The View from the Mantelpiece

Home . . . and Other Cities

2012-01-17T23:27:00.006-05:00

Tonight I sit alone in my home—a quartet of pants somersaulting in the dryer, the kitchen and bathroom floors newly clean (believe me, not a common state), a feeling of post-Christmas order in the living room (I took down the tree, perhaps my prettiest ever, last night). A cup of tea is empty, a crushing work deadline is over, and bed awaits with a book before sleep. There's little I like better than where I am right now.

And here, from writer Susan Cain in the New York Times, comes confirmation that neither the delicious solitude that I relish on a night like this nor shutting my door at work (as I'm wont to do) is a sign of antisocial behavior but a necessity for creativity and productivity:

"Our offices should encourage casual, cafe-style interactions, but allow people to disappear into personalized, private spaces when they want to be alone. Our schools should teach children to work with others, but also to work on their own for sustained periods of time. And we must recognize that introverts . . . need extra quiet and privacy to do their best work."

All I need now is an article about other introverts who close their curtains as soon as they come home and delight in the feeling that they're hidden from the world where no one can find them. An illusion, but a deeply satisfying one. Oh, and with photos of the cozy and creatively decorated houses and apartments these people come home to—how about it, New York Times?

Speaking of New York (and I hope as proof that a sometime hermit is not all I am), what I'm most looking forward to this week is an up-and-back-in-one-day bus trip D. and I are taking on Saturday to see the Broadway play Other Desert Cities, starring the fabulous Rachel Griffiths).

D. expressed concern that the trip would be exhausting. I said, "An entire day of uninterrupted time, just you and me on a bus making each other laugh and doing the Friday and Saturday Times crosswords together?"

Exhausting? Delicious.

Two fun gals: Sarah Jessica Parker and Rachel Griffiths

Steve Granitz/WireImage.com

Smoke and Metal

2012-01-04T23:11:00.005-05:00

"He was asking for memories, too young to know that memories were only memories of memories. It was diamond-rare to remember something fresh."

These are two typically beautiful and apt sentences from a novel I finished last night, The Stranger's Child by Alan Hollinghurst (about whom I've written before). It's largely about memory and versions of a life (one life in particular, that of a World War I poet); the mystery of what we can never know about someone because we're at the mercy of what he or she chooses to reveal; and the secrets that the satellites of people around that person keep, which we're often powerless to pry open.

Here's another passage that rang so true to me. This scene takes place in 1967, outdoors in the shadow of a party; Paul has never been with a man before, and Peter has more experience. They're in their early twenties.

"He'd brushed against Peter uncertainly as he giggled; now Peter's hand was round his neck, their faces close together in the spidery light through bushes, their eyes unreadable, a huddle of smiles and sighs, and then they kissed, smoke and metal, a weird mutual tasting, to which Paul gave himself with a shudder of disbelief. Peter pressed against him, with a slight squirming stoop to fit himself to him, the instant and unambiguous fact of his erection more shocking that the taste of his mouth. In the fierce close-up and the near-dark Paul saw only the curve of Peter's head, his hair in silhouette and the ragged crown of bushes beyond, black against the night sky. He took his cue from his movements, tried to mimic him, but the sudden stifling violence of another man's wants, all at once, instinctive and mechanical, was too much for him."

It's been only a little more than four years, but D. and I already have different memories of the night we met, even argue about the date (easily—and often—provable thanks to calendars and journals, but still). What I was wearing, whether we actually danced that night or the next, when we kissed for the first time. I've written about it (not here but in an unpublished essay), and even I discovered—after I finished the essay—that I'd misremembered important details (specifically when D. first met my parents).

I'm not sure I can say how any of it really happened, what's metal and what's smoke.

The Chapel That We Crave

2011-11-28T21:12:00.007-05:00

"Happiness is absorption, being entirely yourself and entirely in one place. That is the chapel that we crave."

That's my favorite passage from a really nice essay called "Chapels" by Pico Iyer in this year's Best American Essays. I read it today while sitting in a little garden off Dupont Circle where in-the-know people bring their lunches, or just themselves, on a day like this in late November when the temperature lolls in the 60s. Beyond the garden gate, you can see and hear the life of the city, but it feels like nothing more than a sheer, rustling curtain waving in the near distance—non-threatening, even pleasant—while the greenery of this boundaried space holds you.

Even as I sat in a kind of outdoor chapel, reading the essay made me realize I need to spend more time in those places, physical and otherwise, where I'm entirely me, not split off in shards.

One of the things that make the Iyer essay notable is that he's talking about literal chapels as much as figurative ones, but he never mentions the word God—doesn't need to because that's not what his story is about.

He admits, "For all the years of my growing up, we had to go to chapel every morning and to say prayers in a smaller room every evening. Chapel became everything we longed to flee; it was there we made faces at one another, doodled in our hymnbooks, sniggered at each other every time we sang about 'the bosom of the Lord' or the 'breast' of a green hill."

I can relate to that feeling, having spent a fair amount of time in this musky chapel as a preteen and teen, even having acted (badly) in a 15th-century play within its walls:

As idyllic as it looks here, I don't miss it—almost never, in fact, think about it.

Iyer's essay is about the quiet spaces, sometimes but not always walled, that allow us to recharge. And maybe you have to be an adult to do that with intention.

"Chapels are emergency rooms for the soul," he writes. "They are the one place we can reliably go to find who we are and what we should be doing with our lives—usually by finding all we aren't, and what is much greater than us, to which we can only give ourselves up."

Call that God if you want, but he's not writing about religion, at least not to me. I have no interest in religion. Yet it turns out that this is the wallpaper I chose months ago for the computer on which I'm writing these words:

Hard to say which is the "chapel" in that picture—the space where I took it (on the way up the tower of the Freiburg cathedral, on a 50th-birthday trip to Germany with D. this summer to revisit some important parts of my life, in this case the site of my junior year abroad exactly 30 years ago) or what my eye was taking in.

Or was it where my mind rested at that moment as I held the camera, paused on the bridge between who I was and who I am now?

Five Cents, Please

2011-11-23T23:00:00.004-05:00

I think this will be the first Thanksgiving ever that each "unit" of my family will celebrate separately—which is to say the first when nobody is having our parents over. My local sister, who has usually hosted dinner for whoever is available, may stop by their assisted-living facility (where now are both in memory care), may bring them a bit of turkey or pie, but she'll have her own celebration, like each of the rest of us. (D. and I are going to see friends of his in Lynchburg, Virginia.)

Dad moved into memory care about two and a half weeks ago, and neither he nor Mom even remembers that it's Thanksgiving or much cares (I mentioned it to him tonight, to little response). They'll be served a holiday dinner by staff, and after that Dad will go to bed and Mom will sit up in the common room with her neighbors. She's up most of the night, I'm told (one of the caregivers has her sit beside her and help with her "paperwork"), catching up on sleep during the day.

We've been reading Dad Winnie-the-Pooh, and he seems to enjoy it. (He's actually doing remarkably well in general under the circumstances.) The other day I bought him a book of Peanuts comics, which I thought would be interesting and possible for him to read on his own. Tonight I couldn't find it.

***

Lucy: "Follow me. I want to show you something. See the horizon over there? See how big this world is? See how much room there is for everybody? Have you ever seen any other worlds?"
Charlie Brown: "No."
Lucy: "As far as you know, this is the only world there is, right?"
Charlie Brown: "Right."
Lucy: "There are no other worlds for you to live in, right?"
Charlie Brown: "Right."
Lucy: "You were born to live in this world, right?"
Charlie Brown: "Right."
Lucy: "WELL LIVE IN IT THEN! Five cents please."

Fragments, a Return

2011-11-06T22:08:00.004-05:00

This weekend my siblings and I started hospice for Dad.

It's been almost a year since I wrote in this blog (I'm a little shocked but not totally surprised to see). In that year, my mother's condition has remained mostly stable, which is to say that 13 years of dementia quietly rolled into 14, with no major changes from one to the next. Tonight when I was talking to D. and my brother and sister, I described her conversation as a bagful of disconnected words, sentence fragments, gestures, expressions, questions, phrases, and moods all shaken up and spilled out. I just ride the wave of what emerges— "Oh, no—not that!" "Really?" "I know." "Yeah, I'm Billy." "Don't cry—be happy." "Want to sing a song?" When I'm with her these days, I rarely feel anything but loved.

On Friday, we got a report that Dad was drooling and going in and out of consciousness at lunch. There was more to it, but that was the most alarming development. Most likely, in retrospect, he was probably having an ischemic attack, one more of the stealth mini-strokes that both he and Mom have experienced over the years, she for a much longer time.

He has declined markedly in the last four to six weeks, sleeps most of the day when left to his own devices, eats little and irregularly, and rarely converses at all except in single words. We'd already been taking the initial steps of moving him into memory care (the wing where Mom has lived for the last year and a half), but this turn of events sealed the deal. Among other benefits will be better monitoring of his diet and hydration, although the accompanying loss of independence makes me sad.

Hospice quickly entered the picture, and at this stage it seems essentially just another level of care, one that's more sensitively attuned to his weakened condition and making him more comfortable. It will start out at least once a week but will probably increase somewhat from that according to his needs as the hospice personnel get to know him and us. Nowhere near round the clock . . . yet.

As D. put it recently, my father is winding down. It's very hard for me to look full on at what that means.

When D. and I were falling asleep and talking about Dad last night, D. said, "I'll miss him." That brought tears to my eyes because I really believed him—he's been a great friend to my father—and it made me think about how much I'll miss him, too.

Do You Remember?

2010-12-30T21:31:00.012-05:00

D. and I went out for our weekly Silver Diner dinner with my father tonight, Thursday, because we'll be away in Provincetown this weekend. Dad was very quiet, but I didn't have any reason to think he was unhappy. In the car on the way there, I asked him if he had any New Year's resolutions, and he said he couldn't think of any. Then later at dinner, D. asked him again, and Dad said, not with irritation but with a small, shy chuckle, "You asked me that before—I can't think of any." (I can't either!) It's sometimes surprising what he remembers from moment to moment.

After we said good night to him, we popped in to say hi to Mom in the memory-care wing. We weren't sure she'd be up, as it was 8:30, but we found her poking around the hall in her nightie and slippers. We took her back to her room and turned on a CD to get her relaxed. It took only a few minutes to coax her into bed as the music played. We kissed her good night; D. said "I love you" and told her we'd see her in the morning—a lie but a benign one. I had told her I'd see her "in the daylight," unnecessarily staying on the factual side of the fence. We will see her in the daylight, just not tomorrow's.

Here's a picture of me and my father tonight in our tissue-paper crowns after opening some British "Christmas crackers" D. had brought.

And here's what we left playing when we said good night to Mom:

Dearie, do you remember when we
Waltzed to the Sousa band?
My, wasn't the music grand?
Chowder parties down by the seashore
Every Fourth of July . . .

Dearie, life was cheery
In the good old days gone by
Do you remember?
If you remember,
Then Dearie, you're much older than I.

Dear Friends

2010-12-28T00:21:00.007-05:00

I had to edit my holiday letter down at the last minute when I realized that the type, reduced to fit on one page, was too hard to read and there really was just too much of it for anyone to put on a mantelpiece with the other cards. But maybe not too long for this mantelpiece. Here is the unedited version (and yet also slightly expurgated for the purpose of my semi-anonymous blog), which gives a fuller picture of my experience of 2010 than the version my friends and family received in the mail. Happy New Year to anyone reading this.

***

This is the first holiday letter I’ve ever written, but all the kids seem to be doing it now and since I continue to resist Facebook, it’s the least I can do to update you in a more substantive way than my brief notes of years past.

Sometimes it seems it seems my whole life is dictated by the cyclical nature of my job. For about a week and a half every month, work is very intense. My job is almost completely portable, and I often work in the evening or on weekends during those periods. When people express concern about getting a late-night e-mail from me, I say that editing with a fire in the fireplace, a cup of tea, and my dog at my side beats working in a spooky, abandoned office at 11 p.m. I think of my job as solving problems, small and not so small, which is very satisfying.

I continue to teach, though I’ve been on a break since June and will return in March. I’ve come to believe my true calling is more as a teacher than as a writer. I did, however, complete an essay in November and have already had it rejected. So—two accomplishments checked off my list (ha ha).

In the spring, I had grand jury duty, which took me out of the office three days a week for two months. Even I’m a little amazed I managed to get my job done. It was an educational experience despite the fact that 75 percent of it was repetitious and tedious. Also despite the fact that most of the other 22 jurors were cliquish and sophomoric. We heard nearly 200 cases, almost all drug-related, many presented in less than 15 minutes. I was most surprised to learn that prosecutors in DC Superior Court are, by and large, just as young and attractive as they are on Law & Order.

During this time, my mother—who has had dementia for 13 years and been in assisted living since 2008—fell and broke a bone while wandering at 6 in the morning. After rehab, she moved into “memory care,” which has turned out to be a mostly positive step for her and she’s doing well relative to the unrelenting nature of her condition. Dad lives in the building’s general population and can see her whenever he wants, as can I and my siblings. My partner D. and I take him to the Silver Diner every weekend. I’ve slowly become better at not measuring the success of such an outing by Dad’s talkativeness or silence or by any particular words of appreciation but by the pleasure with which he devours his All American Burger Basket and the curiosity in his eyes as he surveys the people, lights, and activity around him.

Both of my parents have passed age 90, and my father’s own dementia, which began more recently, has started to progress more noticeably. It occurs to me that my brother and two sisters and I are now the caretakers of our parents’ memories. With most of Mom and Dad’s pasts lost to them or jumbled, we likely know all we will ever know of them—their childhoods, their travels, our own births. These stories we’ve memorized or simply absorbed over the years are entrusted to us for safekeeping as surely as the snapshots of fuzzy-headed toddlers on beaches, the letters and diaries, the pictures of a newly married couple slicing a cake nearly 60 years ago.

The four of us have been getting the family house ready to sell sometime in the near future—sorting through possessions, holding a yard sale, making repairs. One thing I know for sure: I’m lucky to have siblings I get along with, and I can’t imagine how such tasks would be bearable otherwise.

My partner D.’s older sister passed away in November, and if I didn’t already appreciate the gift of having siblings I love and respect, D.’s relationship with her would be a lesson. He was her caregiver for the last 11 years since he moved her up to Washington from Florida, just as he had been for a period in the 1980s when he moved her to be near him in New York. One of the first things he ever told me when we met three years ago was that she protected him when they were kids, and he owed her the same when she became sick. That’s when I knew he was a generous and worthwhile man.

We’ve had a lot of fun this year, from seeing the extraordinarily moving and imaginative play War Horse in London (coming to Broadway in the spring) to trips to three of our other favorite places—Provincetown (three times, with another coming up at New Year's), Vermont, and New York City—to trolling flea markets and antiques shops whenever and wherever we can. His job as a dance professor and director of the arts scholarship program keep him very busy, and he’s a much-loved mentor to many young people present and past.

D. and I each have homes we love—his house in the suburbs (less than five minutes from where I grew up) with its lovingly tended gardens, my House at Pooh Corner condo in the city. I recently sent Doug a passage from a New York Times article about this year’s National Book Award winner in fiction, Jaimy Gordon: “Ms. Gordon, 66, has taught writing for almost 30 years at Western Michigan University and lives by herself in a two-story house next to a lake here. Her husband, Peter Blickle, 17 years her junior, teaches German at the university and lives by another lake, about a 20-minute walk away. His wife goes over there most evenings with her dog and they have a glass of schnapps.”

The subject line of my e-mail was “See, we’re not so strange.” D. replied: “I wish we had the lake and the 20 minute walk instead of a 20 minute drive! Let’s do the schnapps.” The truth is we’re not schnapps drinkers, but we share a pot of tea every time we get together.

This month marks the end of my first year of being vegan—the most fun and profound development of the year, full of discoveries, creativity, and good food. Like many, I never thought I’d be able to be vegan, even as it became harder to argue against it. Then I read the nonfiction book Eating Animals by the novelist Jonathan Safran Foer. The fact that Foer may not even be vegan himself (he never says so, though he is vegetarian) speaks to the power of his writing in that it had the effect of changing my life. I sensed before reading it that it was what I needed to make the leap. I wanted the push.

In some ways, my life feels more expansive than ever, in others more stripped down. Without denying the stresses and uncertainties of life, both impressions feel welcome. I wish you happy endings and beginnings of your own.

Just Being

2010-11-27T15:52:00.007-05:00

I was saddened by the recent death of Jill Clayburgh, an actress whose roster of leading or costarring roles is relatively small and who, I realized, I've seen in only a few things. But I've always liked her.

I remember when An Unmarried Woman came out in 1978. It was not a film I was old enough to see on my own, nor would I have had the opportunity had I wanted to—I was a 16-year-old boy; it was An Unmarried Woman. The pictures of a bearded Alan Bates intrigued me more than anything. I saw it a few years later in college, one of the free Saturday-night movies on campus. Because of my still-young age and the fact that the early '80s weren't so far removed from the late '70s, I don't think it resonated fully—how could it have? I remember liking it as a movie well enough. (I had by then seen Clayburgh's follow-up, the 1979 comedy Starting Over, and was familiar with her appeal.) And the bearded Alan Bates was just as sexy as I'd imagined.

This weekend, I rented An Unmarried Woman and was taken anew by it and by Jill Clayburgh. Would you believe that a 49-year-old man in 2010 could find a lot to identify with in the story of a thirtysomething woman in 1978 who is suddenly single and must navigate the world of dating, sex, independence, attachment, responsibility, risk-taking, and love (and not-love)? Well, it's true. I watched the whole thing through another time with the very interesting dual commentary by Clayburgh and director Paul Mazursky (who didn't seem to have been in the same room at the same time).

I also rented Starting Over, which I enjoyed when it came out (I think I saw it with my parents and brother). This time, it struck me as slighter than I remembered, but Burt Reynolds is totally endearing, as is Jill Clayburgh again, though to me it was more his film (yet she got an Oscar nomination, as did Candice Bergen, who was comical but wooden as usual).

Jill Clayburgh's acting has a low-key naturalness that's refreshing, like someone who's just being yet whose subtle illumination draws you to her. Her obituary in the Washington Post—which, surprisingly, was much better than the one in the New York Times—ended with this:

Ms. Clayburgh was proud of her understated acting style, believing it was more true to her characters and to life itself.

"I don't like being knocked out by performances," she told The Washington Post in 1978. 'I don't want anyone to say, 'what a fantastic actor' about me."

In the DVD commentary, Paul Mazursky said he originally offered the part to Jane Fonda, who turned it down because it wasn't political enough. He said, What do you mean? It's as political as you can get. After the movie came out, she told him he was right.

Fonda would have given the movie a different slant—I suspect much greater seriousness and overall angst. Had I seen that version, I probably would have come away saying, "What a fantastic actor."

After watching the actual movie—with Jill Clayburgh—I thought, "That was really, really good."

Only This

2010-10-03T19:48:00.009-05:00

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
" 'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door;
Only this, and nothing more."

This weekend, I hand-delivered a card bearing the image at left to my 90-year-old father. Inside were small notes from D. and me. It was part of a little project I began at the start of my 50th year about two weeks ago involving getting back to writing to people on paper—not directly related to my feelings about Facebook, but you could say there's a connection. (I might write more about the project in a future post.)

This print is "Circle Raven" by Yoshiko Yamamoto— one of many beautiful letterpress designs from the Arts and Crafts Press.

The card got Dad and D. and me talking about ravens and crows and their ilk. My father has always had a curious mind, to say the least, but these days there's more curiosity than retention, more silence than response—you often have to simply trust that he's taking information in and let go of expectations about to what use his mind may be putting it.

I had recently bought him a large-print book of poems because his eyesight is bad and he's so bored and he used to be someone who cared about poetry. I don't think he's read much of the book, so given what we were talking about, I decided to read Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven" aloud to him.

I have to say I absorbed only about half of it myself—it was the first time I'd read it in at least 35 years—but the rhythms were a blast to feel on my tongue and vocal chords, a tour de force of language offered to a man whose world was once nothing but language. (He is—was—a polyglot linguist whose specialty was Russian.)

As I read, Dad leaned forward, appearing to listen intently. Every time I got to the refrain "Nevermore," which ends the last four stanzas, he looked up and joined in with heart—"Nevermore!"—finding, it seemed, a place of memory within him still. A place where a single familiar, archaic word was stored from adolescence, or childhood, or even deeper back, a place where words themselves originate, where he would have found me at that moment as well.

Exactly 300 Words on Why I Won't Join Facebook

2010-09-29T14:38:00.007-05:00

I loathe the competitiveness inherent in listing how many “friends” you have; I dislike the idea of asking someone to friend you as well as accepting or rejecting someone’s request. That feels like high school. I've done high school.

Last year, I was contacted by someone I’ve been mostly out of touch with since we were 20 except for occasional contact, when we catch up and then find we have zero to say. This time, she ended with: “If you don't have Facebook, get it! That is an order, even if you think it is stupid. I've reconnected with people 30 years after high school! I am so excited to have you back in my life!” I replied, filling her in on my life and echoing the love, but explained I wouldn’t be joining (avoiding the details here). I never heard back.

I don’t like devaluing the word “friend” to encompass everything from true intimate to acquaintance to professional contact to person you once knew half a lifetime ago but may have nothing in common with anymore.

Mixing worlds makes me uncomfortable. Though I realize you have some control over what’s public, I wouldn’t want coworkers to see how I interact with my friends, nor would I want to edit my interactions with the latter.

Googling someone is great—I do it too. But I don’t want to be found any more easily than I already can be (i.e., easily, and I don’t mean through this blog, which is virtually anonymous). One of my favorite things is coming home, drawing the curtains, turning on the lights, and feeling no one can find me. (I’m talking feeling, not reality.)

And this profile of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in the New Yorker only made me more confident in my decision.

Loverly

2010-09-28T22:08:00.010-05:00

Random obsession: Audrey Hepburn.This started when D. and I were at a B&B in Pennsylvania. I turned on the TV, and TCM was showing The Nun’s Story, which I’d never seen. I got sucked in.

I was struck by the almost documentary style—surprising for the 1950s—of the scenes in the Congo, where Hepburn’s nun works in a hospital, then by the seriousness and delicacy of her acting. I made a note to reacquaint myself with her.

My first stop was her official Web site, with a fascinatingly intimate trove of photos. I looked for biographies, and all seemed cheesy; what interested me most was a book by her son Sean Ferrer—not a memoir but presumably from a reliable source and full of more riveting photos. It turned out to be a rambling but sweet tribute. There’s an insularity and an idealism toward his mother that are both touching and odd—at her deathbed, you’d think he were an only child (he’s not; he has a brother, barely mentioned) and the only person with her in her final hours (hard to believe).

What I gleaned is that Hepburn was a truly kind, modest, humble, generous, family-oriented, loving, socially conscious person who probably was more complicated than her son cares to recall. Why should he? There was enough of the perfect to fill a book.

I’ve since read Fifth Avenue, Five A.M., about the making of Breakfast at Tiffany’s and “the birth of the modern woman.” It’s easy to read but has the feel of a quickie project (the author had written a book about Blake Edwards, who directed Breakfast, so the research probably didn’t require heavy lifting).

I saw Roman Holiday for the first time a couple months ago and rewatched Two for the Road recently, her second-to-last film before semi-retiring.

What next?

Nun's Story photo by Leo Fuchs
The Nun's story © Warner Bros. Pictures Inc. all rights reserved

So Runs the World Away

2010-08-01T19:37:00.007-05:00

Thanks to Diablo for sending me the following poem by Mary Oliver, a resident, as it happens of Provincetown, where I recently spent a happy week and a half.

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

***

I spent many hours with D. biking the trails in and around Ptown, including the magnificent Cape Cod Rail Trail, which we hope will someday extend all the way up the Cape to Provincetown. I haven't owned a bike of my own since I was a child but am on the verge of buying my first adult bike. This is thanks to D. and the roads we've ridden together over the last nearly three years.

While on the Cape, we had a very nice visit with a former grad school professor/writing teacher of mine and his wife. He retired a few years ago and moved up there about three years ago. I used to see him at least a couple of times a year at various social or literary occasions but hadn't talked with him at length since his move, so it was nice to reconnect. One thing I told him was that he was a big influence on my teaching, as, among many other things, I learned from him that it's okay to teach from notes, that no one will think less of you if you refer to them. In fact, I still write out notes before the first session of every workshop I teach, and later sessions if I'm teaching an essay I haven't taught before, but the interesting thing is that I refer to my notes less and less. It's the writing of them that imprints them.

One of the last times I spent time with my old teacher and his wife was at a Josh Ritter concert at the Birchmere, probably in 2006. Now in his late sixties, he's a huge Josh Ritter fan. As it happened, I had just downloaded Josh Ritter's new CD, So Runs the World Away, onto my iPod before my vacation. I was just listening to it the other day and was struck by its style, so different from his earlier, more classic singer/songwriter mode. It's kind of epic sea shanty meets art song. I need to listen to it more.

I started this post almost two weeks ago (through most of that last paragraph). And just tonight I bought a novel, Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin, whose title reminded me of Josh Ritter's and then of this unfinished post.

The book I have to finish before starting that one is Rosanne Cash's memoir, Composed. I just finished a lovely chapter about six months she spent living in London at age 20 and 21, and that chapter ends on a note of wistfulness about friends and mentors she lost touch with over the years, some of whom she reconnected with later in moving and unexpected ways, some of whom died before she had a chance to.

I hope to see my teacher again the next time I'm passing through.

Foreign Countries

2010-07-21T10:31:00.005-05:00

Greetings from Provincetown. The last time I was here, it was New Year's, the population closed in on itself for warmth. It's now the height of summer—tattoos breathing for the first time in months, vacation beards sprouting, people relaxing into each other and themselves. One of the notes in the guest book of our condo, from two men, adds a P.S.: "We held hands walking down the streets of Provincetown." A big duh to anyone who has been here more than once or who is from a big progressive city, but a revelation when you've never done it before anywhere. The same couple: "It's like coming to another country from our beautiful but conservative Maine."

D. and I saw the Swedish movie The Girl Who Played With Fire last night. Excellent, complex, disturbing, but as far from Ikea's cheerful dining rooms and entertainment centers as you could imagine. Though Ikea is, funnily enough, among the credits.

History, Boys

2010-07-19T19:27:00.006-05:00

I recently rented The History Boys and was especially struck by the matter-of-fact way this group of mostly straight boys in an British "public" (private) school accepted and joshed with and even sympathized with the gay kid among them, particularly his crush on the dreamiest straight guy of the bunch (Dominic Cooper). And at least as much by the matter-of-fact way the gay boy himself, even as he struggled with his feelings, openly talked about his attractions and identity.

It was refreshing to see, and I guess I have to assume it's not wildly implausible for the setting (England) and the time (1983), though the movie (and Alan Bennett play on which it's based) takes place only four years after I graduated from high school.

It couldn't be further from my experience in a private boys' school in the United States, in which heterosexism and homophobia ruled to such an extent that the gay boys either kept staunchly silent and softly invisible or let their peculiarities leak out (awkwardly queer mannerisms, penchants for sketching fantasy characters on every available surface) and were subjected to isolation, ridicule, even cruelty. One boy in the latter category (let's call him M.S.) when confronted with the message "M.S. is a fag" in large letters on the blackboard and all the erasers hidden—as well as a roomful of classmates waiting to see his reaction—had no choice but to wipe the words off with his own '70s-plaid polyester suitcoat.

I watched and said nothing. Guess which of the groups of gay boys I was in.

Where the Driveway Ends

2010-07-04T17:01:00.012-05:00

Why has it been so hard for me to get back on track? Somehow my eight-week jury duty (with 22 people who, for the most part, I could not stand, hearing cases that were, for the most part, maddeningly repetitive and tedious, not to mention depressing) and my mother's fall (she's now almost fully recovered physically but much changed mentally) threw me off my blogging stride. The only way I'll ever get any words down is not to claim any continuity or structure for them.

I had one of NPR's much-touted "driveway moments" this evening when a story on Shel Silverstein came on All Things Considered just as I pulled up to D's house. I knew Silverstein wrote songs in addition to children's books (which, by the way, I never read as a child), but the only songs I knew he wrote were "The Queen of the Silver Dollar," on Emmylou Harris's great first album, Pieces of the Sky," and "I'm Checking Out," which Meryl Streep sings to amazing, triumphant effect at the end of Postcards From the Edge.

There's a new Shel Silverstein tribute album out, the subject of the NPR story, and who knew he also wrote those Top 40 songs of my youth "Sylvia's Mother" and "The Cover of the Rolling Stone," not to mention Johnny Cash's "A Boy Named Sue" and Marianne Faithfull's "The Ballad of Lucy Jordan" (which I love and haven't thought about in years)?

I had to sit in the car and hear the whole interview with the album's producers. And who knows -- maybe I'll buy it. See, there's still hope for me after all.

_______

Illustration by Shel Silverstein from Where the Sidewalk Ends.

Cracklin'

2010-06-28T22:21:00.005-05:00

For some reason, music has stopped being very important to me—at least in the way it has been for most of my life. I almost never listen to my CDs and records these days, and when I do they're background music; I used to dance around, and not so very long ago. Now I look at the covers and think, eh, I've heard that so many times. I rarely buy music on iTunes. I have a nice iPod Nano D. gave me for my birthday last year (supplanting the minuscule Shuffle I bought myself a few years ago), and my project to transfer my favorite records to it never got very far; it always seems so time-consuming, daunting, and, frankly, boring to complete it.

The last new CD I bought was this, sometime last year, I think. It's a nice-enough record.

I still listen to the radio in the car, but I find I don't sing along much anymore. The only decent music station in Washington is WAMU's Bluegrass Country, which is way down the dial from the main 88.5 station and comes in spottily but at least is original and energetic and varied (it's more than just bluegrass).

I can still get excited by a live performance—such as Judy Collins at the Birchmere in January, or, memorably, Joan Baez in Philadelphia the year before last, or just about any YouTube clip of Peter, Paul, and Mary in their heyday.

I feel lucky to have seen Mary Travers perform solo in the late '70s, a reunited PP&M a few years later, and Peter and Paul without Mary—sadly showing the lack—a month before she died; her death was a great, underestimated loss.

I adore this other, more unexpected trio featuring Mary, doing one of the great songs of our time. I have it bookmarked and sometimes watch it over and over:

It's nice not only that D. loves '60s folk music but that he's reawakened my love of it.

So clearly, I can get excited about music and musicians. But it's not what excited me two or three years ago. What seems to get to me now, whether I remember it from the time or not, is music dating from my childhood. What's that about?

Well, this I would have found very sexy (in an inchoate way), were I to have seen this episode of Johnny Cash's show, which I well might have at age eight or so:

"Good Night, Prosecutor": Ten Good Things

2010-06-05T20:49:00.007-05:00

As I slowly resurface . . . ten good things since late March, the point at which my life reached overload:

1. Riding the Vamoose bus back from NYC on a Sunday night in April, D. and I eating still-warm H&H bagels with vegan cream cheese and scallions from, of all places, Zabar's (who knew?) and doing the Times crossword. As D. said, speaking for me, "It doesn't get better than that."

2. Please Give.

3. Finding four perfect-condition Stangl "Fruit and Flowers" teacups and saucers with a creamer and sugar bowl for only $26 at the Bethesda Op Shop, my first pieces in that pattern. The fact that I found them not in an antiques shop but in a mostly junky thrift store—and on a day when I was actually thinking I probably shouldn't even bother going in because this place only has junk—was a sign that I should get them. So now I seem to be collecting two patterns—I already had a Bachelor Button coffee service. D. has an almost complete set of Thistle. Though he introduced me to the line, I was the first to buy, last summer in Provincetown. I said to him, "It's the only thing we're competitive about."

4. Great Sage.

5. Taking Dad to a real barbershop for a haircut (instead of waiting for the next time someone comes around to cut hair at his assisted-living facility), putting an extra cushion we brought with us on the seat, telling the barber how to cut his hair . . . and remembering that about 45 years ago he he did much the same thing for me. And seeing what a pleasure it could be, amid his daily existence of mostly tedium and dozing, for him to be out in the world surrounded by male voices and be matter-of-factly yet expertly groomed.

6. The trip to New York itself.

7. During a mostly agonizingly dull eight weeks of grand jury duty, volunteering one day to read the role of the prosecutor when we were hearing the transcript of previous testimony in a case we were considering (the actual prosecutor read the role of the witness), and not only enjoying the heck out of it but receiving numerous compliments from fellow jurors. "Good night, prosecutor," one said to me at the end of the day. It reminded me that several years ago I thought about volunteering for an organization that records books and articles for the blind. Maybe I'll revisit that when things calm down more.

8. Slice some onion, sauté it in olive oil till it's soft, add some chopped green cabbage, cook it some more till the cabbage is softened to your liking but still a little crisp (in other words, nowhere near sauerkraut soft), season with salt and pepper, and stir in a little Dijon mustard and a sprinkling of fennel seed. Improvisation transformed into inspiration.

9. For the first time, on one of my days off from grand jury duty (to which I was committed three days a week), coming into work on an intense deadline day when I was just barely keeping up and saying to a colleague, "It's good to be here"—and meaning it.

10. One thing that never changed: that hour or two between Patsy's early-morning walk (usually between 5 and 6 am) and the time I have to get up for work, when the two of us get back in bed and breathe together—even better when D. is there, breathing along—knowing we have just a finite time in that peaceful state, but not yet willing to start the day.

Parsley, Sage, Rosemary . . . and Time

2010-05-26T22:27:00.010-05:00

"I've lost my harmonica, Albert."

-- Simon and Garfunkel, "A Simple Desultory Philippic (Or How I Was Robert McNamara'd Into Submission)"

Re-entry is hard.

Come Fly Away

2010-04-24T08:21:00.003-05:00

Greetings from the Hotel Roger Williams in New York City, a brief escape during a busy and stressful time. I had to come to Manhattan for the weekend to have a moment to blog. Blame eight-week grand jury duty three days a week (at the midpoint as of yesterday), the usual work chaos (now compressed into two days a week as well as evenings and weekends), trying to keep up with teaching (my one break from which is this weekend, hence the trip to New York), and a family crisis -- Mom fell, was hospitalized, and is now in rehab. More on that when I have time to reflect.

Plan for the day: the new Hester Street Fair, the vegan bakery BabyCakes, maybe lunch at this longtime favorite of D's, dinner at the vegan restaurant Candle Cafe (I have the cookbook), and tonight Come Fly Away.

The Blind Side

2010-03-26T23:15:00.008-05:00

After this long blogging silence, the first thing I write about when I finally return is . . . Sandra Bullock?

A few months ago, I officially decided I couldn't stand her anymore. (Not that I was that much of an active fan to begin with.) What had started to get to me was that -- at age 45, with no biological children, and likely on the cusp of that unfortunate stage in a Hollywood actress's career when she's no longer "marketable" as a leading lady -- she was making a bit too much of a deal about how she really, really was maternal after all.

She seemed to bring it up in just about every story I saw about her. It came to a head for me in an article in Parade last November, in which she said that before she met her husband (the bandit Jesse James) and started helping raise his five-year-old daughter, "I was too selfish to have kids."

Yes, the old No Children = Selfish equation. What a fresh idea. Thanks for that, Sandy.

But that wasn't enough. She went on: "If you don’t have kids and animals, you don’t truly know what real life is about."

Okay, I have an animal (and have had animals plural), and I now find it hard to imagine living without them. But for many years I didn't have animals in my life (34 years, to be exact), and I'd never be so judgmental and presumptuous to declare that those without them don't know what life is about.

Life is about your life and what you make of it, period.

Sandy, I thought, you're just an insecure clod.

Now, as everyone knows, mere weeks after her genuinely moving triumph of winning an Oscar, she has been publicly humiliated by allegations that her husband serially cheated on her.

And I've felt for her.

In her Golden Globe acceptance speech earlier this year, she said that before she met her husband, "I never knew what it felt like to have someone have my back."

Lord, all of those quotes that have come back to haunt her.

I've been there myself. Do I think he could be seeing someone else? No. No way.

I remember seeing a 20/20 segment in the '80s about people who couldn't get over the death of their pets. Who were in grieving support groups, who couldn't stop crying. Get a life, I thought. Anyone who's that attached to animals doesn't know how to deal with people.

Next Wednesday is the second anniversary of my beagle Charlie's death. I still pray for his soul sometimes.

It's probably best not to make sweeping declarations about what constitutes life -- yours or anyone else's. All you'll end up with is reminder of how human you really are.

Not such a bad thing, I suppose.

Acceptance

2010-03-15T21:51:00.013-05:00

Vladimir: "I'm glad to see you back. I thought you were gone forever."

Estragon: "Me too."
-- Waiting for Godot

Today D. finally e-mailed me this photo he took of us last May in London as we waited to see a production of Waiting for Godot starring Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart. It's one of my favorite pictures of the two of us (I'm on the right).

I show it for no other reason than I need an anchor for my mind, which tonight refuses to alight on any single idea -- as it has refused for the last couple of weeks.

I just frittered away a couple of hours -- a fire burning and then dying in the fireplace, my dog sleeping and then waking beside me (breath in, breath out) -- trying to gain entry into coherent thoughts about friends falling away, relationships shifting, once-common interests diverging. Without planning to, I found myself Googling names and images, here and there coming across someone's familiar but drastically changed (or not at all drastically changed) appearance -- and, when I did, feeling little more than mild surprise or amusement, tempered by a curious sort of spongy distance from whichever potential This Is Your Life panelist it happened to be.

It is this detachment, among other things, that has kept me from joining Facebook: I believe that it's a rare, rare case where an old, lost friendship can be revived beyond the superficial level. What's more, my antipathy toward small talk is such that I'm reluctant to invite more of it into my life.

My long-held attitude toward organized reunions (i.e., that you should attend any and all that you have the chance to) is even changing, much to my surprise. My high school had an all-class reunion last spring that I was planning to attend, until I lost interest as the date approached. I haven't even considered going to this year's edition.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about a friend of almost 30 years with whom I currently seem to be on pause. We've had no contact for the last six months (possibly the longest we've ever gone) -- this after a perfectly pleasant evening with her and her husband and two little girls in which nothing untoward happened other than the fact that it became starkly apparent to me (and, I'm convinced, to her) that we were, figuratively, gazing in almost completely non-intersecting directions.

This is the friend who introduced me to Joni Mitchell's album Blue, the two of us sitting on a cold linoleum dorm-room floor, listening to it over and over again: I remember that time that you told me, you said love is touching souls . . .

Tonight I don't even quite know where I am. I feel a bit reclusive, a bit wistful yet non-sentimental, a bit at a loss for words.

D. leaves for a few days in LA tomorrow, a trip to see friends. I'm going to the theater on Thursday to see a new play with a friend of my own. He's a more recent friend than those I was Googling tonight. Someone who has helped see me through -- helped see me -- these last several years of change and reorientation.

So there you have it -- my bookends for this directionless and confused musing: nights at the theater. A curtain parting, a curtain closing, ideas to contemplate as I make my way back home.

If It All Fell to Pieces Tomorrow, Would You Still Be Mine?

2010-03-05T23:36:00.006-05:00

Last weekend, D. and I took a drive up to Adamstown, Pennsylvania -- Antiques Capital U.S.A., I'll have you know -- and as we were wandering through one antiques mall, "Take It to the Limit" came on over the sound system (antiques malls play '60s and '70s Top 40 more than any other genre of music), and I realized that that song evokes the 1970s -- not just the decade but my experience of the decade, whose latter half corresponded exactly with my adolescence -- more than any other song, period.

One of my sisters, my next-oldest sibling, loved the Eagles, so I heard a lot of them then. "Take It to the Limit," besides being a great radio sing-along when you're alone in the car, takes me back in an instant to the winter of 1976. (To confirm that my memory was placing it correctly, I Googled it just now, and indeed it was released as a single in November 1975.)

Nothing momentous happened. I was a high-school freshman in a Catholic boys' school. My sister and I were the only ones at home; our older brother and sister were away at college. It was a time of puffy down jackets, hair parted down the middle for guys, velour shirts. When you're 14, the shy youngest of four, you spend a lot of time observing your siblings, hearing about their dates, their friends, the concerts they went to (Jackson Browne, Little Feat), the movies they saw (Love and Death, Barry Lyndon), the parties, the summer jobs and the trips to the beach. Sometimes you fantasize about a time when you'll do all of those things -- see an R-rated film, have a girlfriend, get a down jacket or a velour shirt of your own.

You spend years learning about desire.

Next thing you know you're a fortysomething man wandering through an antiques mall in Amish country with your fiftysomething boyfriend -- surveying the Depression glass, the Stangl dishware, the back issues of Life magazine in plastic sleeves, the tchotchkes of way more generations than your own -- and a '70s pop song full of unabashed falsetto urgency comes on from somewhere unknown and fills you with an unaccountable longing, followed hard by a strange kind of pure satisfaction that where you are is just good enough.

Transmission

2010-02-22T10:32:00.006-05:00

Deep in the shady sadness of a vale

Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn,
Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star,
Sat gray-haired Saturn, quiet as a stone.
-- John Keats, "Hyperion"

I'm killing time at D.'s house, on a Monday when I normally would be at work, waiting for a tow truck to come take my 1995 Saturn, which I'm donating to a public-radio station. The clutch gave out in late November, and because my father's 2002 Saturn (with fewer than 18,000 miles) was waiting for a new home, I decided not to have my car (with nearly 110,000) fixed, as it would cost at least half of what the car was worth. But I couldn't find the title, so I had to order a replacement, which turned into a nearly three-month ordeal with DC's Department of Motor Vehicles. The car has been sitting in front of D.'s house the whole time. Now I have the title, the donation has been arranged, and it's time to say goodbye to a good, mostly reliable car that I've owned since 1998.

Meanwhile, I bought Dad's car. But last week, before I'd even made all the payments to my sister, I punched a hole in the front of it while trying to turn my way out of the narrow entrance of a downtown parking garage that was, at the time, attendant-less. The attendant, of course, appeared as soon as I drove off in frustrated rage -- at myself. (No other car was involved.) So now I have to get body work done on the new Saturn (manufactured by a company that, as of a few months ago, no longer exists) as soon as my other -- frankly, beloved -- car is donated and on its way.

I helped Dad buy this car, aided by Saturn's no-haggle policy, and he himself put a couple dents in it during the relatively short time he drove it (all since repaired). I realize that the material things we own have no expectations of us. And my father doesn't know about my accident, let alone remember that I've bought the car (he continues to think I borrow it, with his blessing). But I can't help feeling I've already failed at my stewardship of this object entrusted to me, corporate orphan that it is: a vehicle in need of greater care, cooler emotions, a gentler hand shifting it into drive.

Mother, Child

2010-02-18T00:21:00.007-05:00

A couple of weeks ago, I went to a preview of the exhibit "Turner to Cezanne: Masterpieces From the Davies Collection, National Museum Wales" at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. It's a very nice show, even if its modest scope and content seem almost at odds with the grandiosity evoked by the word "masterpiece."

One work by a painter unfamiliar to me stood out among all the rest: "Maternity (Suffering)" by Eugène Carrière. It's markedly muted, nearly monochromatic, amid the vibrant colors of Renoir, van Gogh, Manet, and the rest. I don't think I've ever seen a painting quite like it from that period (1896-97).

In a way, it's not surprising that I was drawn to it because it reminded me of a 19th-century photograph -- not a particular one, but the photographer who immediately came to mind was Julia Margaret Cameron. (It's relevant to note here that one of my favorite activities in the world is wandering through a museum exhibit of black-and-white photographs -- far more enthralling to me than any collection of paintings.)

In refreshing my memory of Cameron's work online, I see that most of her photos don't have the haziness of the Carrière painting, as I thought they did: that blur of half-recall, like one's first mental imprint of a private time with a parent -- the smell of the skin or breath, the motion of a rocker, the mysterious warmth of a hand on one's head.

I don't remember seeing the exact photograph of Cameron's at left before, but I very well might have -- why else would she have come to mind? Could I be reliving an encounter with it in a gallery from long ago? Or a moment from my own childhood? Are both of these pictures echoes of countless mothers and children through the years -- one brush, one lens, one memory after another burnishing an impression on canvas, on paper, on the farthest reaches of our eyes?

Winter Weekend

2010-02-07T18:26:00.011-05:00

I didn't have to do any digging out during the snowstorm, because I'd taken my car in for service Friday morning and was allowed to leave it there after the work was done (though how and when I'll be able to get it home from the suburbs and find a space to park in my neighborhood, I'm not sure). Others in my condo beat me to the shoveling on and around our property (about which I feel somewhat guilty). My ventures outside have been mainly to walk the dog -- multiple times a day -- so I've seen the snow's nature, in the air and on the ground, change over the last two days, like a a body blooming, coming into its own, slowing down, then yielding to the onslaught of footprint and tire.

I baked and cooked -- pancakes, muffins, bread, pasta with avocado and tomatoes, Irish oatmeal with apples and cranberries. And I ate.

D. and I have been apart, separated by the weather, like lovers on separate continents, though we're only a handful of miles away. He's finally on his way over as I type, having braved the roads, the Metro, and the icy streets.

Mom and Dad's phone service and cable -- their only connections to the outside world unless one of us is visiting -- were out for a time, but they're back up. This weekend I had a good excuse to have no obligations to them, other than checking in (when it was possible). So I had that rare thing: a weekend at home, where I got to walk and sit and doze through full cycles of sunlight and dark; scents of breakfast, lunch, dinner; the intermittent scrape of shovels on pavement, like an animal's insistent pawing to be let inside.

Next Door

2010-02-04T23:03:00.004-05:00

While this will interest only a small segment of my already minuscule audience (if that), I have started another blog to chronicle and reflect on a recent change in my life. Feel free to pay a visit. Or not. Who knows, I may build a whole different audience there: the neighbors next door.

Now Boarding

2010-02-02T23:04:00.013-05:00

When I was in Prague in November, I bought Me, Myself & Prague: An Unreliable Guide to Bohemia by Rachael Weiss in an English-language bookstore. It's a memoir about the Australian author's first year as an expat in the Czech capital a few years back -- easy to read, not as funny as it wants to be but often winning, and pretty informative about a fascinating and somewhat mysterious city, if about 100 pages too long. What it does very well is evoke the disorientation and struggle that often accompany moving to a foreign country, as well as the pride in coming to call a once-strange place home.

For me, it also awakened reflection on the subject of adventure-taking, which I tend to shy away from. Specifically, it made me think about 20 years ago when the Iron Curtain fell and the subsequent flood of Americans and others who moved to Eastern Europe to teach English, set up businesses, have a part in the establishment of budding democracies -- and just live an adventure during a ripe time in an inviting place. (Even though that's not the period in which the book I was reading takes place, it was on my mind because, by chance, D. and I were in Prague for the 20th anniversary of the velvet revolution of November 1989.)

I started asking myself, "Why didn't I ever do something like that?" I lay awake more than one night thinking about the good it would have done me to up an take off for Prague or a place like it in the early 1990s, put down stakes for a year or two or more, and see what happened.

In fact, that period in history coincided with a time in my life when I was unencumbered, somewhat lost, and utterly available to being shaken up. I had finished graduate school in the fall of 1989 as the Berlin Wall was being torn apart. In the winter of 1990, at age 28, I was working in a bookstore making $5 an hour. A romantic relationship with a woman, a dear friend, was disintegrating from the corrosion of my as-yet-unspoken gayness. (She was actually in another city attending to her dying mother as I, to my eternal shame, remained paralyzed by my confusion and fear over what I'd gotten myself into -- no balm to her grief whatsoever.)

If only someone had said to me (after I made things right with my friend, of course), "I was reading about how English teachers are needed in Prague -- you'd be good at that." Or "Look at this article about Americans helping to bring the former Soviet countries into the 20th century -- why don't you think about doing something like that?" Or "Billy, I'm going to go travel around Eastern Europe for a while -- I don't have a plan, but I think it would be fun. Wanna come along? (And hey -- my dad has a few thousand dollars in the barn we can use to finance the trip!)"

That's what it would have taken: someone prodding me, essentially forcing me into adventure. I never would have thought of it or done it on my own. I was certainly aware of what was going on in that part of the world at the time (I remember it quite clearly). But it never crossed my mind that this could have anything to do with me or have any practical bearing on my life.

That was the most telling and sobering realization.

Of course, in the pre-Internet age, it would have been harder to find out about such opportunities, let alone make arrangements for them, find a place to live, etc. I know all that. But this is a what-if fantasy.

And here's the thing about this fantasy: Like some sort of alternate-reality travel agent, I found myself trying to arrange when it would have worked out best in my life: I wouldn't have wanted to be in an unfamiliar country when I came out of the closet (in the summer and fall of 1990). I really needed that support group I took part in -- and that shrink I saw for a year was lifesaving, too. So it wouldn't have been a good idea to go to Prague (I told myself) until I'd laid that psychological groundwork. Oh, and it would have been nice to have my first relationship out of the way before moving -- he was such a nice guy.

"So here's what I can do for you, Billy," the travel agent in my head told me. "I can fit your Prague fantasy in from the middle of 1992 until, say, 1995 -- how's that? I think about three years in Prague would do you a lot of good and you could still return to America in time to get on track to become who you are today."

That says it all -- I can't even have an adventure fantasy without assuring myself that I can be back in time for the me-train to arrive at the present-day station as scheduled.

Bake at Moderate Heat Until Tester Inserted in the Middle Comes Out Clean

2010-01-24T10:32:00.006-05:00

The other day I had one of those moments where I found myself saying something pithy and wise ;) that I didn't plan. I was talking to a writer over the phone about a pitch he'd made by e-mail -- a sketchy and unformed, albeit interesting, pitch -- and after we'd agreed that he should think more about the aspects we discussed and get back to me, he apologized (unnecessarily, as I know him and have worked happily with him before) by saying, "Sorry this was so half baked." I said, "Hey, you can't get to baked without going through half baked." He seemed to appreciate that.

Triumphal Spirit

2010-01-15T19:33:00.011-05:00

Though I'm not far into it yet, I'm enjoying Reynolds Price's Ardent Spirits: Leaving Home, Coming Back, a memoir of his years as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford in the 1950s and his first few years teaching at Duke upon his return. The opening paragraph in particular interested me:

On the afternoon of September 30, 1955 an elegantly trim and all-but-new ocean liner slid from its berth on the Hudson River in New York City and headed for England. With its other passengers in tourist class, I was among a group of some thirty American men bound northeast for Oxford University. Our ship was the S.S. United States which, on its maiden voyage three years earlier, had shaved ten hours off the prior record for transatlantic voyages. We'd be five days on the early-autumn sea and, with any luck, could dodge the great storms that had roiled the Atlantic in recent years.

The reason for my personal interest is that eight years later, as a 21-month-old, I was a passenger on that same ship, sailing in the opposite direction, from Europe to America, as my family returned from two years abroad. Just something Reynolds Price and I have in common with Vivian Vance, Bill Clinton, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Suzanne Pleshette, JFK and Jackie, and Eydie Gormé.

Last year I came across a nine-page typewritten account by my mother of her voyage in the summer of 1949 on another ship. She was on her way to a summer of study at the American Academy in Rome, a scholarship she had received from the Ohio Classical Society. Her account, which includes a description of her entire sojourn in Italy, was apparently a required summation of her experience for the classical society. It's moving to me to read her plain but elegant description of this wonderful journey that she -- a Latin teacher of 29 who had never traveled abroad -- was embarking on:

Our ship was the Italian Line's Vulcania, just recently renovated and decorated after the war. Our vacation started immediately, and we literally swam our way across the Atlantic in the second-class swimming pool. . . .

Compare her ten-day passage (yes, ten days) to your last transatlantic airplane flight -- or any flight for that matter (some of which probably felt like ten days, and not in a good way):

Each day the ship's activities for cabin class would be printed on brightly-colored paper and distributed to the passengers. A typical program began with mass in the chapel at eight, breakfast from seven to nine, luncheon for two sittings at eleven-thirty and twelve forty-five, movies -- either in English or Italian -- at two, an afternoon tea accompanied by a concert in the verandah, benediction in the chapel at five, dinner beginning at six-thirty, and in the evening again more movies or horse racing games, both of which were followed by dancing until the last tired couple decided to leave.

Her travelogue -- which includes an idyllic-sounding postwar summer of classical lectures, sightseeing, siestas, dining in trattorias, and trips to Assisi, Naples, Pompeii, and Florence -- ends this way:

Last May when I learned that I had been selected by the scholarship committee, I thought I could not be happier or more grateful, but now that I have spent those seven unforgettable weeks in Italy, and know exactly all the things that I am thankful for, I find that there simply are no adequate words to express my deep appreciation to you all. Moreover, such a summer full of profitable learning, pleasures, and friendships cannot be repaid. Now because of falling in love with Italy there remains, along with memories, only an insistent need to see her again.

She did see her again, when she returned to Rome for a year as a Fulbright scholar in the early 1950s. For her, no memories remain. The Vulcania was scrapped in 1974.

The SS United States, which last sailed in 1969, survives. As of last May the owners were seeking a buyer, and according to this report, the ship may have a second life:

"The worst case scenario is that she's torn apart on the beaches of India," says Susan Gibbs, president of the S.S. United States Conservancy, a nonprofit dedicated to saving the ship. Gibbs hopes potential buyers will want to adapt her as a hotel, restaurant, or museum. "She needs to endure as a vibrant symbol of postwar America, the triumphal spirit of that age."

Děkuji

2010-01-05T01:04:00.007-05:00

In November I went on vacation to Prague. This was my first time in continental Europe in 27 years and my first ever in the Czech Republic (or that country's previous incarnation).

Have you noticed how many times I refer to my time in Europe in 1981-82? I think it's safe to say it was a seminal and memorable time in my life. Though I've traveled to some interesting and beautiful places since then, it's not too surprising that none of them have have triggered the level of discovery and growth that living on a foreign continent can afford a 20-year-old.

En route to meet D. in Prague, I had five hours in the Frankfurt airport, which was fun, though I was shy about using my German. On top of simply being very rusty, it turns out I still suffer from a form of the same affliction I did all those years ago: not speaking until I'm sure that just the right vocabulary will come out perfectly grammatical and syntactically correct. Which, in the end, is the same as not speaking very much except to buy postcards and ask where the nearest mailbox is.

In the Czech Republic (a country where I have roots on my mother's side), I eventually screwed up my courage to say dobrý den (hello) and děkuji (thank you) in shops and restaurants.

Before the trip, my 89-year-old linguist father, whose memory fades more every day, had helped me with some pronunciations. We sat in the courtyard of his assisted-living facility with a not-very-clear phrase book from the Communist era. Russian was the main language Dad used in his career, and he knows at least bits of countless languages, so his lips formed the Czech words with an ease that didn't come as naturally to me.

My mother, whose maternal grandparents were Czech and who studied and taught many languages herself (Latin primarily), virtually all of which she's forgotten, sat silently by, enjoying the breeze of a warm October day.

Here's a picture of me looking out over the breathtaking city of Prague. I might be thinking about my Czech ancestors I never knew, or about the fumbling American boy in Europe I once was, or about my parents and their disappearing words. Or I could just be taking it all in, for a day when I'll look back and wish I could do it all over again.

Winter Light

2009-12-31T18:59:00.006-05:00

We arrived in Provincetown this afternoon around 3:30, and it was already turning dark by 4:45 as we wandered through town. It's a lot quieter than either D. or I expected for New Year's Eve (though we didn't expect excitement or crowds). You get a sense of what it would be like to live here year-round. You'd need to find your comfort and light largely from within your own hearth -- and the beauty around you. I joked to D., "Maybe we can get ourselves on the dinner-party circuit while we're here." (We leave day after tomorrow.)

We're back in the hotel room right now waiting for our 9:00 dinner reservations. And after? Who knows -- maybe that piano bar we walked by every night the last two summers, the rousing strains of "Memory" and "Can't Help Lovin' That Man of Mine" never quite succeeding in tempting us inside.

As last summer's vacation wound to a close, I was overcome with a feeling of deep safety in the remoteness of Provincetown, the paradox of security embedded in what is truly a sense of being on the edge of the world, the outermost reach, the very tip of the crook of a beckoning finger.

Happy New Year.

What You Get When You Google "Ice Breaker Questions"

2009-12-29T21:50:00.012-05:00

If you could have an endless supply of any food, what would you get? Pasta. Wait, I do have an endless supply of pasta.
If you were an animal, what would you be and why? I've always thought (generically) a bird, but maybe I'd be a dog so I could keep my dog Patsy company during the day now that her pal Charlie has passed away. But then who would walk us?
What is one goal you’d like to accomplish during your lifetime? Loving well.
When you were little, who was your favorite super hero and why? Tintin. Clever and adventurous, with an interesting life.
Who is your hero? (a parent, a celebrity, an influential person in one’s life) I posted this without realizing I hadn't answered this one. Very hard question, as I don't generally think in those terms. I think parents should be honored with gratitude for raising their children to be loving and responsible people (and I do), not be burdened with a legacy of heroism. I can think of celebrities I admire, but I can't think of one I'd call a hero. I've had people in my life I consider professional and creative mentors, but that's different, too. I'll say D. is a hero -- for loving well (see number 3); for accepting me as I am; for being a good, lifesaving brother to his sister; for achieving the life he dreamed of as a boy; for wanting to be part of my family; and for being fun pretty much every day.
What’s your favorite thing to do in the summer? Going to Provincetown with D. (we're going in two days for New Year's, so it may turn out to be a favorite thing in winter as well) and going to Wolf Trap.
If they made a movie of your life, what would it be about and which actor would you want to play you? It would be a quiet indie film, very internal -- one of those movies about which people say, "Nothing really happens in it, but I wasn't bored for a second." I don't know -- John Krasinski? If the movie were made anytime soon, it would have to be someone who could play me both young and older; he comes to mind as someone who could do that.
If you were an ice cream flavor, which one would you be and why? Orange creamsicle. You have to ask why?
What’s your favorite cartoon character, and why? Tintin, if a comic counts as a "cartoon." I dread what Steven Spielberg will do to him.
If you could visit any place in the world, where would you choose to go and why? To Munich, where I was born. I've been back once, in 1981, and would like to go again. Anytime I revisit my past, I'm moved and piqued in some way.
What’s the ideal dream job for you? One that would allow me to edit (so I could fix redundancies like "ideal dream job") and force me to write. Not too far from what I do now, with the difference that I'm not often forced to write. Now, fantasy job is different -- that would be photojournalist (I seem to remember saying this in a long-ago post). Yet another version of the question: What would I want to do if I had to do something in a different field (I see this as a more realistic question than the fantasy job). I would work in the theater in some capacity; that's always struck me as a profession in which one can be part of a tight community.
Are you a morning or night person? Neither, really, if you mean getting anything accomplished, but I love nothing better than evenings at home puttering. So I guess night.
What are your favorite hobbies? Baking, running, reading.
What are your pet peeves or interesting things about you that you dislike? What a strange question. You mean pet peeves about myself? That doesn't make sense. I have peeves, but they're not "pet." Pet peeves in general? Too long a list. Interesting things about me that I dislike? What in the world could that mean? If they're interesting, I'm all for them! I dislike it when I stumble over my words, which happens often, and I suppose someone else might find that interesting. Next question.
What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever eaten? The whole idea that some people see some food as "weird" makes me impatient. Since I don't eat meat, though, I'll say meat. I actually do think that's a little weird.
Name one of your favorite things about someone in your family. One thing about my father that I love: He wrote a condolence note to Jacqueline Kennedy when JFK died. I'd give anything to know what he said -- I find it incredibly touching, and somewhat out of character, that he would do that. All we have is her (form) reply on cream-colored Crane's stationery.
Tell us about a unique or quirky habit of yours. I like to examine my fingernails and cuticles close up.
If you had to describe yourself using three words, it would be… Nice, shy, modest.
If someone made a movie of your life would it be a drama, a comedy, a romantic-comedy, action film, or science fiction? It would be "other." You know, the section with all those "weird" films with subtitles and talky scenes and gay stuff.
If I could be anybody besides myself, I would be… Myself with biceps.

O Tannenbaum

2009-12-25T22:05:00.006-05:00

Other than my junior year abroad 28 years ago -- when I spent Christmas with friends in a storybook village in the Black Forest of Germany -- last night was the first time in my life, whether I was single or in a relationship, that I didn't spend at least part of the evening of December 24 with my parents.

Last year, their first in assisted living, it was an early evening, but it was an evening. This year, they both need to be reminded that it's Christmas. We didn't do any formal gift exchange, last night or today, and that was a very good thing -- no confusion, simpler, more peaceful.

Christmas Eve meant an afternoon visit from me and one of my sisters and her husband, with cookies and hot cider (both a little too complicated for Mom and Dad -- all that powdered sugar on their fingers and lips, the strangeness of . . . hot juice?). No visible recognition of the German carols I played on CD, the ones we've listened to all my life: "Es Ist ein Ros Entsprungen" ("Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming"), "Ihr Kinderlein Kommet" (Come Ye Little Children"). We try to preserve what needles still cling to the tree.

So last night I was home by 6:30. I made dinner for D. at my place. Another first: Christmas Eve dinner cooked for someone other than blood kin. Baked Thai-style tofu (this p erson likes the same recipe) with brown rice, a salad, wine, and hot fudge pudding cake.

The candlelight, the company, the music (a CD of German carols D. made for me), and the meal made for a lovely and warm evening. To tell you the truth, it was wonderful.

In a way, it felt like my first truly grownup Christmas Eve. And for better and worse, it won't be the last.

Top Five

2009-12-23T00:31:00.016-05:00

I imagine many of my friends -- particularly my writer friends -- would be surprised to see much of what I've been reading. (It used to be all novels, essays, and literary memoirs. Life is funny.) Herewith, the most enjoyable books I read this year. Actually, I found it hard to find time to read this year, so my list of books read this year isn't a whole lot longer than my list of most enjoyable books read this year.

1. My Life So Far by Jane Fonda. Really? Yes, really. A beautifully written and impressively honest memoir by an intelligent, powerful, vulnerable, brave, insecure, deeply thoughtful woman. It was also a pleasure to see her return to Broadway last winter in 33 Variations, after an absence of more than 40 years. Her A-plus performance in a B play was what inspired me to read her book.

2. Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood by Mark Harris. A start-to-finish "biography" of the five Best Picture nominations of 1967 (The Graduate, Bonnie and Clyde, In the Heat of the Night, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and Dr. Doolittle). Educational, hugely entertaining, and a trip into my own past, surprisingly enough: I loved Dr. Doolittle at age six, but apparently it's considered one of the biggest turkeys ever nominated for an Oscar. Finding out why was fascinating.

3. Positively Fourth Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina, and Richard Farina by David Hajdu. This one is cheating because I read it at the very end of last year, but since that was during my blogging hiatus and I was still thinking about it well into 2009, I'm giving myself a pass. It's truly a "lives and times" biography, making me wish I'd been around Greenwich Village in the early 1960s -- and making me feel I was.

4. When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson. Brilliant -- and I use the word in both the American and British senses, as it's set in England and Scotland. It's the third mystery novel starring Jackson Brodie. He's really an equal member of an ensemble cast -- and the first fictional character I've ever met whose iPod playlist I'd enjoy as much as my own. Atkinson's Brodie books are about how random tragedy, sorrow, and life-altering mistakes lie around every corner, sparing no one. Cheerful, huh? I can't wait to read the next one.

5. Noah's Compass by Anne Tyler. This is coming out in January -- I read an advance copy. It's not quite as good as Tyler's last novel, Digging to America, which is her best. In fact, I think it will end up one of her minor works. But that doesn't mean I didn't like it. As I've noted before, I've never encountered a contemporary novelist whose voice is so consistent in all of her books, starting with her first one more than 40 years ago.

Some other things I read:

Most bloated: The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb. There's a good 400-page novel about the Columbine massacre and the aftereffects of trauma in these 700 pages by an author whose previous two novels I loved (especially She's Come Undone). There's also a boring 300-page novel about a 19th-century female prison reformer. Really? Really.

Best book with a truly awful title (or most page-turning clunkily written book by a professional journalist who nevertheless did her homework): Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon and the Journey of a Generation by Sheila Weller. All three of them have made great music and the most amazingly bad choices in relationships. I ate it up.

Most disappointing edition of a reliable anthology: The Best American Essays 2009, edited by Mary Oliver. A page turner only in the sense that I kept turning pages because nothing held my interest -- except for one essay, which I read twice: "First" by Ryan Van Meter, a very touching gay-boy personal essay about young desire stifled.

Most overrated classic: Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion. It took me this long to finally read this collection from the '60s, but I've got to say: bright and smart surface, not much there beneath it. I think her spare, unforgiving style was a breath of bracing air back then, but these essays don't hold up well. I was surprised how dated and shallow they felt. A good example of writing that thinks it's deeper than it is. (I'm judging just this one book, not her whole oeuvre. I did like The Year of Magical Thinking very much and have even taught individual essays of hers.)

Oddest celebrity memoir: Daybreak by Joan Baez. A little-remembered chestnut (I got it at the Montgomery County Library used bookstore) written when she was still in her twenties and a megastar on the folk scene. In fact, she probably wouldn't even call it a memoir (there's virtually nothing in it about music). It's very well written and has a particularly refreshing chapter about her love for her mother and sister Mimi (see Positively Fourth Street above). I think there's also a chapter about Bob Dylan, couched in metaphor and coyness, but the fact that you can't quite be sure is part of the problem.

No Jane Fonda: Trust Your Heart by Judy Collins. I revere Judy Collins (just saw her in concert last Wednesday, and she's full of stories). This was interesting but more of a summary of a life than a memoir -- with a little too much about the country house and her comforting cups of home-brewed espresso. But she has written quite a few autobiographical books since then, and I'll probably give another a shot at some point.

On my list for 2010: Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater by Frank Bruni, Ardent Spirits: Leaving Home, Coming Back by Reynolds Price, Will You Take Me As I Am: Joni Mitchell's Blue Period by Michelle Mercer, and The Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore.

The Power of Two

2009-12-20T11:49:00.006-05:00

In October, I saw the Broadway revival of Finian's Rainbow, a silly but exuberant 1940s musical that was also a silly but forgettable 1960s movie with Fred Astaire and Petula Clark (directed by Francis Ford Coppola!) that, despite its forgettability, I remember seeing with the family when I was a kid.

The New York production stars the talented Cheyenne Jackson, an openly gay actor (and not an obscure one either; he got praise for the Broadway hit Xanadu, and he played gay rugby player/9-11 hero Mark Bingham in the movie United 93) who recently released a CD with openly gay cabaret singer/musician Michael Feinstein called The Power of Two.

It's very pleasant and fun to listen to (it helps if you have an affinity for show tunes and old chestnuts like "Me and My Shadow"), but it's truly extraordinary in that it's a record by two successful, mainstream, openly gay male artists singing love songs to and with each other. Think of how rare that is -- and I'm not counting subtexty stuff by people like Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra.

The title song, a duet, is a lovely cover version of an Indigo Girls song. Another good and poignant one, particularly for gay men d'un certain âge, is "Old Friend," a solo by Feinstein. Cheyenne Jackson does "Old Devil Moon" from Finian's Rainbow.

I give a standing ovation to both of these men for making this record not a matter of bravery but a matter of artistry and of joy . . . and of fact.

Snowfall

2009-12-19T17:41:00.004-05:00

Does anyone still blog anymore? I have a feeling the answer is no. And yet here I am again, more than a year since my last post. I don't expect I have any readers left. And yet here I am.

My reasons for going away had to do with time, work, emotional distraction, and growing questions about writing into the blogger-void in the first place, Some of my readers knew me well from my real life. Some had never met me at all. I'd had an experience, not long before my posts trailed off, in which I'd become a regular and supportive reader of a blog by a person who turned out to be a plagiarizing fraud. This person's blogger persona had become so real to me (and to hundreds of others) that when I found out he was a fiction, it was rattling to say the least. I started to wonder about the handful of strangers out there (let's face it, it was only a handful) who thought they knew me through my posts. While I'm not a fiction, I've presented only selective sides of myself here. I think they're honest. But people who have never met me who think they know me do not. That dynamic started to feel -- on a level I wasn't even able to articulate to myself fully -- kind of fraudulent in itself.

But that's only part of what happened. My relationship with D. grew, my parents demanded more and more of my time, and my job had changed dramatically (even more so this year, with layoffs roughly doubling my work load).

For more than a year I've barely looked at this blog, which was such an important part of my life for nearly three years -- a time in which I was single and groping for a way to be after the end of a relationship.

So the abandoned blog felt like a friend I'd fallen out of touch with but didn't quite know how to reconnect with. The more time passes, the more awkward it is to call or e-mail and set up that coffee date.

Today is December 19, 2009. I'm 48 years old. The snow outside is falling in feet, like something I haven't seen since childhood. On a day like this, the footsteps you imprinted a mere hour ago are now little more than suggestions that you were once out walking. So you just step into the snow again.

Layers

2008-09-22T20:06:00.004-05:00

The weekend before last, I went to a memorial service for a former student, a woman more than 30 years older than me who was in one of the first classes I taught 15 years ago and who took my class probably at least half a dozen times over the years. She was full of life, with a slightly kooky manner at times, well educated, long divorced, the mother of a much-loved daughter with cerebral palsy -- and one of the best writers I ever taught, though she rarely published her work. Her career before I met her was at the Library of Congress, where she headed the poetry program and, among other things, assisted the various poets laureate. Whenever I saw her name on a class list, it was like someone had surprised me with a plate of cupcakes.

You hear a lot of talk about how students need respect and encouragement, but not much about how teachers need it too. Nancy always gave me both, particularly in the beginning of my teaching career. She was a great booster -- by her enthusiastic presence, in notes and e-mails she wrote, voicemail messages she left, and gifts she gave me.

For some reason I can't find any of the notes I remember her writing me, but today I received an e-mail from another former student, who wrote:

". . . I did think very fondly of your class when I saw the memorial notice for Nancy -- someone I might not have appreciated as much (older woman, a little nuts) if you hadn't helped the class see how wonderful she was."

I found the word "nuts" harsh, though I suspect she didn't mean it that way. There was nothing nuts about Nancy. I don't remember specifically doing or saying anything to make anyone see how wonderful Nancy was (I thought it was evident), but it was nice to hear that someone got that.

At the memorial service, a friend of Nancy's read the following poem by Stanley Kunitz:

The Layers
I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
"Live in the layers,
not on the litter."
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.

Whew

2008-09-12T21:03:00.003-05:00

I have to admit it was comforting to read this quote from National Endowment for the Arts chairman Dana Gioia, an American Book Award-winning poet who announced he's stepping down from his NEA post early next year:

"I have done most of the things I set out to do. I really want to go back to writing. I haven't had time for my own writing. I write all the time for the NEA, official writing. Since I have become chairman, I have not published a poem."

It's hard to write when you have a demanding -- and, let's face it, often stimulating -- job. Sometimes it feels like I'm the only one who can't seem to manage it. Though I'm hardly an an American Book Award-winning writer and I don't exactly head a government agency with a multimillion-dollar budget.

Today I came off one of the most intense work deadlines in recent memory. I worked two 13-hour days in a row followed by a 12-hour day; on one of them the work was so relentless that I (1) forgot to vote and (2) missed a therapy appointment. On more than one occasion this week, I heard myself saying to a colleague, in the interest of calming the sea, "If I sound agitated right now, it has nothing to do with you." (On at least one occasion, it kind of did.)

But now that it's over, I have a satisfied feeling. I did some good work, and I'll have some good work to show for it.

Who Knows?

2008-08-19T18:43:00.010-05:00

On Saturday, D and I drove up to the Philadelphia Folk Festival, where we enjoyed a wonderful evening of music by, among others, folk legends Tom Paxton, Janis Ian, and Judy Collins. At nearly 70, Judy still sounds fabulous. I've seen her at least three times before and have never been disappointed. Those like D who have followed her in real time for her whole career (he saw her in 1970), say that her voice has changed -- as I'm sure it has (I didn't start seeing her live till the mid-'90s). But it's still amazing. What could be a better lullaby than to be serenaded on a summer evening (albeit a surprisingly cold one) with "Who Knows Where the Time Goes" as sung by the voice with whom it's most associated?

Another highlight was not only enjoying a set by country singer Kathy Mattea, singing from her spare and haunting new album, Coal -- a collection of songs about coal mining (she's from West Virginia, and both of her grandfathers were miners) -- but also meeting her. She was very down to earth and genuine, as I think the picture here indicates.

Where to next?

Basta!

2008-08-11T22:34:00.006-05:00

Here's a New York Times article by one of my favorite cookbook authors, Mark Bittman. It's about a vegetarian restaurant -- known for rich, luscious meatless food -- in Nice, France, called Zucca Magica. Of the two Italian owners, Bittman writes:

Ms. Bolmida is from Turin, and her husband, Mr. Folicaldi, is from Rome, where they met. Their vegetarianism evolved slowly. “When I was growing up,” Mr. Folicaldi said to me, in a combination of French, English and Italian, “we ate meat, meat and more meat.” To hear him tell it, he first became tired of eating it. Then he met Ms. Bolmida, and the two became self-described animal lovers. Finally, he says, “We said ‘basta!’ to trying to pretend the slices did not come from a nice little pig.”

With the article is a fun video of Bittman making a dish he learned at the restaurant, chard stuffed with risotto.

I haven't made that one yet, but I've already made this recipe (twice) that I heard on the radio show The Splendid Table on Saturday. I used haricots verts instead of asparagus. On the show the author, Sally Schneider, said you could make it with just about any base for the egg -- from vegetable to starch. Simple and delicious!

Wonderful Town

2008-07-27T09:30:00.015-05:00

I wasn't sure I liked Provincetown on the first day I was here. I hadn't expected the crowds in the center of town or the jams of pedestrians, bicyclists, and cars on the narrow streets. But now I can't wait to come back. There actually is some mystical power to this place. There is plenty of quiet and beauty, and even the crowds are fun, though I think if I lived here (a fantasy that has already crossed my mind), I would probably get as sick of them as I do of the crowds in the center of the neighborhood where I live.

I've seen three celebrities on the street so far: him and him (who I see all the time on the street at home because he lives around the corner) and Lea Delaria. I shook her hand, and D. and I saw her perform that night. She has an engaging personality and an incredible singing voice (I saw her in Wonderful Town on Broadway five years ago), but her comedy is kind of a poor woman's Margaret Cho, in my opinion. It's an easy kind of humor -- counting on laughs by saying the word "fudge" in a gay resort town -- not especially sharp or wise. D., who has seen her show before, says she seemed to be concentrating more on her music than her comedy writing this time around (about half the show is music). And she's one of those people who are a pet peeve of mine, whether in performance or in daily life: those who laugh at their own jokes.

Me.

D. in my "beach cowboy" hat. It was meant to be his.

Good Things

2008-07-25T09:07:00.005-05:00

We had a fun bike ride across Nantucket yesterday; we'd taken the ferry there for the day. It's a beautiful island, full of Martha Stewart houses and Martha Stewart people.

But we wondered what there is to do there if you don't have a bike. Play golf, I guess. Have cocktails. Buy a new tennis dress.

I much prefer Provincetown, with its eclectica of people, places, and things.

A view on the way down from the top of the Pilgrim Monument in Provincetown.

To My Parents

2008-07-23T09:21:00.004-05:00

Seven years ago, I wrote an essay about my parents. I sought publication to no avail. Then my boss expressed interest in publishing it, and it sat languishing for years until it started to become outdated. Now that they're no longer living in their home of 50 years, it's completely outdated, so I withdrew it. I'm posting it here (without its title -- not the title of this post, by the way -- because I might also put it on my writing site under my own name).

*** *** ***

Almost every Saturday or Sunday afternoon I have tea with my parents. I come by to see how they’re doing and to help out around the house -- mow the lawn, bag leaves, solve a problem on my father’s computer. We might go for a walk around the neighborhood; often I do a crossword with my mother. But at some point, early in the afternoon or late, one of them will say, “Who’d like a cup of tea?”

The invitation is always theirs, though I sometimes do the actual brewing. Dad likes straightforward black tea, not even of especially high quality -- a store brand will do. If I’m making it, though, I’ll root around in the cupboard for some loose tea or Twinings bags -- usually left over from a Father’s Day or Christmas present. My siblings and I are always giving him what we consider good teas, but as a Cancer who came of age during the Depression, he’s both set in his ways and thrifty till the end.

I’m technically off caffeine, but a polite hello to my system now and then isn’t unwelcome, so I’ll usually have whatever Mom and Dad are drinking, even if it’s a steaming cup of U-Save brand. (I’ve been a vegetarian for several years, too, and it feels like a lot to ask of two people in their eighties to swear off meat and caffeine just because I’ve come calling.) If, say, I haven’t slept well for some reason and I’m worried about another wakeful night, I might make a separate pot of herbal for me and my mother. As long as there’s a wedge of lemon and a generous teaspoonful of honey, then chamomile or peppermint suits her just as well as Earl Grey.

I’m strictly a lemon man myself -- I like the tart balance to the usually sweet accompaniments -- but I’ve gotten in the lemon-and-honey habit when I’m over there. The way I look at it is: Mom offers me honey every time -- why not accept? Dad takes his tea with a spoonful of sugar. This surprised me; he used to drink it black, as he did his coffee for all the years he drank that. Come to think of it, Mom always had her coffee without sugar as well, just half-and-half. Does your craving for sweetness become greater the older you get?

I end up eating most of whatever Mom and Dad serve with the tea -- an inevitability they take into account when baking or shopping for this unspoken ritual. I don’t have an official standing date with them, and I occasionally miss a weekend visit entirely. At some point during those times -- whether I’m out of town, at the office, or busy with errands -- it’ll hit me with a flash that there’s a box of cookies on the counter or a tray of scones cooling by the stove in the house I grew up in.

These days Dad has taken on the role of provider of baked goods, and Mom is happy to let him: one week, donuts from Safeway or Danish from a nearby bakery; the next, homemade brownies or soda bread. Nothing fancy from his own hand -- no pies, tarts, or anything with multiple layers. The recipes he chooses are almost monastic in their simplicity. But they’re made with love, a convert’s curiosity, and the hope that someone else will be there to share them.

Dad started to help with the cooking when I was a teenager, but he never baked then. Mom did, and it’s from her that I inherit my own love of baking. Before I was even in school, I’d stand by her side measuring ingredients for spice cake, the page in the cookbook marked for easy reference with a sheet of wax paper; cornflake cookies, the dough so thick with cereal and oatmeal that it slowed the mixer to a whine; or banana bread, to be cut into moist slices and spread with cream cheese.

Today, if I’m bored or stressed out at the end of the day, I’ll more likely than not find my way into the kitchen to bake. It’s my first real skill -- learned before riding a bike, before swimming. As with most such skills, my first teacher is with me each time I practice it.

***
The bird feeder outside their kitchen window is crowded with sparrows, grackles, and the occasional mourning dove. When the birds land, seeds spray from the saucer like ice from a skater’s blade.

My parents and I talk about the birds -- conversations that, thanks to a change of seed, now actually are about the birds rather than the squirrels. We talk about the new people across the street, who sit out on their front lawn instead of their back, a habit that my parents are as appalled by as if the neighbors had strung a clothes line across the front porch. We talk about the crumbling playhouse from my siblings’ and my childhood; Mom would like to replace it even though it serves little purpose other than to store an old bike, random lumber, and broken furniture. We talk about phone calls from or visits by my two sisters and my brother -- about their kids, jobs, vacations -- and about the news of my own life: a wedding I attended, a high-school friend I ran into, what I made for dinner the night before last.

Sometimes we talk in circles -- Mom’s memory is fading -- and often I feel I have little of interest to say (“I gave away three bags of clothes to Goodwill last week!”), but I have to believe they’re glad for the company. I’m not as entertaining as I wish I were -- while there are smiles enough, it’s hard to remember the last time any of the three of us laughed outright. But when words fail -- at least interesting, fresh, unexpected words -- there’s always the tea.

Who’d like a second cup? Is this Red Zinger or Lemon Zinger? Help yourself to another slice of cake. The fear of spoiling one’s appetite for dinner, a concept I was raised on, vanishes for all three of us during the handful of hours I’m at their house. Is this what it’s like to be English?

I refill Mom’s cup and add more hot water to the pot while Dad replenishes the sweets. I’m welcome to perform some of the hosting duties, just as I’m allowed to let myself in with my own key without ringing the doorbell. My parents would never do either at my house, nor would I want them to. I suppose part of being a grown child on good terms with your parents is having full access to your home of origin, no questions asked. And part of being parents who respect their adult children must be to willingly wear the mantle of guest when visiting them. The reward, when the children come to their house, is to put on the more comfortable costume -- if only briefly -- of parents whose children never left.

***
I sit with them awhile longer, till the clock starts inching up on dinnertime. I’ve found no way to make my departure not seem abrupt. Even if I plant the seed before the fact -- “Well . . . I should think about going pretty soon” -- at some point I have to stand up and say goodbye. That moment always seems to come in the middle of something -- Mom and me struggling with the last, frustrating corner of the New York Times crossword or Dad pulling a book from the shelf to find a poem whose first (or fifth) line one of us saw quoted somewhere.

“You can take it with you,” he says, handing me the book.

Sometimes I politely turn him down, pleading too much reading I haven’t gotten to at home. More often I let myself see how badly he wants to give it to me -- confirm that I share one of his intellectual passions -- and I take it.

I walk to the front door, thanking them for the tea and the hospitality. Mom tells me to drive safely. If it’s dark by now, she might ask me to give a quick call when I get home, just to let them know all’s well. Neither of them drives at night anymore.

“Doesn’t driving in the dark bother you?” Mom often asks.

“Only if it’s an unfamiliar route,” I say. “But I could find my way home without any light at all.”

Here I Go Again

2008-07-22T08:07:00.007-05:00

I write from Provincetown, Massachusetts. The last time I went on a real vacation was five years ago, and the last time I went on one for more than four days was six years ago. I'm here for a week and a half with D.

I don't know for sure that this blogging revival will take, but I'm trying to get back to myself after months away. Mom and Dad are now both in an excellent assisted-living facility and being well cared for (including by their four children). The last six months have seen big changes in my family, which are still ongoing and about which it's hard to know when I'll find the words.

Maybe some will come to me later. Meanwhile . . .

***

I saw Mamma Mia! last night at a drive-in theater on Cape Cod -- the first time I've ever been to a drive-in. The movie is pretty dreadful, mostly because it could have been so much better in the hands of an actual film director. The other problem is that everyone, including Meryl Streep, is at least ten to fifteen years too old for his or her part. (Nearly sixty, Streep plays a woman who became pregnant out of wedlock twenty years ago, which would mean in her late thirties -- not as big a deal even then as the movie would seem to make it out to be.) Then there's the fact that most of them -- with the exception of Meryl Streep and Christine Baranski -- can't sing.

Last night as I lay in bed, I came up with an alternate cast -- all people closer to believable ages for the characters and all with musical experience. (The two younger castmembers, the bride- and groom-to-be, were unobjectionable if unmemorable, so I didn't bother with them.)

Meryl Streep --> Sarah Jessica Parker
Christine Baranski --> Bebe Neuwirth
Julie Walters --> Tracey Ullman
Pierce Brosnan --> Harry Connick Jr.
Colin Firth --> David Hyde Pierce
Stellan Skarsgard --> Ewan McGregor (a little young, perhaps, but way more charismatic than that lump)

***

Here's one of the many reasons I love Anne Lamott (a real-life woman who got pregnant "out of wedlock"; her well-loved son is now about seventeen). I just finished her book Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith (about as good as the first book in her faith trilogy, better than the second).

"Let me say that not one part of me thinks you need to have children to be complete, to know parts of yourself that cannot be known any other way. People with children like to think this, although if you are not a parent, they hide it* -- their belief that having a child legitimizes them somehow, validates their psychic parking tickets. They tell pregnant women and couples and one another that those who have chosen not to breed can never know what real love is, what selflessness really means. They like to say that having a child taught them about authenticity.

"This is a total crock. Many of the most shut-down, narcissistic, selfish people on earth have children. Many of the most evolved -- the richest in spirit, the most giving -- choose not to. The exact same chances for awakening, for personal restoration and connection, exist for breeders and nonbreeders alike."
___________
* Actually, I would say they don't always hide it so well.

Misty Afternoon

2008-04-27T22:25:00.004-05:00

Me this afternoon in the cemetery of St. Mary's Catholic Church in Rockville, Maryland, with the grave of F. Scott Fitzgerald behind me (to the right of my chin in the photo) and an assisted-living facility my siblings and I are considering for our parents in the background.

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

How Can a House Feel So Quiet When the One Who's Gone Made So Little Noise?

2008-04-01T22:13:00.009-05:00

I sent this e-mail today to some people in my life:

I want to let friends and family know that Charlie, my beagle, passed away last night. He had been ill for many months with what turned out to be liver disease. It took a dramatic turn for the worse yesterday, and after a difficult afternoon and evening of consultations and decisions, we decided that this was the time. S. and I and Patsy, Charile's terrier cohort, were with him.

Charlie and Patsy came into our lives on the same day seven and a half years ago. Anyone who has met Charlie knows of his presumably difficult early life before we adopted him -- the physical evidence of life in a research lab. Anytime we got mad at him for his stubbornness or sometimes unorthodox dog skills, all we had to do was remember what he had been through in his formative years. S. and I were glad to have given him a happy and peaceful life -- both together and apart -- and he gave us years of smiles and comfort in return.

***

Dear Hearts and Gentle People*

2008-02-17T00:12:00.007-05:00

A whole month has passed. My father fell, was hospitalized, had surgery, and is now in rehab. My brother and sisters and I are looking after my mother. (She's started telling me I look like *Bing Crosby, whom I'm actually distantly related to, though she doesn't remember that, so maybe I do look like Bing Crosby.) Tomrrow we're having a family meeting. And one of my dogs has been very sick.

When Dad was delusional from the drugs the first night following surgery, my brother and I sat with him, trying to calm him down. As I drove home at 1:30 in the morning -- my brother settled into a hospital chair for the duration of the night -- it struck me that I had spent more time touching my father in those few hours than I had since I was a baby.

***

This is what I did tonight:

Getting Real

2008-01-18T00:12:00.000-05:00

Another refreshing unpretentious-celebrity article, this one about the actress Keri Russell. Call me a sucker, but I can't help thinking she might actually not be just a PR-manufactured mannequin of a down-to-earth mother but the real thing. (She's even married to a carpenter; reminds me of one of my very favorite anti-celebrity celebrities, Mary Chapin Carpenter, who's married to a contractor and lives on a farm in Virginia.)

I'll probably piss someone off for saying this, but my default assumption about Hollywood celebrities is that they don't really raise their kids but rather farm out the job to full-time nannies. It's a cynical thing to say, but I confess I do believe that until I see convincing evidence to the contrary. And I rarely see convincing evidence to contrary. (No, the "Stars, They're Just Like Us" photos in Us magazine don't do it for me. I always imagine the nanny is just outside the frame.)

I've been taken for a ride before -- remember when I wrote about Jane Seymour's view of plastic surgery? Well, come to find out this (been meaning to write about that for a couple of months now).

I don't spend that much time thinking about celebrities. Honest.

Because

2008-01-17T11:22:00.000-05:00

I keep coming across articles or other things I want to blog about but never seem to find the time. Quick -- no one at work is looking. Here goes:

I liked this New York Times article about Robert Redford's daughter, the first film she's directed, and her relationship to her one-bedroom co-op in New York City. As it happens, I have a one-bedroom condo I love -- though it isn't in New York and my father isn't a world-famous movie star/entrepreneur/activist. That's where she and I part ways.

This passage spoke to me:

It’s a great apartment. But it poses the question: Does Robert Redford’s kid really have to be living in a one-bedroom apartment?

"This kid does," Ms. Redford says firmly.

Why is that?

"Because I want to have my life reflect who I am and what I create and what makes me the most comfortable . . ."

As I approach the one-year anniversary of my condo purchase (January 29), I'm reminded so often of how much I love it, how much at home I feel there, and how much potential there is to make it reflect me and my values even more. It was a long time coming.

I've been lighting fires in my fireplace a lot this winter. Weeknight fires, just because.

Forever and for Always

2008-01-06T10:16:00.000-05:00

I've been gone a long time. The holidays were very nice. It's a new year. Can we call it a new start?

Yesterday I took part in a 60th-birthday reading for my friend Meredith, a wonderful person and poet. (She and I were in a gay and lesbian writing group years ago.) She invited several writer friends of hers to read whatever they wanted as long as it was three minutes long. Well, mine was pretty close.

Below is what I wrote. It's not an essay. As I said in my introduction, it's just a trifle, but I gave it a grandiose title just for fun -- the reference, for anyone not a fan of cheesy country-pop, being to a Shania Twain song. (As longtime Mantelpiece readers might notice, I've cribbed some moments from old blog posts here and there.) I was surprised how many people came up to me afterward and said that they were two-steppers or contra dancers or about to start salsa lessons or something.

Here, too, is a lovely poem by Meredith.

Forever and for Always: A Midlife Obsession

As I got dressed, I noticed a pair of boots flopped in front of his closet door. “Do you two-step?” I asked.

He said yes, he liked to go dancing at Remington’s, a gay country-western bar.

I said I used to go there years ago, even had tried two-step lessons for a time but had given up, thinking I’d never get the hang of it.

My whole life, I’d never been able to partner dance, other than doing a feeble box step with my mother at a wedding reception or the semblance of a waltz required by a part in a high school play.

“Well,” he said, “we’ll have to go there sometime.”

Two weeks later, on a Friday night in January, he pulled me onto the dance floor. He led, I followed.

“Start on your right foot,” he instructed. “Quick-quick, slow . . . slow. Right-left, right . . left.”

We were moving, merging into a revolving circle of men. It was like being pushed out the door by someone who won’t take any more excuses—you’ve been sitting around the house too damn long. But another door kept opening, I was being pushed through another and then another, through an endless tunnel of music and light.

I may have been a beginner, but I was wearing cowboy boots; I’d prepared for this. I’d gone out on the previous Tuesday night and driven 45 minutes in the dark to replace a pair of boots I’d bought for lessons the first time around, a dozen years before—the ones I’d sold at a yard sale when I realized nothing would ever come of them; they weren’t really me.

I danced badly that January night two years ago. I sweated a lot, like a waiter his first night on the job, stumbling from table to table, unable to remember who’d ordered what: Who had the quick-quick? Who had the slow . . . slow?

But I came back not long after that for formal lessons. I told myself: I’m going to get this down. I am determined to get this down.

***

There’s something subversive about men dancing together, particularly a partner dance with the courtliness of the Texas two-step. It’s both an affirmation of the traditional dance-partner relationship—leader and follower, dominance and submission—and an upsetting of it: One leader, a slight, preppy young guy, might count off time for his novice partner, a burly older man in flannel and jeans. Gay country-western dance revels in stereotypical masculinity even as it reinvents it: A pair of men take an ecstatic spin around a corner, exchange a hip swivel and a wink, kiss at the end of a Shania Twain love song.

Two-stepping lacks both the preening and the physical abandon of dancing to pop or house music in a nightclub. The inherent cooperation in it—the follower’s hand atop his partner’s shoulder, the leader’s fingertips firmly on the follower’s back, their other hands gently joined midair—leaves little room for grandstanding or competitiveness.

The various men I’ve danced with over the last two years illustrate the particular pleasures of having a commanding leader—a follower’s competence on the dance floor is all about having a commanding leader. But, especially early on, there’s also been the satisfaction, comforting in its way, of a leader as inexperienced as I am. It's when I’ve been paired with someone just good enough to be better than me that I’ve gotten into trouble.

I’m now able to talk while dancing—it took a good six months to get to that stage, six months for the legendary “muscle memory” to kick in—though I prefer not to speak at all. I’m secretly thankful when I’m with a man who doesn’t turn a two-step into an opportunity to chat about his planned trip to Home Depot Saturday morning.

I’d rather not be distracted from the circling train I’m a part of, from catching my reflection in a window as I’m led through one door to the next, the wind whistling between cars, the air cool on my skin as I sweat out my desire and move to the rhythm—quick-quick, slow . . . slow, quick-quick, slow . . . slow—my smile a muscle in itself.

Gifts

2007-12-14T20:07:00.001-05:00

It's Friday evening and, after a couple of weeks away from it, I'm looking forward to two-stepping tonight -- even if my new favorite partner is abroad for another six days.

Photo by Brassaï

When true simplicity is gain'd
To bow and to bend we shan't be asham'd,
To turn, turn will be our delight
Till by turning, turning we come round right.

Sparkle

2007-12-11T00:01:00.000-05:00

I bought a Christmas tree this weekend. Quite a change from last year's, huh? The biggest difference, not only from that tree but also from any other I've had in my life: I put tinsel on it.

I grew up in a non-tinsel family. There seemed to be an unspoken understanding that tinsel was tacky. But I always secretly liked it -- the kind that drapes on the branches in thin, wispy strands. (Note that I still can't help drawing a distinction between the acceptable kind and the . . . other kind.)

Once, I came across a photo of my parents' first Christmas trees in the 1950s, before they had kids; there was the same "icicle"-style tinsel on it that I have now. It was sort of like discovering that one of them had had an illegitimate child.

Perhaps -- as I've often realized over the years in other matters -- the strictures, prejudices, or prohibitions that I'd imagined never actually existed at all. Maybe all I ever needed to do was simply utter the word: "tinsel." And it would be mine.

Like Home

2007-12-05T21:19:00.000-05:00

As I sat here at my desk tonight, a series of thoughts led me to remember that the second anniversary of this blog was two days ago.

Then, as writer Faye Moskowitz says in one of my favorite essay collections, "the memory chain began to slip again . . ." and I was reminded of another almost-anniversary: a post I wrote here just shy of one year ago.

The song I wrote about on December 19, 2006 -- Raul Malo's version of "Feels Like Home" -- still moves me as strongly as ever. In fact, I just listened to it again after rereading the post.

I now own the home that on December 19 was still only a longing. I didn't know then that I'd see it for the first time ten days later -- and make an offer on it two days after that, New Year's Eve.

And that other feeling that was awakened as I listened to Raul Malo's voice a year ago? I tucked it away for safekeeping, like a crinkly letter from the past, glad to know it wasn't lost anymore but wary of taking it out of its drawer again, as if it would crumble in my hands, or blow away with a draft.

It turns out it may not be an old letter after all but the start of a story.

Follow the Leader

2007-11-25T23:07:00.001-05:00

Last Monday, after almost two years of following, I took my first country-western dance lesson as a leader. It was actually a waltz class, not two-step; they alternate them. I was surprised to find that it didn't go as terribly as I had feared. Waltzing is a lot simpler than two-stepping, so I decided to take the plunge in that dance first. Tomorrow is the second (and final) waltz lesson of this particular round. I'll try leading two-step when the next four-week session of that begins in January.

On Friday, I waltzed as a leader for the first time on a regular open-dance night, with a full dance floor. My partner was a (versatile) friend with whom I've danced a lot and who I knew would be patient with me. It went well, but I didn't want to push my luck, so for the rest of the evening I followed.

Life's a dance you learn as you go
Sometimes you lead, sometimes you follow
Don't worry about what you don't know
Life's a dance you learn as you go.

Path

2007-11-18T23:12:00.000-05:00

I took a long walk along the C&O Canal today with a new friend. It's nice to see so much color still on the trees so late in the season, so close to Thanksgiving -- the upside of this year's drought followed by the belated fall rains. Sometimes it's hard to tell if the reds and golds are disappearing or just emerging, like a kind of springtime in reverse. We stopped for a while by the river on the other side of the path. Then as we started back, I noticed my cell phone was missing from my back pocket. We went back to our spot, and there it was nestled in some leaves. Just before I saw it, D. dialed my number from his cell. As I bent to pick the phone up, it was ringing. I answered it, and he stayed on the line.

Truth in Journalism

2007-11-15T09:45:00.000-05:00

As I read this question to Ask Amy this morning, I thought, "Come on, Amy -- say it, say it! You know it's true." She said it. I knew she would.

"Dear Amy: My 18-year-old son recently started college on a baseball scholarship. I'm so proud! He is having problems with 'Melissa,' his girlfriend of more than two years because of this.

"His college is several hours away from her, and now they get to see each other only on the weekends. This doesn't seem to bother him too much, but it is driving his girlfriend crazy! She spends most of her time with him crying and complaining that she doesn't get to see him enough. She makes it impossible for him to go back to school Sundays (crying that the weekend is over).

"When he's at school, he sounds good and says everything is OK, but when he's with her his attitude changes.

"She has tried several times to persuade him to quit school, which is pretty selfish, I think. My son has mentioned shaving his head so she won't worry about other girls looking at him.

"I suggested getting rid of the girlfriend instead.

"What is the best way to deal with her and her insecurities?

-- Helpless Mom"

"Dear Helpless: 'Melissa' sounds insecure, controlling and even abusive. Some of this might be a result of simple immaturity. It's normal to be sad and upset over a separation in a long-distance relationship, but her behavior takes the drama to an unfortunate level. Secondly, everybody knows that bald guys are hot.

"You should continue to be supportive of your son's college goals. Don't push too hard on the girlfriend front, but if he asks tell him that if Melissa really loved him she would also support his goals and dreams. Point out that he doesn't seem happy when he's with her. "When baseball season starts, he's not going to be as available to her; for her sake as well as his own, maybe he should set her free well before practices begin."

Dancing Is to Book Groups as _ Is to _

2007-11-07T23:58:00.000-05:00

Well, I'm back two-stepping. Maybe you wondered. Or maybe you didn't know I'd been away.

Two thousand six was all about the two-stepping. Two thousand seven, not so much. That was all about the home. When I'd go back, sporadically, my head was elsewhere. Or everyone else's head was elsewhere. Not turned toward me.

I made a decision to start going back regularly a couple of weeks ago. I've been wanting more connection in my life. And that's what I'm starting to find.

***

After an adult lifetime of resisting book groups (I just didn't see the point -- why would I want to sit around talking about a book? I wasn't in graduate school anymore), I'm not only now in one, but I started it.

Despite the fact that I give people the impression of being a voracious reader (I ran into a former student on the bus recently, and he said that very thing), I'm anything but -- I'm slow, I'm easily distracted. I wasn't getting enough reading done.

I also wasn't seeing enough of my friends. So I hand-picked the members (a half-dozen gay men d'un certain âge), we had an initial get-to-know you potluck two months ago (since I knew everyone, but not everyone else knew everyone), and our first official bimonthly meeting is this Sunday. Unfortunately, the book, which I haven't finished yet, is leaving a lot to be desired (and I'm not the only one who thinks so, apparently). But that's all I'll say about it for now.

And So Stylish Too!

2007-11-01T21:16:00.001-05:00

Don't you hate it when you wake up wearing a piece of conical plastic around your head for no reason you can discern?

A guy on the street asked if it was a sun visor.

Stop Time

2007-10-23T21:49:00.000-05:00

An insightful and cleverly written My Turn essay from a recent Newsweek (with a really lovely last line):

A Life Lesson Learned at the Stop & Shop
I was obsessive about managing my time, until a small act of kindness slowed me down.

How the Rich Are Different From You and Me

2007-10-21T22:02:00.001-05:00

Let me count the ways.*

"Gwyneth Paltrow, in an Etro dress, hula-hoops in the apple orchard of her Hamptons home."

-- photo caption, House & Garden, November 2007

* Minus one way: I had a hula hoop when I was a kid.

Other Than That, My Life Is Really Ordinary

2007-10-19T22:03:00.000-05:00

I like living in small spaces.
I bake to relax.
I share custody of my dogs.
I listen to country music.
I bought my first home at age 45.
My parents are nearing 90.
I once had a summer job sorting Marine Corps personnel files.
I’ve been to Belfast.
I once edited an article by former senator and presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy.
I lived with my brother for eight years as an adult.
I’ve never felt unsafe walking alone in New York City, no matter what time of day.
I taught myself to swim.
I taught myself to ride a bike.
I didn’t know how to ride a bike until I was about nine years old.
I think the swimming came even later.
I’ve been to Hawaii twice.

Over the Moon

2007-10-15T21:13:00.000-05:00

I just spent an hour and a half catching up with three weeks' worth of the New York Times (it's work-related). What a great, great newspaper. What better proof that it's a great paper than the fact that I'm repeatedly reminded anew of what a great paper it is? It's hard to take the Times for granted.

Amid all the interesting and well-made articles, reviews, opinion pieces, and photographs was this gorgeous little keeper of a personal reflection on the editorial page by Verlyn Klinkenborg, "Watching the Full Moon Rise Over the Northeast Corridor." I love riding Amtrak, in all its tedium and its rhythmic beauty, and he captures the experience exactly, though the article is mostly about observing the moon from his seat.

I adore these sentences:

"The full moon was rising on the ride home. At first there was just the suggestion of a disk low on the horizon. It might have been a moon painted on old red brick, faded and soot-stained over the eons, the remnant of an ad for some forgotten nocturnal medicine. I'd been watching the way Baltimore backs blindly onto the tracks -- the toothless old houses, boarded up, beyond despair, here and there a wall gone entirely so that the houses seem to be leaking their privacy into the night."

Fly

2007-10-11T21:24:00.000-05:00

Last night was what may turn out to be the last true evening of summer -- marked by pizza, wine, ice cream with homemade chocolate sauce, candles, and conversation in the garden. Tonight there's fall in the air -- though I'm kind of sorry to see the warm weather go, something I never would have said just a few years ago. Is this a sign of a snowbird in the making? God help me.

I did receive the AARP publications of my condo's deceased former owner in the mail today, as I have been ever since I moved in. (It doesn't seem like such a big deal, as I've been reading them at my parents' house for years.)

I made it to the gym tonight, there's banana-apple bread in the oven, and I'll make egg salad before going to bed at a reasonable hour for the first time in ages. I'm trying to turn over a new leaf. Too much wasted time. I like the evenings too much -- too many bleary-eyed mornings as a result.

Am I building up stories, unbeknownst to me? Time will tell.

The First Monday in October

2007-10-01T21:20:00.000-05:00

My blogging mojo has obviously flagged over the last couple of weeks. Sorry about that -- it doesn't reflect anything bad going on. Here's what has been happening. Since I last wrote, I turned 46; painted my kitchen ("Golden Delicious"); became preoccupied with World War II (my father's war); grew my goatee back and embraced the gray (see "I turned 46") because facial hair is almost always a good thing; made a peace offering to a coworker I unintentionally offended (an incident from which I learned it's a bad idea to try to catch up on work at 11:30 at night, the time when cranky e-mails happen); read the best Washington Post Style section celebrity profile I've read in years; read a great article in the New Yorker about Leica cameras, which was so beautifully written and inspiring that it made me wonder if my long-abandoned calling as a photographer was the right one all along, continued to enjoy, while walking the dogs four times a day, podcasts of the best program on NPR (it was broadcast in Washington for about five minutes a couple of years ago, which is how I became acquainted with it); and, the other night, met a charming, warm, and radiant young woman while walking said dogs who told me that she's seen me with them many times and, because of our slow-as-molasses pace (set by the beagle), says to herself whenever she sees us: "Here come the old ladies." (Yet only one of us is actually female.) I intended to blog about each of those things over the last two weeks, but this will just have to do.

Gestation

2007-09-18T22:20:00.000-05:00

I'm off this week, so -- eight months after buying my condo and nearly seven months after moving in -- I finally got down to business with my patio/garden. This is how it looked on a dreary January day (and it hasn't looked a whole lot different over the subsequent months):

The weird curtain-like screen that did no good whatsoever and was ugly to boot is history. I plan to have a retractable screen installed next spring so I can sleep with the door open. (The patio is off the bedroom.)

I put the paint-spattered chairs (not mine) on the sidewalk and they found a happy home.

And here's how the garden looks as of today. It's a start. The ornamental grass, ferns, and hostas especially won't start coming into their own until next year. Everything will grow and spread. I can't wait for the dogs to see it. They've had no pretty scents to smell (a.k.a. plants to pee on) all this time.

Thanks to Meg for obtaining the oak splits bordering the beds; they're from a lumberyard on the Eastern Shore. I stained them mah-self. (Yes, that's a new fence; my neighbor replaced it since the first picture was taken.)

I dug up the rocks from the dirt that lies underneath the topsoil.

Note the Stonehengey rocks that formerly bordered the garden beds (see first photo). I don't really have a use for them but don't want to throw them away because I kind of don't hate them. So for now I've just lined them up on the ledge.

I've always been drawn to symmetry -- probably too much for my own good.

This is a potting shed made from a salvaged window shutter. My ex and I bought it and the rusty obelisk in the other garden bed in Frederick, Maryland. I got them in the divorce.

Grow, little planties, grow.

My garden and the city beyond.

Dog-Eared

2007-09-12T23:03:00.000-05:00

I finally finished the book I've been reading for some weeks now, Dog Years by the poet and memoirist Mark Doty. The length of time it took me is no reflection of how much I enjoyed it, which was very much. My life these days is simply made up of fragments of time, it seems.

The book is about Doty's relationship with his two dogs, Arden and Beau, a relationship that overlaps with the death of his lover, Wally, from AIDS and his current long-term relationship with Paul. There's more on Paul in this book; an earlier memoir by Doty, Heaven's Coast -- also beautiful -- deals extensively with Wally.

I liked this passage from Dog Years:

"A while ago, I had a drink with a new acquaintance, who was taking a little time away from his work and had come to the seashore to write a screenplay. Over a beer, in the way that people offer a topic of conversation in order to know one another better, he asked what I'd like to do if my commitments were all waived, if I suddenly had the freedom to choose whatever. I said I'd buy a place with a barn, in the country, and open a shelter for homeless retrievers.

"He looked at me a little incredulously. He seemed to be choosing his words carefully. 'I don't know,' he said, 'when people talk about what they want to do for animals, I always wonder why that compassion isn't offered to other people.'

"My anger flared, a hot, fierce flush. I said, 'You asked me what I wanted to do, not what I thought I should do.'

"He nodded. 'Fair enough.' But the damage was done, the judgment cast. If I'd been more thoughtful and less offended, I might have said that compassion isn't a limited quantity, something we can only possess so much of and which thus must be carefully conserved. I might have said, if I was truly being honest, that I've never known anyone holding this opinion to demonstrate much in the way of empathy with other people anyway; it seems that compassion for animals is an excellent predictor of one's ability to care for one's fellow human beings.

"But the plain truth is no one should have to defend what he loves. If I decide to become one of those dotty old people who live alone with six beagles, who on earth is harmed by the extremity of my affections? There is little enough devotion in the world that we should be glad for it in whatever form it appears, and never mock it, or underestimate its depths.

"Love, I think, is a gateway to the world, not an escape from it."

Those last two paragraphs remind me of a movie I saw a few months ago, Year of the Dog, starring Molly Shannon (and, hello, Peter Sarsgaard). It's not perfect, but I did like it. What I really loved was the final note the film struck: It didn't flinch from or make excuses for the fact that love of animals is a legitimate love -- not inferior to any other kind -- and in fact for some people it's the primary and most nourishing love in their lives. I really hand it to writer/director Mike White for celebrating that connection, so often devalued or marginalized, in a mainstream (albeit indie) film.

Sayonara

2007-09-06T22:52:00.000-05:00

I haven't asked, but I'll bet you anything T.Kevin also noticed Miyoshi Umeki's obituary in the paper today.

I'm of the generation whose first association with her is not the movies Flower Drum Song and Sayonara but the TV series The Courtship of Eddie's Father. I loved Eddie, and I really loved Eddie's father, but I also loved, in a different way, Mrs. Livingston.

Don't think less of me if I phonetically and politically incorrectly remember her pidgin English one last time: "Yes, Mista Eddie's fadda . . ." I loved how she called him that.

As I waited for the bus tonight, I challenged myself to remember the theme song to that show. At first the Partridge Family theme is all I could think of. Then, finally, it surfaced: "People, let me tell you 'bout my best friend, he's a warm-hearted person who'll love me till the end . . ."

Do you remember who sang it (and wrote it)?

La Vie

2007-09-04T22:38:00.000-05:00

My mother has started to get confused about who I am -- a new stage in her slow, ten-year-long passage through dementia. On a few recent occasions, she's asked me how my family is. And she's not talking about a "chosen family" of friends or my siblings. Actually, the first time, she asked how my "kids" were, and I thought she was being playful and meant my dogs, so I told her. She laughed a little, but it was clear from the look on her face she didn't mean that.

When she asks about my family, I say, "I don't have a family. I'm single."

This past weekend, she said, "But someone told me . . ."

"No," I said, "I don't think so . . ."

"But whose kids are S______ and T______?"

"Those are your brother Billy's kids. I'm your son."

These particular moments of confusion are rare and fleeting, for now. She still smiles every time I come over and often gets teary when I leave. But I know the tears don't last long.

Her favorite tune these days, which she hums over and over like a theme, is "La Vie en Rose."

Crazy, Innit?

2007-08-31T22:31:00.000-05:00

One of the most handsomely ridiculous* movies I've seen in a long time.

*Lest there be any confusion over whether I liked it, in the clear light of morning perhaps preposterous would be a better word.

"Good Heavens, Is That My Foot in Your Stall? I Do Apologize!"

2007-08-29T08:30:00.000-05:00

And this is great -- Dana Milbank in the Washington Post. (You may need to be registered to read it.) It's the only place thus far that I've seen Craig's excuse for how he came to be making contact with the foot in the next bathroom stall.

Uhhhh . . .

2007-08-29T07:08:00.000-05:00

"While I was not involved in any inappropriate conduct at the Minneapolis airport or anywhere else, I chose to plead guilty to a lesser charge in the hope of making it go away," Craig, 62, told reporters in Boise, Idaho.

-- from today's Washington Post article on Senator Larry Craig of Idaho

Closer to Fine

2007-08-27T20:10:00.000-05:00

Okay, I've now officially had my summer and can go into autumn smiling. Last night Diablo and I trekked out to Wolf Trap -- a true natural and artistic treasure that we Washingtonians are lucky to have in our vicinity. To me, Wolf Trap (America's only national park for the performing arts!) is summer. I try to go at least once a season, and I didn't make it there at all last year. To listen to lovely music on a lawn full of congenial people while warm breezes pass over me in this particular place -- well, it's one of my favorite things in the world.

I can't do much better than Diablo has in describing last night's Indigo Girls show. "Catching up with an old friend" is just right. I'd never seen the Girls live and had long heard that their Wolf Trap show was something to experience. Indeed it was. As all of the very best concerts are to me, it was, in some indefinable way, inspiring. Not really "I could do that." More I want to do . . . not that but something like that, something beautiful and humane and connecting. The pursuit is worthwhile. And being the recipient of that feeling almost feels enough. At least on one night.

I have only one Indigo Girls album, which I'm listening to right now (on cassette). It's their self-titled one containing the career-defining anthem "Closer to Fine." (Diablo would argue "Galileo," which I'd almost forgotten about, is that song.) I consider myself a fan, so why don't I have more of their music? I will rectify that situation.

Here are some pictures of my own from last night, to supplement Diablo's and his narrative of the entire evening.

The Filene Center, where the stage and the people with the more expensive seats are. I've sat there too, and I think I like the lawn better, unless it's someone I'm fanatical about, like Emmylou Harris, and must see every movement of. It's a beautiful structure that burned to the ground when I was in college and was completely rebuilt.

Me with glasses.

Without glasses. Look at the couple in the background. Are they mocking us???

The horror! The horror!

Still Life With Calves (and Knees)

Please, sir, I want some more.

I Hate That -- You Know That, Don't You?

2007-08-25T22:12:00.001-05:00

If I could have one wish tonight, it would be that no play, no movie, no TV show, no book -- hell, no real life -- would ever again contain the hackneyed, cringe-inducing line "I love you -- you know that?" (Variants: "I love you -- you know that, don't you?" and "I love you -- you know that, right?")

I saw a play tonight, Lazarus Syndrome, that contained that line. I wish I could say it was the only misstep in an otherwise wonderful play. It was a so-so play -- about a middle-aged gay man living with HIV -- far from wonderful, but it did have a surprising and genuinely moving twist toward the end that ultimately made its compact 75 minutes worth seeing, or at least not a waste of time.

Wish number two would be that actors playing in a small theater wouldn't YELL their lines as if playing to the back row of the Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater. The guy playing the main character's brother tonight did that; strangely, he did it only on half of his lines.

I see that problem a lot in Washington, and it's probably my number-one theater pet peeve. Why so many local directors don't ask these actors to scale their performances to the size of the space is a mystery. Why these actors don't just figure it out for themselves is another.

All Over but the Shoutin'

2007-08-22T22:54:00.001-05:00

Only the hairy balls survive.

Sorry, no time for anything but sophomoric double-entendres tonight. I've been painting.

Soon, a lovely quote from this book. As soon as I finish it.

Five Little Words

2007-08-19T21:01:00.000-05:00

"I have three words," said Diablo as we exited the theater where we'd just seen Death at a Funeral. "Contrived. Predictable. Gross."

I added two: pedestrian and implausible.

Although it came in too late to qualify as an official sixth word, we later agreed that "offensive" applied as well.

I was convinced that the screenwriter, Dean Craig, had to be an American hack (or rank beginner, or both) who got it in his mind that he could write a wacky British farce -- I could think of no other explanation for the lame, write-by-numbers material -- but it seems that he's British after all.

A shame to see the sexy and talented Peter Dinklage fallen this low. But hey, the rest of the audience seemed to love it. Why does this happen so often?

Say It With Flowers

2007-08-18T09:52:00.001-05:00

Sign at the farmer's market this morning: "Folks, I didn't make it up. The green object in the bouquets is called hairy balls."

Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me

2007-08-12T22:42:00.001-05:00

This past Wednesday, I had lunch with my junior-high and high-school classmate who had e-mailed me out of the blue.

It was a fairly transformation-less experience. I couldn't quite figure out what, if anything, he wanted from me. He had indicted in his e-mail that he was interested in writing for the publication I work for, but every encouragement I issued to him was met with seeming indifference. He talked ad nauseam about himself -- and of course, I asked question after question about him, even when I wasn't all that interested. The only time he asked anything about me was toward the end of the lunch when, apparently out of desperation or an eleventh-inning surge of politeness, he said, "So how long have you worked at ______ ?"

He wasn't very into reminiscing about our school or classmates, either. We did a little of that, but he made it clear that he didn't have fond memories. Strangely enough, he's been in touch recently with a guy who used to be one of my best friends, now a priest, whom I haven't been in touch with since the early '90s (the ball is in his court, if you ask me).

As we left the restaurant, the conversation turned to a classmate who was the closest thing to a best friend that T.B. had (in my memory anyway). He said, "We went through some rough times." I wasn't sure I had heard him, and I said, "You went through some rough times?" (meaning "you" singular). He said, "We both did. Drugs will do that to you."

Right. The drugs. I almost forgot.

He's a very handsome straight guy -- very white teeth, open collar with gold chain, pleated pants (heh heh), learning to play golf (very useful in the investment field and all), three kids in the suburbs. I didn't mention Elton.

Maple Nut Prufrock

2007-08-06T22:58:00.000-05:00

I had a nice visit to Madison, but I have to confess that as I walked into the crowded party Saturday night, I thought, Are you serious? Did I really come halfway across the country to attend yet another party at which I know only the host? It wasn't quite the elegant, flowing affair I'd imagined, but it was fine. I think my friend was touched that I came.

The highlight of the weekend for me had been earlier that day when I attended the Sugar Maple Festival, an all-day (actually, two-day) outdoor festival of country, folk, and traditional music. I was particularly excited to have accidentally timed my trip just right to see a singer I like a lot and had never seen live before, Robbie Fulks. He kicked off the afternoon in an authentic, unpretentious, yet passionate way. A really good local Celtic band, West Wind, totally won me over, particularly the mesmerizing voice of one the singers, Josh Perkins; unfortunately, the group doesn't appear to have a CD.

As planned, I did have lots of ice cream (orange custard chocolate chip, maple nut, chocolate mint flake) and took a several-mile-long walk around Lake Monona. And Madison has the most amazing farmers' market. It completely encircles the Capitol building. But the city boy in me did start to get a little impatient with the slooowww pace of foot traffic -- which they can hardly be blamed for: You want to stop at every cheese, baked-good, flower, and produce stand. Unless you just . . . want . . . to . . . get . . . out . . . of . . . the . . . crowd -- and move.

Sigh. I was really glad to get home. It was a little too quiet there. I like where I live.

***

Get this -- I actually finished a book: Songs Without Words by Ann Packer. It's officially being published in September. I loved her first novel, The Dive From Clausen's Pier, which came out five years ago, and still recommend it to people. This new one was a little harder to get into, if just as well written, and I put it down for a few weeks, picking it up again on my trip. It's largely about women's friendship -- which makes it maybe chick literature, not to be confused with chick lit -- but it's also about marriage and parenthood and sadness and working your way out of all the muck, even the muck you'll never understand.

Here's a short passage I liked, about a husband and wife whose relationship has been strained after their teenage daughter's attempted suicide:

"He said, 'Something smells delicious.'

"She said, 'Just chicken.'

"This was how they often talked these days, in code. He had just told her that he was not disinclined to see her in a favorable light, and she had replied that that might be true, but that he hadn't convinced her."

Oh, All Right

2007-08-01T23:49:00.000-05:00

After much resistance, here goes:

1. What is your favorite word?
Can't think of one word. One of my favorite phrases: Aberdeen Proving Ground. I have no idea why.

2. What is your least favorite word?
Since I picked a phrase above, I'll do the same here: "I could care less."

3. What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?
Connection.

4. What turns you off?
Small talk. The older I get, the less tolerant of it I am.

5. What is your favorite curse word?
G.D., pronounced as initials. It's what my father says, adjectivally ("Who put that G.D. box there?"), when he's really angry. (No one ever uses a real swear word in my mother's presence.) My siblings and I occasionally say "G.D." in a cheeky homage to him, and it always makes me smile.

6. What sound or noise do you love?
Someone, human or canine, snoring beside me.

7. What sound or noise do you hate? [Number 7 was not on the list, but I assume this is it and it was left off by accident, since James Lipton always asks it on Inside the Actors Studio.]
The sound of a cranky child between the ages of zero and two crying in a public place. Parents reading this are probably thinking that I'm unsympathetic with the child and/or his or her parents. I'm neither sympathetic nor unsympathetic with either; I'm not passing judgment. I simply hate this sound as sound. It makes me want to scream.

8. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?
Photojournalist.

9. What profession would you not like to do?
Reporter.

10. If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?
"This is so going to be worth it."

Hey, J. Alfred,* What Are You Doin' This Summer?

2007-07-30T22:52:00.000-05:00

After much deliberation, I've decided to take a trip to Madison, Wisconsin, next weekend for the 50th-birthday party of a friend who moved out there a year ago. We once worked together, after a fashion -- not on a day-to-day basis but in a freelance relationship (she was the freelancer). On the handful of occasions that we've gotten together in the last 14 years -- and it has been no more than one handful -- our connection has been unusually deep and warm.

So I was flattered that she invited me to this and was drawn to the idea of going -- I've been to Madison twice, when another friend lived there back in the '80s, and loved it -- but I wondered for the longest time if it would be . . . weird to go all that way this time. Would I be the only out-of-towner at the party? Would people think we were closer than we were? Or would they wonder why this person she barely knew had come all this way? Could I afford it? Would I regret it?

Much like the first time I went to a college reunion -- with none of my friends planning to attend and no history as a "reunion person," I rented a car, drove up, and had a memorable time -- something was telling me to go. So as I've written here before on other matters, I decided there was a reason the idea was pulling at me and decided to go. I had some credit-card miles I'd never used, and I found a room in relatively reasonable and charming-looking bed-and-breakfast (I couldn't see going all that way and staying in a Motel 6; too depressing). I plan to have some ice cream here. Walk along the lakes. Maybe hear some music. And, of course, go to the party. She says she's thrilled that I'm coming.
_________________

* . . . And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair --
[They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!"]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin --
[They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!"]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. . . .

-- T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

Come On Down!

2007-07-25T20:14:00.000-05:00

I don't know about you, but I love that America is finally ready for a Price Is Right host with pierced nipples.

Not that I know for a fact that Bob Barker doesn't have them . . .

I'm Still Standing

2007-07-23T22:28:00.000-05:00

I got a random e-mail today from T.B., a guy I went to junior high and high school with. Back then he was a thuggish little fuck who used to bully and torment me in seventh and eighth grades. (It was an all-boys school, not that that made a difference.) I remember that he also got good grades, which was unusual for a "bad" boy. Another thing: He was a huge Elton John fan.

Some of my older readers might remember that in 1976, Elton John gave a much-publicized interview to Rolling Stone magazine in which he came out as "bisexual." It was quite the huge story at the time. This was long before he came out as gay, became an AIDS philanthropist, and married a man.

I remember how devastated T.B. was to hear this news. I don't recall him making any blatantly homophobic comments about Elton John, calling him a faggot or anything, though he was certainly capable of it. I just remember him walking around in a kind of I-can't-believe-it daze for what seemed like weeks.

Younger readers might find it incredible that anyone could miss the fact that Elton John was gay, but in those days he was just considered outrageous and flamboyant. And his music was so much better than it is today; it was good. That's how he was known first and foremost: as a musician.

Anyway, by senior year, T.B. and I were friendly (though not quite friends). My class was so small (23 people) that by the time we were in our final year, hanging out in the senior lounge, doing stuff together on weekends, we had almost all bonded. There were very few rivalries and cliques left. It was nice. With one or two exceptions, we all kind of respected each other.

So today T.B. e-mails me to ask if I'm the same "Billy" he remembers; he came across my name in the publication I work for: "I started my own ____________ firm a little over two years ago and have learned a great deal working with clients and [about?] human behavior. . . . I have my own newsletter and enjoy writing. Would you like to have lunch sometime?"

I said sure.

I once wrote a really bitter and vengeful -- and not very good -- short story about a guy who runs into a former classmate who used to bully him. I don't feel bitterness or vengeance toward T.B. It will just be interesting to see him. He's one of only a couple of guys whom I'm pretty sure I haven't seen even once since the summer after graduation 28 years ago.

Tonight I looked through my old diary from seventh and eighth grades to see if there was anything about him. This is all I found:

November 14, 1973: "T.B. stapled his finger by accident this morning. It didn't bleed much but it made me sick to think about it."

For Uncle Jack, and for His Brother and Sister (My Mother)

2007-07-22T23:34:00.000-05:00

Let Evening Come
By Jane Kenyon

Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn.  Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass.  Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down.  Let the shed
go black inside.  Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don't
be afraid.  God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.

Dinner With Friends

2007-07-15T20:48:00.000-05:00

Friday evening, a very pleasant dinner with R, J, and K.

A telling fact about my life in the last four years is that I met each of these men online, in one fashion or another. I've known R the longest, almost four years. I made J's acquaintance several months later. Those two eventually met through me and became friendly. I chatted with K off and on for a couple of years before we finally met face to face a year or so ago. Somewhere in there, R and I realized that -- unbeknownst to either of us until then -- we both were online buddies of K. So not long after I met K in the brick-and-mortar world, he and R and I got together. Friday night was the first time J had met K, but they seemed to get along well. Many laughs and fun stories -- the kind of evening I haven't had enough of lately.

I have almost nothing but good things to say about the ability of the Internet to bring people together socially -- in fact, speaking from my own post-LTR experience, to essentially create a new social life for me.

In addition to the circle I just mentioned, there's B, whom I met online and who got me back into two-stepping a year and a half ago ("back into" because I'd tried it before, but he made it stick). B and I haven't seen a lot of each other lately, but I consider him a friend . . . and should give him a call this week, come to think of it. Next Sunday, I'm having brunch with D -- whom I met online and dated for several months in 2005 -- and his current boyfriend, whom he just moved in with.

These are all witty, interesting, engaged, kind men I feel lucky to know. And this isn't even counting the friends and acquaintances I've met through them.

I used to meet people without the help of the Internet . . . but I can barely remember how.

The middle-aged (and above) married people I work with* will sometimes make a comment along the lines of "So I guess the Internet has replaced personal ads for young people today, huh?" or (addressing a young person) "So do you and your friends instant-message each other a lot?" or "Why in the world would anyone want to share his personal life with complete strangers the way bloggers do?" And everyone will kind of shake their heads or half-smile in the middle-aged equivalent of "What-ever!"

Meanwhile I sit there, my life a mystery to them, I'm sure. They have no idea that a 45-year-old man in their midst makes use of the Internet to meet people, to chat, to blog -- to create many kinds of joyful, stimulating, life-affirming relationships, both virtual and in the flesh.

I kind of like the mystery. It makes me feel young.
________
* By the way, despite my slight snarkiness here, my attitude toward my workplace has undergone a sea change since I started my new job a few weeks ago. For the first time in years, I don't dread going into the office. I'm busy and often under stress, but it's task-related stress, not the psychological kind that I bring home with me and that takes up residence in both my muscles and my self-esteem. I'm more relaxed at work, more involved, more sociable -- happier by miles. Why didn't I do this ages ago?

How Do You Feel About Sputum? Take Our Poll!

2007-07-09T22:12:00.000-05:00

"[Katie] Couric seems determined not to let anyone see her suffer, but according to several people familiar with the situation, she is privately frustrated. . . . The stress has caused her to blow up at her staff for small infractions on the set. During the tuberculosis story in June, Couric got angry with news editor Jerry Cipriano for using a word she detested -- 'sputum' -- and the staff grew tense when she began slapping him 'over and over and over again' on the arm, according to a source familiar with the scene. It had seemed like a joke at first, but it quickly became clear that she wasn’t kidding.

" 'I sort of slapped him around,' Couric admits. 'I got mad at him and said, "You can’t do this to me. You have to tell me when you’re going to use a word like that." I was aggravated, there’s no question about that.' But she says she has a good relationship with Cipriano. 'We did ban the word sputum from all future broadcasts. It became kind of a joke.' "

-- "Alas, Poor Couric," New York magazine

Meteorology

2007-07-08T10:08:00.000-05:00

Charmless Billy

2007-07-03T23:28:00.000-05:00

Barely a week into the new job and I already lost my temper with a coworker over the phone today. I felt he was being patronizing and unhelpful over an issue we were both responsible for -- and he was a little, but not intentionally. I was out of line, and the fact that I was under stress was no excuse. I apologized by e-mail later, but I still feel terrible. I guess I'll talk to him next time he's in.

I'm not known for losing my cool on the job, and I hate it when it happens. Moments after the confrontation occurred, I started imagining that the entire office had heard it. A strange silence descended upon the place for the rest of the afternoon, it seemed. Colleagues rolling their eyes perhaps, thinking, Shit, what have we gotten ourselves into?

I prefer to be known as the coworker who spent his Oscar-pool winnings on cookies for the office. Now, that was a good move.

Cruise Control

2007-06-28T22:49:00.000-05:00

Since so many hundreds of you were dying to know what Tony Blair and I had in common (besides our penchant for hanging out with queens), I will tell you: We both got new jobs yesterday.

Mine is with the same place I've been working for years but involves at least 50 percent new responsibilities, a new (better) title, a new (better) salary, and, I have reason to believe, a new level of respect from certain quarters. It's the first time in my life I've been almost completely in the driver's seat on a job change. I proposed the switch in an effort to solve two ongoing problems (one in the company and, privately, one in my relationship to it), I drew the boundaries of what I would and wouldn't do, and I decided -- and got -- what I considered to be appropriate compensation.

After work tonight, as my car was stopped at a light, a handsome man waiting to cross the street looked my way, met my gaze, and wiggled his eyebrows. This almost never happens to me. I've been cruised exactly once in my life that I'm aware of. (Key and sadly all-too-telling phrase: that I'm aware of.) He then turned back to talk to his friend. Rather uncharacteristically, I decided I would be ready when he looked at me again, as I knew he would. I would not look away. I would not play it cool. The light turned, he looked at me, and I was waiting with a smile. He sent a lingering one back as he crossed the street. I turned the corner and drove on.

What Do Tony Blair and Billy Have in Common?

2007-06-27T18:33:00.001-05:00

Owning Up: The Musical

2007-06-25T21:37:00.001-05:00

Last night I went to see a documentary called Show Business: The Road to Broadway (terrible title). It chronicles four Broadway musicals from the creative stages just prior to opening night through the 2004 Tony Awards. The four shows are Avenue Q, Taboo, Wicked, and Caroline, or Change. The Washington Post gave the film a so-so review, but I quite enjoyed it. It did a great job of capturing the excitement, intensity, uncertainty, and camaraderie of, well, putting on a show.

(But what does it mean for someone like me -- who has written a review or two of various types in my day -- that the most annoying people in the movie were the tableful of New York critics? These particular people were insular, bitchy, self-important, and . . . kinda pinched. I found it interesting that that the more prestigious critics, Ben Brantley of the New York Times and John Lahr of the New Yorker, excellent writers both, were interviewed separately -- at their own request, I wonder? -- and weren't half as irritating.)

The only one of the four musicals I've seen is Caroline, or Change, which is powerful, moving, and highly original. I saw it in 2003 at the off-Broadway Public Theater before it went uptown -- a stage of its development (and success) that the movie strangely ignores.

One of the most enjoyable parts of the documentary is seeing the novice composer and lyricist of Avenue Q, who remain unaffected, wide-eyed, appreciative, and sweet throughout their odyssey, culminating in the Tony Award for best musical. Here's hoping they remain so. I'd like to see their show.

***

I have an ambivalent relationship with musicals. My interest is still more anthropological -- both toward their aficionados and their practitioners -- than truly passionate (with some notable, and very personal, exceptions).

A dozen years ago, I published an essay that explored this very topic. I described how, as I kid, I lip-synched along to records of musicals and danced around the living room when the rest of the family was out. Then, in time, I began to suppress all of that as I approached puberty and started to have fearful clues that I was a homo. As I grew into a openly gay man -- who might have finally celebrated this fabulous side of himself -- I realized that the "musical queen" in me was buried so far down that he barely existed anymore.

The opening of my essay describes me as an adult visiting a Greenwich Village piano bar with a friend. Everyone in the place is singing along to Sondheim and other musical numbers that I don't have a clue about. Later in the essay, reflecting on the boy in me who used to love musicals, I write:

But what happened to the other life -- the imagined costumes, the songs, the delicate flutter of a hand or the strong crescendo-lash of an arm before a mirror . . . ? It died. And I don’t actively miss it, except for those times when I realize how much a part of me it once was. Then I get the strange feeling that it misses me.

Well, twelve years down the road, I have to say that the queen is climbing his way up again from the darkness. He does miss me -- I was right about that! And I find myself reaching toward him a little bit from my end. I even saw a Sondheim show a few years ago.

Like someone who receives an e-mail from a childhood friend who suggests getting together for a cup of coffee, I've been more and more game to catch up. It's true that it's hard to reignite those long-ago friendships -- so much water under the bridge and all. But you never know.

Ireland, the Grand Tour

2007-06-24T11:47:00.000-05:00

Friday, Belfast. Saturday, Dublin.

Last night I saw the bittersweetly lilting Irish movie Once, about a busker in Dublin and a young Czech woman he meets. I loved it. My "companion" wasn't quite as enamored of it as I was -- mainly, I think, because the music didn't have the, um, staying power for him that it did for me -- though he conceded in the end that the movie was pretty good. I conceded that Glen Hansard's singing -- he's lead singer of the Frames, a band I've somehow been unfamiliar with till now, even though they've been together since 1990 -- bears some superficial resemblance to that of James Blunt (whom my friend likes). The difference is that James Blunt's voice makes me want to scour my eardrums out with a melon baller every time I hear it. I very much liked Hansard's passionate singing and found his costar, Markéta Irglová (only nineteen years old, I just discovered), equally winning and authentic.

Two thumbs up -- way up! ;)

Big Play

2007-06-23T13:01:00.000-05:00

I saw an extraordinary play last night, Scenes from the Big Picture by Owen McCafferty. It was put on by the DC company Solas Nua, which is devoted to contemporary Irish works. The play depicted a day in the life of Belfast, with a cast of twenty performing in a scrappy, smallish space at Catholic University.

It sounds a little lowbrow to express amazement when an actor gets a foreign accent down accurately. How many times has that been the first thing you've heard someone compliment Meryl Streep on? It's true there's so much more to a dramatic portrayal, but when the accent isn't quite right, or when it comes and goes at random, it's a distraction that can last the duration of the play. In this one, every member of the mostly American (and local) cast had a completely consistent and believable Northern Irish accent, which isn't the typical "Always after me Lucky Charms!" brogue that Americans usually associate with Ireland.

Scenes from the Big Picture builds from the quotidian to the riveting over about two and a half hours. It has almost nothing to do with Belfast's "troubles" -- the words "Catholic" and "Protestant" are never uttered, and only one or two of the many interweaving stories have (maybe) a connection to the political/religious divides that Northern Ireland is notorious for. These characters' troubles range from drug addiction to infidelity to loneliness to loss. Plenty to relate to, yet you feel that they could take place nowhere other than where they do.

The friendly fellow next to me had returned to see the play a second time. I would consider doing that myself if it weren't both closing tomorrow and sold out for the remaining performances. I will, however, be back for Solas Nua's next production.

No Meat, Please, I'm Vegetarian -- and Pierced . . . and Have a Shaved Head . . . and a Weird Little Patch of Hair Below My Lip

2007-06-19T22:33:00.000-05:00

My vegetarian readers may be as interested as I was to learn that New York Times food writer Mark Bittman has a new cookbook coming out in October, How to Cook Everything Vegetarian.

His more general book, How to Cook Everything, has become my favorite basic (non-vegetarian) cookbook -- far superior to the old standby Joy of Cooking (whichever version of that one you have; there are as many generations of Joy of Cooking as I understand there are of Nancy Drew mysteries). Bittman's recipes have never steered me wrong, so I'm excited to see he's devoted 1,008 pages to meat-free dishes (even though he's not vegetarian himself).

Publisher's Weekly says about the new cookbook: "Even owners of the original book will find much new to savor while benefiting from Bittman's remarkable ability to teach foundational skills and encourage innovation with them, which will help even longtime vegetarians freshen their repertory."

***

I could use some veggie empowerment, because I'm joining several people from my office for a half-day meeting/retreat next Tuesday at this restaurant, a very nice place I've never been to that specializes in Southern Low Country cuisine -- a.k.a. meat, seafood, and other animal products. There's one vegetarian entree on the menu. It looks perfectly good, but it would be nice to have more than one option.

Once again I find myself mildly annoyed at the insensitivity of colleagues about (1) what vegetarianism means (it does not mean I eat fish) or (2) the fact that there's a vegetarian on the staff in the first place (actually, there's more than one, but I'm the only one at this meeting). That would be me -- the single, gay, artsy, pierced, soul-patched, shaved-head (currently growing the hair out a bit) introvert in the corner.

Speaking of which, here's something interesting (and related): A few years ago, I published an essay that included the following passage:

One afternoon at the office lunch table, my first job out of college, the conversation turned to a client who’d been in that morning. He was in his thirties, casually dressed, irreverent, chatty, highly caffeinated. This was noticeable in a workplace of Brooks Brothers, Talbots, and Laura Ashley. He also wore a gold hoop on his left ear.

“You know what my kids tell me,” a coworker—the mother of teenagers—chirped in apparent relief. “Left is right, and right is wrong!”

I detested this woman for reasons that were only reinforced by those words. Hearing an aphorism for the proper side for a man to wear an earring on—“spring forward, fall back,” “i before e, except after c”—made me resentful, but also cautious: If I ever did submit to a piercing gun, I knew it would be on the left ear.*

Well, nearly 25 years later, after a number of years away, I now work in the very same office again. Just the other day, the very same "client" I described in that essay came up in conversation among some coworkers. (He's now a fairly prominent writer living in another city.) Once again -- nearly 25 years later -- they were off and running, talking about how "edgy" he was, what with his pierced ear and shaved head and all!

Jesus. Last time I checked, it was the 21st century.

__________
* In fact, as the essay goes on to describe, when it came time for my first pierced ear, I had the right one -- the "gay" one -- pierced. I later had the left one pierced as well, wore two earrings for a time, then one, then none, then my holes closed up. A few years later, after breaking up with my ex, I had my right one pierced again. And so it remains today, with a thin silver hoop in it.

Long Time Gone

2007-06-18T23:37:00.000-05:00

AWOL again -- sorry.

These days are turning out to be a time of transition for me. I'm not always even sure what I'm transitioning to. In addition to the ongoing creation of and settling into my new home, I'm starting up another (knock on wood) blog under my real name and with a more specific focus than this one (which I will continue, even though you might not know it at the rate I've been posting). The new blog is related to some professional and creative ambitions I have -- a step toward forging a new direction, you might say. I was working on it tonight. I'm sorry to say, though, that I won't be linking to it from here, as I want to keep this one anonymous and personal.

I've also been contemplating proposing a somewhat different position for myself at work. It may turn out to be moot (I'm aware that I, and almost everyone else in the world, misuse the word "moot" according to the dictionary definition, but it's such a . . . convenient word, even when misused; and it rhymes with "cute"). That's all I'll say for now. It's very likely nothing will change, but it could. Unless I decide not to play those cards, which is a distinct possibility. It may not be the right move even if the opportunity does arise.

Anyway. Transition. I'm 45 years old -- does that mean anything? I think it definitely qualifies as midlife.