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."

Tuesday, March 23, 2004

A Conversation From the Bar Scene

Matt: ...and then we went to see a movie. We didn't get home until almost 1:30.

Brad: Wow, we got done with dinner early. What did you guys wind up seeing that was so long?

Matt: Return of the King.

Jeff: Oh, I've been meaning to see that.

Brad: You mean you haven't?

Matt: That surprises you?

Brad: I guess. I just figured Jeff would be first in line for any movie that involved a band of men and a piece of jewelry.

Sunday, March 07, 2004

A Conversation From the Bar Scene

Kelly: Did you get a new haircut, Kevin? It looks great.

The Giant Queen: Yes, and your wardrobe is improving. Marriage suits you. That little wife is turning you into quite the metrosexual.

Kevin: But I'm from Creve Coeur. Don't you have to live in a big city to be a metrosexual?

Kelly: It's an interesting question. Are there metrosexuals in the suburbs?

(a few moments of silence pass)

Kevin: Maybe I'm a subsexual.

Brad: (spit take) I would very much like the record to reflect that I did not say that.

Thursday, March 04, 2004

Dear Mr. President

Dear President Bush,

As a citizen, I am extremely concerned about what I perceive to be a lack of leadership and conviction on your part in dealing with the growing threat to the institution of marriage in the United States. It is incumbent on you, as our avatar of morality and freedom, essential principles upon which this republic was founded, to take swift and decisive action in this matter.

But as renegade mayors and county officials, bureaucrats and minor functionaries in cities such as San Francisco; Portland, Oregon; and some little backwater burg in New York state take it upon themselves to radically redefine marriage, you're just not doing as much as you could to address the crisis.

What have you done, Mr. President? You made a speech and said you would support an amendment to the Constitution, definitively describing marriage as a bond between a man and a woman. That's it.

Hey, it's the right idea, as far as it goes, but think about it. Do you have any idea how long it'll take to pass a Constitutional amendment? A long time! First you have to get big chunks of the Senate and House of Representatives to vote for it. That could take weeks. And then you've got to get a bunch of the states -- thirty-some, I think, but you've got a staff to look that up for you -- to approve it too. It could be well into September or October before that's all wrapped up.

But meanwhile, those little self-righteous peckerwoods like Gavin Newsom and Diane Linn are breaking the law right now, flouting the Defense of Marriage Act and holy scripture, permitting hundreds of gay and Lesbian couples to marry. And they're going to keep doing it! All the while, you dither and prattle on about a Constitutional amendment to stop them.

Months, Mr. President! You're looking at months before you can ram through an amendment and meanwhile, the institution of marriage is going to take one whale of a beating as more and more deviants get hitched. Divorce rates are already skyrocketing. Just a few hundred more queer marriages and who knows what sort of chaos could follow?! You've got to do something now.

You've got to send federal troops to California, Oregon, New York and anywhere else this insanity is going on and put a stop to it.

I'm serious. Marriage is in danger. The law is not being upheld. You must act with force and dispatch. And you can do it, too, if you just grow a pair and pick up the phone.

President Kennedy did it in 1963. He federalized the National Guard in Alabama to make damn sure the University there would let black folks attend classes. They weren't going to do it, you know, in clear violation of an order to desegregate. What they were doing was patently illegal and Kennedy sent those troops to uphold the law.

OK, sorry, that's probably a bad example. I know a bit about electoral politics and I'm nothing if not pragmatic. I guess you really can't be seen to be following the example of a beloved liberal icon like Kennedy, even in the cause of ensuring justice and the rule of law. And I know you aren't fond of working with the National Guard.

Look at President Eisenhower, then. He dispatched 1,000 troops from the 101st Airborne to Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957 to enforce desegregation at Central High School there, and he was a Republican. Heck, that's probably where President Kennedy got the idea in the first place.

So the idea of using the military to enforce the law, particularly in times of national strife, is a solid one. It's a historically proven one. It's even a Republican one. You have to do this, Mr. President. My faith in your leadership, my pride in my country and, most urgently, my decision about whether I can support you in the coming election, depend on it.

If I don't see tanks rolling up Market Street and bayonet-bearing boys in uniform breaking up gay marriages by, oh let's say Friday, I may be forced to conclude that you're not serious about defending what you've called a sacred institution. I may even infer that you're merely using the confusion and hysteria surrounding this issue to gain political ground.

That would disappoint me deeply, Mr. President. You took an oath to support and defend the Constitution and the uphold the laws of this great nation. If those laws are just, as you believe, and if marriage as we know it teeters on the brink of oblivion, as you say, you must act. If you're going to have a culture war, make it a war.

Send in the Marines. I can't wait to see the pictures.

Yours truly,
Brad L. Graham
American

Monday, February 02, 2004

Big Shots

Wednesday, January 14, 2004

The digital life

I made what I thought was a very sensible decision, namely that I was not going to purchase an iPod -- one of those tiny, portable computer hard drives from Apple Computer designed to hold a ton of digitized music, a higher-tech Walkman -- until I actually had a ton of digitized music. They advertise that those little buggers can hold 10,000 songs at a time, which sounds like a promising prospect: "Carry your whole CD collection with you all the time!"

Their promise, however, depends on making one of your own. Before you can experience this marvel of the digital age, you have to digitize, or "rip", the music from your compact discs into a format the computer can understand. This takes a lot of time, particularly if, like me, your music collection contains many more than 10,000 songs. In fact, it's nearer to 10,000 CDs.

OK, well perhaps that's an exaggeration. But my motley assortment of cast recordings, jazz, folk, country-western, a cappella, pop, rock, dance, cabaret and classical discs does number in the thousands. It's a bit embarrassing, sometimes. At parties, when the conversation turns to matters of money and investing, at my turn I just smile enigmatically and aver that my funds are all tied up in CDs.

But over the past few months, by a piecemeal process, I've undertaken the task of stripping all the little 1s and 0s off the discs and storing them in my computer, their native habitat. It's slow going, taking between five and ten minutes to process each album.

And, occasionally, I get pangs of doubt. In geek speak, I'm converting the CDs into a computer file format called MP3 which, you may recall, was all the rage a few years ago among teens and college students swapping music with the Napster application.

I was a late-comer to that party; lacking, for the longest time, a high-speed phone connection attached to my home computer, the prospect of downloading large music files was too daunting. It never even occurred to me that I could simply convert the many music discs I already owned. So MP3 remained a mystery to me and I was, quite frankly, reluctant to explore and embrace it.

Hell, when they were introduced, I refused for a long time even to buy a CD player until I got a signed affidavit from somebody promising they wouldn't come out with something better a week or two after I did. The milk crates packed with vinyl and a closet full of eight-track cassettes, dying and dead formats, in my student apartment already cruelly mocked me and, at the same time, labelled me a luddite.

So naturally I'm fretting that as soon as I finished ripping all of my CDs into the MP3 format, they'll invent something better the next day and render all my time spent feeding disc after disc into the computer obsolete.

The process has, however, yielded a few discoveries about my music collection, some happy, some perplexing, some worrying. For example, I was only slightly surprised to discover that there are a few dozen discs I purchased but never bothered to remove the plastic wrapping from, meaning they've never been heard in my home. There are a carton or two more that I received either as demos from groups I sought to book for one performance series or another, or review copies passed on to me during my tenure as a music critic for a major daily newspaper. Still others are extra copies boosted from the radio station where I DJed after high school.

And there's nothing like touching every album in your collection to expose odd gaps and even odder surfeits in my inventory. Cast albums, naturally, comprise perhaps the largest percentage chunk of the lot, but I've got a suspiciously lesbian number of Joni Mitchell albums. A bit earlier alphabetically, my Bette Midler collection is complete, but there are several missing Madonnas. And how I ended up with three copies of the perternaturally awful concept album for Starlight Express, I have no idea. (I suspect I was too drunk at too many white elephant exchanges in the 80s.)

Anyway, I've a few more albums to convert (and by "a few", I mean "at least 1,500") before I order that iPod. It's nice to have a goal and, heaven knows, I've got plenty to listen to while I pass the time.

"Heaven Knows." Hmmm...

Donna Summer, Robert Plant, or The Corrs? They're all here somewhere.

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.

Friday, December 12, 2003

A Conversation From the Bar Scene

Michael: I heard something on CNN today about an archaeologist having discovered fossil evidence of what they believe to be the world's oldest penis.

Brad: Is that so?

Michael: Yeah. Isn't that bizarre?

Brad: What's bizarre is that I had no idea Catherine Zeta-Jones was an archaeologist.

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.

Monday, November 24, 2003

Missed connections

Talk about your missed connections.

He was sitting right across the aisle from me, shifting uncomfortably in a cracked plastic seat by the gate at Midway, while I stole long glances -- furtively, I thought -- at him over the script I was reading.

In fact, I was reading the same page again and again, I realized. I didn't realize that my stealthy glances were anything but. Chalk it up to caffeine deprivation and a heart that was racing a little bit in spite of it. But I didn't talk to him, didn't bother to strike up a conversation even though he was glancing back and making no attempt to disguise his attention. He had closed his book -- Eggers, but that can be forgiven -- and held it on his lap. Which is where I was staring with alternate glances. Well, wouldn't you?

I mean, just look at him, in full, as I did not, at least not all at once. Rusty hair, freckled and flushed, trim waist, full torso, jeans and boots, grin and chin. Totally my type, right? Late 20s, maybe, early 30s? Fit as a fiddle and ready to diddle?

Didn't say a word, though. I didn't, I mean, but then neither did he. They called group "B" and I joined the herd and headed home, leaving the handsome boy in the departure lounge to resume his reading -- which he didn't, I noticed in the security mirror by the door, as I watched him watch me -- and then to make his way to his own destination.

Which, as it turns out, was St. Louis, the exploratory trip, first of two, and then to stay, for a while anyway. And then by some miraculous convergence of technology, cupidity and dumb luck, he finally started the conversation we could have had seven weeks ago.

Look before you leap, they advise. I looked but didn't leap. And it seems as though I've been doing that more and more recently, not from maturity, not from fatigue, certainly not because I'm shy or circumspect. (Please!)

But I've been doing it, more window-shopping than buying, more glancing than going for it. I got into a rut and called it a groove, as a friend once said. I needed a little kick to get me back in the game and I'm gonna get one tonight, I think, for the price of a pizza. His name is Derrick and he's bringing the beer.

Thursday, November 20, 2003

Hot Stuff

It is only five days until my birthday and it's 76 degrees in St. Louis. Seventy-six degrees! On Tuesday, I was walking around lower Manhattan with a light shirt and no coat. No coat! I wish we'd known and understood the effects of global warming sooner.

I'd have used a lot more hairspray during the 80s.

Wednesday, October 08, 2003

My Word!

Episode 678, in which I am, apparently, linguistically damaged in some fashion:

I guess it's okay to admit now that over the past few weeks, whenever I heard or read the name Bustamante, my brain rendered it as "bust-a-move".

Well, it's probably not okay, but...

Also, I seem to have recently adopted a peculiar pair of curse phrases, uncharactistically tame stand-ins for harsher language. For example, instead of invoking the colorful "Hell's bells!" -- which I unwittingly inherited from my father -- as I usually do when matters take a turn for the absurd, today I was heard to exclaim "Holly Hobby!" in frustration and mild anger.

I mean, come on! Holly Hobby?

A few weeks ago, attempting to calm an unusually rambunctious dog, I turned and shouted for him to "Cool it!" which, somehow, the speech center of my addled grey matter turned to "Culottes!"

And to think I haven't had any good grass in weeks.

Tuesday, September 23, 2003

Three Out of Four Ain’t Bad

There are many ways to tell if one has chosen the proper florist to retain, I suppose. Certainly, you want to find their work visually pleasing, and an efficient delivery service is a must in these fast-paced times in which we live.

But friends, you know you've stuck with the right flower seller for over a decade, through the occasional botched centerpiece or wilted nosegay, when the clerk at the counter doesn't bat an eye as you dictate the sentiment for a funeral arrangement:

As the poets have mournfully sung,
Death takes the innocent young,
The rolling in money,
The screamingly funny,
And those who are very well hung.

I didn't make that up, by the way. It's Auden, a little limerick the dear man tossed off in 1960, titled "The Aesthetic Point of View".

Death does not, we know, discriminate mighty from meek, but among the ways to go, rock climbing accidents tend to favor the bold. That was Todd in a nutshell: never daunted by a challenge, always spoiling for an adventure, sexy and profane, loving deeply, living boldly. How I envied him.

We hadn't seen each other in almost five years and that was a chance meeting as we were both changing planes in Chicago. Across a crowded O'Hare concourse came this lumbering frat boy, blowsy auburn hair pitched at odd angles, a huge, endless hug. Fifteen minutes we passed together, maybe 20, and he was off to points west, to a new life, he said.

Chatty e-mail messages, at least one a month, kept me abreast of his travels and his new job, jokes and Michael, who he loved with affection so fertile and whole you wanted to laugh and cry at its intensity. Michael came to dinner whenever he was in town -- and will be a welcome guest always -- and never lacked for a riotous story about his lover's latest exploit.

Todd could tell a story like no one else, especially if it was a story about you. I liked hearing about my flaws and folly from Todd; I took ribbing from him I wouldn't take from anyone else because he could make me laugh at -- and learn from -- myself. A singular gift.

In thanks for that, when he left our little group (almost ten years ago now; are we all that old?), I inscribed his card with another epigram of Auden's: "Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh."

The least I can do is pass on the gift and, so, the limerick and an arrangement of flowers bursting with every color you can imagine. Funny and radiant, just like Todd. Funerals, after all, are for the living and as we share a fondness for black humor, I know it will give Michael a smile.

Particularly my postscript: "Well, three out of four ain't bad."

And wheresoever he is now, Todd can puzzle out what that means too, beyond that he was loved, so very, very much.

Monday, September 22, 2003

A Conversation From the Bar Scene

Brad: Why did you call Dr. Dan?

Jeff: I went to the movies last night and realized I could barely hear anything in my right ear.

The Giant Queen: Daniel is a neurosurgeon. Why did you call him?

Jeff: It came on so suddenly. I thought I might have a brain tumor.

Brad: Of course.

The Giant Queen: And?

Jeff: He said it's probably nothing. But just in case, he referred me to an ornithologist.

Brad: ...

The Giant Queen: Did he?

Jeff: I'll be right back. I gotta pee.

Brad & The Giant Queen: (uncontrollable giggles)

Andy (arriving): What's so funny?

The Giant Queen: We...we just received medical confirmation of something we've known for quite a while.

Andy: Really? What?

Brad: Jeff is a bird brain.

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.

Monday, August 18, 2003

A Converation from the Bar Scene

Chuck: So Mary Carey kicked off her campaign for governor of California today.

Brad: The voice of the Cubs?

Chuck: Not Harry Caray. Mary Carey. The porn star.

Brad: How on Earth do you know about straight porn actresses?

Chuck: She wants to tax breast implants.

Brad: So that would make her...

Chuck: The voice of the C-cups.

Brad: Of course.

Wednesday, August 06, 2003

Super Jesus

Last night, I dreamed that Jesus lost his superpowers and wandered the streets until he showed up at my house. I fixed him dinner and let him take a shower, then we watched TV together.

In the dream, Jesus looked a lot like Carson Kressley.

There were agents (angels?) pursuing Jesus, trying to convince him to come with them but when they caught up to him, he told them he didn't want to go. He wanted to stay with me and be my boyfriend.

...

There are about a million things wrong with that dream, not least that I figured Jesus would look more like Thom Filicia.

Monday, August 04, 2003

Ebay?

Mark and I are on the train, heading downtown, and I'm telling him about the headline I saw on a tabloid earlier in the day.

"It said, 'After Uday and Usay, It's Time to Bag Dad'," I say.

I'm as much a fan of clever wordplay as any man, probably moreso, but that one was just awful.

"It's Kusay," Mark says.

"What?"

"The other brother. His name was Kusay."

"Why do all of these guys have names that sound like Pig Latin?" I ask.

Mark thinks about this for a minute. "You may be on to something there," he says. "So you think their names are Scoo and Do?"

"Could be," I allow.

"So the fellow we should be looking for is probably named Be."

Scoo. Be. Do. It's so crazy, it just might be so.

"And what is Be in Pig Latin?" Mark asks.

It comes to be a second later. "Ebay."

This smacks of global conspiracy. Code names. An Internet auction site as a front to fund terrorism. The involvement of a goofy cartoon dog. Someone should give Tom Ridge a call.

Alternatively, someone should insure that Mark and I don't start drinking so early in the day.

Monday, July 28, 2003

There are days

There are days, my friend. Let me tell you, there are days.

There are days when you become so frustrated with drivers on the interstate and you finally understand "road rage", when you come face to face with the terrible wrath inside you and contemplate, however briefly, what it would be like to push the speedometer all the way to the right and swerve into a guardrail, causing a great conflagration and pain and suffering.

There are days when government bureaucracy so infuriates you that you swear by all that's holy that you have taken your last number, stood in your last line, written your last check, completed your last triplicate carbonless, fathomless, meaningless form and that the next drone who sends you somewhere else is going to pay with their own blood.

There are days when the debts outnumber the notes in your pocket and the distance from your hand to your mouth seems like a marathon, when you've lost a tiny rectangle of petrochemicals and magnetized oxide and it feels less like a missing chunk of plastic and more like a pound of flesh.

There are days when the paper is stacked high on your desk and the phone won't stop ringing and the e-mail keeps coming and the server keeps crashing and the lights go out and the soda machine's busted and you question your sanity while others question your talent and the answers to neither will present themselves.

And there are nights when you lock the door and you turn down the light and you draw a bath and you listen to a torchy ballad and you hear the voice on the phone that both comforts and kills you, and you think how interesting it might be, someday, if just once, somebody -- even just one somebody -- thought of you not as one thing to many people, but as everything to one person.

Yes, you have days and you have nights.

Yes, you.

Not me.

Nope. I've got it all together.

But there are days...

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.