Saturday, December 23, 2006

Observation

When all you have is a hammer, the maxim tells us, everything begins to look like a nail.

The same thing is essentially true when you buy a new cordless drill.

Or, especially, a label-making machine.

Monday, May 09, 2005

I’d stick it on my rear

I'm not really big on ribbons—yellow, white, camouflage, whatever—but if someone made a magnetic car bumper decoration shaped like a jock strap with the legend "SUPPORT OUR ATHLETES", I'd buy it.

Friday, June 25, 2004

I Put My Hand In

A helpful tip for the musical comedy fan who happens to find himself in the "adult" section of his local video rental establishment: Do not get excited if you see a cassette titled I Put My Hand In. It is not — I repeat, not — a sequel to Hello, Dolly.

Thursday, June 24, 2004

Pride Floats You Won’t See

This weekend — the last of June — is, of course, the traditional observance of Gay Pride in the United States, which means Saturday and Sunday in cities across this great nation, millions of homosexuals will line the streets to witness the annual "Pride Parade" in their hometown.

(This used to be called a "Pride March" in the days before twinks took over the organizing committees and focused more on which obliquely famous, one-hit-wonder disco diva would headline the main stage and less on any political or social aim. Now it's a "parade" or, as my friend Norman once quipped, "the funeral procession for the death of taste".)

Surprisingly, though, amid the fearsome bare-chested lesbians, drag queens female illusionists, tweaked-out shirtless club kids simulating anal sex, and leathermen who seem to be perennial darlings of evening news photographers, there are still some parade floats and marching units you won't see.

• Folsom Street Tribute to the Men of Abu Gharib


• Twelve-Step Two-Steppers Recovery & Square Dance Club


• Gay Men Against Their Mothers Finding Out Gay Marriage Is Actually Legal Someplace


• Disney's Drag Extravaganza: Welcome to the Mulan Rouge


• The Gay Men Over 40 "Proud to Be Your Pity Fuck" Flag Brigade


• Don't Panic Presents "25 Years of Rainbow-Colored Crap"


• Association of Gay Men's Choruses Who Refuse to Perform Judy Garland Medleys


• Log Cabin Lesbians For Bush


• The New Closet: Guys Who Secretly Can't Stand Margaret Cho


• ACT-UP Alumni "Bring Back the Righteously Earnest Buzzcut" Campaign


• Black and White Men In Support of Martha: The Down Low Meets the Down Duvet


• Queer Equestrian League Salute to Barebacking

Of course, that last one would follow the inevitable "Dykes on Bikes" contingent. I like to think it would be called "Fags on Nags".

Monday, April 05, 2004

It’s a raft tonight

The smoke, at once sweet and acrid, curls around my head in the dim light leaking into the room from the door. The house is quiet; there's no sound at all, in fact, except the arrhythmic rattle of a tree branch blown in the wind against the window frame.

Derrick has stopped stirring beside me and sleeps quietly too, in that mysterious, almost deathly way he has. I could put my hand on his chest and feel the beat of his heart, so slow now as to be almost imperceptible. I'm amazed once more at how he can thrash so much before sleep just seems to crash down on top of him and still his body instantly.

I am trying to think how to answer his question, those final few words I could make out as he shivered and convulsed lightly before plummeting into dreams. Derrick talks in his sleep, but only in those few moments of frenzy, and rarely intelligibly. A few selected phrases, gathered in my memory over a period of weeks and months, seem to have some bearing on his waking life, but we never discuss them in the mornings that follow.

It's been over a month since we've shared a bed and tonight's question, delivered hoarsely but with a recognizable rise in pitch at the end, is the continuation of a conversation we had the last time, an uncharacteristic sharing of intimate secrets.

I turn the question over in my mind. "Is it an airplane or a boat tonight, do you think?"

For me, it is almost always a boat, a raft, actually. Tonight, it will be raft again.

It was only the fifth time we'd managed to get together, our work and travel schedules happily lining up to give us a night uninterrupted. The sex was fantastic, athletic even, as it had been from the first, and when we finally collapsed, breathless, into each other's arms, Derrick was giggling, giddy, his face flushed like a little boy who's been tickled until he can't catch his breath.

It did feel a little like a schoolboy sleepover, the way we'd rough-house and wrestle until finally everyone just fell back on their sleeping bags and told ghost stories in the dark. I said as much and Derrick laughed again.

We talked about our boyhood dreams and the things we thought we'd be when we were older, when we became the men we are now. We talked about the make-believe battles we fought in the backyard and the pup tents and Scout troops and I told Derrick about the raft.

"A lot of nights, before I turned out the lights and went to sleep, I'd sit in my bed with pillows propped around me, my legs stretched all the way out and I'd imagine that my bed was a raft on the river," I said. "I'd conjure up the Mississippi or the Missouri all around the edges of the bed and picture a clear, cool, starlit night. I'd listen as hard as I could, particularly in the summer when the windows were up and the breeze carried the sounds of crickets and cicadas and owls into the house.

"And then I'd switch off the lamp and roll onto my side and pull the sheets around me and close my eyes and float away. Just me and my raft and the river, floating away until I fell asleep."

Derrick smiled at this, I remember. "Like Tom and Huck," he said.

"One or the other," I said.

"All alone, out there on the river? It's a big place for a little boy, all by himself."

I still do it, I told him. Even when you -- or someone else -- is here with me, I still try to make the river real, to just float by myself until sleep takes me.

We were quiet for a minute. "That must seem pretty silly," I said. "A grown man fancying himself Huck Finn to go beddy-bye."

"It's not silly," Derrick said, and then he was silent for a minute more.

"I do it too."

I shifted to look at him, gently running my fingers along his forehead. "You do?"

"For me, it's an airplane. Or a spaceship. I'm the pilot -- I see it in my mind, flying -- and all my passengers and crew are below. We soar and I think about the places I want to go, the places a plane can take me or the stars we might explore someday."

That might explain your tossing about, I say. "The passengers must get a thrilling ride, with all those barrel-rolls you do in your sleep."

He laughs again and I can see Derrick, age 8, and Derrick, age 28, guiding his airplane of sheets and covers through the clouds. I wonder if I could fly at night, why I never have. I wonder if I might be able to look up from my raft and see him speeding across the sky as I drift lazily along, taken by the current. "Why don't you try to fly someday?" he asks.

"I just might," I say.

We've worn ourselves out and the day is closer than it should comfortably be. We keep hold of each other and for a while, I let myself be carried along by his restlessness until finally he sleeps and, I presume, is carried aloft in his dreams. And I push back from the shore and give myself up to the river.

And now, all these weeks later, as he takes flight he wants to know. Is it an airplane or a boat?

I don't think I've ever told anyone else about my river excursions; certainly I'd never admitted they're still almost nightly departures, 30 years after the first. And I needn't think very hard, nor do I wish to, about what it means that my nocturnal fantasies take me away to solitude, with a destination left to the whimsy of the water while this clever, coltish man's take him to the skies with dozens in his wake, on a course set by his own imagination.

It's a raft, of course, and the stars are just coming out.

I take one last drag on the joint, stub it out and settle beneath the sheets.

"It's a raft tonight," I whisper. "But I'll try to fly someday."

Monday, February 02, 2004

Big Shots

Thursday, January 08, 2004

Less a(ttra)ctive

A few weeks ago, I was chatting with a friend of mine, a celebrated writer and fellatio novice who is, despite getting a late start on the hobby, quickly mastering the rudiments and, apparently, taking every opportunity to refine the craft.

Naturally, I applaud his industry and initiative. I think I may even have mentioned once or twice looking forward to contributing to his research into this most practical of arts.

Anyway, in the course of conversation, he raised the topic of the dreaded "gag reflex" and means by which to mitigate it. Without a second's hesitation, I reeled off two bits of advice. First, I said, like anything, practice is essential. With time and repetition, nearly anything becomes easier and more comfortably accomplished. This is as true of mansex as it is of multiplication tables.

Second, I quickly added, the gag reflex is "less active" in the morning, suggesting yet another in the long list of pleasures to be derived from wake-up sex.

Now, I think the speed with which my answer came may have given it some credence, some mantle of authority, like a long-established fact that lives on the forebrain and waits to be recited. The trouble is, I have no idea if it's true, physiologically speaking.

I know, you're not supposed to believe everything you read and certainly, that's seldom a problem for me, since I rarely even retain most of what I read. But the "fact" that the tendency to choke up a bit when things aren't proceeding down one's gullet as smoothly as they might be is less pronounced in the early hours of daylight? That's something I first read (or, as will quickly be made plain, misread) almost 20 years ago.

It was right there in black and white on the pages of The Joy of Gay Sex, the original 1977 edition, prized today not for its subject matter, much of which was either laughably obvious or dangerously incorrect, but for it's lavish and artistic -- no, really! -- illustrations. Subsequent editions of the volume, which is still in print, have retained too much of the outdated original text and all but eliminated the beautifully rendered pictures and diagrams. I don't recommend it as a primer.

I see that I made generous notes on my reading in my personal journal from the era and, despite having already more or less grasped and in some cases carried out the basics of the operation, I clearly learned a lot from the book.

It was the summer of 1985 and a few weeks before, I'd walked into the Waldenbooks of a suburban shopping mall and, before continuing on to the arcade where I'd spend the rest on futile round after round of Dragon's Lair, I marched up to the counter, bold as brass and plunked down a week's lawnmowing wages to buy it. I still shudder a little bit at the relative courage that required of me, and I still marvel that such a book was even stocked in the, I thought, unenlightened backwoods of northeast Missouri.

Anyway, that's what it said, along with a whole host of other things: "The gag reflex tends to be less active in the morning." I would have taken that knowledge and added it to the growing register of things I knew about who I was and what I very definitely wanted but for one small detail.

I've told you what it said. What I read, however, was: "The gag reflex tends to be less attractive in the morning."

I am chagrined to admit that, because a couple of years later I lent the book to a friend in Texas and it was never returned, it was almost 10 years before I ran across a copy of the book in a secondhand shop in Chicago, reread the passage in question and discovered my error. Yes, although it may tarnish my reputation as a cultural and sexual sophisticate, I spent my late teens and early 20s believing that kecking a bit while sucking cock was an unwelcome foible first thing in the A.M. but, just perhaps, considered excusable after sundown.

The thing is, now that I put it all down in words, I'm not entirely sure that both interpretations don't have some merit.

Friday, December 26, 2003

A holiday miracle

And so it came to pass that one of the guests at the party complimented us on the ecumenical decorations, fawning over the pine boughs and holly and the glittering tree and the "lovely midori" on the mantle.

"Because the real miracle," Mark later reminded me, "was that after eight days, even though all the green liqueur was gone, the Jews continued to drink. Until Juda Macabee could get to a package store or something."

Me? I prefer the festival of light beers.

Wednesday, December 24, 2003

Creatures and stirrings

There's a darting movement on the periphery of my vision and I look up from my reading just in time to see a small grey mouse zip across the floor. It disappears in the moment it takes for my mind to find the word "mouse" and I spend the next few minutes puzzling over the questions: where did it come from? where did it go?

Another minute or two and I realize what it was doing. It was stirring. You have to laugh when something like that occurs to you, and I did. It's the night before Christmas and, in this house, at least, a mouse is stirring.

Take that, Clement Moore.

The place is over a hundred years old, so I shouldn't be surprised if there are more little creatures not listed on the deed who have nonetheless set up housekeeping here. Still, tomorrow maybe I'll poke around and see if I can't scare up some sort of trap. A humane one, naturally, catch and release, in the spirit of the season.

I have had, perhaps against reason, a good deal of that spirit in the past few weeks, finding myself smiling a great deal and cheerily shopping and wishing for snow and even whistling carols.

This upbeat attitude puts me at odds with a lot of my friends this year, it seems. At least a handful have told me over drinks or in hurried street corner conversations that they "just can't wait for Christmas to be over with". Another dozen or so have said, while admiring mine, that they simply couldn't find time to put up a tree this year. "I managed to dig a wreath out of the closet," a co-worker confided to me today. "I'll put it on the door tonight. That's the best I can do."

I understand. We're all busy, hewing to harried schedules, real or imagined. I don't believe in enforced merriment or mandated decoration or observance of any secular or religious ritual you aren't 100 percent comfortable with or able to wedge into your lifestyle. If Christmas feels like a chore, you're doing it wrong anyway and probably should stop.

Still, it's a little disappointing, I guess, in a year when I actually managed to pull it all together, to decorate, send cards, give gifts, bake cookies, visit friends and have some semblance of goodwill toward my fellow human consistent with the ubiquitous songs...well, yes, it's disappointing that everyone else isn't right there with me.

Saturday before last was a near perfect day, with snow falling as I rushed around making preparations for what turned out to be a lovely party on Sunday night. As I went store to store, it seemed as though everyone was there with me, in the holiday moment, greeting me with smiles, extending good wishes, saying "please" and "pardon me" and "thank you" instead of elbowing their way through the aisles and scowling, drenched in humbug.

I remembered the same pre-party routine from a Christmas seven years ago, the snow, the shopping, the smiles and all, except it was accomplished alongside a man with whom I was truly, deeply in love. It says something, I think, that the memory came this year with feelings of warmth and nostalgia, not heat and bitterness.

And afterward, with my car packed literally to the roof with food and parcels, a convivial cocktail hour with almost all of the old gang, even the former couple formerly known as The Twins, no longer estranged but not quite ready to consider making the leap toward giving it another go. Even if they do, they'll probably never be The Twins again anyway. Jerry's a blond now and, for the rest of us, the experience of seeing them separately these past few months has reminded us they're individuals and don't really look that much alike anyway.

For me, the twins are now those little miracles who did the impossible: civilized Jeff. I spent a nervous three or four hours alone with them a few weeks ago, doing my avuncular duty while Jackie and Jill got some precious "alone time" to do some shopping and visit friends.

I'm not particularly keen on children; they don't drink and are not, as a rule, interesting dinner companions. But a teensy part of me looks into the sparkling eyes of these specific kids -- one of whom bears my name, by the way, and is clearly the smarter, prettier one -- and can't help but love the messy little spit-and-shit factories my friends have made. The larger, pragmatic part of me whispers in their ears, subliminally reminding them of their obligation to look after their godfather and titular uncle in his dottage.

Erik claps me on the back, buys me a Scotch and hands me a brightly colored gift bag which turns out to be a sex toy we joked about at a shop in Chicago months ago. "It's a gag gift," he brays, "literally!" An hour or so later, The Giant Queen pulls his chair alongside mine and lowers his voice, hardly necessary with the noise in the bar of diners waiting for tables.

"You seem tired," he says. "Are you still having sleepless nights?"

I am tired, I allow, but it's because the day has been full and I've still got cleaning and baking on the agenda before a few dozen folks descend on my house tomorrow. "I'm sleeping fine," I add, "when I remember to do it."

For a while, it's true, I was having trouble. It wasn't tossing and turning. It was not even getting into bed. Three days at a stretch in one case, and I was really worried for both my health and sanity.

I eventually ascribed my insomnia to a sort of generalized anxiety, a fear of the world brought on by just too much exposure to it. In a year when a friend gets sent to prison, another's car is stolen, one is beaten and another sent to war, you start to wonder "what's next?" and the wondering leads to fear and the fear to nights restlessly pacing the floor, now and then glancing out the window.

Two years ago, everyone seemed to be crowing that the world had fundamentally and irrevocably changed, that nothing would ever be the same again, that our society, humanity and decency teetered on a cliff and any moment could tip into the abyss. That's enough to keep Sominex on your tongue all the time.

Eventually, though, you realize -- or I did, anyway -- that nothing has changed at all, not really. My world is exactly as it was on September 10, 2001, and the main reason is that I am surrounded by wonderful, generous, funny friends who I love and who, even when I taunt them mercilessly, manage somehow to love me back. That's all I need to make a world, although I'm blessed with so much more. The scary parts, the bad parts, the unjust and evil and ugly parts, they don't matter much when good people have got your back.

The Giant Queen chuckles. "You can be a real fucking Hallmark card sometimes, can't you?" he says.

I bop him on the head with Erik's gift.

"OK," he allows. "Maybe you're more from the Shoebox line." We light cigars, push back from the bar, and rejoin the rest of the reasons I'm sleeping well again.

Tuesday, December 23, 2003

A Hairdresser?!

I'm so tired of it, sometimes. Ya know? The whole fucking routine?

That's what I told Kevin tonight, twice, not that he listened. Too busy staring at the green eyes which were, in turn, staring at his chest. Whatever.

Maybe if I'd spent the past five years somewhere else, doing something else. Doubtful, but just maybe.

Tired of being outclassed by the declasse. Tired of being outsmarted by the profoundly stupid. Tired of being deep-sixed by the unfathomably shallow.

"Yeah," he said, and turned back to the fellow with the inelegant highlights. You'd think a hairdresser would, at least, have better hair.

The Giant Queen had another drink waiting for me when I wandered back. "Red hair and an elaborate tattoo," he said. "You're awfully predictable."

"And?" I said.

"Much smarter and prettier than him."

That's the kind of talk that makes you glad you sprung for the Moet. Them's the words that forge a friendship no boy can shake.

Tuesday, December 09, 2003

Secrets and lies

I thought about it last night, about you, about me.

It scared the shit out of me at the time, back then, and really, what's the most frightening thing of all but the thing you want most handed to you? Because once you have it, what else is there to wish for or work toward or hold with? So yes, it scared me and clearly, it scared you because while I went past my fear, brushed the horror with my shoulder and plowed ahead, you gave in to it and ran away.

Everytime you think it's gone, that feeling, that remorse, that "what if?" speculation of heart and stretching of sinew reaching out to romance, straining until muscles corded under skin so thin you fear it would burst -- every time you snap back and wonder about it. You push and then remember you pushed before. Was it too hard or not hard enough? Assertive or timid? Was it the right time at the wrong place, or the right words with the wrong man, or the wrong belief in the wrong church?

Your timing is even worse than mine, you choosing to come back now, to revisit this, to reopen negotiations from the distance. I stand accused by friends and family of turning my back on love, of giving up and giving in to what is easy -- sensation, touch, in and out before the image can even register.

I hear them talk about the bloodlessness of it, the callowness of what must be...empty? Wan and wanting for nothing more than a...

The accusation has some merit, perhaps, but they have no standing, no cause to make it, because they have evidence of only the most circumstantial sort. And they will not ask further questions, will not go beneath the surface because they are afraid of the torn cloth, the blood and bloodlessness, the awful, messy, uncoordinated and unbeautiful truth. They will not beg certiorari to know what's gone before, because even though they don't know what it is or was, they believe it is not for them to know, not necessary to pass the judgement.

I wish you were serious about it. You must be, and perhaps you will, someday. Your hand in mine as we sleep. Hold me when I bleed, kiss me when I cry, lift me when I fall. You're more now than you were before, more than you imagined you could be then.

But it's not enough, not yet. Not enough for you. And certainly less than I'm willing to accept.

Turn my back on love? As if I could. How hard I've tried and how grandly I've failed. I have failed to do anything but stalk it and stand before it and stare at it, unmoving, a fixed point in the future, as steady as I am not. I have seen love, three times, and, knowing I will not see it again, I have chosen to keep it in my crosshairs.

Whatever the cost.

Monday, December 08, 2003

Paul Bearer

I shed a tear when Dr. Romano, the pissy surgeon from the television show ER, was killed in an episode a few weeks ago. Not because I liked the character; I didn't, and was glad to see the one-note Robby go. I like actor Paul McCrane, though. I mean, come on, he's a redhead.

No, I cried when Romano perished in a fiery cataclysm of raining helicopter wreckage because of a single thought that occurred to me: "Shit. We'll have to change the song."

You see, Paul McCrane played the shy, conflicted Montgomery MacNeil in the movie Fame. It's pretty much where he got his big break. His big singing moment in the film comes about midway through, with the folkish ballad, "The Dogs in the Yard". But at the end of the film, in the big graduation sequence, Monty joins his classmates to sing "The Body Electric," a rock fusion bastardization of Walt Whitman's poem, with some ballet, modern dance and tambourines thrown in for good measure.

Monty sings:

I sing the body electric
I glory in the glow of rebirth
Creating my own tomorrow
When I shall embody the earth

And every week for the past several years, when that video clip has been played at a local watering hole where show tunes are second only to boy watching as the primary entertainment, my buddies and I have drowned out Paul McCrane with our own lyrics:

I got my start in this movie,
But nowadays, I star on ER.
I play a really bad doctor
So tape me on your VCR

So, yeah, given that Romano is now a little grease spot in the ambulance bay at TV's Cook County Hospital, we've got to revise the ditty. Here's my first stab at it which, unfortunately, we can't debut for another week or so, since not all of the ersatz choir has caught up with their Tivo backlog:

I got my start in this movie,
And then went on to star in ER.
I played a really bad doctor,
But now my remains are all charred.

Ya think? Okay, perhaps not, but you've got to hear it sung by a dozen drunken show queens in a crowded bar, in perhaps as many keys.

Sigh. Poor Paul McCrane. First that unfortunate Fame perm, then getting dumped in acid in Robocop, absorbed by the Blob, forced to squander his talent as a putrescent doctor on TV, and now dogged by our doggerel. He just can't catch a break.

Wednesday, August 20, 2003

Three blocks to the bar

It takes me 15 minutes tooling around the West End to find a parking place, and a full 30 seconds after turning off the ignition to burst into tears. For some reason, I can't get the song "Wild Boys" out of my head -- I've been hearing it since I put down the phone -- and Duran Duran is starting to piss me off. Lucky, I guess, there's a clean napkin under last Friday's takeout box. I staunch the flow, glance in the rearview, feed the meter and go.

Three blocks to the bar. I should have just called, but I can't think of much to say except invective. Breath. Door. Grin.

This place is crowded again. Is happy hour coming back in style? Scan the crowd. There he is.

"You look like hell," says The Giant Queen.

"Oh good," I say, "because I've been trying to find a look that works for me. Listen, I just came by to say I can't stay. I don't feel much--"

And a drink arrives. No quick exits. The curse of the regular. "I don't feel much like being around people right now." A look of concern. Genuine. "I love you, you know, but I can't stay." Sit. Sip. Breath.

"Do you want--"

Of course I don't want to talk about it. If I talk about it, I'll become rationally angry, which is worse than being irrationally angry. Reason, though easier to grip, is less cathartic.

"No. Thanks." Breath. "I had to park three blocks from here."

"Drink up. We'll go back to my place. Chad's off for the night. We can watch Queer Eye. I Tivoed it last night."

Who are these people?

"At lunch today," I say, "Paul told me he thought that program is nothing more than a gay minstrel show."

"Did he? I hope you had the sense not to--"

"To tell him that his stupid, bitchy Saturday night stage monologues are trite, crass and do more to demean gay people than any summer basic cable TV show ever could?"

Breath.

"No," I admit. "You'd think I'd have more sense than that."

"Well..."

"I do adore that show," I say. "I even learn things. Like, did you know that bit about putting hair product in from the back and working forward? I had no idea."

The Giant Queen lays a hand on my closely-cropped skull. "News you can use."

"And Carson Kressley is hardly a gay Steppin Fetchit." Damn. I've started. "He's not even Prancen Fetchit. He's Paul Lynde with much better fashion sense and no need for writers. It's a goddamned--"

Anyway. Breath.

"I wish," I say, "that Bravo or somebody would come out with a makeover show hosted by Arianna Huffington, Liza Minnelli and Nicole Kidman. They could call it A Straight Eye for the Queer Guys. Hell, they know better than Kyan how a beard likes to be treated, at least."

Sip.

"It's the same fuss Paul and everyone else raised about Queer as Folk," The Giant Queen says. "They want those shows to be all things to all faggots. Jupiter forbid anyone on TV should be fey or promiscuous or--"

"Like we don't all know a few dozen fey, promiscuous, club toys who think they have impeccable taste. In fact--"

"You do not have impeccable taste," says Jeff, arriving and falling into a chair with oblivious comic timing that Jennifer Aniston would kill for. "Let's talk about that tie for a start. And oh my Lord and Taylor, what do you exfoliate with? A belt sander?!"

"Q-fucking-E-D," says The Giant Queen.

The glass is empty. "I have to go," I say. Stand up. "I'll call you. Next week, maybe. I need to be a bear for a while." Hibernate. They know what it means.

Old shorthand. Friends I've never doubted.

Jeff looks chastened. Close, anyway. "Honey, are you--"

"Not really, no," I say. "I just need to be alone for a while. I can't--"

I realize, suddenly, that I've stuffed my hands in my pockets. I find the napkin. Blink. Breath. Here it comes.

"I'll call you. Next week."

Three blocks to the car.

Friday, July 25, 2003

Where have you Ben?

This would have to happen just after I've pitched a 16-pack of Charmin into my cart, the four-by-four stack of plastic wrapped, double-roll "bathroom tissue" towering above the top of the basket. I duck around the corner into the next aisle but, soon enough, he's there too, the cutest guy in the store and he's headed my way.

It seems like I'm the grocery nearly every day recently, Schnucks mostly (motto: "Not just the friendliest stores in town, the only damn stores in town."), since my chaotic schedule leaves me with little idea when I'll be dining at home. I used to buy a whole week's provisions at once -- ah, those halcyon days of three months ago -- but now I'm doing the Mary Richards thing daily, tossing single-serving soups and Salad-in-a-Sack into my cart before hitting the self-serve checkouts.

This everyday marketing serves some appealing parts of my personality; I always get the freshest goods, I get a frequent dose of eye candy to satisfy my harmless bagboy fantasy fetish and, in these austere times, I never feel as though I'm dropping half my salary on food and household goods when I dribble it out a few dollars at a time.

The downside, though, is that it presents opportunities for embarrassment just like this more often. I'm being half-stalked through the store by a hottie when I'm buying discommodious (pardon the pun) personal items.

Why am I mortified to be discovered purchasing toilet paper? I don't know! Maybe it's just because we're societally encouraged to keep our bodily functions private. To never acknowledge that the loo even exists. Remember what a scandal it was to hear a commode flush on All in the Family? But we're all in the same boat, after all, and it's the little dinghy of that chipper sailor boy from the 1970s Tidy-Bowl commercials. Everyone, we are reminded even by children's literature, poops.

I guess I'm just a bit squeamish being reminded of it and even moreso when faced with the prospect of cruising a desirable fellow while toting along a bulk package that practically screams, "Yes, everyone poops! Especially me! Look! I must stock up for I defecate in astonishing volume!"

Yes, this is exactly the sort of thing that goes through my mind on a regular basis. And you wonder why happy hour accounts for the second largest chunk of my wages after groceries?

I should get over it, I know. I'm sure I'm the only person in the world so neurotic about keeping up appearances in the market. I'll never forget running into my friend Mike Lockheed at Walgreens in the early 90s. It was late on a Friday afternoon and, as we chatted about beer and boys and pleasant combinations thereof, I noted that he had packed his handbasket with at least a half dozen Fleet bottles, a 36-pack of condoms and a copy of Men's Fitness or somesuch.

"I've got a big weekend ahead," Mike quipped with a wink as we parted. I stood there for a moment in the aisle, wondering if I could ever be so casual a shopper and reflecting that the "Power Bottom / Bottom Power" t-shirt I'd seen Mike wearing the previous Saturday night at Twist was probably the most truthful advertising I was likely to see all month.

Anyway, back at Schnucks, I'm frantically trying to steer my basket to a vacant aisle, hoping I can park it and then saunter back with poised nonchalance to take a pass -- and perhaps make one -- at the lovely lad who seems still to be shadowing me. I've just rushed through the dairy section and ducked into the shampoo aisle when I run into him -- literally, smacking him in the butt with the front of my cart.

In an instant, I'm apologizing so quickly that the words hardly sound like English. He turns to face me and I notice that his eyes are wide and impossibly blue and, I'm certain of it, focused on the gigantic mound of Charmin bobbing from side to side in the basket, all thoughts of squeezing anything else I might have immediately leaving his mind.

When I stop blathering and begin to move off, he says, "Hey, don't I know you from somewhere?" It sounds so much like a line that I almost laugh but, when I consider him further, I realize he's right. It's been five or six years since I last saw him and he's shed some pounds, clearly hit the gym pretty hard, but this is without a doubt the same guy I spent many late nights fruitlessly flirting with at the late-night copy shop near my house.

We spend a few minutes catching up, my awkwardness almost entirely vanishing when I glance at his cart to spy a tube of Preparation H tucked among the fresh greens and pork steak. That we're both buying ass items is a bizarre comfort, and soon we're casually chatting, then flirting, and then, we're having lattes at a nearby coffee bar.

And later we're having something else guaranteed to raise the heart rate even faster than caffeine, the "your place or mine?" question settled when Ben -- I remember his name shortly after our collision and think to myself that if only one of us had been buying Ben-Gay, this would be the perfect punny story -- suggests following me home since he "lives in a bad neighborhood."

We said goodnight around midnight, made noises about getting together again soon, and prepared to part, only to discover that Ben's car had been stolen from in front of my house. In my "good neighborhood".

He took it in stride, better than I probably would have and, fortunately, his groceries were still in my fridge. After all, the car was insured but they weren't. I took him home, offered him a ride to work the next day, and slipped him my phone number as he got out of the car.

And then I went to Schnucks. I'd forgotten to get milk earlier.

Thursday, July 24, 2003

What’s Ben going on?

"You've got the Bens," Jeffrey says, after hearing a weekend's worth of stories.

"I do!" I say. "I guess I didn't come up slowly enough."

"Or you went down too fast," he counters.

Trust me: That's never a problem.

But last weekend was strange. I mean, what are the odds? I hook up with two guys, both named Ben, on two consecutive days. One encounter ends awkwardly, as Ben the First departs to discover his car has been stolen from in front of my house.

The police officer who arrives to take the report? His last name is Benjamin.

The second evening begins bizarrely, as a fun flirtation turns into a conversation with a fellow who can only be described as "couth-free", but concludes with a coincidence that introduces Ben the Second.

"You're all about the Benjamins," Jeffrey says. And so I am.

Tomorrow: Where have you Ben for the last six years?
Next up: Ben, again.

Monday, June 23, 2003

At my acme

If I'd been paying attention earlier, I would have seen it plain as day but I have been, to put it mildly, distracted lately. Fortunately, the universe decided to throw me a curve ball, and it really got me back in the game.

Actually, what the universe really did was drop an anvil on my head, and I spent an hour walking around the neighborhood, compressed Wile E. Coyote-like into an accordian fold, wheezing out the tinny tune that's going to change my life.

At the end of my walk, I hadn't figured out what I want to be when I grow up, but I had determined who I want to be. And it's going to be a lot sooner.

Friday, June 20, 2003

Hey Sister, how’s it shakin’?

Rush Street, Chicago, Illinois
June 16, 2003

Monday, May 26, 2003

A glitch

He was already about half a block ahead of me when I hit the street and turned right, hurrying down Belmont toward Halsted. I wanted a better look, because I couldn't believe my eyes when I'd first spotted him on the platform, his impossibly blond head with a severe angle-cut soaring at least a foot and a half over the rest of the crowd.

Dressed completely in black with a flowing overcoat that whipped behind him in the wind coming up the street from the lakeside, he wore a pair of fuck-you sunglasses and drew on a European cigarette as he continued to make better time down the street than I would have figured anyone to be able, given he was also standing on five-inch platform heeled black boots.

He looked like the lead in an all-gay sequel to The Matrix, surging forward against the light without even looking left or right but managing to avoid cross traffic. Here, in the half-gritty, half-campy gateway to Boystown, was the quintessential Neo-fag, no doubt on his way to somewhere more fabulous than you. It was the first and likely last time I'll ever see someone actually sashay in bullet time.

Thursday, April 24, 2003

I’m a sick man

Three days of medicine head later and I've just about kicked the head cold — number eight this fiscal year, for those keeping score at home — that's been kicking my ass for the past few days. There's something about my constitution that has permitted me over the years to soldier on through an assortment of gruesome maladies — several strains of flu, torn ligaments, a particularly persistent allergic rash — but still to be felled, flat on my back, congested and cranky as hell with a common cold.

What can I say? I'm special.

Anyway, it's over, or very nearly. A good thing, too, because one day out of the office — the larger part of it spent in bed — and even I'm getting tired of me. Climbing the walls and clearing the TiVo: cabin fever for the 21st century.

There's nothing on this earth more tiresome and annoying than a sick man. Really. Forget the bunker busters. If they'd only managed to drop-ship eight or nine guys with sore throats, body ache and the sniffles into Saddam's concrete hideout, he'd have flung up his hands and surrendered inside of a day. Anything to get away from the whining, complaining and puppy-dog-eyed pleas for a sandwich, maybe, and some juice? Please?

Thursday, April 17, 2003

But only sometimes

Sometimes, I need more than I say I want and, certainly, want more than I say I need.

And no, that doesn't mean what you think it does. It certainly doesn't mean what I thought it did. Life can still surprise us, after all.

Tuesday, April 15, 2003

Spring

My pants have been a little tighter these past few days, and not just because my waist size continues its tradition of keeping pace with my age. No, spring is most definitely here, and this young man's fancy has turned to thoughts of — well, not love, but certainly some of my baser masculine instincts and desires.

In short, I'm gripped with a feral appetite to hump just about everything in sight.

Okay, okay, more of an appetite even than usual.

But of course I have an advantage over the lower orders — dogs, musk oxen, Republicans — granted to me by millions of years of evolution. I can manage my impulses. I have self-control. My brain can triumph in a titanic struggle with my cock and keep me from rampaging through the streets in a feast of utter carnality.

Except.

Except last week after a routine physical, my doctor announced I had a minor chemical imbalance and prescribed, to correct it, a drug that has, shall we say, a catalytic effect on the libido among its side-effects.

Catalytic, my ass! (Please!) The coming of spring notwithstanding, this little tube of gel is like concupiscence cream. Rub-on rapaciousness. It does not salve an itch, it creates one. And, I'll be honest here, I've been scratching that itch like crazy.

All of the foregoing is by way of explanation. If, over the next few weeks, you attempt to engage me in conversation and I seem distracted, inconscient, unheeding, unobservant, unglued or unzipped, I apologize. There's probably a curly-headed, auburn-locked boy in shorts I've spotted nearby. Or a UPS delivery guy. Or a loser I tricked with ten years ago and hoped never to see again but, dear me, has he been to the gym I mean just look at that ass maybe I'll just go over there and tear off that D&G monstrosity and gi—

What? Oh. I'm terribly sorry.

Anyway, if that happens, feel free to shake me, smack me, tie me up and—

Sorry. Sorry!

Just remind me that St. Louis spring is a capricious season. It'll be 40 degrees by the weekend and anyway, there's a long summer to slog through and plenty of time for frolicking ahead. You may also ask me, firmly but politely, to get off your leg.

Monday, April 14, 2003

A scary place

"Do you mind if I turn that off?" I ask, and he shakes his head gently. Why we've been watching the nightly episode of Shock 'n' Awe I'm not entirely sure, but it's been punctuating our casual conversation with "live updates" and "exclusive video" since we finished our last cocktails almost 45 minutes ago.

"Jesus, the world is a scary place right now," he says.

"Right now?"

"OK, scarier."

The TV off, the low hum of the ceiling fan is the only sound in the room except our breathing. The streetlights are out, again, and there's only three candles alight on the table at the foot of the bed so it's dim now too. If I felt like getting up to put The Kick Inside in the CD player, it'd almost be like I was back in college. Hell, back then, I even thought I was dating the man with the child in his eyes.

Hell, back then, I believed in dating.

Ben's head is resting on my chest and it's a nice sensation, a good pose, a pleasant picture. I like this moment, this one best of all. The before. Or the after, it doesn't much matter. The middle is just mechanics, sense memory with a little improvisation. This part — the before, in this case — is just sweet, but like most sweet things, I wouldn't want a steady diet of it.

"I like the way you smell when you wear this," he says.

Uh-oh.

It's just an old gray sweatshirt, the team logo faded about a thousand washes ago, the cuffs ragged, the collar stretched. It's the most comfortable piece of clothing I own, lived-in, the thing I pull on at night when I come home from the office and toss in the laundry maybe once a week.

And he...well, he's a former "independent contractor" who's become a friend with privileges and, over the past few months, started to get almost as comfortable. Almost. I still manage to keep a professional distance, tenuous but necessary. But from where he's sitting, he can hear my heart beating and I'm given up. He's got to know talk like that makes me nervous, fight-or-flight systems powered up and on standby.

A long silence then, while I stroke his arm and wait it out. The surest way to dodge a bullet is to make sure it doesn't leave the chamber. Finally, he glances up to meet my eyes. "What are you thinking about?"

"Direct Deposit."

He rolls his eyes and laughs. Another non sequitur. From me, of all people!

"No, seriously. I had to take my paycheck to the bank today, and that's no fun any longer since they transferred the cute teller. But anyway, I was thinking about Direct Deposit because I've got the opportunity to sign up for it again and I'm not sure I want to. Right now, I've got a few hours when I hold my wages in my hands, when I can feel them, sort of, when I can touch the real evidence that my work has tangible value."

"You don't want to give up control."

"No, that's not it. I don't have any control anyway. I use this computer program, called Quicken? God, that's an apt name for it. It automatically pays all my bills. The power, the phone, the house note. Quick, quick, quick, 24 hours after payday.

"It knows how much is supposed to come in and there's a little calendar in it, telling it how much to send out. How much to save. How much to send to Visa. That check I carry to the bank just feeds the machine. Balances the account. But if I get Direct Deposit, I lose that moment, that connection."

More quiet. "So you only wash this shirt once a week to, what? Save money?"

Oh what the hell. "No," I say. "I do that because you like the way I smell when I wear it."

Jesus, the world is a scary place right now.

Friday, April 04, 2003

Dichotomies

Juxtaposition reveals truth. Driving in a rented car, I punch the programmed button on the radio to discover that 93.7 FM is now "The Bull". A post-commercial bumper announces, with a musical flourish, "Here comes The Bull!", followed immediately by a calm voice disclaiming "I'm Lauren Smith with ClearChannel International News. Here's the latest update on the war in Iraq."

Words mean different things to different people. A gigantic SUV ahead of me on Elm bears a bumper sticker reading "Respect America. Protect America." with the words flanked by icons of an eagle and a fighter jet. A block before we get to Plymouth, the driver's side window rolls down and a Burger King bag packed with empty hamburger boxes and soft drink cups flies out, bounces off my windshield and lands in the roadside grass

Even I can find a way to support our troops. Actual personal ad spotted today: "Ex-USMC top seeks insatiable bottom to be embedded with my unit."

Wednesday, March 19, 2003

Don’t make me release the dog.

There is an etiquette to this sort of thing, gentlemen. I realize calling it "casual sex" is a bit misleading, but some things just aren't done.

Don't talk about the war. You were invited over for a weapon inspection only in the broadest of euphemistic senses. You are here to engage in a sort of congress, not to talk about Congress. To be perfectly candid, I am fucking you to forget, momentarily, about the state of the world in general.

In fact, don't talk at all. You are pretty but you are also likely to be profoundly stupid and/or Republican. Exclamations of "ooo!", "ahh!", "yeah!" and the like are acceptable, but I couldn't care less for chat about Kylie, your unfulfilling job, or how this is so much better than with your girlfriend. I'm well aware that it is. Just shut up.

Dress appropriately. I'm sorry they got ripped up but you know what? Spending $30 for a single pair of underpants is obscene anyway. I'm not impressed by fancy labels. Either go commando or wear the ones you use on laundry day. They won't be on long anyway.

Get out. This won't be a hurried thing, believe me. I'm pretty selfish in bed, I'll admit, but I'm a guy and that comes with the plumbing. You're just looking out for number one too, or you wouldn't be here. So an appropriate amount of time will be invested in making sure both parties remain in a full, upright and locked position until they reach their final destination. Then, please, towel off and leave. Don't make me release the dog.

I'm glad we got that cleared up.

Monday, March 10, 2003

Falling in love with a poor man

Excerpts from the semi-autobiographical novel by an anonymous author, as performed at Fray Café 3 at South by Southwest Interactive, Austin, Texas, yesterday:

From the Prologue:

I've stopped going to therapy.

I joke sometimes that the only reason I started seeing a shrink in the first place was so that I would finally have something in common with most of the people I meet at parties. But that's not true.

I started going to therapy because I honestly believed that I needed help sorting out my life. I honestly believe I still do, but I've stopped going to therapy.

Finding a suitable therapist was a chore in the first place. I've dated so many social workers and psychologists, and been friend to so many more, that managing to ferret out the last remaining mental health professional in the tri-state area who wasn't already intimately familiar with at least some aspect of my life was a major coup.

As a testament to their usefulness, I will cheerfully disclose that I found my prize in the Yellow Pages, "therapy" conveniently situated just a few pages south of "tanning." I had consulted the latter category first, having reached the conclusions that my pallid face needed color and that my addled mind needed professional psychiatric help almost simultaneously. The teeny-tiny part of me that is anal-retentive insisted on satisfying these needs alphabetically.

Besides, tanning is cheaper and requires somewhat less introspection.

I selected Dr. Linda Voller to be my guide back to Well-Adjusted Land on the basis of a time-tested criterion: she had the most tasteful and attractive advertisement in the directory. It was on this single qualification that I had chosen my last mechanic, barber and florist and I had been pleased with the results in all three instances. I was therefore not adequately prepared for Linda.

She greeted me at the door of her office wearing a pant suit that was impossibly pink, a shade of the color just this side of radioactive that left such an impression on my retinas that when I recovered sufficiently to examine my new doctor more completely, everything from her hair to her high heels (both of which were, I noticed, bright white) was bathed in a sort of rosy glow, an effect that was, at once, both comforting and disquieting.

* * * *

Anyway, I've stopped going to therapy. The cessation of treatment has nothing (well, little) to do with Dr. Linda's dress sense. I've stopped going to therapy because Dr. Linda Voller has succeeded, if not in leading me to the Promised Land of Mental Well-Being then at least putting my feet on the correct path toward it and giving me a swift kick in the seat to send me on my way.

It took only two sessions.

Dr. Linda listened attentively to two fifty-minute monologues as I recited my litany of woes, took (as near as I could tell) only a page and half of notes, and then, at the end of our second meeting told me something so patently obvious that in retrospect, it was easy for me to miss.

All of my problems, on some level, have to do with either clothing or music.

I could have saved myself hundreds of dollars, and the health of my retinas, by simply asking any random gay man who happened by. The diagnosis would have been the same.

* * * *

I am essentially an optimist and a romantic, and I am gay. It therefore probably goes without saying that my record collection is heavily weighted with original Broadway cast albums, collections of torchy ballads and the obligatory chart hits and disco. It is music predisposed toward cheerfulness, sunny attitudes about love, moon, June and boys with bodacious pecs. But I also own a small assortment of compact discs which I loosely categorize as "Music I Play to Torture Myself."

You probably know the sort of song I'm talking about. You may have a similar shelf next to your stereo. It is likely only a matter of time before this genre joins album rock and adult contemporary as a hot radio format.

It is the music I play when an affair reaches its inevitable end, and I find myself burrowed beneath the bed sheets, a variety of comfort food and tissue boxes arrayed at my side. It is my-man-done-done-me-wrong ditties. It is here-I-go-making-the-same-mistake-again harmony. It is music to mope by.

The Man Who Got Away. The Man I Love. In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning. "I thought I'd found the man of my dreams, now it seems this is how the story ends, he's gonna turn me down and say 'can't we be friends?'."

But when it comes to love, and love unrequited, and love-just-not-quite-quited, nobody but nobody beats Rodgers and Hart:

If they asked me, I could write a book
About the way you walk and whisper and look.
I could write a preface on how we met
So the world would never forget.
And the simple secret of the plot
Is just to tell you that I love you a lot.
And the world discovers, as my book ends,
How to make two lovers of friends.

Well. Nobody asked me, but this is the book I wrote.

* * * *

From chapter eight: "Love in the Time of College"

It was beginning to put on its fall finery, little bits and bangles of amber and orange mixed in amid its leafy greenness. It was certainly there in May when I moved into this room, but I hadn't taken note of it then, or appreciated how perfect it was. It was a perfect little tree, its perfect branches reaching just high enough to still allow me a view of the circle drive, the library beyond and the grassy expanse that separated them.

"Perfect," I thought. Maybe this year wouldn't be so bad after all.

I returned to school that fall hoping to put the preceding two terms far behind me. Academics aside, I had spent my sophomore year growing a beard and sleeping my way though the performing arts department. Neither endeavor had proven very satisfying. This year, I had promised myself, would be different. Better, I hoped.

I considered my newly discovered perfect tree to be a good omen. I had the tree and I had Eric Kendall. I thought Eric was perfect too.

Eric and I had met and become fast friends over the summer break because of a common past: we had both dated Michael briefly, and we had both — at different times and for different reasons — come to the conclusion that briefly was the best way to date Michael. For his part, Michael agreed with both of us.

* * * *

For the first part of the semester, Eric and I were inseparable — where's Brad? He's with Eric. Where's Eric? He's with Brad. We were quickly becoming not just friends, but best friends and it was quickly becoming the worst kept secret on campus that I was falling in love with Eric. Everyone knew it. Everyone but me and, I thought, Eric.

When I finally figured it out myself, I took, as usual, my own good time deciding how to proceed. Eric had gone home to Dallas for the midterm break and I resolved when he returned to put my cards on the table. I suggested lunch at a downtown restaurant, he accepted and I was mere moments from putting our friendship to the test with a profession of my love when Eric beat me to the punch, professing his instead. But not for me.

I switched gears from doting suitor to enthusiastically supportive friend with astonishing, if not convincing, speed. "That's wonderful," I lied, smiling wanly.

The next few weeks were as predictable as the last. Where's Eric? He's with James. Where's Brad? He's in his room, listening to Rodgers and Hart.

* * * *

We met walking along separate paths, me from my office in the BT after a marathon writing session and a budget meeting that had revealed more holes in our rundown than copy, Eric from a rehearsal at the arts complex.

The snow from the past week's unexpected storm was nearly gone and the wind had left with it. We talked for a while in the brisk winter air about our respective "days from hell" — small talk that revealed nothing. Then we hugged. We hugged for a long time and I, feeling awkward, pulled away, intending to mumble something about an exam to study for and then head back to the dorm. But something in Eric's eyes stopped me. Well, something in his eyes and something in my mind.

I pulled away. It was me. It was the first time. It was the first time I had stopped hugging Eric before he stopped hugging me. It was a little thing. It said a lot.

"We should talk," he said.

"I guess we should."

We walked to the Brown, took a table by the fire and over countless rounds of beer, we talked for three hours. And said absolutely nothing.

* * * *

When Eric knocked and swung open the door, it shattered finally and mercifully the bare concentration I'd been able to muster for the presentation. He threw his jacket casually over the chair by the closet and jumped up on my bed. "What are you working on?" he asked.

"Nothing," I said, quickly saving my work and switching off the computer monitor. I pushed my chair back from the desk and tilted it to recline with my feet propped up beside him.

We made small talk about one-acts and the weather and his new apartment and then allowed the silence to grow around us. Eric took off his glasses and placed them on my desk, shifting to prop himself on a pillow and meet my eyes.

"I'm staying," he said. "Is that OK?"

The thirty-six conversations I'd rehearsed in my head for this moment when it arrived were no longer available to me. I switched off the desk lamp and joined him on the bed.

* * * *

That night, for all of its awkwardness and questions raised in my mind that I was convinced would be answered in good time, was wonderful. So wonderful, in fact, that in the time distant from it, I have elevated and expanded that single night to represent an entire relationship, a template to which I made the next six weeks adhere. So wonderful that I have spent the rest of my life contriving to find ways and to create situations that would again make a man say to me, "I'm staying. Is that OK?"

* * * *

I arranged to arrive back from Christmas break a full two days early. There was work to be done on the paper, and if I rearranged the furniture in my tiny room four times in those days, I can excuse it for wanting everything to be perfect when Eric returned from Texas.

Everything was perfect, precisely the same as it had been four months ago when I first took note of the tree outside my window, now bare of leaves and — had I bothered to think about it — just as much an omen now as then.

Something had happened over the Christmas break. That much was clear the moment he walked through the door. One of us had come to his senses. The other one was me.

Eric said it with a finality that implied he thought it was exactly what I wanted, a belief that we had the tacit understanding that this had all been well and good and great fun but well, heck, gosh and shucks, now it was time to get serious and get back to the business of being such good friends.

"It was just a moment in the woods," he said, pulling me close and hugging me tightly. "Our moment," he whispered in my ear. I wanted to say something to him, the drama queen in me frantically racing ahead in the script to find the proper response that would make him take his jacket off again and stay with me, for that day and the day after that and the day after that and so on.

But there was nothing else to say, no coda, no counterpoint. The handsome prince doesn't stay in the woods with the baker's wife, not for long. They both have lives in the real world to which they must return. In the real world, the baker's wife and the handsome prince are just very good friends.

I held on tight, but I knew how the scene was supposed to end. This time, Eric stopped hugging first, as it was and as it should be. He flashed me a toothy grin, said "I'll see ya later," and walked out the door.

For the next two weeks, I moped. I felt like the subject of an Oliver Sacks study: The Boy Who Mistook Abiding Affection for Love. How could I have so badly misread Eric's intentions, or my own? I had played both basketball and life long enough to understand what a rebound was, and yet when this man caromed off the glass and landed in my arms, I was naive enough to believe that I wouldn't have to pass him eventually, credited only with an assist in his life and a foul in mine.

But sports metaphors weren't my style and neither were they Eric's. We were show queens. It was a moment in the woods, he'd said. Our moment.

The problem, I eventually figured out, was that Eric and I had too much in common.

Relationships wear out and people break up all the time for that reason, but it slips by them. "I don't know why," they'll say. "It just wasn't right." That isn't the problem. The problem is that it's too right. In divorce papers, quarreling couples cite "irreconcilable differences" to justify their parting. Eric and I had, as near as we could discover, almost exactly the same likes and dislikes, friends and enemies, sense of dress and sense of humor. Our intimate relationship ground to a screeching halt not for irreconcilable differences. It was our irreconcilable sameness that got in the way.

Love — passion — requires just that: an unquenchable passion to discover the other person, to delight in a newfound curve to the back as he lies sleeping with the glee of giddy exploration, to let oneself be introduced to new ideas, challenges, pastimes and pleasures that are foreign to you but old hat to him. And vice versa.

Eric and I had virtually nothing of our own that was terra incognita to the other. As we discovered, or rather rediscovered, as lovers we lacked the diversity to make the exploration sustainably interesting.

As friends, however, we were perfectly qualified.

Perfect.

Just like that stupid little tree.