was, on one level, part of the appeal, right?--and I realized rather early on that my paranoia about other people, like my family and my children, making odious comparisons was really just my own feelings about the two of them projected onto others. I couldn't help seeing, pretty close to the beginning, that I had not necessarily traded up. The good things are great, but there are just so many ways that he doesn't, can't, couldn't, and shouldn't have to, hope to equal her. It sometimes makes me wonder what on earth I was doing. My only defense is that when I left home, I had no idea I would wind up with anybody, let alone my Goat. The thought of having to defend my leaving her for him would be harrowing if it weren't also so funny. I'm afraid it's immediately and painfully obvious to everyone what invisible talents balance out all the points on which he doesn't measure up... the final triumph and vengeance of the Inner Girl.

Now, there is a silver lining to the not sleeping: on doctor's orders, if I'm not asleep within twenty minutes, I have to get up and do something until I am sleepy.

That usually takes an hour to an hour and a half, and often has me up until 1 in the morning, but the silver lining is that I am actually doing things that I would never take time to do during the day, when I am supposed to be a productive member of society--ie, earning money. My father left several drawers full of letters mashed into envelopes, which my mother gave me to sort through, as most of them were letters to his mother, and a lot of them in languages my mother doesn't read. And I have been spending my night alerts sorting and ordering them. I have only read a few, but I have they have been doozies. My grandmother had a wide circle of friends, and some of them wrote a mean letter.

It's a good thing I don't have to do it for a living, because I would never get anything done: I'd just sit and read all day, instead of cleaning up the mess... and the mess has spread off my desk onto the bookcase and all the surrounding surfaces. Some day it's all going to cascade onto the floor and all my sorting work will go up in smoke. I never seem to think about the obvious needs of the night-time project during the day. So, someone out there, remind me to go out and get some file-folders and a big box...

Oh, well. So much for not blogging in work time.
If I could keep my nose to the grindstone as I should, I would have no nose left.
Hang in there, all.
C

LET THEM EAT CAKE...

2009-02-17T20:56:00.014-05:00

I know I am in no position to point a finger, but I have to say I hate the way people are talking at the Academy these days. I know they are just worried, or in a couple of cases, considering panic, and I'm not at my best, either, in that situation. The Academy has just instituted some cost-cutting measures, the first in a series of such "cuts," probably; these are in the interest of not having to lay anyone off, which plenty of other schools are doing this year. I have no idea how admissions are doing, but it stands to reason that even the people with the cash to send their kids to private school are eventually going to wonder where things are headed. Needless to say, those who have already been laid off got around to that some time ago...

One of the things that the Academy is doing is ending its pseudo-sabbatical program, which had already become kind of a one-winner-takes-all lottery, and another is cutting out retirement plan contributions. Anyone in his right mind will see that this is better than laying people off. I think.

Of course, if you are approaching retirement, and it's the more recent hires who would get laid off, I suppose it all looks different. Me, I'm just happy that it's not my problem yet. I know it's coming, and I don't know what I will do when it gets here, but I do have six months to a year to figure it out. I think.

I'm actually pretty good at washing dishes, though it's been a long time since I had to do real physical labor eight or more hours a day--or at night, for that matter. I'm sure it wouldn't take me long to regret it.

And panic in my case is particularly unattractive, so I'm not trying to point fingers. At anyone. I just don't like the tone of surface resignation and underlying bitterness that seems to be showing up. But then, I'm not even a Faculty Wife. I'm more of a not-so-innocent bystander... so I should really just shut up. I'm trying pretty hard not to say anything anywhere but here...

Well, as the Naz used to say, "sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." Or, as my grandfather used to say, "a word to the wise"...
C

HOME AGAIN, HOME AGAIN...

2009-02-17T13:09:00.027-05:00

Well, we went, we saw a bunch of stuff, and in the process we spent a ton of money. This theme has been recurring in our conversations of late, as I headlined the two expense statements I put together [our goal is for expenses on joint outings to more or less equal out, rounding off some] as "Unbelievable Expenses Incurred at..." The Goat keeps sidling up to the fact that it was all wonderful and all worthwhile, and I never go far from my "Jesus, what a lot of money!" feeling. [Can this marriage be saved? One of the things Isis and I never had a disagreement about, so far as I can recall, was money; but then, back then there was plenty of it, which usually means it's not important. Money isn't important, as long as you have it...]

It was the best of weekends; it was the worst of weekends...

The Guy Dinner was quite amusing, and it turns out that a few, perhaps even a goodly number, of those gruff burly guys are bent enough to have at some point played both sides of the street (who knew a taste for grease and custom detailing was a feature of the Gay Gene?). In any case, my intention to wear beige and smile a lot foundered on the quantity of alcohol flowing and the general agreement that the stickier the subject, the more fun it was to bandy it about. Quite a bit got bandied about, and much fun was had, not least by me and those in my immediate vicinity. The Goat is still talking to me, which I guess means that I didn't embarrass him too much in front of his friends...

Then we went on to what I still foolishly refer to as The Big City, though of course it's neither the world's grandest metropolis nor a piss-hole in the snow; it was my first big city, and that's what it has always remained. There we dipped our toe in culture: a touring B'way show for me, some high-level dance for the Goat, and several expensive restaurants to round things out. Our P'town hosts did indeed meet us for dinner, and insisted on shooing us off to my late-evening meeting with one of my friends before we settled the check, which means we can add another staggering bill to our long list of debts to these folks. I guess they figure that that's what money is for, or perhaps they are just writing us off as a charitable deduction. I have to say I appreciate it a lot...

Speaking of what Betty MacDonald called "the Dahnse": I don't get it. I know I've been gnawing on the bone of language all my life, so I'm hardly the person to judge, but, beautiful as individual things may be, I just don't get it. I don't. I marvel at the bodies the discipline produces, and at the capabilities of individual dancers, but the whole set of assumptions and traditions just doesn't speak to me.

Maybe it's because I am one the world's clumsiest people--and it's all just envy speaking--but I don't think so. Lucky me, to have landed where "the Dahnse" not only has its own festival, but is practically a religion. And me with this guy who is a devotee of the Art, if not exactly a High Priest of it. [See: can this marriage be saved? above] Well, I paid for the ticket, and I sort of enjoyed the evening, but I couldn't get one old friend's saying out of my head: when driven to distraction by the choreographers he was forced to deal with, he summed it all up with the pithy saying: "They think with their feet."

We got to spend a morning waiting for a couple of the Goat's old-time leather buddies to decide to get out of bed so we could meet them for breakfast (which we finally had at something like 2 o'clock in the afternoon), and we got the Dinner to End All Dinners with his P'town Buddies. We had a late breakfast or early lunch at a diner with one of my poet friends, and drinks with a friend who still works in "the Theatah" after his show got out. ("The Theatah" is famously nearly as crazy an undertaking as "the Dahnse," but at least if you pay attention to what people are saying, you can usually figure out what the hell is going on.)

A teacher of mine (and maybe he made too great an impression on me, come to think of it) once said at a dance concert which he was forced to attend: "Is this piece called 'Vortex'? All pieces like this seem to be called 'Vortex'..."

Well, maybe I should just lay this topic to rest.

The drive in and back out was nice; when the Goat isn't snoozing, he's a fun companion on the road. Unfortunately, he does tend to snooze in the car; I once remarked that I kind of counted on his conversation to keep me awake on a long drive back from the airport late at night, and his response, though not as pointed as all that, landed in the general vicinity of "tough titty." A man of pith, my Goat.

Well, it's only four or five weeks until Spring Break, and the departure for Vacationland. Now that I think of it, having a warm winter getaway in his pocket balances out any of the more irritating qualities a boyfriend might have, and I have to say it completely covers a multitude of such little sins as being a balletomane.

So, after all, was my hero Edward Gorey...

But then, as a friend of mine once opined: you can always tell an Ivy Leaguer--you just can't tell him much...

Hang in there, everyone.
The alternative is too horrible to contemplate.
C

OFF to the RACES

2009-02-06T19:28:00.019-05:00

Off we go! Saturday we drive south to meet a bunch of sports-car friends of the Goat's for a potluck brawl: this comes under the heading of "wearing beige and smiling a lot," though actually it's more of a flannel-and-denim thing. But you know what I mean--the accent is on good behavior and not attracting the wrong kind of attention as I'm introduced to the Goat's two dozen closest friends in the wreck-reassembly business. Well, actually, quietly passing for straight, or at least not making an issue of not being straight, is what I do best: I have years of practice.

Then we veer off to the Big City for a couple of days, and it seems I am about to spend more money in one three-day period than I have ever done before. I am, after all, the guy who saved all his travel per diem so he could buy used books, and basically I'm still a bottom-feeder in the spending department [unless it's discounted at least 20%, I 'm not interested]. But it's the Goat's big weekend in the city, and it means juggling his friends, my friends--those who are still talking to me, at any rate, a couple of Cultural Events, and a lot of bought meals, which is sure to add up over three days...

This is just the run-up, though. Our trip to Vacationland has metastasized as well, and has doubled its cost. Add a two-week trip out West in the summer, and we are talking about serious money. This is exactly why I once thought twice about adopting the Goat's life-style, though I also realized that for the first year or two I would have to accommodate, and think of it less as spending and more as an investment. And I'm trying... I should say, in his Goatship's defense, that some of the more expensive ingredients of the Big City weekend are my doing, even if it might have cost less if I'd been traveling alone and could cut corners and chew on dry crusts in corners to my heart's content as usual... If we wind up having dinner with our Provincetown hosts, as is the plan, we could in fact wind up walking home; they definitely know how to live, and have the wherewithal to do it. I have the knowledge, or something approaching it, but not that all-important wherewithal...

It's the old problem of income and out-go. My current half-time project is drudgery, though the pay is not too bad, and it is a job with some security because it's short-term, and I won't reach the goals set for at least a year--lots of people are wondering where their next check is coming from. I know I'll be there when I do finally get to the goals set out for next summer [or the funding dries up], but in the meantime my main problem is keeping my nose to the grindstone and working enough billable hours to keep myself in the style to which I seem to have become accustomed. And my own work just never seems to get off the ground.

The "steady" work is just boring enough to make me want to do almost anything else but hack away at it. The deadline is so far in the future that it provides no immediate incentive, something I have always needed to get off my fat ass and get things done. I am, alas, a creature of deadlines, and without one I sink back into the slough of ennui from which I first arose. I start by allowing myself so many minutes of Freecell an hour to stay sane, and it pretty much goes downhill from there. And then, when I really can't take it anymore, there are the guy-sites...

I have noted an interesting change in my reaction to what turns up on the internet: there are plenty of guys who show up in various bookmarked blogs whom I find attractive, and some of them I even occasionally Photoshop into "art," but my responses are getting less scattershot and more honed in on what reminds me of the good points of the Goat (in case you haven't been paying attention, there are lots of them). I guess you could describe the difference as resembling that between just "shopping" and heading out to the store with a purpose. Or maybe I could just say that I know much more about what I want. There are still a zillion potential Mr. Rights out there, but they now tend to cluster around the "good points." Interesting...

I narrowly missed meeting one of my e-chat friends over the weekend, and though every chink in the firewall between my real life and my online life makes me fairly nervous (and didn't Isis call that one early on!), this was one breach I was happy to make. Better luck next time.

Hang in there, everyone.
What choice do we have?
C

DOWN in the DUMPS...

2009-01-24T00:07:00.022-05:00

Well, mostly just down. There was a fabulous performance at the academy, and after the applause died down and the crowd began to thin, the art teacher suggested that we join a group of other teachers down at the "pub." The appeal is that these are mostly younger people; the Goat gets invited because he's cool and, under the skin, really still seventeen at heart. I'm invited because he and I are attached somewhere near the hip.

Now, as the person with the least excuse for being there, what do I do? Start making jokes about age, and generally acting like the ass I now feel I am... I had two sizeable beers, pints, I suppose, and have been trying to figure out ever since then how much wine that would be.

When beer doesn't come in bottles I can't keep track of it... but a pint is half a quart, so I have had a quart of beer at 5% alcohol, which would be about 2/5 of a liter of wine at 12-1/2%, a little less, or something like half a bottle, if my math is surviving the onslaught of fat-dissolving chemicals.

No, that isn't the problem, though of course it makes it worse. The problem is that I did something I have done all my life: vent in a group things I would never say to people alone. My ex-wife hated it, and I can see that it doesn't go over particularly well with the Goat, either. Things that might have been shrugged off as borderline funny, or as not funny but not worth worrying about, suddenly seem quite different when uttered in the presence of others. Especially when those others are the Goat's colleagues.

I always said I wasn't cut out to be a faculty wife. It was bad enough when I was theoretically in charge of my own destiny, and my shortcomings were just part of what those along for the ride had to put up with. But I am definitely the sidecar on this vehicle, and I should [if not now, when?] finally learn to keep my mouth shut. It's the old tale: as soon as I begin to feel "at home," the good behavior goes right out the window.

Add to that the fact that the Goat and I had a fairly upsetting afternoon before the performance--nothing spectacular, just a get-together which was meant to make up for my taking off for points north this weekend, which I can see now [the get-together] was just a terrible idea from the beginning. Fridays are one of the worst days in his week; I should have known better than to accept the offer of getting together on a Friday...

Oh, well. And this was the good day. Yesterday I wasted the whole day trying to do something in my apartment that [a] was a complete waste of time to begin with, because there are only so many places to put a TV set in a small space, and [b] kept me from getting work done which I need to have done to prepare for the grilling I am going to get about it this weekend at my project review. It really almost seems like I am trying to screw up my life. I got so depressed that I sat and watched a movie until way too late, and drank wine and ate a jar of pistachios. The typical bad night from last year, when I had the excuse of being far away from the One I Loved. Now, I'm just depressed. Oh, well.

Maybe, with luck, I'll keep my mouth shut this weekend.
But I'm not betting on it...

Beer: so much more than just a breakfast food.

sigh
c

TOO GOOD TO MISS...

2009-01-23T09:29:00.010-05:00

Too good to miss, indeed, though in fact the headline says it all. Jen posted the link over at Kids of Queers, and I just want to share it with the five and a half of you: it proves the ongoing value of online humor... [click here]

In the meantime, we are off to the Big City in two weeks to soak up culture. And then, off to Vacationland. There was a minor bump in the road when Ye Olde Goat showed a decided yearning to travel through the Really Big City to attend the latest opening of fabulous contemporary art by The One Who Got Away. Not only do I not really dig most of what calls itself art these days [click here], but the idea that our vacation was about to include him mooning over What Might Have Been made me a really pissy queen for a day or two.

All over now.
Really.
I love art.
And art criticism--especially mine.

Still mulling on this one in my spare time, and it "gives me plenty of material for mulling: my life five years ago made perfect sense to me and my life now makes perfect sense to me, but the two of them together don't make any sense at all."

Hang in there.
C

A MEANINGLESS MILESTONE...

2009-01-06T20:58:00.010-05:00

So here we are at Sea with over 20,000 hits under our belt. This is a completely meaningless number (it ignores the first nine months or so of the blog, when I had the most readers, and starts in the middle of nowhere--StatCounter crashed and burned when I left home and I had to restart it in October of 2006).

On the other hand, every round number is an opportunity to reflect, and this one is making me think seriously of taking some time off for more productive pursuits, whatever they might be. After 664 posts, I feel it's getting rather repetitive, and if I feel that way, I can just imagine how the rest of the world feels.

There is also the point that over half the hits I get are for one picture [ Google "gay kiss underwear" and you'll see me in the number 2 position, at the moment...]. So, that's 10,000 "real" hits in some twenty-seven months, which any self-respecting site with "gay" and "kiss" and "underwear" in it would be able to generate in a day.

So, I have to content myself with the fact that some 11,000 people tuned in in 2008, and about one in seven came back for more [more of the underwear picture?]. Why, that's an almost 50% increase over the number of "unique" hits in 2007, so I must be doing something right, but what it is I have no more idea than you do. My uncle in the bulk-mail industry says that a 2% response to a cold-mailing was "success," but I have no idea what the equivalent would be on the web. Frankly, the fact that anyone comes back for more of this drivel after getting an initial dose is almost inconceivable to me.

Anyway, if you don't see anything for a while, you can hope that it's because I am finally getting my act together and getting something done in the real world for a change.

Reality has a way of setting in sooner or later.
Lots of love to "all you wonderful people out there in the dark."
C

LIFE is HECTIC...

2008-12-21T14:33:00.006-05:00

"Seasons' greetings, everybody!"

Things are a little hectic--I have been getting 6 hours of sleep a night for a week or two, and am completely fried. The Christmas book I had been trying to finish for everyone in the family went off to the printers half-finished [which means they get it again when I finally finish it--the project has been on the shelf for five years now].

The Goat and I are off for the other coast for Christmas with his daughter's family, and my three kids have been here for the weekend, in the middle of the week from hell: we had one damn storm after another, and we are in the middle of one right now. Two of the party are sick, one bad enough to go to the emergency room, and I am so happy to see them I can barely focus my eyes.

Hope you all survive the next two weeks...
Hang on in there.
C

RUNNING on EMPTY...

2008-12-09T15:27:00.016-05:00

I have a real "skunk at the garden party" post brewing about Proposition 8 and the sanctimonious higher-ground grabbing by both sides, but I don't have the energy at the moment to tackle my life and public opinion at the same time. Or do much of anything else that involves more than keeping track where I am meant to be on which day of the week. I had to do an estimate of the job remaining, now that I have been at it for a few weeks, and my initial sample count leads me to think I could be looking at a year and a half to two years.

Since I waltzed into this job thinking that I might be done in six months, the calculations led to a certain amount of head-scratching. I know I am going to have to bale out at some point to recharge my health care card, so with breaks of a month or two a year, this thing could go on for ever and ever, which is not my idea of a good time, really. The Goat retires in a year or two, and I don't want to be chained to my desk beyond that...

The Goat remarked at dinner the other night that I seemed pensive. I supposed I was because I was spending time thinking about the "big picture." He laughingly responded with a list of proposed topics: Obama's appointments? world peace? faith and science? I had to pull in my horns a bit there, and admit that I was only thinking of my own big picture, which gives me plenty of material for mulling: my life five years ago made perfect sense to me and my life now makes perfect sense to me, but the two of them together don't make any sense at all.

I did not bite my tongue at that point as I should have, but in answer to further leading questions, I admitted that I occasionally worry that having opted the first time for someone who superficially resembled my mother but who thought and acted like my father, I had traded her in for someone who superficially resembles my father but who thinks and acts more like my mother--well, sometimes, anyway, and not in his best moments. The catch is that I am not always sure that the trade necessarily would be considered "trading up."

Not tactful. No. I know that.

But the fact is, I do sometimes wrestle with the fact of the Goat's shortcomings, especially when I am about to enter into an event where my family, who lived with my ex-wife as long as I did, and had sort of gotten used to things as they were, might wind up making comparisons. I shouldn't do it. He came through Thanksgiving with flying colors, and I even heard my mother quote him the other day, in just the know-it-all tone in which she used to cite my father's professional opinion--that made me think that maybe things were going to work out after all. But I do. I worry.

My redneck brothers are next on the list, but we probably won't have to deal with them until next Christmas, and I have already notified His Goatship that I expect him to be around for it. They're great guys, and I'd rather we got together on friendly but neutral territory, and did it before any "ideas" they may pick up from other people's comments get too set in their heads...

I shouldn't worry about things like this, I know. I'm a bad person.

But then, I don't make simultaneous and opposite pronouncements and expect him to discover some sort of thread of safe passage to navigate between the two. We all have our weaknesses, and the inability to keep my mouth shut when it counts is apparently one of mine. That may be the reason that, while he usually insists on doing and/or dictating everything that we do when we truck off to his little house in the Big Woods, the other night he complained that he was tired of doing all the cooking. It's not like I have been trying to get him to do it all, I just don't feel that he wants intrusions on his turf, either figuratively [cooking] or literally [his too-small-for-two-people kitchen].

The last time I tried to step in and finish off a meal he had had to abandon, I got a lecture on exactly how I was doing everything wrong and the lecture made me cry, so I am not particularly eager to go there again. But it turns out he would like me to cook where I am living, which, since it involves incringing on the three rooms my "landlord" still has to himself, I have been reluctant to do. I guess I have felt a rising pressure on that score, but I really don't want to wade into Jeff's kitchen and make a mess of things, on the off chance that he might turn out to be as territorial as some other people in the area. I decided I would just have to take the bull by the horns and do it.

So, today I went and bought a chicken. I can either roast it tomorrow night or take it up and roast it for my grandmother, or let it rest in the fridge until next week, by which time I ought to be able to arrange a meal for Jeff and me and the Goat. That should pour some chicken fat on the troubled waters...

Oh, and the surprise party? It was nice, actually, aside from the somewhat peculiar ending: the Birthday Boy got up to answer a phone call just as the presents were about to be presented, and didn't come back for over half an hour, by which time some of the guests had had to leave.

The good news is that I did get to play cards with my mother, in fact, had a second game extorted while I was trying to hit the road to get home in time for dinner with the Goat. It never ceases to amaze me how every hand strikes her as "strange," no matter how much in her favor the random dealing of cards may be. It's just part of the game to her, I guess. I had to do some family business tending with the aforesaid Birthday Boy, and managed to keep from telling him exactly what I thought of some of the things he was up to. but only just. He probably picked up on it anyway, just as I do with him...

Isn't life wonderful? Well, yes, actually it is.
No matter how bleak thing may look, it usually beats the alternatives hollow...

It was snowing when I left. My mother went on and on about how beautiful it was, and why wasn't I more excited about it? I was about to drive two-and-a-half hours home in it, is why, and I said so. And she just looked at me and said, "Yes, but the Goat will be waiting for you when you get there." I thought that was rather remarkable, really. Almost as good as elevating him to the status of Reliable Quote Source...

We are approaching Christmas at full speed, and so everyone at The Academy is rather strung out, what with the end of the semester and grades and reports all falling due in the two days between the end of classes and our departure for the Coast. To top it all off, it turns out that I am going to have all my kids here that weekend, an arrangement made because the Goat, assuming that this year's schedule would be like last year's--and he has been complaining all fall that it hasn't been--told me he'd have had a week off by then. Oh, well, if Himself is in a bad mood, which, on sober reflection is more than likely, it could be quite a weekend. And to top it all off, I am way behind on my one-size-fits-all sibling/nephew/niece Christmas project. I really have to get cracking on that one, or I will never be able to hold up my head in my mother's house again.

Wish me luck. I'll need it.
I certainly wish you the same.
C

MORE FAMILY ITEMS...

2008-12-04T20:25:00.026-05:00

It was wonderful being able to bring the Goat home for Thanksgiving. We've spent a fair amount of time at my mother's, between one thing and another, but this was just different. He was there as part of the family, and the family seemed to recognize that and just get on with things. My youngest sister's two boys were delighted to be able to talk to someone about sportscars, and for his part, the Goat agreed that the food my sister-in-law brought [once again, her "special" carrot and cream cheese soufflé] was inedible. Having vented about it to the Goat ahead of time, I had to eat mine with as good a grace as I could muster, but I did get a kick out of the fact that he didn't.

He did restrain himself from demanding the recipe, which he had threatened to do ahead of time; it was bad enough to hear the usual carefully polite remarks about how "unusual" it was, and to hear her preening reply that it was so nice to be able to bring something everyone enjoyed so much... I restrained myself from speaking the simple truth, and that's all I can say for my own behavior.

We stayed at my mother's two nights running, and got to stay in the "best" bedroom, too, which happens to be the only one where there is any privacy at all--soundwise--not that we were up to much. I was already fighting off the cold I am now under the weather with, and actually slept much of Thanksgiving Day itself. At least we didn't have to watch the Macy's parade in a house full of poisonously polite queens, as we did last year. We drank and stayed up late playing cards with my mother both nights. It's a short life, but a merry one, up in the Frozen North.

Then, as planned, we hit the road south again to get to his sister's on The Shore--and got another turkey dinner with her kids and grandchildren. Then back home to a friend's party to welcome visiting Gay Friends from the West--another turkey dinner. Then we took a night off for good behavior [Saturday having been a "night off" without good behavior anywhere in sight, as the poetry readers among you may have figured out] and then we struggled out to the Goat's little house in the woods on Monday night, where without thinking he thawed out some leftovers from last February for us to have for dinner: turkey stew. It was good, but with the turkey dinner the school served the last night before Thanksgiving break, that made five turkey dinners in a little over a week... but I'm not complaining.

I love turkey. Really.

And now there's this:

Remember my oldest brother--the one who went into a rant about the local lesbian real estate take-over on his road the night I told him I was leaving my family to live as a gay man?

Yes, that one.

Well, he called me today to invite me to a surprise party that's being given for his birthday this weekend; not only have I never had the surprisee invite me to a surprise party before, but this one puts me in the position of not having any time to shop for a gift, and not having anything ready to give, as I wasn't planning on putting in an appearance at a party I knew nothing about. All I wanted to do was invite myself to my mother's Saturday night so I could hit the bottle and the card table, but now it turns out she's part of the Surprise Borg Collective, too.

That's the price you pay for being part of a family. No wonder gay people want to redefine "family": we'd like to introduce some kind of minimum standards. Do you suppose it's politically incorrect to bring an alcoholic a bottle of booze?

Last, but certainly not least, some more important news:

Anyone who has followed Bigg's link to this corner of Blogworld, or followed my link over to "My Confessions," might want to know that The Tough Guy of East Overshoe has not been posting because he has been in the hospital again, far from home this time. HB is riding herd on him, and a bunch of nurses is trying everything short of tying him up to get him to settle down and give some of what the doctors want to do a chance to work. That's my boy. I've never actually met the guy, but I have gotten to count on his presence in my cyberlife. As Alan Jay Lerner once said, "I've grown accustomed to his face," though it's mostly his acerbic tone of voice that does it for me. I guess I have also enjoyed being reminded that there is less drama in my life than goes on in some others, and so reminded to count my blessings.

You try it, too.
And if you're the praying type, please remember my pal Bigg.
C