In which I Noah few people…

Becca had been enthusing almost non-stop about her new boyfriend and I was trying to be attentive, so I didn't see him until we were nearly finished with lunch. I turned in my seat as I pulled out my wallet to settle the check and noticed that Noah Wyle was sitting at the next table, dining with a woman and two other men.

Judging by the fact that Becca's eyeballs were nearly in my lap, she apparently noticed this at the same time as I. I believe her exact whispered words were, "Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God." And so on.

"I should go over and say hello," I told her and, at that point, Becca gave up any pretense of controlling her optical nerves. She jerked her gaze away from the adjacent table and stared straight at me.

"You should?!"

"Yes."

Although we'd never met before, the young actor who regularly melts hearts as Dr. Carter each Thursday night and I have a couple of mutual friends, one of those odd and non-significant connections in a world where we're all separated by fewer and fewer degrees.

As we got up to leave, I took one or two steps toward the other table, cleared my throat and begged pardon for the interruption. I introduced myself to the actor and asked that he convey my regards to our friends. I then introduced Becca, who was thoroughly charmed when the arguably most famous man in the room extended his hand and said, "Hi, I'm Noah." He then named his dining companions, we chatted amiably for another moment or so, and then Becca and I left.

"Wow," Becca said. "Wow. Wow." That was pretty much the extent of our conversation all the way back to her office.

Upon on recounting this story to another friend, his reaction was equally apoplectic and entirely self-interested.

"Did you ask him out?" Kirk asked.

"No," I said.

"Did you get his autograph for me?"

"No."

"Did you tell him you had a friend who really, really wanted to have sex with him?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I imagine, when you're Noah Wyle, you pretty much take that last one as a given, no matter who you're introduced to."

Remembering Jerry

Ten years ago today, my friend Jerry -- a true smartass and one of St. Louis' greatest fabulists, then or since -- died after living with AIDS for nearly a decade.

The day before, I sat at his bedside and held his frail hand and asked him what I should say at his memorial service. He had specifically asked me to give the eulogy and, knowing his temperament in this life, I thought it best to consult him, lest he be unsatisifed and haunt me in the next one. "A bitchy kaftan-clad ghost is the last thing I need following me around," I told him.

He laughed at this and there followed a long period of hacking and wheezing. His lungs had been filling up with fluid faster than they could be drained. Jerry was a skinny-dipping hippie from way back, an expert and elegant swimmer. The irony that he would be drowning now, at the end, was a source of some amusement to him.

When he found his breath, he turned to me and said, "Remind them that life is a fatal, sexually-transmitted condition."

When I repeated that line a week later, half of the mourners gasped and the other half tittered at Jerry's parting shot. Jerry's mother who, before the service, had been at least stiffly polite when introducing me to his delightfully droll granny as one of Jerry's "...er, friends" glared at me from her seat and never spoke to me again.

A tight clutch of Jerry's "...er, friends" adjourned to Clementine's after the memorial for an ersatz wake.

"Leave it to him to come up with such a kick-ass version of 'carpe diem'," said The Giant Queen.

"Latin was never Jerry's style," said Norman.

"Well, there was that one comely thing from Brazil," the GQ shot back. We laughed and laughed and told dozens of stories about our fallen friend.

We closed the bar that night and the next day, Paul and I called over to Sparta and signed up for skydiving lessons, something we'd talked about often but never made time for. A doctor friend had told me it might ameliorate my intense fear of falling and Paul just loved a thrill. When the instructor asked why we were interested in learning to jump, I told him we'd just been diagnosed with chronic life and didn't know if or when we'd have another chance to do it.

I miss you terribly, Jerry. Come back and see us sometime. I promise not to make a crack about your outfit. You always did look good in feathers, and I know you've got some damn fine wings. Thanks for helping me find mine.

…hard to do

When The Actor and Craig split up about a month ago, I was devastated. It was like Hope and Michael, the thirtysomething poster couple had decided to call it quits, or maybe Bo and Hope from Days of Our Lives. I don't know, something to do with hope. Maybe the wounding of it.

After all, even if I hadn't been the one to bring them together I had, at least, nurtured their coupling, encouraging them individually to bring the best of themselves to it and hoping that, through them, I could divine something of the secret to maintaining romance and all the other more practical considerations of being a mid-30s/early-20s pair. When they'd begun to get serious, after all, I was still smarting from the hash of things I'd made with Jason. If I treated them like the control group in the sociological experiment my social life had become, I would like to be forgiven for having only the best intentions.

And that's not to say, of course, that I did anything untoward or unnecessarily interventionist to give love a little nudge; they were doing swimmingly on their own. They set up joint housekeeping in September and began to more deeply explore each other's respective worlds. The Actor schooled Craig in the capricious ways of the circuit; Craig gave his elder partner master classes in pragmatism and, if not responsibility then, at least, decorum.

Naturally, our group took to Craig instantly, and I adopted a big brother posture, inexplicably paternal in my desire not to see him absorbed by the party blob that The Actor and The Twins and their ilk comprise. I don't want to give the impression I'm anti-circuit -- far from it -- but it can be a little overwhelming to a foundling protofag, just dipping his toe into the roiling waves of flesh, pharmaceuticals and fashion.

I needn't have worried. Craig took what he liked and left the rest, and he had a much needed moderating effect on The Actor. They became, for a short while, a rarity: The sane circuit couple, pretty men, devoted, head over heels (and vice versa) for each other, buying into the party scene but sensible enough not to go for the second mortgage with points for the Black Party.

They adopted a golden retriever. They shopped together in the Michael Graves section at Target. They had (by The Actor's reports -- Craig was characteristically circumspect on this matter) fantastic sex. The Actor's mother adored Craig and even more importantly, so did his chosen family. The Giant Queen pronounced them a "smart fit."

I meddled a little, yes, but only benignly, warning The Actor over brunch not to fuck it up with this darling boy, cautioning Craig on what became our Thursday night Will & Grace tradition not to take any of The Actor's smelly, posturing macho guy guff. I was pleased to be constantly reassured by The Actor that he had found "the one," and by Craig that they were happy together, carelessly discarded socks, insipid puns and all.

Three weeks ago, two months to the day after the party where I'd given the boy a Donald Duck cookie jar to mark his 22nd birthday, Craig moved out, The Actor moved on, and the rest of us were left to muddle out who, in this to-all-appearances amicable and no-fault divorce, gets custody of the friends.

There is a vague tension floating over our little family right now, unknowable but palpably real. There is a story here, and no one is ready to tell it. But it involves, I think, the wounding of hope, and only time will tell if it has been given a glancing blow or a mortal injury.

An excerpt from the autobiography of an anonymous author

The sweetest thing he ever said to me was this: "I guess I have to thank you for showing me it was possible to love again, to feel again. I know now what it means to trust another man, to trust completely and without reservation. Your compassion and your...passion are a gift, and I am so lucky you have given them to me."

And we sat there in the light of the flickering candles, and we cried a little, and I said, for the first time, "I love you very much" and he sniffed and said, "I love you too" and we held each other for a very long time.

And then he left that night, just walked out the door and never really came back, although we saw each other every day and talked on the phone for hours at a time and said absolutely nothing of consequence to each other. He walked out the door and took with him my trust, compassion, passion and ability to love and feel without reservation, and to say "I love you very much".

And I've only just begun to get them back, a little at a time, without anyone's help. Because the only gifts that really count, that you can really count upon, are the ones you give to yourself.

All growed up

Immediately after it happened, there was a long, vast silence. My mother and I both stood there, frozen on the steps. I looked into her eyes with the horrible realization that when she looked back at me, she no longer saw me as her little boy. I had just offered evidence to the contrary. I was now -- and irrevocably -- a man, and this prospect saddened her, a little bit or a great deal, I couldn't be sure. The moment passed like a hot, humid summer night: slowly and with no comfort whatsoever. But it passed, and we went about our task and we never, ever talked about it.

It was the Sunday afternoon before Memorial Day, I was 32 years old, and I had just said the f-word in front of my mother for the first time.

We had been moving redwood furniture from the basement to the patio, just two chairs, three small side tables and a chaise. This last was my undoing, since it required mom to take an end while I navigated the light but unwieldy lounger through the basement door and up the narrow concrete steps ascending to the surface. "Don't pull," I cautioned her before we began. "Just guide it up. I don't want to go too fast and have you fall over backward." My mother tut-tutted at my concern, but seeing my scowl and obvious concern for her safety agreed not to pull.

I hefted the chaise and began to maneuver it through the door, up one step. Two. Three.

And then she pulled.

She negotiated walking up the steps backward with aplomb. My mother was never in any real danger, except from the knowledge that at some unknown time between potty training and this day, her son had developed a sailor mouth. Her unexpected tug on the end of the chaise caused me, holding tightly to the other end, to lurch forward. There was the briefest of moments when my head and the concrete doorframe of the bunker-like basement tried to occupy the same space at the same time and failed.

The laws governing matter thus adhered to, I saw stars and, almost simultaneously, said "Fuck!!!"

There may have been four exclamation points. Perhaps five. Despite the rapidly rising goose egg on my noggin, I was coherent enough to hear the word carom off the other houses in our neighborhood and echo faintly for an instant or so before the silence began.

My mother's mouth described a small O-shape and we held each other's gaze -- mine likely slightly more unfocused -- for that long, long moment. I looked down, away, my head throbbing, my brain still vibrating within my skull, with both pain and horror at what I just had done. I gathered my breath, looked up and slurred, "Lesh try sat again."

Up and up we went, while I replayed the last minute in my possibly-concussion-addled mind: In the same situation, rapping her head, my mother would have uttered a quiet "Damnit." It was her curse of choice, infrequently invoked and almost dainty coming from her lips. My father would have been more colorful, likely letting loose with a "Hell's bells" or "son-of-a-bitch". I never heard anyone in my family use stronger language than that, and certainly not the f-word, which polite people such as I were raised to never say.

To her credit, my mother did not pull and the chaise emerged from the basement without further incident. She went inside to begin fixing supper. I went to the bathroom to dab the blood from my head and the tears from my eyes, crying just a little not for the pain but for losing the last vestige of my childlike innocence.

After supper, while we cleared the table, my mother said, "The patio stuff isn't holding up well. The basement is too wet. We should store it in the garage this year." She gave me a small smile.

"Yeah," I said. "That's probably a good idea."

Nine True Things and One Blatant Lie: The Lie Revealed

1. I have been arrested twice for trespassing.
   
   True. Both occasions came during protests of the Gulf War, one in Atlanta and one in St. Louis, during sit-ins at Army recruiting stations. In both instances, the charges were later dropped. The only other transgressions on my rap sheet are a few parking tickets and a speeding ticket.
   
   
   
2. The first time I ever ate sushi was on a date with Majel Barrett.
   
   True. Several years ago at a Star Trek convention in St. Louis, I was waiting on line to get her autograph for my mother, who is a big fan of her character on Star Trek: The Next Generation. As I neared the table where she was signing, she mentioned to her assistant that she wanted to get sushi for dinner and asked her to find a good restaurant. When I approached, I mentioned that friends had told me that Ted & Teiko's was the best sushi restaurant in St. Louis. "That sounds delightful," she said. "Will you join us?" That night, I tasted my first sashimi in the company of the daughter of the Fifth House, Holder of the Sacred Chalice of Rixx and Heir to the Holy Rings of Betazed.
   
   
   
3. I had a small walk-on role in a fifth season episode of Frasier.
   
   False. I have never appeared in Frasier or any other NBC sitcom. Such a role was offered as one of the "celebrity items" in a charity auction at a professional conference I attended, but sold for several thousand dollars more than I was willing to part with. At the next year's conference, a second walk-on was up for bid and raised a near-record price, all for a good cause.
   
   
   
4. I have never fired a gun with live ammunition.
   
   True. Various amateur and professional stage roles have required me to fire pistols and rifles loaded with blanks but I have never fired a gun loaded with real bullets, nor do I have any desire to do so.
   
   
   
5. I paid for part of my college education by writing pornography.
   
   True. Under a pseudonym, mostly for cheap chapbooks and a few glossy magazines, and largely forgettable stories. My "stash" of these stories was lost in 1995 when my basement was flooded. No big loss.
   
   
   
6. I am missing the tip of the middle finger on my right hand.
   
   True. My mother accidentally closed my hand in a car door when I was in the second grade. We were only minutes away from a hospital at the time and fortunately, an excellent plastic surgeon was able to sew up the wound and graft skin from my right arm to cover the missing finger tip. I had to wear an enormous bandage bundle on my hand for nearly a month, but the injury healed far faster than my mother's nerves.
   
   
   
7. I was once threatened with suspension for coming to school in drag.
   
   True. During homecoming week in my sophomore year, the Pep Club sponsored an "Opposite Day". Several of the football team -- including me, as manager -- came to class dressed as cheerleaders, while the cheerleaders donned football uniforms. The principal (who was also the athletic director) ordered us to change our clothes. If we did not, the team members would not be permitted to play in the coming game and I would have received a one-day academic suspension. We caved, but later exacted revenge through an ingenious prank.
   
   
   
8. I have visited every American state except Alaska and Hawaii.
   
   True. I've also been all across Canada and hit some of the high points of Europe. I really want to go on a cruise to Alaska. I am ambivalent about visiting Hawaii, except for a sense of completeness.
   
   
   
9. I have performed on stage completely nude.
   
   True. In the 1998 New Line Theatre production of David Dillon's Party. I played Ray, the smart-mouthed, showtunes-lovin' priest.
   
   
   
10. I missed being valedictorian of my high school class by one-tenth of a percentage point.
    
    True. My choral music instructor claimed he never gave anyone a perfect grade because no one was perfect. In my senior year, that meant the difference between first and second place in my graduating class. One of my best friends became valedictorian. I got out of having make a speech. It was a win-win.
    
    

A BradLands Flashback

Originally published on pre-permalink June 14, 1998

Sitting out on the back deck last night, communing with nature in the detached way that urban dwellers without the wherewithal for a visit to the country must, I saw my first firefly of the season. First one, then another and then a handful more. It reminded me of when I was a little boy growing up in New London, scampering about my backyard after my playmates -- always neighbor boys older than me, since I was the youngest on the block -- had gone in to supper or ridden their bikes across town to other diversions.

I would roam around for an hour or so, capturing the glowing insects in an empty Miracle Whip jar with airholes punched in the lid with an icepick. (I remember I thought that was the intended use for the implement; I'd never seen anyone use an icepick for another purpose.)

Maybe that's a useful demarcation for when childhood ends and adulthood begins, that time when we stop thinking about containing the glow of fireflies and other gentle creatures and are content merely to have them swirl around us.

Embarrassing Photographs of Brad on Official Documents

SIXTH IN A SERIES. COLLECT THE WHOLE SET. TRADE THEM WITH YOUR FRIENDS!



I ran across this a few weekends ago while sorting through a half dozen boxes of old files cluttering the small upstairs room that has been destined for five years to become a gloriously large walk-in closet and is finally fulfilling its destiny.

My friend Michael and I traveled to England together in the winter of 1997, staying in a little hotel in Brixton and tubing into the city or other points of interest each day. Our leisurely stroll to the Underground each morning took us past The Fridge, an imposing gay nightclub, and -- to my Anglophilic delight -- several of those red cylindrical post boxes, the likenesses of which grace die-cut postcards sold for 75p in the shops.

Because we would be there exactly one week, we both took tourist passes for the Underground, allowing us essentially unlimited travel for a modest price. The pass kit consists of a green TravelCard -- indicating its valid dates on the front and with a magnetic strip on the back permitting it to be fed into the automatic turnstiles -- and a photo ID card, pictured above. The TravelCard, we were assured by the earnest, blowsy and balding gentleman who sold them to us, was not valid unless accompanied by the photo, to be produced upon demand.

Naturally, in seven days, we were not asked to produce a photo corroborating our identities even once.

I'm ambivalent about this photo, although as quickly processed photobooth style pictures go, it's really not half bad. My hair is much longer than it's been in some time, but I still manage to display The Enormous Forehead of Doom. Four years later, my hairline is still receding at a pace on par with the dollar against the pound.

That's not a mullet style, by the way, just the shadow produced by the flash, I swear.

Our day in the park

The weather was gorgeous, though, and thousands upon thousands of homosexuals (including a couple hundred with cute pooches in tow) flocked to Tower Grove Park for the doings. After four years in this locale, they've finally gotten the layout right: booths lining a shaded walk, mainstage in the sunny circle of the park, necessary services off to the side.

I must admit to skipping the parade (call me when they start calling it a "march" again, please) and I will also skip my rant about the fact our St. Louis festival was organized, in part at least, by a marketing company based in Seattle. In the end, the manifold corporate sponsorships were appropriately played down, and I guess if it keeps the festivities free, I can't grouse about the rare event held open to everyone in town, regardless of their pocketbook.

It was a decidedly non-political day all around, save for fine speech by Barbara Smith, with the obligatory reminder of the interconnectedness of oppression and the moral necessity of "all for one and one for all" in political organizing. Other than that, even the folks getting ready to launch the whimsically named MONA (Missouri Non-Discrimination Act) stayed in their booth and waited for folks to ask them what's up. I practically had to beg the sole referendum huckster I saw on the grounds to show me his petition. The gay agenda, it seemed, had adjourned for the day.

The "-fest" portion of the event, though, was very much in evidence, passable cover bands, a decent DJ in the dance pavillion and enough rainbow-encrusted crap available for purchase to keep me stocked for the next 365. It certainly warms the cockles of my cynical fag-activist heart to see gayboy larvae gyrating to the sounds of Labelle, even if they do recognize "Lady Marmalade" only from the recent Moulin Rouge movie remix. Giuchie, Giuchie, ya ya dada, boys, "Hello, hey Jo, you wanna give it a go?".

There should probably be some sort of rider in the contracts of mainstage performers spelling out a limitation on how many covers of "I Will Survive" and "We Are Family" are permissible in a four-hour period. I danced or at least wiggled a little whenever they were played, anyway. An anthem is an anthem, after all.

As always, I ran into people I hadn't seen or dated in ten years, and others I had hoped to avoid. I caught up with friends I see only once or twice each year, and made some new friends besides.

I used to believe that the only way gay people were going to be accorded civil rights and respect were if we collectively began to act as though we already had them. That isn't the case, of course, but it certainly felt like it on Sunday.

How delightfully distressing. How distressingly delightful. What a swell party it was.

Departmentalized

The sign near the grocery door apologizes for the dust and says they're "remodeling our store for your shopping convenience." As it turns out, this does not mean they're moving the beer closer to the entrance or training the bag boys to be more receptive to amorous advances. Instead, they're installing a mini-branch of a bank at which I do not have an account, a florist, a coffee bar, a one-hour photo lab, a video rental department and an booth where I can get fitted for glasses or contact lenses while the seafood department steams a lobster for my dinner.

This is happening everywhere. A once-cozy bookstore I used to frequent has expanded to three floors in a massive building occupying a whole city block. Now, in addition to books and newspapers, there's a smart bistro on the mezzanine overlooking a vast selection of specialty clothing, adjacent to sections where they sell cards and overpriced gift items, videotapes, computer software, DVDs and compact discs.

Not to be outdone, the store where I buy compact discs has begun stocking t-shirts, assorted leather clothing, magazines and books. They also have a coffee bar...but so does my dry cleaners. No, seriously.

Yes, the record store sells books! The bookstore sells records! The Sam's Club store down the street sells a case of Comet cleanser -- more than anyone could possibly use in a lifetime -- for $14.99, underpants by the 144-piece blister-pak and radial tires that they'll install for you while you have your hair done at their in-warehouse salon.

I don't want to come off sounding like an old fuddy-duddy, but I plainly remember when bookstores sold books. Just books. At music stores, you could find records and tapes without tripping over a tapas bar on the way the jazz section. And what might you expect to find at a food market? Food, as astonishing as that might seem.

There were stores that sold more than one type of item. I recall it distinctly: they were called department stores, huge structures looming over the urban landscape -- two, three, sometimes even five or six floors of clothing, music, appliances, even radial tires.

But such old-fashioned merchants were outmoded, we were told. Specialization, m'boy! That's the wave of the future. Why settle for a small selection of books here at Sears when you can patronize this gleaming monument to literature down the street? Every title you could possibly want and more! Why choose from only one or two leather jackets on display at JCPenney's when The Leather Barn has racks and racks and racks of just leather jackets?

Well guess what? The Leather Barn now stocks blue jeans and jewelry and cocktail dresses, none of which feature leather as a component. There's a coffee bar in the back, I just know it, and it's just a matter of days before they wedge some Kenmore washer and dryer sets in behind the belts. Everything's becoming a department store again, but nobody's talking about it.

Happy, really

It's a lazy afternoon, a stark respite in the middle of the glorious, exhausting go-go-go I've committed since arriving Friday. But here we are poolside, smoking and soaking up sun, gazing at the distant hills in a place where fifteen minutes takes about a day and a half to pass. I'm thankful for whatever anti-entropic force has wrapped us up in time and made us the beneficiaries of forever.

Patrick is sitting on the tile poolside, Indian-fashion with his head between my knees, so he has to reach up and behind him to pass me the pipe. I toussle his hair and take a deep drag, then lean back and slowly, slowly exhale into the endless, impossibly blue Texas sky.

"You could move here," he says.

"No," I say. "I couldn't."

"No," he agrees, "I guess you couldn't. It'd take a damn crowbar to pry you out of your safe little happy life, wouldn't it?"

"My life isn't all that safe."

"But is it --"

"Yes," I say. "It's very happy, thank you."

Patrick shifts and wraps his arms around my left leg, resting his face against his clasped palms and staring out on the rippling water. "I love you, you know," he says. "Can you believe that?"

I take another long pull on the pipe, feeling it now, willing myself to relax and pleased to find myself complying. "I do. I believe that," I say. "Of course, I believe in a lot of things that may or may not be real. Unicorns. Santa Claus. Bisexuals."

He turns his face toward me.

"I love you too, Patrick." I touch his face with the back of my hand, feel the warmth of his cheek and wonder how things might have been different had he decided to stay, had I not been gunshy of crossing another line.

We have a complicated relationship, this man and I. A complicated relationship, as if there were any other kind. A long history between us that's really little more than an eyeblink, and a deep, abiding affection that, distilled to its essence, is equal parts longing, need and complementary neuroses, with a soupçon of sex.

Matt returns from the house where he's been involved in a long phone conversation. He takes the pipe when I offer it. He tilts his head toward Patrick. "Is he proposing marriage again?" he asks.

"Yeah," I say. "Crazy Mormons."

"No one's living in the guest house right now," Matt says. "You could move here."

"Don't you start," I say. "No. I couldn't." And, plucking the pipe -- now down to the dregs -- from his hand, I push him into the pool.

Embarrassing Photographs of Brad on Official Documents

FIFTH IN A SERIES. COLLECT THE WHOLE SET. TRADE THEM WITH YOUR FRIENDS!



I'm pretty ambivalent about this picture. It's not bad, and it's certainly not good, but it bears enough resemblance to me to satisfy law enforcement officers and nightclub bouncers and that's pretty much all I ask of it.

This is my current driver's license and, for those of you who've been reading for a while, you'll notice a 20-pound weight gain. I remember exactly when that happened: it was about five hours after my 30th birthday. My mother always told me my body would go to seed when I turned 30. I didn't realize she meant that day.

Missouri licenses have gotten all fancy these days, with that screened color picture of the Capitol Building in the background. I assume that's some sort of anti-forgery measure but considering how much this scan looks exactly like the card in my wallet, I'm not sure how it works. I shall leave it to more intrepid petty crooks than me to figure out.

Embarrassing Photographs of Brad on Official Documents

FOURTH IN A SERIES. COLLECT THE WHOLE SET. TRADE THEM WITH YOUR FRIENDS!



I don't deserve this gym. Actually, I suppose it's a health club, but either way, I don't deserve it. The locker room is nicer than my house. The equipment is gleaming...in fact, everything gleams, including my trainer. I pay an obscene amount of money monthly for the privilege of using this gym -- which includes all the towels I can use, free use of the adjacent spa and all I can stand of something called "spinning," which bears a striking resemblance to what we used to call riding a stationary bike.

But as little as I deserve such a fine place to sweat three or four times a week, I deserve this photo on my membership card even less. My hair looks like I walked into Custom Cuts, only to be greeted by the receptionist with "Good afternoon, Mr. Munster!" My mouth appears to be roughly the size of Rhode Island. And my eyes? That's my French Stewart impression.

Pretty good, eh?

Next week: Dramatic license.

What dreams may come

The other night, I dreamed a Lifetime Movie of the Week. In the dream, I fell in love with this absolutely gorgeous, whip-smart guy. We hit it off from the moment we met, made amazing whoopie and planned to spend the rest of our lives together. Everything was jake until he introduced me to his mother.

His mother was, apparently, my father's fiancee.

There followed a lot of soul searching and sneaking around to be together -- more fabulous whoopie -- and, finally, wracked with guilt about the not-quite-incest-but-just-plain-weird nature of our relationship, the decision for the good of the family to be just friends (well, and step-brothers).

There was a surprise waiting for us in the final act, though. Our respective parents decided that, although they were very fond of each other, their children's happiness was more important to both of them, so they would not marry and we could be together, weirdness-free.

I know that nothing in this dream is true, because I'm certain if ever a movie is made of my life, my father will not be played by John Ritter, nor could I possibly fall for any off-spring of Shelley Long.

The new social scene

The Home Depot on a Friday night is essentially just one disco ball and a few designer drugs away from being the hottest nightclub in St. Louis. Actually, the latter isn't really necessary if you just hang out in the industrial solvents aisle and inhale deeply. The sharp spiral into a K-hole can't be nearly as exciting as asphyxiation from benzene fumes.

I'm here to find lightbulbs, actually a particular type of halogen lamp that apparently isn't manufactured any longer, meaning sooner rather than later I'll have to replace the fixtures on my desks at both the office and home unless I can find a source. Still, this store is a boundless source of diversion.

First, of course, there are the men. The place is crawling with daddy types, particularly young daddy types -- the most appealing sort to me -- with toddlers and trim wives in tow. There's a Marlboro man in the lumber department wearing a tool belt and a Richmond Heights police officer in full uniform, meaning we're just a leather queen and an indian brave short of a The Village People reunion. Something about the alchemy of testosterone, sawdust and 17 display kitchens makes this a homo paradise, at least from a scenic design point of view. Hello, Central Casting? Get me manliness! Perfect!

The most surreal aspect, however, are the PA announcements. I've scarcely been in the store half a minute before I hear, "Mr. Powertool, aisle seven. Mr. Powertool, aisle seven." Naturally, I'm curious, but before I can make my way to the designated location, another announcement summons, "Lubricant consultant, aisle 12. We need a lubricant consultant, please, aisle 12."

I did what any healthy, self-respecting gay man would do, of course. I burst into a fit of uncontrollable giggles.

And then I made my way to aisle 12. I could hardly deny my fellow shoppers my expertise in the area.

Embarrassing Photographs of Brad on Official Documents

THIRD IN A SERIES. COLLECT THE WHOLE SET. TRADE THEM WITH YOUR FRIENDS!



Would you let this man into your country? This is my second passport. My first contained a photograph bespeaking international savvy, the glamour of worldly sophistication. (OK, actually all it bespoke was "Hi, I'm a 16 year old geek headed for France," but at least it was a decent picture.) This, on the other hand, bears a photo which practically shouts, "I'd check my luggage for explosives and drugs if I were you!"

When a planned trip to London rolled around and I couldn't locate my passport, I had to replace it quickly. This photo was taken in a AAA office just 10 minutes from my office at the television station where I was working in January 1997. The day I went to have it made -- having calculated that it was the last possible opportunity to do so and still secure my papers in time -- it took me just under an hour and a half to get there, owing to the blizzard-like conditions. I'd called before I left to insure the office was open, but I was frankly surprised to find it still was when I arrived.

The harrowing journey to get the photo snapped may account in part for my appearance, but to this day, I still expect to be asked to check the bags under my eyes at customs. And that great nimbus of hair? What the hell is up with that?

Next week: They call him Gym Jones.

Creative Ways to Meet New People

SECOND IN A SERIES

When visiting the homes of friends and/or tricks, press the Redial button on their phone and chat with whoever answers.

This is, admittedly, a method which will generate more misses than hits, but as a testament to its usefulness, I will disclose that this is how I met Norman, who has become one of my closest chums. It is also, obliquely, how I began to suspect that my boyfriend at the time was fooling around with Norman. We still laugh about that. Well, at least I do.

Ghost stories

My house seems to have become home to a new poltergeist and, as usual, I attract the benign, weird ones. (This is true of my life in the physical realm as well.)

A few years ago, shortly after my friend Bill and I had moved into the city, I was unpacking boxes on the third floor of our turn-of-the-century arts-and-crafts style house. I had just finished with one of the many cartons labelled "Miscellaneous" and decided to dash downstairs for a cold drink. Walking through the dining room where, a few minutes earlier Bill had been hanging an enormous mirror over the fireplace, I stopped abruptly in my tracks. There was a football on the dining room table.

I called to Bill in the kitchen and he joined me in the dining room. "Look at that," I said, pointing to the pigskin. "Isn't that odd? That's my football."

"You own a football?" Bill said. "That is odd."

After I punched him in the arm, I explained that what truly made the football's presence in the dining room extraordinary was that, just a few minutes earlier, I had unpacked the same football and placed it on the top shelf of a closet on the third floor. I had then placed several other items on the shelf in front of it. I had closed the closet door. And I had come downstairs to find the football in the middle of the dining room table.

Neither Bill nor I are particularly inclined to believe in spirits, but neither could we come up with a plausible explanation for how or why sporting goods were mysteriously moving around our house. A few weeks later, after a party, a cobalt blue glass water pitcher disappeared from the kitchen, only to rematerialize two nights later in the second floor bathtub. Still later, Bill came home from work one day to discover that the bedspread from his bed now adorned the bed in the guest room and vice versa.

Events like these became commonplace in our house; every few weeks, something would disappear and show up again in the most unlikely place. We ceased to be at all freaked out by these translocations and, instead, speculated that our house ghost's afterlife must have been as singularly boring as our own miserable social lives such that he or she resorted to rearranging our belongings for entertainment.

After a couple of years, Bill got married and moved to Ohio, we sold the house and I moved in with a friend on the other side of the park in a house that seemed to be free of whimsical spirits. There were demons in the house, it's true, but that had everything to do with my roommate's emotional state and nothing at all to do with the paranormal.

Fast forward seven years to two weeks ago Monday. A bottle of cocktail onions appeared in my refrigerator.

Because I am usually too lazy to garnish my Bloody Mary with a celery stalk, it has been established that neither my housemate nor I drink anything to which it is necessary to add vegetables. The origin of the bottle of cocktail onions confounded us both. Last night, having been confronted with the mysterious condiment for the past fortnight, I threw the bottle in the trash.

This morning on my way out the door, I went to the fridge to get a can of Mountain Dew or, as I call it, the breakfast of champions. You can probably guess what was sitting on the very top shelf. The onions are back. And so, it would seem, is my old playmate from the world beyond, and these days he wants a martini after a workout on the dining room gridiron. I have no idea where my football is right now, but I expect it to show up any day now.

Says I

Plato said, "Love is a grave mental disease."

Woody Allen said, "The difference between sex and love is that sex relieves tension and love causes it."

I say, "My name is Brad. I am healthy, single, only slightly cynical and inexplicably available. I enjoy dinner and the theatre, am not afraid of subtitled films, and believe that a kiss isn't a kiss unless you have difficultly standing for a few moments when it's through. I am also prone to Platonic mental disease and Woody tension."

Taking the cure

For the past week, I've been plagued by a sore throat and have, most days, been on the brink of losing my voice completely. Various friends and co-workers have encouraged me to drink hot water with lemon juice, herbal tea or an assortment of other fluidic cures. Last night at dinner, an acquaintance of mine who is also a local food critic prescribed her favorite remedy: very dry champagne mixed with orange juice. I awoke this morning in full voice and without any pain or tenderness in my throat.

I hate being sick, but I love any illness that can be cured with mimosas.

As if…

It is 65 degrees today and sunny. The same teenagers passing my office window today in t-shirts and running shorts were yesterday clad in sweaters and corduroy trousers and heavy down jackets. This afternoon, at lunch, I will spread a blanket across dead brown grass under a bare tree and read from a novel while eating a sandwich and marveling at the fact that tomorrow's weather forecast calls for a high of 17 degrees with an 80 percent chance of freezing rain.

That is one of the many joys of living in mid-Missouri, the delightfully predictable unpredictability of the winter weather. Today, it is spring and the air is full of possibility. Tomorrow, it will be winter again and we can settle in to heed the groundhog's edict. For 24 hours, though, I can pretend that the world is new and romance is in the air and today will be the day he will call and forgive me and want to share my life again.

Doctor, doctor

A few weeks ago, I had to have a complete physical, the prerequisite for a new insurance carrier to take on my policy. This matter forced my hand, as I had not selected a new primary care physician when my former doctor retired from his practice. For expediency's sake, the first doctor I selected performed the examination. I figured it was as good a way as any to get to know each other...he my health, me his manner.

At one point in the proceedings, The Prospective Personal Doc asked me a barrage of intimate personal questions: Did I engage in oral sex? Anal sex? Traumatic sex?

I had to have that last one explained to me, since I wasn't aware there was any other kind.

A random excerpt from the personal journal of an anonymous author, circa 1996

Recently, I've had the feeling that my life is governed by some sort of universal constant, akin to the Laws of Thermodynamics or matter conservation or, at the very least, momentum. One tragedy or back-formed bad emotion replaces whichever one I've managed to exorcise in the course of each day. Enemies and ill feelings, real or imagined, spring up with frightening regularity, and I wonder if I will every be truly happy again. Then I wonder if I was ever truly happy at all to begin with.

A reflection on Saturday’s date

Once you get to the bottom of the barrel, you realize the barrel may not have been all that deep to begin with.

There are phases

"You seem to be wearing a ball cap an awful lot lately," I said to Scott as I slid into the booth and picked up the menu, a superfluous act considering I always order the same omelette at the Majestic.

"I'm losing my hair," he said glumly.

"You're not losing your hair," I said.

Scott's countenance brightened. "You don't think so?"

"Of course not," Jeff chimed in. "You've already lost your hair."

"I have 'male-pattern baldness,'" Scott retorted.

"And clearly, the pattern you've selected is plaid," Jeff said.

"Look," I said, "it's not that bad, really. You can take some consolation in the fact you'll pretty soon have that sexy Captain Jean-Luc Picard thing going for you."

Scott groaned and added another sugar packet to his coffee. "Great. Just great."

"It's the next logical step," Jeff said.

"There are steps?!"

"Of course," I said, catching Janet's eye and, through a pattern of non-verbal communication established after a decade of brunches, ordering a Greek omelette with home fries. "You only recently made the move from Ron Howard to Scott Hamilton. At this point, you have the option of embracing the inevitable or going all Ted Danson on us. The next phase, and frankly the most dignified, is Patrick Stewart."

Scott sighed and stared into his mug. After a long silence, he turned to Jeff. "Go on," he said. "You know you want to say it."

Jeff grinned and gestured toward our increasingly chrome-domed friend with his thumb and forefinger. "Make it so!" he said, as the Bloody Marys arrived right on cue.