Running Up that Hill

"Shit!" Hear him rolling over in bed to check the time. "We have to leave in 5 minutes." My hopes for happy morning sexcapades quickly vanish. Ten minutes later we are running up the hill to the bus stop to catch the 55 back to Seattle proper. This is my first run following the marathon I'd run two weeks before.

The morning of the marathon I woke up at 7:00 am. I ate a granola bar for breakfast for fear that if I ate anything more substantial I'd have to go number 2 during the race, which wasn't a very appealing thought. I put on my running shorts and the free t-shirt I'd gotten when I entered. I fastened my bib with the number "391" to the front of my shirt. I secured the chip to my ankle that would track when I crossed the start and finish lines. I took a couple of tylenol in anticipation of the pain I'd soon be experiencing, and I walked down the hill in the cold November morning to the starting line.

"Here come the real runners!" I heard a voice say as I lined up in front of the starting line. I smiled to myself at the thought that I was a "real" runner, and the people who'd run the half marathon were just pretending.

The truth is, I was totally intimidated by the other runners. They were lean and muscular in lycra and spandex, doing stretches and last minute preparations. I'd followed a tall, muscular man over to the starting line. He was wearing a yellow tank top and black shorts. His body was comprised entirely of muscle and sinew, and I could tell that he was totally hard core and I was just some short, pasty marathon phony by comparison.

An annoucer fuflilled her title by making announcements. A 68 year old who was running his first marathon. An 84 year old who had run over a hundred. A man was trying to break the record for fastest marathon run while dressed as Elvis. A local celebrity sang the National Anthem, stringing out every word so that they each had at least 5 syllables, Mariah Carey style. Suddenly everything seemed ridiculous, and I wondered what I was doing there. Shivering in the cold Seattle air. A gun shot and the race started.

Things got off to a great start. The weather was perfect. A gray, overcast sky. Cold, but not wet. I'd carried my wallet, iPhone, and a packet of Gu Chomps (kind of like gummi supplements to replenish electrolytes) in my pockets. Unfortunately, my shorts were kind of loose, and those things were all weighing them down, so that every 30 seconds or so I was pulling my shorts back up. So I ended up just carrying my phone with me, which is why I can be seen carrying it in every picture taken that day. I'd only brought the phone with me in the first place so I could dial 911 if I collapsed in a gasping heap around mile 20.

I'd trained for the marathon by running on the treadmill at the gym. Normally I ran 10 minute miles. I was surprised the first few miles that I was running 8 minute miles out on the road, and figured I should slow down and pace myself if I was going to make it the full 26.2 miles.

On the way to Mercer Island an old man in a pink tutu passed me, and for once I was glad I was carrying my phone so I could snap a picture and post it to Facebook.

At mile 16 I was still maintaining a good pace, and I was feeling strong and was starting to feel optimistic that I might actually be able to finish the race without, you know, dying. The scenery was beautiful. Water, trees, mountains and the athletic, sculpted bodies of scantily clad runners were everywhere I looked. Crowds of people lined the route, cheering as I ran past, spurring me on. I saw the Elvis impersonator pass me, and smiled.

At mile 17 I was less optimistic. The race seemed harder. The chip I'd strapped around my ankle was chaffing because I'd fastened it too tightly. I was afraid to stop and loosen it though, because if I stopped I might not be able to start again. Suddenly the voices of the people lining the streets seemed irritating, and I wanted to shout at them to shut up as I ran past.

At mile 20 my right leg and left foot started hurting. I kept thinking to myself that I only had 6.2 more miles to go, I could do it. But I wasn't sure. Six point two miles suddenly seemed like six thousand. Then I saw the tall, lean guy in the yellow tank top and black shorts limping on the side of the road as I ran past him. I'd been so intimidated by him before the race, and somehow I'd managed to surpass him.

At mile 22 there was an obscene hill and I was ready to start sobbing. There was no way I could make it up. I slowed to a walk, feeling defeated. The man running beside me said "We're almost there." It was enough to spur me on and get me running again. I smiled gratefully at him, and he said, "Good for you!" I found out later that a lot of runners avoid the Seattle Marathon because it's a difficult course frought with a series of steep hills in the last few miles. I'm glad I didn't know this before the race.

Every 2 miles there was a volunteer station with Gatorade and water. Every two miles I grabbed a dixie cup of one or the other, only to end up spilling more of it on me than I managed to get into my mouth.

At the 23rd mile I knew that I was going to finish. There were only 3.2 more miles, and that was nothing!

By the 25th mile, my legs were made entirely of pain and I just wanted to stop. I wanted it to be over. I wanted to eat some Thai food and go home. I thought I was going to have to crawl across the finish line, so I slowed to a jog. Every step hurt, and I hobbled along and the mile seemed to stretch on forever, neverending.

The last mile was the hardest. But seeing the stadium in front of me and the throngs of people cheering gave me the last bit of momentum to finish running. I ran into the stadium, across the green, artificial turf, across the finish line at 3 hours, 50 minutes and 6 seconds. A voice called my name over the loud speaker anouncing I'd finished. Someone handed me a medal for completing the race.

Around me runners were crying, or breathing hard, or shivering in plastic wraps to warm them up. I mostly felt fine, and just wanted to sit down somewhere. Carlos was waiting for me by the finish line, but I didn't see him, and got swept along with the other runners to the "Recovery Area." The recovery area boasted water, and fruit and massages, but nowhere to sit down which is all I wanted to do. I tried calling Carlos, but I couldn't hear anything. So we texted and were able to find one another in the crowd. Ducky was there too, and he took our picture with the Space Needle behind us.

Everything was surreal and anti-climactic. It felt like any other day and any other run. I was cold so Carlos gave me his jacket. He and I stopped for Thai food, because all I'd been fantasizing about the past 10 miles was a big heaping order of Phad Kee Mao with tofu and a neverending glass of diet soda. We sat in a 3rd rate Thai place, and I told him about the race. Things were feeling pretty great about then. The first flush of accomplishment washed over me. I experienced, for the first time, the unfamiliar feeling of accomplishing a goal that I'd worked hard to achieve. It felt...strange...but good. We got the check and I realized that after sitting for so long, I couldn't stand up again.

I hobbled home leaning on Carlos for support. At home I was able to assess the damage I'd sustained more clearly. The chip had rubbed a red, bloody circle around my ankle. I had a huge blood blister on my big toe. My left foot felt as if it was broken, and my right hamstring ached. I lay on my floor and Carlos massaged me. (There are perks of dating a massage therapist). Despite pain and exhaustion, I still managed to find the strength to have some hot, sweaty monkey sex. (I think the sight of me in my running outfit had turned him on).

The next day my entire body was sore. Even my shoulders and arms, but especially my legs and feet. The only thing that got me out of my apartment was my diet coke addiction. I'd drag myself uphill on my elbows for a diet coke. I felt like an arthritic old man who'd been bludgeoned with a sack of bowling balls. The months of training and the agony of success hardly seemed worth the pain of recovery.

Time passed. The blood blister has become a rough, pink callous. The chaffed ankle has scabbed over. My legs no longer hurt. I make a tentative run on the treadmill. At first I can only go a mile or so, but after a little bit six miles seems no problem. I find myself planning my training regimen for next year's marathon. I guess running 26.2 miles is kind of like childbirth. You become an amnesiac and forget all about the pain, and end up willing to put yourself through it again. And again.

Thanksgiving Leftovers

"What are you doing for Thanksgiving?" He asked, one evening when we were both tipsy on a chocolate flavored liqueur from Septieme, where we'd gone to celebrate his birthday. Being drunk and vulnerable, I found myself agreeing to spend the holiday with a boy I'd only been dating for a few weeks and his colorful group of friends.


Last year I "celebrated" Thanksgiving alone at an all you can eat Indian buffet. The waiter felt sorry for me, and guilted me in to eating pumpkin "pie" which was more like a pumpkin colored mush. I don't even like pumpkin pie, and I especially don't like it when it resembles custard and smells of curry, but I ate it anyway, because he seemed so well meaning.

In fact, since moving away from Texas, Thanksgiving has always been pretty hit or miss. Let's face it. Mostly miss. In Los Angeles I prepared a huge feast for Anna and I. We sat, stuffed, watching Bjork videos and decided to go for a walk. Then Anna locked us out of my apartment, and I had to break in through the living room window which opened just enough for me to slither through like a cat. Remember how disturbed I felt at the remarkable ease of breaking in, and how I wondered if I'd missed my calling as a cat burgler.

One year I'd made a beautiful tofurkey with chopstick drumsticks. Another I'd spent with Anna once again as she made dinner for her boyfriend, his dog, and me, the odd man out. I remember spending the day starving, reading the Kite Runner, and sobbing hysterically. Whether from the book or the situation I'm no longer certain.

So when Carlos asked me if I wanted to spend Thanksgiving with him, I readily agreed. I figured at best I'd spend the day with a boy I like, eating yummy food and meeting some new, interesting people. At worst I'd spend an awkward day with irritating strangers, longing for death. Either way, I was sure to get a blog entry out of it.

The festivities took place in a suburb of Seattle, north of the city, called Mukilteo. I worried that I'd fade like a hothouse flower the second I left the safe, urban confines of the Downtown/Capitol Hill area. But for Carlos I was willing to take the chance. Still, I brought a bottle of Valpolicello Ripassa with me for insurance.

Because neither Carlos nor I are car owners, we were picked up by his gay-married friends, Stan and Jesus. They are an older couple who got married in San Francisco in the brief time period in which it was legal for them to do so. Jesus, who is also called Chuy, is Chinese, but was raised in Mexico, so he has a very interesting manner of speaking, along with a unique accent. They picked us up in a white mini fan full of pies that they'd made for the occasion. It took every ounce of willpower I possess to not dip my fingers into the chocolate cherry cake sitting in the seat behind me. Smelling the baked, sugary goodness all the way there was a torture greater than anything our troops performed at Abu Ghraib.

It rained on the way there. Bundled in a scarf and gloves. Carlos's hand over mine. Cars inching impatiently along in holiday traffic. Orange headlights. The pale faces of strangers behind rain streaked windshields. A sudden stop to avoid a stalled car sent a water bottle barrelling into the apple pie. Stan was devastated that his pie was ruined, but I assured him I would eat it anyway.

We found ourselves in Mukilteo on a residential street lined with expensive looking houses. The house we stopped at belonged to Val and Jason, whose relationship I was never able to suss out over the course of the next few hours. They lived together, but he seemed to be obviously gay, and was clearly not the biological father of Val's daughter Jackie, Jackie being....well...black, and Jason being Jewish. But Jackie called him "dad" and he called Val "babe" so I just accepted that people's relationships are complicated and stopped trying to figure them out.

I helped Stan carry the pies inside as people introduced themselves. We left our shoes and coats and scarves in the foyer. Inside, another couple was sitting on the couch. Dan, a tall, thin, dark haired man with a goatee, and his boyfriend Nate, a blond and burly bearish man. I sat in a folding chair behind the ottoman where Jackie, the 11 year old daughter, was watching Dexter. She correctly predicted that the bitchy reporter was in cahoots with Trinity, the serial killer, as I sat quietly judging her parents for allowing her to watch such an inappropriate show and stuffing myself with batter friend green beans and puff pastry with tomatoes and blue cheese.


The last guests finally arrived. Pat and her husband whose name I can't recall, and their antiquated and smelly dog, Spirit. They were an older couple who own a wine shop and cafe and seemed pretty snooty. I decided to allow myself to immediately dislike them, and invented imaginary histories that involved them discriminating against wee people, slapping babies and clubbing seals.


After all the guests arrived, we went into the dining room for the first course. Foie Gras with fig jam and white wine. I didn't want to make a big deal about my vegetarian leanings, but nor did I intend to nom on the fattened liver of a hobbled, alcoholic duck. So I mostly mushed mine around on my plate, and took the first opportunity to surreptitiously dump it in the garbage. Carlos, who just flat out disliked his, fed it to Spirit, the dog. Someone said the wine was fruity, and Dan made a joke that so were most of the guests. Everyone laughed, and Jackie said "I'm laughing, but I don't get it," which made everyone laugh harder.

After dinner, Carlos and I sat on the couch holding hands. The old man was across from us, asleep in an easy chair and snoring. Carlos spotted a photograph in the foyer of a woman with a dog who looked like Jeri Blank from Strangers with Candy, and he and I started giggling uncontrollably and took pictures of it with our cell phones. We weren't sure if it was a family member of Jason's or just some picture they'd found at a yard sale somewhere. Or maybe it came with the house. Our speculations and giggling were endless.

In the back yard Jason used a small flame thrower to start a fire. We put on our jackets and stood around the fire. A crisp, beautiful night. Sparks flying. The cracking of burning wood. Jason and Val passed a pipe back and forth as Jackie stood between them. Nated farted loudly. Only I was mortified. Carlos was shivering, so he stood in front of me, and I wrapped my jacket around him to warm him up.


Inside once again, I ate some of Stan and Chuy's chocolate cherry cake with ice cream, and some of Nate's caramel crunch bars, depsite being full of mashed potatoes and stuffing. Jason asked if Carlos and I had any videos of ourselves on xtube. I said not yet. Jackie was playing a video game, and he said not to worry. Everything went over her head. We watched youtube videos of monkey's having sex on their bigscreen TV. The next door neighbor, a straight laced straight couple, came over to share the tea they'd made. Carlos drank some. I did not.

"You aren't watching the game?" The pony tailed, fleece pullover clad neighbor asked us. Silence. Blinking. Someone put on a gay marriage parody on youtube until the neighbors finally, sensing awkwardness, felt compelled to leave.

Not long after, we left as well. Stan and Chuy drove Carlos and I back to Carlos's place in West Seattle. It rained again on the way home. Chuy was driving and I feared for my life as he swerved and slammed on his brakes repeatedly. Feel carlos gripping my hand. Show him the picture from my iPhone of the Jeri Blank lookalike. He starts giggling. We kiss.

At his place we hug Stan and Chuy goodbye. Exchange nice to meet yous. I really really need to use the bathroom. I need to use it in a way that can only happen in the quiet solitary confines of my own bathroom in my own apartment which is miles away. Suffer in silence as he plays a South Park episode on his computer. Finally, unable to bear it any longer, I go use the bathroom down the hall. It feels like I'm inside for a remarkably long time. Every bodily function sounds like it's being amplified in surround sound. Finally flush and sheepishly return to his bedroom where he has the good manners to pretend that nothing happened. Crawl in bed beside him and fool around until we fall asleep in one another's arms.

Maladie D'amour

"I just want to attack you." He says. We are sitting on the floor of his bedroom, listening to Dead Can Dance. We're sipping gourmet hot chocolate. A candle is lit. Flicker of light, our shadows bend and sway. Our atmosphere is charged with sexual tension. I set my mug of chocolate on his bookshelf to facilitate my imminent molestation.

Sometimes the best way to get over one boy is to immediately start having hot, sweaty monkey sex with another one. But feelings don't just evaporate one day because you will them to. Time and change turn desire to affection.

Post orgasm, we are sitting on his bed beneath his Tibetan prayer flags in underwear and knee high, stripey socks. He looks at me and says, doing his best Sebastian from the Little Mermaid, "I'm French! I like French toast. French fries...." "French and Saunders?" I chime in. He agrees and we French kiss. I've always been a Francophile.

In college I was only interested in watching black and white French films about death. My rule of thumb was that if it wasn't directed by Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut or Eric Rohmer, it wasn't worth watching. I associated the French with sophistication, and being from a podunk little town too small to have a traffic light, I lapped up anything I perceived to be sophisticated like 14 year old girls lap up poorly written vampire novels.

Of course I took French for my foreign language credit despite the lack of any possible practical application of it in my daily life. It was the language of love, after all, and love was the only thing I was interested in during my college years. Pursuing it. Dreaming of it. To have it. To keep it. If I could have made amour my major, I would have. In retrospect it probably would have been more useful than Sociology.

In French we studied using a program called French in Action, featuring the characters Robert and Mirielle (played by a French actress who appeared in Playboy). Still sporting the remains of my now long since aborted Texas accent, my pronunciation always seemed to cause my professor physical pain. I'd answer a question about Tante Georgette's cat. She'd correct me, and I'd repeat the French words after her, slowly and futilely with my Texas twang. My study partner was a girl named Stacy, and when we read our first novel, en Francais, she started calling me by the name of the titular character: Le Petit Prince. I was small and blond and completely lost. It worked.

***

In Paris with Jonathan, I could understand just about everything people said to us, but I was completely unable to form a response. If I told Jonathan what they were asking then he would put together a reply. So between the two of us we managed to navigate the city of lights without any serious misunderstandings. The times that I attempted to speak my poorly pronounced Southern drawl accented French, "Un billet pour le metro, s'il vous plait!," the attendant would invariably roll his or her eyes and answer in perfect English "Here's your ticket."

***

For a couple of weeks in my late twenties I thought I might try to learn Russian. I bought a CD and was listening to a Russian speaker say phrases in English, then in Russian which I repeated in rote fashion for a while, until I started listening more carefully and became disturbed by the nature of the sentences I was mimicking. "My money has been stolen!" "Where is the nearest hospital?" "Don't touch me!" "I have no food!" Horrified, I gave up on my Slavic fantasies, and limited my Russian to the ordering of the occasional piroshki.

Now in my 30s I've picked up studying French once again. I have a DVD with lessons that the Other Lance made for me that I listen to every afternoon while I'm working. If Russian was about pleas for help, French is about getting laid. The phrases I'm asked to repeat mostly involve asking a woman back to my place to have a beer. Unlikely to ever come in handy, it still feels like a step in the right direction. I'm still determined to find love. However long it takes. However unlikely it seems. When it comes to speaking the language of love, I figure it doesn't hurt to be bilingual.

The Little Prince has seeped into my psyche. More often than not I feel like I'm the naive stranger, navigating an unfamiliar landscape, looking for companionship. For someone who feels like home. When someone comes into my life that I really feel is a kindred spirit, who I really care about, I loan him or her a copy of The Little Prince. It's my way of taming that person. Of being seen and understood. Of becoming a familiar fixture in someone else's landscape. It's a way for a person for whom spoken language always feels foreign to say, I love you.

***

My gym partner returns my copy of The Little Prince that I'd loaned him. We smile and joke as we work out. I give him a fleece pullover that was too big for me. He gives me homemade fudge. Time and change turn desire to affection. Maybe not so simply as that. But still.

A month passes and my rebound romance shows no sign of abating. A birthday. A Thanksgiving. A candlelit bubble bath, laying against his chest as he fashions a beard for me made of suds. More often than not he falls asleep holding my hand. Feel his long eyelashes brush my naked shoulder and smile in the warm, dark.

"I'm going to get 'Property of Lance' tattooed above my butt." He tells me. He somehow makes this sound romantic. I joke that in a week the Lance will be crossed out and instead it will say "Property of Hector." He looks at me, beautiful and earnest and says, "I'd never date someone named Hector." Then he suggests we "watch a movie" which has become a euphemism for laying in bed and not watching a movie.

The two of us naked as zombies lumber across the screen in front of us. Kissing as people scream. Touch to the sound of chainsaws. We seem to understand one another. Pressed inside him, the movie melts away. We are the only two people who exist in the world. Later he lays against me, his head in the crook of my shoulder. Start thinking about where to take him on Friday night. Date night. He really likes French food. So some place French. Some place sophisticated. Some place romantic.

"Goodnight My Prince." He says and kisses me. "Good night." I say and kiss him back.

Just Friends

"I don't have friends, I have ex-boyfriends." My friend Chad once said to me. Back when we were dating.

Yesterday J. came over with chocolates and goodies left over from a post-Halloween party in exchange for some wilty veggies I could find no use for. In retrospect it doesn't seem like a very fair trade. But since it was unfair in my favor, I'm okay with that.

This is the first time I've seen him since we stopped seeing each other in March. I worried that when I saw him there'd be some weird, residual feelings or awkwardness, but thankfully there was nothing. If anything he was the one who seemed nervous. Fidgetting on my couch as we chatted. Absently playing with his nose ring.

Not much has changed about him in the time that has passed. His hair is longer now. His face scruffier. He is still thin and shivery in an oversized sweater. Still slightly socially awkward. Feel ridiculous for having changed shirts three times before he got there.

We sit across from one another and chat about nothing in particular. I'm working so he doesn't stay long. Hug him goodbye. Nothing. As soon as the door is closed behind him, heat up his homemade hot chocolate and eat the peanut butter balls and chocolate mousse he left behind. He was always a great cook. I totally scored!

Three weeks ago the boy I like liked and I decided to be "just friends." Romance wasn't quite working and after we talked and decided to put romance on the back burner, I felt both relieved and disappointed. Relieved that I wouldn't have to worry about whether or not things were going anywhere, or if I wanted things to go somewhere, or wonder how he felt about me, or how I felt about him. I could just relax. It felt like a weight was lifted. But at the same time I feel sad that he is no longer my monkey. I am no longer his Lance Baby Snookems. His Pookie. His Burrito. His fella. We're just us.

We continue to be workout partners. After a couple of slightly awkward workouts, things smooth out and our just friends status becomes normalized. The second workout I almost accidentally kiss him goodbye out of habit, but after that there are no further mishaps. We behave the way that friends behave. Routine turns to comfort, and when another friend springs some unexpected drama on me, his counsel is the most valuable and comforting of all of my friends. He and J. are hanging out now, which seems inevitable.

When anything happens or changes in my life, the first person I talk to about it is Bryan. Of all of my ex-boyfriends who are now just friends, he and I are the closest. We lived together for 4 years in two different states. There's no one with whom I'm as intimate. I can be completely myself around him and know that I won't be judged. That I'll be supported. Despite the fact that I give him no end of grief for his recent forays into gun toting, meat eating and listening to Fantasy audio books while driving. I love him just the same.

When I tell him about the boys I'm dating now, he always says, "As long as it makes you happy."

Halloween. I go out with my gay-married friends Michael and Matt, and our friend Daniel who is visiting from San Francisco. Back when he lived in Seattle I had a total and unrequited crush on Daniel. Now the two of us are friends, or at least, we're people who read one another's blogs and Facebook statuses.

Earlier in the day Michael, Daniel and I had lunch together and then went last minute costume shopping. Red Light was totally picked over. The Crypt had nothing for me. I'd wanted to be something scantily clad that would show off my hot bod to my best advantage, but I worried it would be too cold and counterproductive to gallavant about in my undies. At Value Village Michael found a soccer jersey for me that fit, for $1.64. He loaned me his soccer shorts and socks to complete my ensemble. Daniel found a child's furry green dragon costume that he creatively fashioned into a headpiece and cape.

For dinner the four of us took a cab to a Mexican restaurant on 15th. We ordered margaritas, and Matt told the waiter that Daniel was a pig, and there was an exchange right out of Abbott and Costello, with the waiter asking Daniel about his costume and Daniel asking whether there was pork on the menu.

After dinner we walked to a beautiful house on 15th street owned by Daniel's friends to a Halloween costume party. I was a soccer player. Daniel was Puff the Magic Dragon (I'd suggested he wear a skirt so he could be Puff the Magic Dragqueen). Matt was the vampire from Twilight (but way hotter than that guy). Michael was Robin, from Batman and Robin fame, with a scandalous pair of black leather underwear that showed off his muscular legs and rendered a codpiece unnecessary.

At the party, a witch with red hair made me a glass of absinthe which tastes unfortunately like licorice, and I talked about literature with a man named Blair who was dressed as a wiccan priestess. An 83 year old woman dressed as a gypsy aroused memories of Harold and Maude as she drank, swore and got stoned to Matt's delight. The absinthe quickly made my brain all fuzzy, and at one point I was sitting on a bar stool and Matt and Michael were on either side of me, their hands feeling up my legs all the way up the inside of my borrowed soccer shorts. I decided we were either all too drunk, or not nearly drunk enough.

Someone threw up on the living room floor. Daniel had his fortune told. I ate my own weight in oreo cookies. It was time to leave the party. Walking down 15th to a bar, we stopped and went downstairs beside a Lebanese restaurant to a ballroom where people were Tangoing.

Text from Jonathan. "There are dual displays of porn and lots of people in costume. It's not too late to come." Jonathan is the ex-boyfriend I've known the longest, and the one I loved the most intensely. Which also makes him the one most adept at pressing my buttons. He wanted me to join him at Re-Bar. If it wasn't so cold and far away, and if my brain wasn't so clouded with Absinthe, then I'd have probably gone.

Instead, the four of us make our way to the Cuff. We stand outside, waiting in line to get in for about 15 minutes. Daniel utilizes this time by making out with the cute but obnoxious wigged guy in front of us. The most clever costume is a guy dressed as GRINDR, an iPhone app that tells you what guys are in your area.

Once inside the bar, everyone is shirtless and more muscular and more attractive than me. We dance, but the dance floor is too crowded to really dance, so we mostly just jostle about, among the sweatstained, and shirtless denizens on the floor around us. Jonathan texts again that he's at the Cuff, but I never see him. The time changes, and we get an extra hour. I'm relieved finally when Daniel is ready to go and walk with him home, freezing in my soccer shorts in the cold, night air. Walking home Daniel says, "It's strange. You look just like an ordinary person. I'd never guess you were such a great writer." I ask him what a writer looks like, but he doesn't have an answer. Get home around 2:30 which is really 3:30, which is much later than I've been out in quite some time.

On Sunday I have brunch with my group of friends. We go to the Broadway Grill. We sit at a table beneath a skylight on a bright, sunny morning. It's a warm group and we laugh, and it's great to see everyone. I make eyes with the cute, red haired waiter who smiles at me. As I'm leaving, see my gym partner eating lunch with some other boy. He's wearing the same shirt he wore when we went to see 500 Days of Summer. It's fine. He isn't my monkey anymore. Wonder, but do not want to wonder, if they're sleeping together. Does this other boy's touch feel as good as mine does? Did. Shrug. I've been on dates myself, what can I really say? Walking home I realize it really is okay. Just a surprise.

At the gym later that day, validation comes in the form of a hot 21 year old. 5'10" with blond hair and blue eyes who tells me he thinks I'm cute and gives me his phone number. I have no intention of actually calling him, because, well, he's 21. Too young and too pretty. But the self esteem boost is welcome and needed.

Bryan's advice "Call him!" Maybe I will after all.

Tonight my gym partner and I meet up for our bicep and back workout. We are comfortable around one another. More comfortable than I think we've ever been. We laugh and enjoy one another's company. The hot 21 year old is there again, working out with two other guys. He smiles at me, and waves, and I wave and smile back, but we don't talk. Shy, I guess, since we're both working out with other people. See my gym partner checking him out and smile to myself. Boys.

After the workout I play some frenetic tunes and dance in my kitchen as I make blueberry and banana protein shakes for the two of us. It's nice. I see his face with his auburn, fuzzy beard, and smile. Think, "I love him." In a friendly kind of way. "You're the best gym partner I've ever had," he tells me. He leaves to go watch TV with another friend. I hug him goodbye. He asks for another hug, just because he wants one. I hug him again. "Friends" is not such a bad thing to be.

The Runner

"Why?" Is the question I'm always asked immediately following my disclosure that I'm training for a marathon.
The questioner will invariably be wearing an expression ranging from surprised befuddlement (like a dog with it's head cocked to the side regarding some stupid human invention that makes no sense), to guarded approval. The latter usually comes along with the requiste feigned smile and nervous nodding of a person confronted with a lunatic who they're just appeasing until someone with restraints comes along. Some people just flat out tell me that I'm crazy.

Like my vegetarianism and goth phase, I have no ready answer for them, other than, "It seemed like a good idea at the time."

The truth is, I don't know why I decided to run a marathon, other than that I like the idea of being someone who's run a marathon. I want to be able to say, "I ran a marathon!" someday to some handsome, bookish type who'll be impressed with my ersatz athleticism over hot chocolate following a rousing discussion of Noam Chomsky's contribution to linguistics and popular ideas about propoganda and who controls the media. I'll sexily sip my hot chocolate as the implications of my stamina sink in to his erotic consciousness. Now that I think about it, I could just say I run marathons now, without, you know, going through all the effort of doing so. Like when I had a guitar leaning against my wall because I realized I seemed just as cool without having to actually play it. But in my thirties I tend to practice intellectual rigour at all times, even when I'm trying to get laid.

Maybe the real reason, or part of the reason, I decided to train for a marathon is the fact that life feels so chaotic and meaningless. That in some ways, doing this is like having a measure of control over the uncontrollable. Or maybe on some level I feel that having a goal that I don't really have an emotional attachment to is easier than trying to do something I really care about. Maybe I just analyze everything to death, when I should just relax and experience it. Maybe, like Bruce Springsteen before me, I was just born to run.

In junior high I hated running. Gym was right after lunch, and any time they made us do laps I'd get a sharp pain in my side, and, more often than not, barf on the gym floor. My school was small and when track season came around participation on the track team was mandatory. The portly and sadistic coaches would make us run around the school beneath the glaring Texas sun for the entire 45 minutes or so of class. As soon as I rounded the corner and was out of sight, I'd start walking and would continue walking until I was within sight again. As the first track meet approached I went up to the coach and expressed my reservations at being on the track team. His response was, "Why don't you go play kick ball with the sixth graders?" Which is what I did for the rest of the season.

From this inauspicious indoctrination into the world of running one wouldn't expect to find me, years later, training for a marathon. But here I am. I started running again in my late twenties. My body at the time was unaccustomed to anything that required more exertion than pressing the buttons of my remote control. Because my boyfriend at the time was gung ho about working out, and because I was insecure enough about my body that I felt I had no choice but to follow suit, I signed up for the gym and had my first re-introduction to the world of running via the gym's treadmill.

When I began, I regarded the treadmill with the suspicion and disdain I'd normally reserve for Ron Paul supporters. It sounded like a good idea on the surface, but something about it just wasn't right. I took a few tentative steps on it, imagining my shoelace getting caught and somehow dying in a freak, treadmill related accident. That first run, I was only able to sustain my momentum for about two minutes. Then the old familiar pain in my side surfaced, along with the ever present threat of projectile vomiting. But I kept at it...because my fear of being dumped for someone with a better body outweighed my revulstion of working out. By increments I increased the length of time I could keep at it. First to 5 minutes. Then to 10.

At some point my extreme dislike turned to resigned tolerance, until I realized one day that the running portion of my workout was what I looked forward to the most. The realization shocked me. But I came to understand that when I was running my mind cleared of all my obsessive thoughts and over-analyzing. All I focused on was breathing. Putting one foot in front of the other. Running became like a form of meditation. As zen as I'm ever likely to get.

Before I knew it, I was running longer and longer distances. Four miles. Five or six miles. Running was my major form of stress release. After a long day in the cubicle I couldn't wait to just sweat out all of the anxiety and tension that the work day accrued. Anna and I lived together then, and she was the one who suggested that, since I was running so much anyway, why not try to run a marathon?

I dismissed it at first. There was no way I could ever run that far! But the idea lodged itself in my subconscious, and after a while it didn't seem so far fetched. Maybe I could run a marathon.

So last year I decided to sign up for the Seattle Half Marathon. I lacked the confidence to try for the full 26.2, and thought that 13.1 was a good way to get my feet wet and see if running that far was possible without, you know, dying. So I spent 3 months training, which basically meant 3 months of gradually increasing the length I ran until I was able to run 13.

The first two months of training, my feet were covered in blisters and always hurting, and I almost gave up. But I perservered. Mostly because I'd already paid my entry fee and bought a pair of running shoes, and was determined to get my money's worth. By the third month I'd developed calouses and the pain was mostly over. In the course of my training I'd run up to 18 miles, so I was pretty confident I could finish the half with no trouble at all.

The day of the half marathon, I woke up around 6 am, an hour I'd previously knew existed only on an intellectual level, and walked down to Seattle Center to get ready for the race. I had my bib pinned to my shirt with the number 10941. I watched the thousands of other runners talking in small groups in the cold morning air, or stretching. My stomach was grumbly and nervous, and I was afraid to eat anything for fear of barfing.

The race got off to a slow start. At first I could only walk because I was pinned in behind thousands of slow moving people, packed together like athletic sardines. But after 15 minutes or so the herd had thinned out enough that I could bust into a slow jog. Having trained entirely on the treadmill I was unprepared at first for the hills. One around mile 7 was particularly steep and the runner in front of me loudly declared upon seeing it, "This hill is bullshit!" He ran over to the sidewalk and quit the race. I was feeling pretty daunted myself, when at that moment someone began playing Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" which spurred me on and motivated me over the hill.

The race was without incident until around mile 11. The runner in front of me suddenly started walking, and to avoid hitting him, I ran around him, hitting myself in the groin with an orange and white traffic marker, tripping, and rolling onto the sidewalk, scraping my arm pretty badly in the process. I was so humiliated that I got up and started sprinting through the last two miles so that I was no longer in sight of anyone who'd seen me fall. I finished in just seconds over the 2 hour mark with energy to spare.

Encouraged by my triumph over the half marathon, I decided that this year I was ready for the full 26.2 miles. I've ordered a new pair of running shoes. I've allowed myself 4 months to train, of which I have a month and a half left. I've given myself carte blanche to eat any and every carb that comes my way. During the course of my training I'll get up to 20 miles. Saving the last 6.2 for the day of the race. Right now I'm at 14, which I'm able to do fairly easily. But it's still a far cry from where I need to be, and I'm beginning to feel twinges of doubt that I'll really be able to do the full race without having to walk.

"You've got a great ass from all that running." The boy I like tells me. An unexpected perk of my training regimen is a perky bottom! Later he and I are sitting on my futon and he shows me a text he'd just sent a friend of his upon being asked what he was up to that night. "Might be snuggling with my Lance baby snookems."

I am someone's Lance baby snookems. I smile and kiss his temple. But inside I'm simultaneously pleased and horror stricken. We've been seeing one another for nearly 3 months at this point. I want greater intimacy but am terrified of making myself vulnerable to hurt. When confronted with this ambivalence in the past my modus operandi has always been to flee. Either by emotionally withdrawing and becoming distant or unavailable, or by physically picking up and moving. Runner has always been part of my psyche.

This time around I'm trying to keep the desire to flee in check. To take a stand and face my emotions instead of running from them. Even if it means that I end up getting hurt. Because all of that running gets exhausting.

"You're a burrito." He says, one morning in his apartment. We've just come from the shower and he's wrapped me in a warm blanket. He makes us omelets for breakfast. I'm warm in his embrace, but afraid of being too comfortable. Afraid of the unknown expanse of our emotional landscape. Running may be exhausting, but I've built up some serious endurance. A new pair of running shoes arrives this week. But for right now I'm standing still.

September

"I'm going to die on September 26th." When I woke up one morning at the age of 18, this was the thought that was running through my head. Convinced I'd had some sort of premonition, when September 26th of that year rolled around I was horrified that I was going to get hit by a bus on my way to class and flattened into an Emo pancake, or murdered in a ritualistic fashion by a pirate costumed serial killer, or by choking on my lunchtime sandwich like an anorexic and vocally challenged Mama Cass. I spent the entire day walking carefully, looking both ways as I crossed the street and carrying a cannister of mace.

Obviously since I'm writing this, I didn't die. Unless I'm a zombie. Which would explain the perfunctory nature of my daily routine. My stiff gait and affinity for brains. I digress. The point is, every year on September 26th, I take a moment to reflect on my life. Where I'm at vs. where I want to be. A flower pressed between the pages of a book, marking my place. Usually so much introspection would send me spiraling into ontological depression and existential crisis. This year, let's face it, is no different.

Where I want to be is fairly simple to envision as the "dreamboard" I created can attest:

1. I want to be in a committed, longterm, monogamous relationship with a man who adores me, who I adore. My biggest fantasy is to wake up and find myself suddenly in the middle of one. When we're at the point where we're already comfortable with one another, and we stay in bed watching movies and snuggling, and we talk about our days, and there is the trust and security that comes from a shared history. Then when we're ready we'll adopt a Chinese baby. One day, the most important facet of being part of a couple will be mine. To be able to change my Facebook status to "in a relationship."


2. I want to be a published novelist. To spend afternoons typing at a computer, working on a universe of my own creation. To derive joy from the doing. To be able to make a living doing what I love. To sit in coffee shops, my face illuminated by my laptop. Giving free reign to my creativity instead of stifling it with conference calls and Excel spreadsheets.


3. I want to live in a loft apartment, in a proper city with hardwood floors, sophisticated furniture and avant garde paintings. Jazz playing and intricate gourmet dinner parties for my stylish, artistic friends. Candlelight bathtub and a starlit balcony.


4. I want to finish the Seattle Marathon without walking. Or dying.


5. I want meaninful connections with people that I love and respect. People who really see me and get me. I want to feel like I'm understood, accepted and cherished by people other than the barista at Starbucks and the blond chick behind the counter at my gym.


6. I want the motivation and inspiration to make these desires come to fruition!

Where I'm at is....well...not there. Yet.

1. He calls me Fella. I call him Monkey. He comes over with apples and smoked gouda that he slices and arranges on one of my clear blue plates. We take it to my bedroom and curl up beneath my grandmother's quilt and watch a movie. He feeds me a slice of apple and cheese, and when the movie is over we slide off our underwear and fool around. It's nice. A hurried shower and we scurry back to the warm bed. Manage to fall asleep with his arm around me. Wake up, rolled over, my arm wrapped around him. Kiss his freckled shoulder. Peel away from him, our skin sweaty and stuck together where we were pressed against one another. Breathe in deeply, tiny molecules of him, as if I could memorize his scent. Realize with dismay that I'm developing feelings for him.


2. "I'm Brent." A stranger introduces himself. Bleach blond in a purple striped shirt. I'm sitting in a coffee shop, my face illuminated by my laptop, supposedly working on a short story. The deadline for the bi-annual writing contest is the end of September. Brent and I chat about our lives. He is a massage therapist and recovering alcoholic who is learning to play piano. I make a mental note of these details in case I can use them for one of my characters sometime. He goes out to smoke a cigarette. I manage to correct a grammatical error but otherwise the story remains untouched, and eventually I click "save" and go home to watch the season premier of Heroes instead.


3. "Can I?" He asks. I answer, "Go ahead." The upstairs neighbor's alarm is going off, has been going off for 30 minutes at this point as he presses snooze every 5 minutes. Now it's just vibrating constantly, until the boy I like bangs the wall 3 times, and the neighbor quickly turns it off. He taps the wall two more times to say "Thank you." We spoon benath my blankets in my dim, cave-like apartment. My Hopper prints and second hand furniture decorate a small, lack-luster room. Close my eyes and pretend we are in a loft apartment, snuggled beneath 500 count Egyptian cotton sheets.


4. Saturday morning I run 12 miles on the treadmill at the gym. Listen to my Run Lance Run playlist. Frenetic, upbeat songs to get me moving. To trick my brain into being positive. Covered in sweat. Cheeks red. Chest heaving. Run twelve miles and go nowhere. Refuse to think of this as a metaphor for my life. Fail.


5. Saturday night a birthday party. I'm sitting at the center of a table full of friends. Delicious food is being passed along. A brown faced puppy pops up between my legs from under the table. Paws at my knee to beg for food. Absently I pat his head. Conversations are going on all around me. All I hear is the din of voices. Clipped words and dinner party smiles. I'm invisible, and all the air disappears from the room. I feel suddenly, terribly lonely.


6. The only thing I'm consistently motivated and inspired to do is to catalog my porn collection.

September. I can't believe the month is almost over. Like relationships, I never seem to be aware of it until I'm in the middle of it. Then it takes me by surprise. Noting the passage of another season by counting the freckles on his sunburnt shoulders. I start talking faster. My words always speed up as winter energy collects beneath my tongue. The boys of summer start to lose their summer tans. Leaves begin to turn from green to red. The air turns cooler. I pack away my summer clothes. Fold my shorts and put them in the bottom drawer. My summer fling starts to change into something else, but I'm not sure what exactly.

"Is that my toothbrush?" He asks Monday morning in my bathroom as we're getting ready. I'm simultaneously pleased and horrified that I'm eeking out a space for him in my routine. Pleased because I like him, but horrified because making a space means making myself vulnerable. Wonder, but do not want to wonder, what we're doing. Is it going anywhere? Does it have to go somewhere? Memorize his beauty. The redish brown fuzz of his beard. His sleepy smile. the vibrant green of his eyes. Think, there should be some chronicle of him for when September ends. In my more ambivalent moments I worry that the only thing we really have in common is that we're both lost. Watch him gargle mouthwash and spit into the sink. Smile to myself in the cool, gray morning. Wrap my arms around his waist. Hold him tightly.

Part at the gate with a kiss as we walk in opposite directions. He tells me to have a good day. I wish the same for him. Listen to a song on my headphones. Bright Eyes. Hear, "This weather has me wanting love more tangible." It's funny. When I'm at home by myself, I never feel lonely. I'll read a book, or watch a movie and I'm perfectly content. But when I'm walking down a busy city street and a stranger brushes past me, that unexpected touch can jolt me into awareness of solitude. When I'm sitting at a friend's birthday party at a table full of people, or at brunch on Sunday with a group of friends, and all around me people are having conversations, I feel alone.

Here I am at the end of September, another year almost over. I taste it in peaches that are overripe and bursting. I feel it in the folds of sheets that even after washing reek of the stale sweat of summer lying intertwined. That still may betray a trace of his DNA. A lingering stain to prove that he exists. I know September in the creases thinly forming in the corners of my eyes. Betrayed at last by a youth of smiles. I try to stay in the present. In the present moment I'm content. I'm not worried about where I should be, or where I've been. I'm just happy to be alive. To have a boy that I like. To have goals. To have dreams that don't seem that far away after all.

Outside a cool breeze rustles the changing leaves of the trees that line the sidewalk, that block some of the traffic noises from the freeway below. The neighbor and his boyfriend rush down the stairs, lighting cigarettes. Hang on to their youth in lazy forgetfulness. I fold laundry and listen to it rain. Wish that he was here. I want to fall asleep inside of him. To unravel the morning glories of my longing and desire. Instead, in bed alone, stumbling over thoughts of an uncertain future. All of summer's forget me nots, more often than not, end up as forgets, and the wind becomes a sigh when the season changes. September.

Closet Station

"You look sick." My mother says. "If I had a gun I'd shoot myself."


I am 18 and have just gotten a haircut for my student ID. A flat top. Before then my hair had been long, bleach blond, with bangs down to my chin (which my mother also hated and complained about incessantly). I lose the ID and have to get a replacement anyway when my hair has started to grow out a little.


I wonder to myself how she'll respond when I manage to work up the courage to tell her I am gay, considering her reaction to a bad haircut is to threaten suicide.


The funny thing is, I'd gotten the haircut to try and seem more "normal." But it only seems to accentuate the fact that I'm not the son that they wanted or expected. That nothing I do can ever please them. They expected a redneck, cowboy and got the president of the Drama Club. A gay, atheist vegetarian.


At 18 I am a freshman/sophomore in college, still living with my parents. I have a 1:00 am curfew. I commute 35/40 minutes every day in my mother's forest green 1995 Dodge Spirit to College Station to go to class. I attend Texas A&M University, famous for it's bonfire, the Fighting Texas Aggies, and for having cloned CC the cat, and first genetically cloned domestic animal.

College Station is the (at this time still future) home of the George Bush Presidential Library, Freebirds Burritos, and my alma mater. The population is 80.53% white, and almost entirely conservative Christian. My Darwin fish is stolen from my car so many times, that I finally have to surrender the idea of keeping it. To show my gay pride, I wear rainbow colored "freedom rings" on a necklace, and a classmate asks me if I was in the Olympics. I tell her yes. That I am on the luge team. She seems satisfied with this answer. Twice I wear my "Nobody Knows I'm Gay" t-shirt to school, and both times I run into my highschool friend Christy who must think I wear it every single day. "I just want you to know that I find your lifestyle disgusting," she tells me. "But I still love you."

Texas A&M is a school steeped in tradition. If you aren't totally gung ho about the school, and don't "bleed marroon" you are considered a 2 percenter. If you accidentally step on the grass at the Memorial Student Center, you risk being beaten to death by over-zealous Corps of Cadets members (many of whom I made out with during my 4 years there.) During "Howdy" week, people go around saying howdy to one another and passing out howdy stickers. Whenever I am confronted with this greeting, I take a sadistic glee in responding with anything but howdy. Hello. Hiya. Hi. Greetings. Hola. To name a few.

During bonfire (which I always go to because, well, it's a really big fire!) when everyone else is hunched over during one of the ridiculous cheers, (Farmers Fight!) I look across the crowd and pick out my fellow 2 percenters because we are the only ones standing. Any time there is a hugely conservative population, there is always a large, liberal undercurrent. The goth kids with their Rocky Horror Picture Show. The Take Back The Night Lesbians. The errant club kid in platorm shoes, vinyl shorts and body glitter, sitting at the IHOP at 2 am with a never ending cup of coffee and a copy of Nietzsche's "Civilization and it's Discontents."

The reason I go to Texas A&M and not some liberal arts college somewhere where I'd have been better served can be traced back to my mother. I was filling out applications to the schools I wanted to attemd, and when she saw the applicatoin for Columbia, she threw a fit at the prospect of me living in New York. Because she is a master at the art of the guilt trip, and because I want to please her, to show her that I really am a good son, I choose the school she wants me to attend. My only act of rebellion is to major in Sociology. I want to major in Creative Writing. She wants me to major in business. So I chose something I think is a compromise, and end up pleasing no one.

In College Station there is one gay club. When I am 18 it is called "The Club." I go to the mall and talk to my friend Joe who works at the cologne counter of Dillard's and he'll ask "Are you going to the club this weekend?" I think it is a way for the closeted men in town to be able to talk about their lives openly with discretion. After I leave, I hear that The Club has been burned down by arsonists and replaced by a Baptist Church. But now, years later, there is a new club, close to campus called Rain that is a popular dance spot for students.


The Club plays a mixture of country and rock songs. Has a stage and some tables in the front room, and a back room with pool tables. The patrons that make up the crowd on Saturday nights are a mixture of students and professors from the university. Frat boys and Corps of Cadets members wary of being spotted by their fellows. Locals who come for a beer and to unwind after work and maybe to meet someone, to connect. Married men, in the closet, conflicted with unrequited desire (or furtively requieted in bathrooms, parks and rest stops). Men in the tiny rural, surrounding towns, who work at farms and factories, construction workers who drive 45 minutes or an hour to the one place where they can be themselves one night a week. The patrons refer to the town as "Closet Station."


The drag show nights are far and away the most popular and draw the most students. The drag queens who perform always strike me as brave and creative. They are men who are unafraid in that small town to go shopping for bras and panties. To find a size 14 pair of purple pumps with six inch heels. At the time the phrase "all that and a bag of chips" is popular and my favorite performer does a number in an outfit comprised entirely of bags of chips.

It is at one of these performances that I meet Jason II (having already met and discarded Jason I, a gymnast, because he likes the Big Mountain cover of "Ooh Baby I Love Your Way"). He is 21 and a senior business major. His goal is to work at a bank, and some weekends he officiates high school basketball games as a referee. He lives in a small apartment near campus. He comes up to me at The Club and introduces himself and asks me out, and I tell him I'm not interested. He isn't my type. I'm "alternative" and he is preppy. Khaki pants and a Polo shirt. But my friend Stan talks to me on his behalf and says that I should give him a chance. He's a really nice guy. Because I am 18 and because I want nothing more than to lose my virginity, I figure he's a safe bet and acquiesce.

A week before my mom had told me that my Aunt Shirley called her because my cousin Misty was upset because someone at school had told her I was gay. I freaked out and assured her I wasn’t. I wanted to be honest with her. But I wasn’t ready. I was afraid that she wouldn’t be able to accept it.


The night I am out with Jason, I lie and tell them I am out with my friend Courtney. My standard alibi. Having known I was gay since I was 10 or 11, lying and hiding who I am has become second nature to me. Usually I call Courtney and let her know what's up, but this night she is out of town, so I don't bother. My mission is accomplished. My virginity is lost. In a twin bed, in a sterile apartment beneath a Southwestern print comforter. To the Pret a Porter soundtrack. It is painful and embarrassing, and I'm horrified. Is this what being gay means? Is this what my life will be like? Secret meetings. Painful sex. Emotionless interactions. I drive home numb, wanting to just crawl into my bed and pretend it never happened.

When I get home they are waiting for me. “Who were you with tonight?” My mom asks. “Courtney” I answer. “Courtney called looking for you.” She says. “Who were you with? Who’s Jason?” I start crying. My mom starts crying. My dad says “You made your mama cry. We’re going to get to the bottom of this.” My mom goes to my bedroom and returns with my phone and throws it on the floor at my feet. She says from now on I'm not talking to anyone. I'm not allowed to leave the house except to go to school. “From now on you’ll act normal.” She says. “From now on you’ll be normal!”

I lock myself in my room. Sobbing hysterically. Rocking back and forth. Hitting myself in the head with my fist. I want to die. I am so ashamed. I know that I’ve disappointed them. That I’ll always be a disappointment to them. I think that it isn’t possible for me to ever be happy being gay. I just want it to all be over. To take myself out of the picture. So I can stop being a disappointment. They break open the door to my room. My mom puts her arms around me. Crying too. Saying she can’t stand to see me hurting. I want to say, “The only one who’s ever hurt me is you.” But I don't. My dad says, “How could you let a man touch you?” My mom says she doesn’t want to talk about it. Then she asks if there is someone I can stay with. I panic and ask “Are you kicking me out?” And my dad says, “Nobody is kicking you out.” My mom doesn’t say anything. My dad says if I need counseling, they’d send me, to try to fix me. I say I don’t need to be fixed.

That night for the first night of my life, my mom doesn’t tell me that she loves me before she goes to bed. She doesn’t tell me she loves me again for a year, and by the time she does the word means much less than it once had.


The next day I get into a car accident at school. Fail a calculus test. Get a speeding ticket on the way home. At home she is wrapped in a quilt on the couch and doesn’t speak to me, or make dinner. Or move. I feel so disgusting and so worthless. A few weeks later I move out, and into the duplex with Courtney and Nikki. A first tentative step and being free to be myself.


15 years later, 1812 miles away. I still edit out the biggest part of my life when I talk to them. It would be nice to say that time heals all wounds. That after so many years, I'm finally able to be open. To be myself around them. That the guilt and shame I felt back then are behind me. A thing relegated to the past. To a different time and place.


But every time we talk I'm 18 again. Hiding the biggest part of myself because I feel that if I was ever completely honest they wouldn't love me. Because when I was honest, I learned that their love wasn't unconditional. Or supportive. Or nice. Or easy. So I don't talk to them about my relationships. Who I spend my time with. What I do. We talk about work. The weather. The movie I've just seen. And all the shame and guilt I felt from those years still colors my relationships today. So that I'm terrified of opening up to people, because there is the built in assumption that who I am is basically unlovable.


"I really like the show Will and Grace." She says. "Have you seen it?" That's the closest she's ever come to telling me she accepts me. My father asks, "Can your people get married yet?" She quickly changes the subject. Birthday card smiles and wet nosed puppy Christmases only exist in pictures. Not in memory.

We talk on the phone three times a week so she "knows I'm not lying dead in a ditch somewhere." Every call ends with her saying "Mama and Daddy love you." I tell her I love them too, but it always feels false, because they don't even know me, and I still believe that if they did, they couldn't possibly love me for who I am. Because when it really counted....they didn't.

Adventures in Bumbershooting

Friday
"What kind of toast do you want?" The waitress at Glo's asks Dave. I can tell from his puzzled expression that he's thinking "warm and browned?" He stares at her until she feels compelled to rattle off a list of the different types of breads available. After she leaves, he confides that no one has ever asked him what kind of toast he wanted before.

Dave is visiting Seattle for the first time, from Dallas where breakfasts are simpler. It's good to see Dave. I haven't seen him in a couple years, and he is pretty much unchanged. He wears a yellow, Seattle basketball jersey and a straw hat. His skin is tanned from the Texas sun. I feel pasty and mole-like by comparison.

I'm happy that there is a beautiful, blue sky, and a warm sunny day for his first impression of the city. When we're done with breakfast, we walk down the hill to Seattle Center and start off our day of being tourists at the Science Fiction museum. Neither of us is really into Sci Fi all that much, so we walk briskly through it. Dave takes a picture of a Trekkie uniform, mostly to gloat to our friend Brad who'd be much more into the place than either of us, when a security person tells him that there are no pictures allowed.

Next door at the Experience Music Project we are much more in our element. Dave takes a picture of Michael Jackson's glove. We look at a historic display of the evolution of the guitar. A collection of Jimi Hendrix memorabilia. I love music, but there isn't a Cyndi Lauper or Erasure exhibit, so I'm a little bored. Dave accidentally opens an emergency exit, setting off an alarm, and we scurry away before the security guy comes over.

Dave rides the elevator to the top of the Space Needle. Being unable to rationalize spending money on it, I stay down below and wait for him. Watch the tourists with their cameras. Listen to conversations drift pass in a number of languages. Am annoyed by the parents who let their two monster children run amok in a flower bed.

We take the Monorail from Seattle Center to Westlake Mall. We sit facing an aging French couple. The woman talks to me in English about how lucky it is we're all short so our knees aren't bumping. The man looks confused. I want to give him a hug, but it would probably confuse him more. Because the monorail doesn't really go anywhere, the ride is over in probably a minute or so.

Walk through Pike Market. While Dave observes the Flying Fish, I grab a dozen donuts from a surly vendor with dubious hygiene. Dave admits that he was less impressed with the throwing and catching of fish than he thought he'd be. The donuts are too hot, but I eat them anyway. But after three I feel gross, and throw the rest of them away.

We stop at the Seattle Art Museum. There is an art installation comprised of cars suspended from the ceiling with wands of blinking lights bursting from them that look like sparks. Some of the paintings are really beautiful, but a lot of the "art" seems ridiculous to me. I think I'm just not smart enough or educated enough to get it. What is a poorly taken photograph of a cup of water supposed to mean exactly? I take a picture of an absurdist painting, and the security guard comes up to me and tells me that there are no photo's allowed in the museum. I explain that my camera doesn't have a flash, but he says it doesn't matter. By way of rebellion, I go to the bathroom and take a picture of myself peeing. It's art!

In Pioneer Square we take the Underground Tour of the City. Walking beneath the busy sidewalks is cool, and hearing about the city's sordid history of prostitutes and speakeasies is interesting. But after an hour or so, my dogs are barkin' and my mind begins to wander. There is a drunken, annoying frat boy (I say as if there's any other kind) and somewhere along the tour Dave observes that he is no longer with the group. Imagine him wandering down a dark, dank tunnel, lost and feel a certain sense of satisfaction. Hello schadenfreude.

We take a cab back to my place, and our friend Sara and her husband pick us up and we go to a burger joint called Red Mill. There is a line going out the door, and when I finally get my food, I'm amazed. The best veggie burger I've ever had. Make a mental note to go back sometime.

Afterward they drive us to Gasworks Park. We walk through the mushy grass, to the top of the hill overlooking Lake Union. Across the lake the downtown city lights wink and stretch across black waves. A couple of boats float lazily along, one playing "Billie Jean" as it passes. The night is beautiful and it is a totally romantic moment. Or anyway, it would have been had I someone to wrap my arms around at the time. To our left there is a hippie drum circle with fire jugglers. To the right there was a circle of Christians with a guitar singing Jesus songs. We speculate about which group is more annoying. But I'll take the dirty, smelly hippies over the smug Christians any day.

Saturday
Saturday morning I wake up early. Blend a fruit smoothie for breakfast. Delicious and nutritious! The boy I like comes over and we walk down to the gym to workout. It's still my week as team leader, so I pick the routine. Biceps. Shoulders. Back. After our workout we change into swimming trunks and flip flops and make our way to the sauna.

Having never been in a sauna before, I wasn't really prepared for the reality of it. In my mind a sauna is a place where hairy, Italian mobsters go to relax when they aren't busy killing people, the movies being my only point of reference. In reality, the sauna is much worse. The steam is suffocating, and the heat is unbearable. I feel like I'm trapped in an overheated petri dish, and start worrying about germs. My skin is red as a boiled lobster's, and when I think I can't take it anymore, Brian (my boything) suggests we go. Outside the cool air feels so good against my skin. We stand beneath a cool shower, washing off the sweat. In the locker room, towel off. Steal a glance at his naked body. Feel refreshed and happy.

Back home, Dave and I walk down to have breakfast at the Hurricane Cafe. This time he is prepared when they ask what kind of toast he'd like. Behind me a schizophrenic man begins to yell and hit himself. I start forming an exit strategy. Otherwise, a pleasant breakfast of their idea of huevos rancheros, which is more like nachos with eggs on them. But tasty.

We walk to Seattle Center for day one of Bumbershoot. On the way, there is a guy in white face, with dark rings around his eyes holding a sign that says "Zombie Car wash." Dave takes a picture.

The first band we see is called Olympic Sound Collective. They're from Australia and kind of funky. A gaggle of hippies dances near the front of the stage. Whirling like dervishes. One in particular, a pudgy man in a utilikilt and Hawaiian shirt catches my attention and continues to amuse me as he spins and sways. The band isn't bad until the lead singer starts talking. His pretentious spoken word ramblings send Dave and I scurrying like vampires from garlic.

Because we want to see different bands, Dave and I split up. It's an hour till my first band starts, so I wander and do some people watching. People walk by gnawing on roasted corn, which seems ridiculous to me, so internally I mock them. Corn eaters! Not having ever heard of most of the bands on the schedule, I decide on a band because I like the sound of their name. The Not Its. That sounds cute. So I walk over to the stage they're performing at, past the Roller Derby Girls getting dunked in a tub of water, past the hipsters and the wanna bes, the never weres and the never will bes.

I sit close to the stage and wait for the Not Its to begin. Notice that there seem to be an awful lot of parents with small children filling the seats around me. The band bounces onto the stage wearing pink tutus and start to sing a song about sharing. I become uncomfortably aware that I'm the only adult in the audience without a child, so I quickly leave.

At another stage I watch Natalie Portman's Shaved Head. They are fun. Because I'd already seen them when they opened for Lily Allen, I don't feel compelled to stay for the whole show, and because it is hours before the next performer I wanted to see, I ditch bumbershoot and go home to relax for a few hours.

After I return I get some ice cream, and the guy at the stand says, "I like your shirt!" I was wearing my black, zombie bunnies t-shirt. He goes on to ask me if I am familiar with the rest of the artist's work. I admit that I'm not. I just like zombies. And bunnies. He says it is a great shirt. It looks good on me. He asks what I am doing later. "Just Bumbershooting up." I answer. Thank him for the ice cream.

While waiting for Eleni Mandell to play it rains a little. Watch the people scurrying for cover beneath the trees. The leaves have already started to turn red. When Eleni comes out, so does the sun, and after a song, a bright gold ray of sunlight strikes the stage, and a seagull flies by, cawing. An older man with a Jewfro, also alone, sits beside me and tells me he is really disappointed that the Ting Tings cancelled. In him I see my future, and am not really sure what to make of it.

Catch the end of Os Mutantes set. They sing "Baby" which is my favorite song of theirs, a Caetano Veloso cover. I smile. Feel slightly romantically depressed and wish that I was there with a boy. With one boy in particular. I sit by the fountain and take a picture of the Space Needle lit up against the blue black sky. Realize that the only other times I've been to Seattle Center were for Gay Pride. It's unnerving to be surrounded by so many straight people. Am disappointed that the fountain isn't full of hot, shirtless guys, but instead, pre-teens on skateboards, daring each other to go into the cold water. I let Dave know that I'm not up for De La Soul, and walk back home. Alone and lonely.

Sunday
Wake up early. The boy I like comes over and we go to the gym for chest, triceps and legs. But I'm not really feeling it, and because I'm team leader, I call it quits before the workout is complete. He doesn't mutiny. Mostly I just can't wait to get into the sauna. Strange how something can feel so unpleasant and so wonderful at the same time. When we leave, I'm dismayed that it's begun to rain.

Dave and I walk to Seattle Center in the rain. By the time we get there I'm soaked to the bone. My hoodie and shirt and sopping wet. My jeans are saturated and clinging to my legs. Cold. My socks are soggy. When the rain stops, the wind starts. I shiver and shake like a wet rat.

We look for food. Dave wants a bucket of Thai noodles. I tell him I'm holding out for a gyro. See someone walk by with some roasted corn, and it looks really good. Dave spends way too much money on a Bumbershoot t-shirt, and a Bumbershoot hoodie, because he's wet and they're dry. Later he also picked up a Bumbershoot hat, and I suggest he buy some Bumbershoes to finish off the ensemble.

We watch a band called Handful of Luvin'. They are not very good. Dave comments that the bas player thinks that he's Chuck D. The hippie in the utilikilt and Hawaiian shirt is back, twirling with his fellow hippies. The lead singer introduces their next song by saying "This song is about smiling!" And it's impossible not to.

We stand at the main stage among the hipsters and watch the Cold War Kids. I hate the hipsters with their white sunglasses and skinny jeans both collectively and individually. The air is thick with the smell of pot and indie funk. Everywhere couples have their arms around one another. Still, the show is great, and my calves are sore from bouncing by the end of it. Before the Yeah Yeah Yeahs take the stage, I go to wait in line to use the port o potty. When I come back, all the straggling hipsters have arrived en masse, and form an impenetrable barrier of carefully disheveled aloofness that I cannot penetrate. I text Dave to let him know that I can't make it back to him, and I go sit in the stands among the bored parents of the teens in the crowd below.

Ultimately I realize that the stands are where it's at because a) I can sit down, b) I can actually see, c) it isn't too loud and d) I'm not getting stepped on by gangly teenagers. Despite the fact that it's drilled home that I'm now officially an old fogey, I thoroughly enjoy the show. For reasons beyond my ability to comprehend there are people actually crowd surfing to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The mind reels. Watch the lights. The waving hands of the crowd below. How they clap and jump in unison. How they know the words. How they sing along.

Again I go home for a few hours. Change out of my wet clothes. Take a hot bath. Drink some hot chocolate. Feel warm again. Watch TransAmerica which is okay. Write a little. Instant message the boy I like. "Tuesday night you're mine," he says. Smile. Change into some warm clothes and trek back to Seattle Center.

Meet up with Dave and catch the end of Roy Ayers set. Then walk down to catch the Helio Sequence. Of all the bands playing at the festival, they are the ones I most want to see. There's already a crowd at the front of the stage when we get there. I elbow my way through the gathered 12 year olds to the very front of the stage. It is disconcerting that I am easily 15 years older than the other people on the front row. Listen to them talking to one another about school. Their voices haven't changed yet. When did this happen? Not only are the bands I like younger than me. But the audience is now comprised of people I could have fathered.

The music starts and the rest of the crowd melts away. Unabashedly sing along. Clap and hop when songs I really like play. Take a picture of the lead singer. Smile at the funny faces the drummer makes. This is what I love. Music's ability to transport you into a totally emotional landscape. There is a stuffed monkey at the corner of the stage. Smile. Smile all the way home.

Monday
Sara and her husband drive us to B&O Espresso for brunch. I get the shakshuka which is poached eggs in a marinara sauce with roasted potatoes and warm pita bread. Everyone is happy with their food. The waiter is cute and friendly, and the conversation is warm. When we're done they drop us off at Seattle Center for the final day of the festival.

Dave and I have no bands in common on our schedules until that night, so we split up. It's raining again. A hard, steady, unrelenting rain. I walk over to see a girl fronted punk band that I like called Visqueen. But halfway through the first song, standing in the rain, shivering again, I say, "Fuck this!" Walk home.

At home I watch a movie about a bullied, Autistic boy called Ben X which is really good, and really emotionally intense. I go to the gym and run 9 miles. Feel good. Feel like I've managed to run off at least some of the crap I've eaten over the past few days.

Go back to Bumbershoot. Buy some roasted corn. Deal with it! Meet up with Dave again and watch Franz Ferdinand. This time he joins me in the stands. It's nice. A cool, beautiful night. It's finally stopped raining. More crowd surfing. A girl with a Minnie Mouse voice squeaks shrilly behind us. Dave says he wishes he had a bottle to throw at her. The music is good. Look up Franz Ferdinand on my iPhone and am pleased to discover that the lead singer is 4 years older than me. We catch most of the set, but Dave wants to leave to go catch Sly and Robbie, and I just want to leave, so we make our way out of the stadium.

Outside crowds of people wander in all directions. Carnival lights, stuffed animals and carousels. The couples holding hands. The teenage gangs of giggling girls. Exotic smells from vendor stalls. Cotton candy. I lose myself in the crowd. Vacillate between being integrated and being by myself. Pull my hoodie tighter in the cold night air and make the long walk home.

Parks and Recreational Spooning

"I'm going to snoop." He says. "That's fine." I assure him. "Just stay out of the drawer on my nightstand." I say, kidding. Mostly. The first time he's been to my place. Find him lying on my bed and cannot resist crawling in on top of him and kissing him.

Thursday, a sleepover on a school night. We order pizza. Waste time for it to arrive watching Capoeira videos on Youtube and stealing smooches. Eat the pizza off of clear, blue plates by candlelight, while a Lance-mix plays on my iTunes.

Watch Shaun of the Dead which he has never seen. I can tell I like him because I feel compelled to show him my favorite movies, have him listen to my music and read my books. I feel like then he'd really know me, as if I am a composite of the things I like. Want to know the things he likes. To immerse myself in him.

After the movie we blow out all the candles and crawl under the cover. Later, the necessity of showering sends us out again. Watch him scurry naked from the shower back to bed. Smile in the dark. Wrap my arms around him to warm him up again. Kiss his freckled shoulders. Wish that the summer wasn't almost over.

As a child, my family never took trips during the summer. My mother hates traveling more than taxes, exotic food and the lack of rain over her yard. Still, every summer, my aunts and cousins and my mom and I would drive to a State Park in Huntsville, TX to swim in the lake. Even though it was only an hour away, it seemed like another country. One comprised of pine trees and hills. We grilled hamburgers and hot dogs by the lake. My mother and aunts would lie on towels in the sun by the shore. Baby oil suntans. My cousins and I would swim in the lake. Slithery things skimming past our legs. Slathered in sunscreen.

I remember swimming, and looking up, seeing my mom waving frantically at me. Unbeknownst to me, a girl had just thrown up in the water in front of me, and my mom was trying to wave me away from it. But I just waved back, grinning like an idiot and swam right through it. A story my mom would recant, laughing, all the way home.

I looked forward to going there every year. In a world as small as mine was, going to Huntsville was a big adventure.

Ten years ago, Jonathan and I went to the Grand Canyon. It rained in the dessert the day we drove through it. Clouds everywhere as dark as his eyes. In Colorado, in the mountains, I saw my first real snow. We parked the car, and I ran out and fell laughing into a soft, white mound of it. A man asked us where we were from, and when we replied, "Texas" he said, "Carry on." In Utah we looked at the orange Wiley Coyote rock formations at Arches and Bryce Canyon. In Arizona there were cliff dwellings, and the wide expanse of the Grand Canyon. Remember sitting on a rock near the edge, looking out into the fuzzy, polluted horizon. Amazed and humbled by nature.

There was something really freeing about being on the open road, driving. Singing along to U2 on Jonathan's CD player, and really meaning it.

Sometimes I have to get away from the asphalt and concrete, the glass and steel of the city and be surrounded by green. Just to feel recharged again. A part of things.

Friday night, after work, after my 6 mile treadmill run, I meet up with Jonathan and we go to Cal Anderson Park to watch a free showing of 9 to 5. Travis joins us, and we sit on my blue blanket in the middle of a crowd of people. Beside us a group is speaking Russian and drinking wine. There is a costume contest where three girls dressed like Dolly Parton battle for prizes. I'm surprised that there weren't any drag queen Dolly's around. The smell of pot wafts by. The couple in front of me are constantly kissing or hugging and obscuring my view of the screen, so that I have to constantly shift to see around them. But I don't mind. They're cute. The night is cool and beautiful. The movie is hysterically funny. The theme song is ingrained in my brain forever now.

Saturday I go to my yoga class. We do a pose called "Frog" which is impossible to do and retain one's dignity. The guy beside me and I exchange amused glances because it is clearly not a very "manly" pose. Lunch afterward, Indian food, the all you can eat buffet. A Saturday ritual.

After lunch I meet up with my friend Nathyn and we walk to Volunteer Park. On the way we stop by Cafe Ladro, and he picks us up some yummy treats. I have a chocolate raspberry tart that tastes like it was made on a cloud by culinarily adept cherubs. We catch up on the past few months, and watch the people in the park. The pasty skins of Seattlelites, soaking up the summer sun. On blankets and towels. In groups, but mostly ones or twos. Playing Frisbee or throwing a ball to a happy dog.

Because it is a sunny, beautiful day, we decide to walk through the cemetery next door. "Bruce Lee is buried here somewhere." I tell him. We walk around, remarking on the names on gravestones, like Hummer and Liptrap. Remark on the overcompensation of giant stone obelisks, and ostentatious mausoleums. A Danish tourist comes up to us and asks if we know where Bruce Lee's grave is. We don't, but assure him that if we run across it we'll let him know.

We walk past a fountain. Past the grave of an entire family. A mother and father and six children from the 1800s. The children all died very young and we wonder what the story was. Some outbreak of disease? The Danish tourist shouts to us and waves us over to the spot where Bruce Lee is buried, but we aren't really interested after all.

Walking home Anna calls to let me know that she has tracked down the girl whose Elephant planner we'd found the week before. I meet the girl, her name is Allie, near the corner where I live and return her planner to her. She tells me that her car was broken into and she thought she'd never see it again. She thanks me, and I let her know the credit is all Anna's. "She's a good person." Allie says, and I agree. She is.

Sunday I go to Cal Anderson Park with my friend Brian. We sit in the shade, in the soft grass and catch up. I haven't seen him in a while either, and feel like I've been a neglectful friend the past few months. He tells me about a camping trip he's making over Labor Day weekend.

As a child, I had a tent that I set up in the backyard with my sleeping bag. But despite the fact that it was in our backyard, my mom never let me spend the night in it because she was afraid I'd be killed by escaped convicts or ripped apart by wild animals. Who knew Iola, TX was so dangerous?

As an adult I tried to go camping once with Jeff, my first real boyfriend. We drove to a campground outside of Austin, but things quickly went horribly awry. We tried to set up the tent, but neither of us really knew how, and it didn't really end up looking very tent-like. It was more like a green, misshapen lump. We tried to make a fire so we could roast marshmallows, which was really pretty much the draw for me, but we couldn't make a fire. I joked that even cave men had been able to do this, surely we could, but it was to no avail. Then it started to rain, so we crawled into the tent and thought we'd call it a night and try to sleep. But the ground was hard and no matter where I lay, there was always a rock digging into my back. After midnight, wide awake, I turned to Jeff and said, "If we get in the car right now, we can be back in our comfy bed by 3am." So we dismantled the tent, probably leaving pieces of it behind in the dark, and were in the car and heading home in minutes.

The boy I like recently suggested that he and I go camping. I have a feeling that with him things would probably go more smoothly, and I love the thought of spending the night with him in the great outdoors. Our sleeping bags zipped together. A camp fire burning. But our schedules don't have overlapping days off. "We'll have to do it next year," he jokes.

Sunday, later in the afternoon, he and I meet up at Volunteer Park. See him walk into the clearing in a green and white striped shirt. His hair and beard look almost auburn in the sun. His bright, green eyes. He sits beside me and asks what book I'm reading. I'm humiliated to admit that it's a self-help book about overcoming chronic discontent. He doesn't judge. We sit in the grass and talk for a bit. Then we go to a health store and he buys shampoo, and we get groceries and walk back to his place.

He makes us blueberry banana shakes. Sit in his living room, legs touching. The shake is amazing. Make a mental note to get a mixer so I can make shakes every day! He takes our empty glasses to the kitchen and comes back to the couch where we lay in front of the sunlit window. The whirring of the fan. His arm around me. Spooned and content. It's warm and we doze off for a bit. Wake up and turn toward one another. Smooch. He is fuzzy. A sleepy smile. A pair of bright, green eyes. I kiss him and kiss him again.

Elephants

"Should we talk about the elephant in the room?" He asks. Saturday morning, we are sitting in his bed, still in our underwear, and I have no idea what he is referring to. Being totally self-absorbed I can be pretty oblivious to the most glaringly obvious of details, but I thought even I would notice an elephant in the room. It catches me completely by surprise.

Walk home afterward in the same clothes I wore the night before. Sleep deprived and cotton headed. Stop at 7-11 on the way home and get a Super Big Gulp for a much needed caffeine boost. A blond guy in a blue hoodie smiles at me. I smile back, but don't slow down. Walk down a residential street. The pale sun shining in disjointed beams through the green leaves of trees, casting leaf shaped light patterns on the sidewalk. My stomach feels like it's full of sand, but I'm not sure why.

Text Anna that I'll be home soon. Brunch? Obviously! When I get home she's fresh from the shower, drying her long, red curls. We walk up Thomas to Broadway, and on the sidewalk Anna finds a girl's planner. Pale green with purple elephants. No name or address. We thumb through it trying to find out who it belongs to. There's information on college classes. On financial aid. On jobs applied to. Parties attended. Summer trips to Europe. A hostel in Spain. A name and phone number scrawled in blue marker across the bottom of a page. Twice. Phil. Anna calls the number and says something like "Hi Phil. You don't know me, but I found a girl's planner, and if you know who it belongs to..."

Sitting in the Deluxe Bar and Grill, I fill her in on the details of my night and morning over a Greek omelet. She only has a salad. Girls. “I personally couldn’t keep seeing him if it were me.” She says. My omelet has too many olives, and I start picking them out and concentrate my efforts on the spinach, egg and cheese.

“It’s okay if it makes you uncomfortable.” He says. This bit is a flashback. We're still sitting on his bed in our underwear on Saturday morning. “No!” I assure him. “It’s cool.” I put my hand over his in a way that I hope seems reassuring. But to be honest, it does make me uncomfortable. A little. I feel a little out of my depth. Swim through the rest of my day like I'm under water.

Saturday afternoon, a chocolate shop alone, eating a chocolate torte with raspberry preserves and drinking hot chocolate made from dark chocolate. I have a book with me that I am pretending to read. A family is eating across from me, and the four year old boy asks his mother why I am reading, and she says "That's what people do when they go to restaurants alone." I pause in mid bite.

Sunday morning I wake up early and go to the gym for my super-chest workout. Working out feels good. The pumped up muscles. The rush of endorphins. Walk home with a swagger. Anna has gone to work, so I watch an episode of Dr. Who, then go meet the boys for Sunday brunch. We sit at B&O Espresso, waiting for the Egyptian waiter to take our order. Matt and I both get the shakshuka, poached eggs in a marinara sauce, with toast and roasted potatoes. The service is, unsurprisingly, horrible. He never refills our drinks, and the food is late, and Jason didn't get any silverware, and Brian L.'s eggs had cheese on them. But the food is really good, so maybe it balances out. Ducky asks “So how was your date?”

Friday night is our third date. We meet in front of Thai Ginger. He texts me to let me know he is running late. I sit out front in a pair of shorts that Anna says made my legs look sexy. A bright green shirt with a dark blue sweater vest. Green and blue striped socks. He walks up, cute, in a pair of jeans. An orange and blue, sporty shirt. We order food, and it comes quickly and tastes delicious. He finishes his food and eats a few bites of mine. It feels intimate. But it's been a couple of weeks since we've seen each other, since I was on vacation, so at the same time, it's like we're meeting all over again. There's also a shyness.

We watch 500 Days of Summer. He keeps his ticket stub. The movie is quirky. I am acutely aware of how close he is to me. Our knees touching. Want to reach over and hold his hand, but fall short. My cowardice knows no limits. He drives us back to his apartment when the movie ends. I sit upstairs while he changes a light that had burned out in the foyer. He comes back sweaty and takes a shower. Is clean and damp in a pair of boxers. We crawl into his bed and kiss. His skin feels so good pressed against my own. His beautiful green eyes. His smile. Feel his long eyelashes brush against my naked shoulder as he blinks, his head laying against me. Tickles. I lean over and kiss his cheek.

Sunday evening I meet up with Travis for drinks at the Elite. He gets a vodka cranberry and I get a Black Opal, which is pretty much entirely alcohol. The weekend warrants a stiff drink. I tell Travis about the movie, and some guys playing darts talk to us. As always, Travis is hysterically funny, and I can't stop giggling. We talk about his desire to be a shut in and become morbidly obese. I point out that if you gain 15 lbs, it's just really embarrassing. But if you gain 500 you get your own TV show.

We have dinner at Pho Cyclo. I get spicy tofu over rice noodles, with carrots, cucumbers, lettuce, peanuts and bean sprouts. It tastes wonderful. We share fresh rolls. I am completely drunk at this point, and recognize that I'm becoming louder and more obnoxious by the minute, but feel helpless to stop the torrent of catty obscenities pouring out of my mouth. I go to the bathoom, and over the urinal someone has graffitti'd a snail with a thought bubble that says "Small dick." I take a picture with my iPhone and show Travis when I return to our table.

We walk to Half Price Books and I pick up a copy of Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse which I remember liking when I read it first 10 years ago. Travis doesn't find anything, so we walk back toward my street. Hug on the corner. Say we should do it again.

Back in my apartment, Anna is watching Buffy. I eat her Ritz crackers. We talk for a while, but I'm exhausted. She tells me she put an ad up for the owner of the elephant planner on craigslist. She'll leave it there with me, she says, in case anyone responds. She's going back to L.A. this week. Part of me is happy to have my own space back. My routine restored to me. But I already miss her being there. Her presence and her understanding. Comfort.

The elephant planner with it's loopy writing. The pink and purple colored pens of girls in college. See that the girl's friend Dave is coming to stay with her for Bumbershoot, a music festival. A strange coincidence since my friend Dave is coming from Dallas to stay with me while we go to Bumbershoot. But there the coincidences end. Otherwise her life is nothing like mine. There is a distinct dearth of summer trips to Europe in my life.

Lay in bed, unable to sleep. Think of a lyric from a song. "My bed's too big for just me." Hear Anna in the living room. Hear her listening to music. Watching Buffy. Hear her in the shower. Hear her open, then close the refrigerator. Think about him. About Saturday morning. "The conversation is about to get a little heavy." He says. He relays the story of his brother's death. Years before. Details. A sad history of horrible events I can only imagine. Put my hand over his. Tell him I'm sorry about his brother.

Think of elephants. A girl's planner full of Spanish classes, trips and parties she may or may not attend. Optimistic future. Elephant in the room. A piece of information to keep filed in my brain. But ultimately it doesn't matter. He is no less sweet, or thoughtful, or fun to kiss, or nice to hold. Warm, summer nights. Secrets whispered intot he folds of sheets. Peeled away, revealing ourselves piece by piece.

Imagine elephants. Elephants with bodies like greyhounds. Long and sleek. Muscles tight and glistening in rain. Walking in line down a nighttime city street. I stand on a corner and count them as they pass. Slate gray rain the same color as the elephants. The smallest one comes only to my knee. Curls himself around my legs and goes to sleep.

The Texan

"Take that goofy hat off, you look ridiculous." This was the first thing out of my mom's mouth when she saw me at the airport. Not "How was your flight?" or "We missed you!" She hugged me anyway, and I told her she didn't have to wear the hat. She said "No, but I have to look at it." So I took the hat off.

I'd actually meant to switch it out for a baseball cap in the airport, having anticipated her reaction from 33 years of prior experience censoring myself around her. Every time I go home, I remember, within minutes, why I live thousands of miles away. I climb in my father's truck and try to steel myself for the two and a half hour drive from the Austin airport to my parent's home in Iola, TX.

At least once we're on the road, the focus shifts away from me, and my mom begins to complain about my father's driving. Her grousing is warranted as he is blind in one eye and tends to meander into other lanes. Half-way home they switched out and my mother drove while my dad complained. "Where should we stop for dinner?" My mom asks. My dad turns to me and says, "You want some steak?" The only thing that makes less sense to him than my being gay is my being a vegetarian. I assure him I do not want to feast on the rotting corpse of a murdered cow, thank you very much. The truth is, I've eaten meat this past year, but I can never ever let them know that since they've made such a huge deal about me not eating meat in the first place.

They stop at a fried chicken place. "You can eat mashed potatoes." My mom says. "And cole slaw, do you want some cole slaw?" I'm not hungry anyway, having eaten a small pizza on the plane, so I relax in the back seat and start digging through my Iola, TX survival kit. The kit consists of:

1. My iPod with an emergency LanceinTexas playlist of 80s new wave, Emo and Indie tunes.
2. Books. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace and The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.
3. My laptop so I can work on a short story for a writing contest while I'm there.
4. A case of DVDs mostly of the foreign, gay, indie and zombie ouvres.
5. My iPhone which I'd like to have surgically embedded into my palm as it's my only link with the outside world.
6. My journal.

The friday before I flew back to Texas I'd taken Anna to Chez Gaudy for a pre-birthday celebration. I ordered a drink called a Blueberry Tango. Anna ordered a Flying Grasshopper. For an appetizer we got the Flaming goat, which is baked goat cheese that is drizzled with alcohol and set aflame at your table. Anna, not realizing this, leaned forward to tell me something just as the waiter lit the alcohol drenched cheese and it burst into flame. She leapt back, surprised, narrowly managing to keep her eyebrows unscathed, much to my immense delight. She did manage to burn her arm on some hot lasagna, and the waitress brought her something to spray on the burn so it wouldn't blister. Despite the excitement, the food was lovely, and we were both tipsy from our drinks.

After dinner I carried my heavy bags up the hill to his apartment. My boy-crush. He came down and opened the door, khaki shorts and a green t-shirt. He took the heaviest bag from off my shoulder and carried it up the stairs for me. In his apartment we stood talking. He handed me a glass of water. He was hungry, so I snooped through his kitchen while he made himself some pasta. Glass cabinets full of dishes. Dark, an open window. Gas stove. The smell of pesto. Perspiration sliding down the side of my glass.

In his living room he lays with his head in my lap as I stroke his hair. His green eyes, half closed like a sleepy cat. The bedroom is more comfortable, so we go there and undress. I ask him which side he prefers. Crawl in bed beside him. His skin, smooth, tastes like salt. Like him. Spooned in his room, the imposibility of sleeping with a beautiful man beside me. I feel like every nerve ending is vibrating, every cell resonates with his scent and taste and all I want is him.

In the morning we wake up early. Shrug into clothes in pale, morning sunlight. He drives me to the airport and I thumb through his CDs. Linkin Park. Nickelback. A Perfect Circle. Tool. Madonna. He drops me off at the airport. Gets out of the car and hugs me goodbye.

I arrive just in time to catch my flight which is already boarding when I go through security. A connecting flight in Phoenix that I also manage to catch just in the nick of time. The drive home with my parents seems longer than the flights. We drive down a single lane dirt road past the place we used to live when I was younger. But the house is no longer there and the trees, and my mother's manicured yard full of green grass and flower beds is gone, dry and yellow earth.

At home we sit on the porch in the hot, humid evening, listening to the chirp of the cicadas. "Did you bring any movies for us to watch?" My mom asks. When I say I did, she says, "They aren't all French with subtitles are they?" I smile, swat the giant mosquitos that are dive bombing my pale arms. My dad asks if I have a girlfriend in Seattle. I came out to them as a teenager, so I'm not sure where this is coming from, so I just look at him, and say, "Let's try and keep it real." He says, "We want a grandson." Feelings hurt, I say, "You better adopt one." "Let's go in." My mom says, and we go inside and sit in different rooms, watching different TV shows. She watches some Agatha Christie mystery and I watch a documentary about a Primordial Dwarf from England, and my dad lies in bed, reading an old Louis Lamour western.

The next day my dad has to travel to Louisiana for work, so he leaves early. I'm quietly relieved since it's always easier when it's just me and my mom. I sleep late, and wake up feeling relaxed and tranquil. My mom makes us pasta and salad for lunch. We sit in her kitchen which is covered in chickens. Shelves line the ceiling with porcelain chickens staring down at us. There are chicken salt and pepper shakers. Chicken plates. Chicken towels. Chicken napkin rings. Thousands of chickens. My old, gray cat winds himself around my legs and plops himself down so I'll rub his belly. Lulled into a false sense of security, I do so, and then he latches onto my foot and sinks his fangs into my ankle.

Other things happen, but nothing much worthy of note. We go shopping. We go to my grandmother's. We visit my aunt. I'm horrified to discover that a family of White Supremacists live across the street from her. Four flags are flying in front of their dilapidated shack. A Texas flag. A Confederate flag, and two white flags adorned with a machine gun and a bomb respectively that read "Come and try to take it away from me!" in bold, black letters. My mom tells me they had a Nazi flag hoisted as well, but took it down after the local paper wrote a story about them. Apparently they sell these flags at a little corner store in the next town over, and on the interweb.

A couple nights my grandmother spends the night with us because she is afraid to sleep in her house alone. On these nights I'm banished from my old bedroom to sleep on the couch, which is narrow and uncomfortable. My grandmother is the sweetest lady in the world, and she makes the best banana pudding ever, but in her dotage she has become...well...irritating. She never stops talking. Ever. She rambles on and on...these non-stop stream of consciousness monologues that are impossible to respond to. Things like "The man came Wednesday and sprayed for fire ants, and the next day the sidewalk was covered with them little pill bugs. We always called them pill bugs. I don't know what they're really called. I must have swept hundreds of them little pill pug off the sidewalk. Pill bugs everywhere. Boy howdy, I never seen so many pill bugs. And then you know I had these, I call them inside warts, on my heel. The doctor had to dig them out because I couldn't hardly walk. If it ain't one thing it's another." I just stare at her and blink, having no clue what to say.

On Tuesday it is my grandmother's 84th birthday. I sit inside her small, hot house with my extended family. My cousins and all of their blond haired, blue eyed spawn who toddle around, nameless and interchangeable. A little red haired kid who is about 4 asks what the girls are talking about, and my aunt says "Oh, they're just talking about boys." So he sits down beside them and says, "Hey! Do y'all want to to talk about dinosaurs?"

My uncle asks me about MP3s and how to burn a CD. No one asks me if I'm dating anyone. Or anything about my personal life. If they talk to me at all, they just ask what I'm doing for a living, or if I'm still living in Seattle and what the weather is like. I feel like I have to edit out the biggest part of my life because it isn't pallatable to them. In the end we are just strangers who know too much about each other.

They grill burgers and hot dogs, and my mom grills some veggie burgers for me. My uncle says "I just can't get over how buff Lance has gotten." There's cake and ice cream. We sing "Happy Birthday." My grandmother blows out her candle. There is only one. I sit in a corner and try to just fade into the background, mostly succeeding.

On Thursday my mother, my aunt, my cousin's wife and her baby drove me to Bastrop where I caught a Greyhound bus to Austin. Because my mother is too afraid to drive in a traffic filled, urban area, Bastrop was as far as they were willing to take me. We ate lunch at a second rate Mexican restaurant, that still eclipsed any Mexican food I've had in seattle. They dropped me off at the little one room Swiss Alpine Chalet that passed for the bus station. My mom hugged me goodbye, fighting back tears and told me I should just forget Austin and Seattle and stay in Iola with them.

The bus ride into Austin proper is 30 minutes long. I catch a cab and go to wait at a nearby coffeehouse for Bryan to get off work. The Morrocan cabbie is nice, and we chat about the greenhouse effect and consumerism, and the weather, and the recession, and I start to wonder why we'd been driving so long since the coffeehouse is only a mile from the bus station. He'd misheard me, so instead of going to West North Loop, he'd driven down Guadalupe. So a $4 cab ride turned into a $25 cab ride. Still, he is so nice and philosophical, I can't really begrudge him. Much.

I sit down at the coffee shop and get ready to spend the afternoon working on a short story, but Bryan has taken off early and is already there. We drink chocolate milk and look at one another's iPhone apps, then drive back to the home he shares with his boyfriend Andrew (Who I affectionately refer to as Harry Potter's Socially Retarded Older Brother in my mind). We go upstairs and sit on the couch, surrounded by their pets, three cats and a dog, and watch a pretty pathetic horror movie called Haunting in Connecticut.

Andrew comes home, and we go off to get some sushi. On the ride there we listen to some fantasy novel narrated by an aged British actor on CD. Andrew doesn't say a word to me, except to respond to a direct question. I don't know if he's just weirded out because I'm Bryan's ex-boyfriend, or if he's just anti-social in general. The waiter is clueless, and the food is okay, but Bryan sprang for it, so I can't complain. Back at their apartment, after hearing another chapter of the fantasy novel on the way home, we play some medieval card game that makes no sense to me. Andrew's dog, a miniature pincher named Samus after the lead character from Metroid, buries her face in my underarm. Andrew scoops her up and holds her, and talks to her, but not to me.

Friday, brunch at a sterile, mod inspired place called Galaxy Cafe. Migas. Burnt orange walls and white, egg shaped chairs. Hipster wait staff, and cool kid music playing overhead. The migas are tasty. We drop Andrew off at work, and Bryan and I watch clips of funny things on Youtube and part of an episode of Dr. Who. An overdue shower and we go pick Andrew up from work, and then go to Central Market to buy groceries for a dinner party they're having that evening.

Bryan and I chop up vegetables and cook. He makes a stew and I make a lasagna, and it's like old times. Warm and nice. Bryan makes me a cocktail, rum related, mojito esque Brazilian drink. Sweet and sticky. Andrew sits in the living room playing a video game on his laptop while we cook.

Todd is the first guest to arrive. Knowing him only from Facebook, I wasn't sure what to expect, but he's pretty much exactly as he seems, a warm, funny guy who likes The Smiths and seems gregarious and fun loving. We drink and sit around Bryan and Andrew's table, chatting. Ryon, the straight guy with the super buff bod arrives next. We talk about music a little, and decide to start eating since the other guests are late. Finally Bryan's friends Will and another Andrew arrive to round out the party. They are an adorable couple. All tans and smiles.

The conversation turns to politics and my eyes glaze over like a Christmas ham. I text Todd because I worry that he's bored. The group retires to the living room, and Todd keeps asking how many animals there are, which I think is funny, since Bryan is practically the cat lady at this point. Some people play a card game, and the rest of us sit and chat. It's nice, and I'm a little drunk, and Bryan and Todd are very drunk. But entertaining.

The party ends, and it's only me and Bryan, and I hug him goodnight. I pick up some dishes and move them to the sink. Upstairs in the guest room, I type a little, and go to bed around 3 am. The next morning Bryan is hungover and neither he nor Andrew is up for doing anything. Todd, suffering from a hangover as well comes over and he and I drive down to my old neighborhood to the Java Cafe for lunch. I get Migas again and devour it along with a slice of chocolate cake. Todd stops for pepto bismal, and I stop for an oversived diet soda.

Back at Andrew's we watch more Dr. Who, and then play video games. In one of the games we're all pirates, and the object is to destroy the other players' ships. Andrew immediately starts attacking my ship, and only my ship, and I realize he's not just socially retarded, he actually does have it out for me, and it takes his passive aggressive video game playing for me to realize it. Things feel a little uncomfortable and tense, and I'm relieved when they go off to a co-worker's party, and Todd and I go grab some New York Style pizza at Salvation Pizza.

We chat some more about our lives and relationships, and it's nice. When dinner is over, Todd and I go back to the house, but Bryan and Andrew aren't there yet, so we watch clips of people swing dancing on Youtube. When the boys arrive, we all go to 6th Street to the Alamo Drafthouse for a Mr. Pancake Theater send up of Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, starring Kevin Costner. It is hilarious. There is a paper airplane making competition, and Todd gets hosed because he doesn't win even though his plane went the farthest. At the end of the movie, Morgan Freeman spears the wicked crone, and one of the guys says, "Fuck you Miss Daisy!" Highlight of my trip.

In the car we listen to more of the fantasy novel on tape, and Todd looks at me like, What the fuck? I try to control my giggles. When we stop Bryan and I hug Todd goodbye. He and Andrew shake hands. Even though I love Bryan and wish we didn't live in different cities, I'm glad that I'm going back to Seattle the next morning. I miss my friends, and cool, gray weather, my own apartment and my own bed.

Bryan drives me to the airport. Andrew doesn't tag along. Hugs, goodbyes, see you soons. Return flight from Austin to Phoenix is uneventful. But the connecting flight from Phoenix to Seattle is delayed for 30 or 40 minutes while mechanics try to repair a broken bathroom door, only to eventually give up. When the flight attendant gives her safety spiel that includes phrases like "After you've stopped screaming, put on your oxygen mask," there is applause. There are three babies, one in front and two behind me on either side. They all begin crying in unison, in surround sound. I put on my headphones, but the shrill, piercing wails are inescapable. Exchange glances with the woman by the window who'd just quit smoking. She says she isn't going to make it. Halfway through the flight, the babies still screaming, the flight attendant asks if she can get me anything. I say "A parachute."

Finally in Seattle, I take a bus downtown to pick up my keys from Anna who is at work. I walk toward home, looking for a taxi I can flag down, but none comes, and after a while I decide to just keep walking and walk all the way back home with my heavy bags. My shoulder sore. Covered in sweat. Exhausted.

Home. A post-card from Paris from a childhood friend. Le Petit Prince. "I saw this in the Louvre and thought of you." Smile. Put it in my drawer of keepsakes. Feel inspired to text my boy-crush and make a date with him for later in the week. I offer to make dinner for us. Then maybe a movie or a game. He accepts. I grin and start wondering what I should make. For the first time in forever, Seattle actually feels like home to me.

I pick up some groceries and then go to the gym, and then start to watch an episode of Dr. Who when Anna comes home from work. We talk for hours and listen to the songs that she's recording. It's good to see her, even though my white bathroom towel is somehow now blue. Hug her, leave her listening to headphones on the couch. Tell her goodnight. Tell her I love her. Sink into my own, soft bed. So cozy. So familiar.

A Brief and Incomplete History of the Telephone

"I just have to preface this with the fact that I really like and respect you, and I think you're a wonderful person." Boy 1 says. I brace myself. When someone has to preface a conversation with how much they like and respect you, it can't possibly be going to a good place. I hold my breath and hear him say, "I might have exposed you to Gonorrhea."

Never a call that you want to get, but I manage to take it in stride (or at least seem like I'm taking it in stride). I let him know that I'll get it checked out. Ask him how his day is going...otherwise. It's pleasant. I understand that these things happen, and it isn't his fault. I'm glad that he told me. In my mind, I start singing the Abba song, "Mama Mia" but exchange the words for "Gonorrhea." He's at work, and has to go, and really, what else can you say after that? So the call is short.

***

I've always hated talking on the phone, even as a child. Especially as a child. Usually when I answered the phone, people would mistake me for my mother, which was always pretty humiliating. I was a late bloomer and my voice didn't change until I was well into my teenage years, so it was about an octave higher than it is now. Being an only child, in a secluded, rural area, I don't think I developed normal social skills. I had no ability or patience for small talk, and having to answer questions like "How are you?" was always exasperating to me. For a while, our house was so rural that we were on a "party line" with our neighbors. I remember quietly picking up the phone and eavesdropping on their conversations until my mother caught me and put a violent end to my voyeurism.

The only person that I ever really talked to as a teenager was Courtney. We were BFFs, so we'd spend all day in class together, and then spend all evening on the phone. We would talk for hours, sometimes even falling asleep in mid conversation. She told me her secrets and I told her mine. Or anyway, I wanted to tell her, but I couldn't so I made her guess. "Are you bisexual?" She asked. "Close." I'd gently nudged. "Are you homosexual?" The tension like tin cans on a string, pulled taut between us. "That's the one." I'd answered with a sigh. "I have so many questions!" She'd said, and I'd clammed up and shrilled, "I can't talk about it!" That's how I came out to my best friend as a teenager. On the phone.

Because my mother is ridiculously over-protective, and because I was never a good driver anyway, she got me a big, clunky car phone to use in case of an emergency when I turned 16 and started driving. The scenarios that worried her most were having a flat tire, getting hit by a drunk driver, or careening off a cliff. Her biggest fear was that I'd end up lying in a ditch, dead somewhere. At least with the car phone, I could rasp out that I loved her with my last, gasping, gurgling, dying breath. That was the idea, anyway. I never had the opportunity to use that bulky, antiquated phone during an actual emergency, but it was somewhat comforting to know I had a life-line when I was driving late at night, down empty, country roads.

***

Friday I leave work early to go to the doctor. I couldn't sleep the night before and the whole day I'm a nervous wreck, anticipating the test I'll have to go through to see if I have an STD. I assume that it will involve the doctor shoving a swab up my urethra. I think that I'd rather just have Gonorrhea, to be frank. I have a narrow urethra! It's exit only. Seriously.

A nurse weighs me, and I am horrified to discover I weigh more than I ever have in any other point in my life previously. My blood pressure is normal. He asks me to wait for the doctor, but, unlike my last visit, he doesn't ask me to disrobe and put on one of those flimsy paper gowns that doesn't really cover my junk, and for this I am relieved. As I wait for the doctor, I pull out my iPhone and check my e-mail and update my Facebook status.

The doctor, when he finally arrives 20 minutes late, seems embarrassed when I tell him why I'm there. He says that because I've already been exposed, the standard of care is to just treat me for it with an antibiotic. But since I'm there he decides to test me for Chlamydia for good measure. The test, I'm doubly relieved to hear, only involves me peeing in a cup and dumping the pee into two vials and depositing my samples at the lab. On my way out of the office, the doctor awkwardly compliments me on my messenger bag.

Down in the lab I take a number, and when I'm finally called, I'm ushered into a small, closed room. The lab attendant looks at me and says, "Hey, you're always at Starbucks, right?" I'm mortified. Isn't that unethical, or something? I hand him the print out from the doctor's office with the words Gonorrhea and Chlamydia all over it and turn pink while he quietly judges me.

Then I walk upstairs to the pharmacy and take another number and wait to pick up my antibiotics. A woman says she can't wait any longer, and asks if I want her number which is several numbers ahead of mine, so I take it. As soon as she walks out the door, they call her number. I pick up my antibiotics, which is just a one dose regimen, and walk back out into the warm, sun. I pull out my phone and prepare myself for an even more unpleasant task. Calling Boy 2 and telling him I might have exposed him to Gonorrhea.

***

Normally I'm the recipient, not the purveyor of bad news. Remember being a sophomore in college. Lying in bed beside my live in boyfriend. His pale, freckled skin. His red, flannel sheets. At 4 am the phone rings, and I already know who it was and the contents of the message, but the knowledge does nothing to assuage the dread of anticipation. I don't want to pick it up, but I do anyway. My mother's voice. Strangled sobs. Kitchen smells. She tells me that my grandfather has passed away. That we should go shopping the next day to find something for me to wear to the funeral.

Sit on the edge of Jeff's bed. "Was it your grandfather?" He asks, sleepily. His arm around me. I nod. But it isn't just my grandfather. It's adulthood. It's depression. It's a broken relationship. Family obligations. Mortality. Everything. I burst into tears.

***

Boy 2 doesn't answer his phone, and I'm disappointed and relieved. I think spending so many years post college working in call centers is what finally cemented my loathing for the telephone. My first call center job was working nights doing customer service for a shady credit card company. Angry people would call and yell at me about late fees and sky rocketing interest rates, or cry that they were stranded in Manilla and their card wasn't working. At midnight every night, the records would start updating, and this would last anywhere from twenty minutes to a few hours, when I could only tell people, "Sorry, call back later!"

After that I worked for the American Cancer Society, talking to patients and their families who, like my grandfather, were dying of cancer. I talked to a lonely old man who had stage 4 pancreatic cancer, and I was the one who had to explain to him what it meant that he was going into hospice. I talked to a little boy who asked me if his mother was going to die. I talked to schizophrenics, and obscene callers. My phone voice is an octave lower than my regular speaking voice, and one woman told me I sounded like a porn star. "Just keep talking, baby!" She'd exclaimed, to my acute embarrassment.

Prior to my current job, I worked for a non profit insurance company answering complaints about unpaid claims and busy, unavailable doctor's offices. 8 hours a day for 40 hours a week, I'd sit with my head set on, talking to people who were angry or upset. I'd go home angry and upset. My shoulders tight as fists. My nerves shot. I don't know how people can manage to keep doing that kind of work, year after year. I worry that it's numbed me. By forcing me to develop a thick skin, I feel I'm not as compassionate as I used to be. In my job now, I avoid talking on the phone unless absolutely necessary, and as a last resort.

***

In my twenties, the phone was mostly just a physical manifestation of my own failure to connect in any meaningful way with other people. I'd come home from work and check my messages, only to discover there weren't any. Evenings were spent before the flickering blue television screen, waiting beside a phone that never rings. I felt like I spent an entire decade waiting for a call that never came.

***

In Los Angeles everyone had a cell phone. Except me. I'd make plans to meet a guy for a date, and he'd tell me to call him as I approached the restaurant or the coffee house and I'd say, "I don't have a cell phone." He'd laugh at first, thinking I was joking, before realizing I was serious. Then ask me, "Why?" Like not having a cell phone was on par in freakishness with sporting a third nipple or a collecting McDonald's happy meal toys.

The truth is, I didn't want to be that reachable. I didn't want to be one of those assholes in grocery stores, talking non stop because they were so important they couldn't take a break for a single second. As a total recluse with schizoid tendencies, the idea of being available 24/7 had no appeal to me. I held out for as long as I could, but after I moved to Seattle, having a cell phone just made more sense than having a land-line.

Then lo and behold, I quickly became one of those assholes, talking on my phone in the grocery store, asking Anna what kind of ice cream we needed, and whether to go with gummi worms or sour patch kids. Now I have a lancePhone, and a bluetooth headset. Asshole ultimo!

***

Now, in my 30s there are only a handful of people I actually talk to on a regular basis. I talk to my mom three times a week, just to assure her, once again, that I'm not lying dead in a ditch somewhere. When Anna isn't my house guest, I generally talk to her for an hour or two nearly every night. I talk to Bryan every couple weeks, to see how he's doing, even though he never gives me anything, and it's usually me who gabs about my adventures.

My ring tone is Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" and it fills me with joy every time my phone rings. Even if it's only a telemarketer.

***

Boy 2 finally gets the message of potential Gonorrhea exposure via instant message from my iPhone. I love that technology can simultaneously bring people closer together and render communication even less personal at the same time. He seems non-plussed by the news, and considering the fact that I don't even know if I had it, and that we were extremely careful when we were together, it seems like there would have been very little chance of transmittal. He tells me I should watch 500 Days of Summer. I agree that I probably should.

That night I have a date with yet another boy. This post kind of makes me sound like, at best a total player, and at worst a total whore. But really, this much boy attention is out of character for me. Or anyway, there isn't much of a historical precedent for it.

I meet Boycrush at a coffee shop near where he lives, and we walk together to Volunteer Park and sit in the grass beneath an overcast sky, comparing scars. He is beautiful, and seems sweet and unpretentious. It starts to softly rain a little, and we try to get smoothies at a Tully's but it is closed, so we go to Cyberdogs for vegan hot dogs instead. We chat up the waitress about death metal, and sit at a table that is a converted Pac Man arcade game. He tries some of my dog. We drive back to his place, and sit on his futon in front of the open window. A fan blowing cool air.

It becomes obvious that things are moving in a make-out direction, so, humiliated I blurt out that I just took antibiotics because I may have been exposed to Gonorrhea, so I shouldn't have sex for a week. He's cool with it, and we make out. Because it's hot we take our shirts off, and lay on his bed. Trace the tattoo on his chest with the tips of my fingers. Kiss his neck and taste the salt of his sweat. We lay, spooned, my arm around him, so comfortable. So close.

That night it's late and Anna works the next day, so I go back home just after midnight. Not wanting to tear myself away. Walking back to my apartment I take out my lancePhone and send a message "Thanks for a great night." He responds that the pleasure was equally his. I smile all the way home, embraced by the warm night air, a brand new crush, and the sweet facilitating romantic lubricant of modern technology.

The Romantic

“We only got one time." He texted me later, after I'd gone. "I'm ready to go again." Friday night, I show up at his apartment with dinner and dessert from Trader Joes that I’d picked up on the way. I appreciate that he’d taken the time to clean. Had lit candles. That soft music was playing. Even though it’s only sex, I dig the atmosphere. That effort has been made to achieve a certain ambience.

While the food is cooking we sit on his couch. Glass of $3.99 wine that tastes better than it should. His hand touches my knee. I brush the dark hair from his eyes. He is beautiful with a summer tan. We eat and make small talk about the work he’s been doing and a seminar he attended. When we’re done with our food he changes from shorts into a pair of sexy, black underwear, walks over to me and sits on my lap, straddling me. I put down my glass of wine so I don’t spill it.

“You seem nervous.” He says when we stand, hugging. “I am nervous.” I admit. It takes me a while to really feel comfortable around someone. Despite this we are quickly on his bed. My clothes come off and then so do his. He says that he’s self conscious from having gained a little weight after quitting smoking, but I don’t see it. He looks gorgeous to me. We kiss. We touch. Lubrication. My finger slides inside his tight asshole. “It’s been a long time.” He says.

I put on a condom, lie down on his bed and he straddles me. Still nervous, but it feels good. The sensation of warmth and motion. He is beautiful above me. Then behind him, on our knees. He is tall and the position is awkward, but we make it work. We orgasm. “Why did we never do this before?” He asks.

Later, we sit in his living room in our underwear, eating raspberry and mango sorbet. I scratch his gray cat behind the ears. He purrs. We start to settle in for cuddling and an evening of watching Venture Brothers when Anna calls. She’s on her way home, so the evening is cut short as I trek back to my apartment to let her in.

Anna and I go to Charlie’s and share a plate of nachos and I drink a virgin, Mango daiquiri. The waiter alternately flirts with me, and completely ignores us. In the grocery store afterward, “Single Ladies” by Beyonce comes on, and Anna starts doing the corresponding dance routine, which would have been much funnier if I’d ever seen the video. It’s only after I’m back home and settling in to read a bit before bed that I get his text telling me he was disappointed we only got to do it once. Smile. Go to sleep.

The Tuesday before, a text from a different boy. "Time to get nasty trashed." He invites me to the Cuff for a drink. See him sitting at a table in the back where a night of karaoke is in full and painful swing. His spiky blond hair and upturned collar. I sit beside him, and he puts his head on my shoulder.

He drinks a Scewdriver, and I drink a diet coke. His blue jeans are ripped down the side, exposing his thigh and a pair of red underwear. My hand finds it’s way inside his jeans. We kiss. His arm around me. His hand slides down my pants. We make out to a warbly voiced queen belting out an 80’s power-ballad, impervious to the people watching us.

For his turn, he sings “Lightning Crashes” by Live, a song from my formative years. He has a nice voice. Deep and smooth. The sensation of being in a bar, late on a work night, of hearing that song, of making out with a beautiful, young man instills this feeling in me of being 19 again. Of staying out too late, doing things I probably shouldn’t.

Decide to go back to his apartment in the University District. Get him pizza at Bill’s on Broadway, then sit at a bus stop holding hands. Sit beside each other on the bus, his head leaning on my shoulder. Kiss his temple. Softly. Accept the fact that sleep is going to be gladly exchanged for a new experience.

His apartment is a converted dorm room. Mini fridge. A mattress on the floor. I use the bathroom and when I’m done, he is in bed naked. I crawl into bed beside him. The thrill of late night debauchery. Skin against skin. Making out was fun, but the sex itself is somehow off. Maybe because it’s late, or because I’m nervous. Clumsy and intimidated. I press inside him. He leans over to kiss me. He wants to flip, but it’s not happening. While I’m completely versatile in theory, in practice nothing’s been up there in more than 5 years, so I’m not really able to accommodate him, so to speak. Especially considering his dimensions. So we touch some more, and eventually orgasms occur, and it’s okay.

We spoon, and I hear him fall asleep. Snoring softly. Our bodies sticky with sweat where our skin is pressed together. If I really was 19, I’d be totally in love with him. But I am 33 and mostly wondering what I’m doing there. I can never sleep in a strange bed anyway, and the sounds outside of people yelling, and cars keeps me awake. Around 4 am I think to myself that it’s finally gotten quiet when an ambulance siren slices through the still night air. I laugh to myself. Spend the remainder of the night staring at the Ouroboros tattoo between his shoulder blades, as my id becomes my ego. The ngiht tranforms into a foggy dawn.

Morning, watch as he walks naked from the shower. Beautiful and young in the pale gray morning. We dress and go downstairs, and he gets coffee. He walks me to the bus stop that will take me home. Leaves with a hug, but I feel distant and disconnected. On the bus, a young man with brown hair sits beside me and smiles at me over his book, but he doesn’t speak and I don’t speak.

Wednesday passes painfully slowly as I sit in my cubicle, dazed and dull from lack of sleep. Remember the night before and smile to myself. How wonderful it feels to have broken my routine. To have spent the night with a sexy, young man. To spend the day at work in clothes I wore the night before.

After work I go to a porn shop with Ducky and Matt. They help me shop for a dildo. Advise me on their favored brand of lubricant. They look at sexy underwear and wrist cuffs and I buy a pinwheel, and a clear, smallish dildo to reintroduce myself to the feel of versatility that isn't only theoretical. At the checkout we look at vintage porn magazines, and I see but do not buy a mold that allows you to make your own dildo from a mold of your penis. Across the street, Ducky buys a pair of goggles from Value Village for role playing purposes, and the three of us go to La Puerta for Mexican food. We talk about boys over oversized raspberry Margaritas.

Sitting beside them I feel a twinge of romantic melancholy. Impossible not to wish that I had a boyfriend of my own. Someone who I could talk to about the book I'm reading, the news of the day. Someone to make dinner with. Listening to jazz and chopping vegetables. To sit on the couch and watch a zombie movie holding hands. To make love every night. To sleep beside and wake up with the next morning. The comfort of familiar skin. It seems like such a long time since I've had that.

Saturday I ask Friday's boy to go get frozen custard with me. Because I want both custard and companionship. As I'm leaving, Anna arrives so she tags along. She and I get there first and I joke that the morbidly obese man limping toward us is the boy we're waiting for. Her mortified expression sends me into a fit of giggles, even though I recognize that it is totally wrong. The real boy arrives, and we have cherry frozen custard, and the dynamic is immediately awkward. The awkwardness progresses as we go to a boardgame shop, and Anna has an altercation with the shopkeep due to a game displayed that has a Nazi protagonist, and further as Anna gives unasked for smoking cessation counseling.

Later, Anna and I are in my apartment. We listen to some early takes of the songs she's working on. They are impressively good. She never ceases to amaze me with her musicianship. We stay up late listening to her songs. Tell her goodnight and settle into bed. Upstairs my neighbor and his boyfriend laugh, and loneliness so strong presses against my chest it is difficult to breathe.

Sunday, I meet Ducky and Matt and their friends at Coastal Kitchen on 15th for brunch. I keep looking out to see if the boy from Tuesday is going to show up, but he does not. I sit beside Matt, and the conversation is warm and funny. The food is disappointing, but the waiter is cute. It's always a trade off. When brunch is over, the boys (and Miss Jane) go off to see Bruno, but I take advantage of Anna's absence to break in my new sex toy. An hour and half and a bottle of lube later I feel like my claim to versatility has been re-earned.

Sunday afternoon, Jonathan asks me to go to Target with him. I've been in love with exactly two men in my life, and Jonathan is one. The first one. Here we are 10 years later, friends who go to department stores together. Looking at lamps, I wonder how life might have been if he and I had never broken up. Imagine that this brief trip into the land of domesticity is a normal Sunday afternoon for us. Imagine us arguing over bills and deciding what to have for dinner. But I can't really imagine us having spent more than a matter of months together without it ending in carnage.

Volunteer Park later. See the couples together shirtless on blankets. Walking beside one another, pushing a stroller in front of them. Walking hand in hand beside the gold fish pond. I am overcome with desire. Not for sex. Sex is easy. It's intimacy that's so elusive. That keeps me awake at night. That fuels my need to sit in coffeehouses pretending to read, to peruse the aisles of used bookstores, to sip second degree drinks in third degree bars, looking up every time the door opens to see who has walked in. The desire for some kind of meaningful connection in a web of static.

Sunday night. Drunken texts from Ducky offer perspective. The key to reconciling sex and intimacy is to have the first filter for finding a partner be sexual compatibility. Talking about common interests and shared ideas is what friends are for. For Ducky it's all about sex. I can't expect one person to be able to fill so many roles in my life. But I can't help it. I want my partner to be my best friend. Someone cerebral with a dry sense of humor who I can talk about books and movies with. Who I can giggle and be silly with. But also someone who cares for me passionately. I want a best friend who I also have sex with.

But until I find him, I have my fortress of books and pillows. My video games and Sunday brunches. Late night conversations with Anna over ice cream. Drunken texts. Emotionless sex and a clear, rubber boyfriend. Uncomplicated and undemanding.

The Risk Taker

"Want to make out?" I text him early Saturday afternoon. Texting is the perfect medium for a neurotic, insecure and bookish type like me to put himself out there without being completely paralyzed by the fear of rejection. Gripped by summer induced brashness, I’d taken the Smith’s song, “Ask” to heart. “Shyness is nice, but shyness can stop you, from doing all the things in life you’d like to.” So I decide to carpe diem.

The day I am seizing manifested itself in the form of a beautiful, disarmingly intelligent 25 year old with lovely blue eyes, an infectious smile, and remarkably strong hands (but I wouldn’t find that bit out until later). His reply to my cheeky text, “Sure.”

We met at Kaladi Brothers on Pike and talked about humanity’s propensity for violence over smoothies (mine was pineapple) and the sharing of an oversized chocolate chip cookie. Our bellies satiated, we wander down the street to a dildo shop, Babes in Toyland, for some browsing. We examine vibrators. He runs a pinwheel down the inside of my arm and across my chest. Instant arousal. I try to think about Janet Reno to avoid embarrassing myself. Make a mental note to myself to go back and buy a pinwheel. Or two. An investment in the future.

After that we wander around and our wandering takes us to another specialty shop, the Crypt, where he tries on a leather jacket and swats me with a riding crop. We make our way to a bar called Purr and order early drinks. A few sips of my Black Opal and I sink into the plush, red sofa beside him, feeling warm and mellow. Anna pops in to pick up my keys so she can get back into my apartment where she’s staying until her latest album is recorded. We sing along to an unfortunate remake of the 80s song “The Promise” and Anna takes her leave to go do laundry. A tickle-fight ensues.

Thoroughly soused from my strong drink, and part of his, we make our way to the Cuff. A shot of Jagermeister and a Diet Coke. We sit on the patio and chat up a pair of older gentlemen who’d met one another online. Inappropriate and mildly explicit displays of affection ensue. He bites the back of my neck. My hand slides down the back of his shorts (hello Commando!) and I finger his asshole. The taste and smell of him. He sits between my legs. Unbalanced, we fall from our perch and onto the ground. He scrapes his knee, but seems unfazed.

We make our way to the park, his arm around me, and after he finishes a burger from Dick’s, we wrestle. He pins me in the wet grass. I giggle uncontrollably. Our safe-word “Armadillo.” Behind him, clouds roil like an angry snake and lightning flashes. His hand down my shorts and mine up his. First an image, then a sound. Drunk, the fragments of my mythology split like atoms.


Saturday night, Anna and I sit on my bed, watching old episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The apartment feels hot and stuffy. Late, the air is heavy. I hug Anna and she retreats to the living room. I close my door but cannot sleep. Blood resonates with an electric current. I carry a charge. Unspent desire. Bruised and restless.

Sunday. A gray and typically Seattle day with rain. Anna has gone to work downtown and I have the apartment to myself. Take advantage of her absence to find release in pornography. Twice in quick succession. But desire does not abate. At the gym I bench press weights, and everyone there is beautiful. I am beautiful and sore, with bite marks on my neck, my stomach, my back and my chest from the day before's debauchery. Lunch with Ducky, then home again. Pornography again. I am insatiable. A coffee shop. My laptop. The exchange of smiles. Of protons and electrons. Remembered the exchange of saliva. Imagine how fun it would be to have sex with him. Home. The upstairs neighbors scream at one another. Bars over the windows. The claustrophobia of rain. Writing is impossible. Thinking is impossible.

Paradigm shift. After having stepped out of the comfort and safety of my protective shell, it is difficult for me to voluntarily step back into it again. Trying to squeeze toothpaste back into the tube. Maybe it's a massive rationalization because I'm dissatisfied with my job, but I can't help but feel that my strict adherence to this exigent responsibility has gotten me nowhere. Five years in the same job, in the same city and nothing to show for it. No money saved, no loft apartment, no great love initiated, no deep connection, no dream realized. Just the comforting lie of security that isn't really secure. I could get laid off tomorrow or hit by a bus. The realization that big rewards necessitate taking big risks.

The truth is, the happiest and most satisfied I've been with my life are the times I've been the most subversive. When I've side-stepped expectation and societal norms. Stealing flashing construction lights in high school. Showing up at Jeff's apartment, naked in only my high school letter jacket. Him answering the door. The jacket drops. Moving in with Jonathan after having known him for a month. Quitting my job and going with him to Paris. Skinny dipping. Dying my hair purple. Moving to Los Angeles. Stripping in a club. Quitting my job in Santa Monica with only a note. Going to Seattle with no money and no job. Submitting short stories to a writing contest. Making out with a beautiful man in a park, on a Saturday afternoon. Feeling innervated and alive.

Monday morning, another emasculated, gray Seattle day, and I've turned into a cat. Not a tabby, neutered in a sweater vest, hobbled by obligation, health insurance and a 401(k). I am a jungle cat. Black and sleek, my muscles tense. Ears flattened back against my head. Tail twitching. Pacing behind the bars. Feral. Poised to pounce on the nearest jugular. I am ready to take a calculated risk. To slip between the bars and feel the cool breeze against my skin. Pregnant with possibility.

The Independents

Friday, July 3rd
"I can't sleep." Anna says, having crawled into my bed and proceeded to prod me in the shoulder repeatedly. "Yeah." I say. "I'm having that same problem."

I don't know what time it is exactly, but I do know that it's hours before I intend to be awake on this rare day off work. Anna tells me about her anxiety about recording while I imagine encasing her in carbonite until a more reasonable hour.

Eventually she takes her pillow and slinks away. I close my eyes and try to fall asleep again without success. Hear Anna in the shower, trilling her voice in a warm up vocal exercise. Bury my head beneath my pillow for a few seconds, then resign myself to the painful fact of being awake whether I want to be or not.

Groggily shrug into my gym clothes and trek down the hill to the gym. "Objects of My Affection" by Peter Bjorn and John plays on my Run Lance Run playlist. "But of course some days I just lie around and hardly exist." By the time the Frank & Walters sing "Facing Silence" I'm sweat stained and malcontent. At the Kwik E Mart afterward, I pick up an oversized diet Pepsi and the burly, Greek owner asks how my marathon training is going. I say "Swell!" Trudge back up the hill.

Lunch alone at a Thai place on Broadway. The sycophantic wait staff thanks me repeatedly and inappropriately to the point that I feel uncomfortable. I look up from my Pad Kee Mao to see two of the higher-ups from my workplace sitting across from me. A moment of panicked indecision where I wonder if I should duck behind my menu, but it's too late. They've spotted me and come over to say hello. I hate being reminded of work on a day when I don't have to be there. Earlier in the week, I'd walked in and was horrified to see a tiny, American flag stapled to my cubicle wall. I think I'd said aloud "What the...!" I'm glad that I was born in a wealthy country that has a relative amount of freedom where I can earn a decent living pretending to work while obsessively updating my Facebook status. But actual patriotism makes me uneasy. To me it's a step away from cyanide laced Kool Aid.

After lunch I take advantage of Anna's absence to spend some time alone with myself and some Internet porn. Twice. In the evening, I walk up the steps beside my apartment and make my way to Robin's for a barbecue. His friends are all nice and interesting. The food is wonderful. Robin made green beans with blue cheese and potato salad, and there are grilled hot dogs, including tofu dogs just for me. His friend George made some wonderful almond flavored macaroons, and some homemade espresso ice cream which made up for him kind of being a know it all. I am pleased when I manage to seamlessly steer the conversation into midget porn territory. The barbecue ends and I arrive home just in time to let Anna in after her long day of recording.

Saturday, July 4th
Sleep late for a change. At the gym the perky attendant says "Good morning Lance!" with more enthusiasm than the occasion warrants. Everyone at the gym is more muscular and more attractive than me. Somehow I'm able to feel both too fat and too scrawny simultaneously. Doing bicep curls, one of the Adonis Triumvirate asks if he can work in with me, and I say in a shrill, pubescent voice, "Sure!" despite the fact that his presence is wreaking havoc on my fragile self-esteem.

Back at home I gently encourage Anna with an electric cattle prod, to get out of her pajamas so we can go grab some Indian food. I'm stuffing myself chock full of naan and saag paneer from the all you can eat buffet, when Anna visits the powder room. She comes back crying, her make up running down her cheeks, saying her eyes are stinging. She goes outside while I pay the bill, and the guy behind the counter admits that they're chopping onions in the back, and says that they're making him cry too.

In the afternoon I go to Molly Moon's to have ice cream with a boy. I see him walking up Pine and am dismayed to realize that I'm thoroughly attracted to him. He gets a sundae and I get two scoops in a waffle cone, and we walk across the street with our frozen, chocolatey confections to the park to get to know one another better. Because I didn't have the forethought to grab some napkins, and because I'm a walking disaster, my hands and legs are soon covered in sticky melted ice cream drips. I'm afraid that he'll think I'm a mess, which is true enough, but not something I want to disclose right away. The conversation is lovely. He's incredibly intelligent, but it was the pale skin of his hip where his shirt and shorts met that I kept staring at. He's talking about evolution and Scientology, and I'm imagining licking the salt off of his pale skin. Doom. There is a band playing in the park, and families with children and cotton candy. There are couples everywhere holding hands, and for a change, I don't even resent them.

After ice cream, the boy and I part ways on Broadway, and Anna and I walk down to her co-worker's for a party. Her co-worker lives in my dream apartment. Hardwood floors. Huge windows. A great view. Stylish furniture. Nina Simone and Afro-Cuban beats play on the stereo. She is a German immigrant, with a doting American husband. Their home radiates warmth and friendliness. We sit around talking about economics, socialized health care, running and Los Angeles. As the place fills up with other guests, Anna and I leave to go get dinner at the Deluxe Bar and Grill. The food is good, and the service is, out of character for Seattle, warm and friendly. Stuffed, we set out for another party.

We walk down 10th to a house off Broadway with a deck that overlooks the lake. The house is owned by a rotund and jolly older man with an affinity for pretty, young guys. The party is overrun by drunken twinks and the blare of dance music. Anna and I hover on the deck, and mostly talk to Jonathan about boys and the struggle of making connections in Seattle. The fireworks start, and we stand, oohing and aahing at the display. Anna's eyes glistening in the starlit sky. Her hair brushed back from her face. Jonathan's hand pats my back as I hop and clap excitedly as the fireworks erupt into a pair of red hearts. One of the gays beside us comments on how perfectly the lame music fits with the fireworks and Anna and I exchange amused glances. I am unembarrassingly impressed by the sparks and eruptions of glittering jellyfish in the sky. When the display ends, we walk back to my apartment, unnerved by the throngs of revelers chanting "USA! USA! USA!" Past the drunks in the park setting off their own bottle rockets.

Sunday, July 5th
Anna wakes up at 9 and takes a shower, somehow managing to get my entire bathroom soaking wet in the process. I make her watch an episode of Angel and walk down to the gym for Super Chest Day. Because of time constraints, she has to go in to the studio today to record some more, so she's leaving just as I return. I walk down to Martin's on 14th to have brunch with the boys.

Everyone seems subdued and tired from the day before. I have a veggie omelet with hash browns and sit across from Ducky and Matt, and listen to their exploits from the day before, lounging on a boat in their skimpy swim suits. The boy is there, but was late, so sits at the far end of the table. When brunch is over, I want to talk to him, to ask him what his plans are for the day, to see if he wants to hang out again. But, as is typical, when the time comes, I find it impossible to speak. Hugs all around, and the boy disappears, and I stay behind, uncertain, before walking home through the Farmer's Market.

I sit in a coffee shop in the afternoon and work on my supposed novel. The night before Anna was wondering why she'd spent so many years hanging out in gay clubs when she should have been trying to connect with men who were actually attracted to her. I think seeing the happy couple earlier that evening had unhinged us both, and left us wanting love a little more tangible than firecracker hearts. I look up every time the door of the coffee shop opens to see who has walked in. Writing is impossible and pointless. Think, if I had a car, I'd load it up with my computer and my books, my clothes and whatever else would fit, and I'd just take off without a destination. Finally an end to feeling trapped, by cities, by cubicles, by my own desires.

At home I watch an old film noir, a black and white Gene Tierney pot boiler called Where the Sidewalk Ends. My mind is jumping all over the place. From the dread cubicle to smooth skin of a boy's thigh, to the half remembered streets of San Francisco. I sip on hot chocolate and plot my escape. But instead I escape into a book, the final volume of Proust's, Remembrance of Things Past. For a moment, everything else falls away. I find myself disappearing into the seams of the couch. Invisible. I Cheshire cat myself into a fading smile. Dissolve in twilight in an unexpected breeze.

June on the West Coast

"I need to have a talk with you." My boss says, popping up over my cubicle just as I'm updating my Facebook status.

Normally when she wants to talk to me about something, we go to her cube and I answer questions about reports or policies and procedures, but today she wants to talk to me in a private office. All of the offices are in use, so we go to the Executive Conference Room.

"This is it," I think. "I'm finally getting the axe." I follow my boss down the hallway, nervous and exhilarated at the same time, grinning like a trained monkey. Finally, I'm free. Free from cubicles, and the indigent and elderly and all of their needs. Free from white noise, and the stale, re-circulated air. The burnt toast break rooms with their diet Swiss Miss packets of hot chocolate. Free from unlistened to voice-mails. From unsent faxes. From the embarrassing bureaucracy of State and Federal programs. From follow up e-mails and Monday morning presentations, strangled by a tie. Free. I can taste it, and I can't stop smiling.

My boss closes the door behind us, and we sit beside one another at the conference table in cool, leather seats. Having finally been caught out for the lazy and ineffective employee I've long been, I brace myself for my inevitable termination. Then my boss starts talking about a meeting I attended the day before, and I slowly begin to realize that I'm not being fired. I'm not even in trouble. That this talk has absolutely nothing to do with me and the work I do. I am so profoundly disappointed.

June is Lance History Month. Historically the month of my birth is comprised of bouts of increasing anxiety in the weeks and days leading up to my birthday, followed by a huge anti-climax the day of. This year was no exception. It's impossible not to look back at the past year and feel like I've accomplished nothing, and that if history is any indication, the next year promises more stagnation, unless something gives. Or I run away and join the circus.

On Thursday at work I was ignoring my job and surfing the net when reports came in that Michael Jackson died. I was kind of surprised and kind of sad to read the news. But not shocked exactly, since he's looked like an alien skeleton creature on the verge of death for about 15 years now. And not too sad, considering he probably molested children and hasn't had a song that anyone's heard or cared about in 20 years. But still, I give respect where it's due. He was probably the greatest performer of our time, and his songs make up a big part of the soundtrack of my childhood. I very much wanted a white sequined glove when I was 7, and to know how to moonwalk. I listened to the Thriller album so many times that I wore it out. So in the end, while my Filipino co-worker cried in her cubicle beside me over his untimely demise, I opted not to create the following quiz and post it on Facebook: Which Michael Jackson Child Molestee Are You? Respectfully.

Sunday was the day of the Gay Pride parade and inconveniently my 33rd birthday. Last year I celebrated my birthday alone in a second degree Thai restaurant, after having been swarmed by a herd of lesbians with no tops and only electrical tape over their nipples, on their way to a beer garden. Had Anna not flown into town Sunday evening, I'd have likely had a repeat performance of the year before.

That morning I met Travis at the big, gay Starbucks, and we walked down the hill to 4th street to find a spot to watch the parade from. I brought my video camera with me, but didn't really use it, because I couldn't enjoy the festivities and film them at the same time. A lot of people turned out for The Running of The Gays as I'm fond of calling it. While I cynically view Gay Pride as just an excuse for guys to get their nipples pierced, I never miss it. It's just...well, there are so many guys there. There were a handful of protesters sporting signs that said that Gay people were going to hell, and that Gay sex is a sin. But they seemed subdued, and were largely ignored by the teeming crowd of revelers.

Having imbibed a gigantor morning soda to get my caffeine fix, I had to pee almost immediately. There was no place to use the rest room all along the parade route, so I ended up walking all the way to Seattle Center to the Space Needle to go there, and then walked all the way back to find Travis again. Walking past a beautiful, shirtless man, I opened my mouth to speak, but all I could say was "abs" over and over again. The parade itself was largely forgettable. Mostly it consisted of advertisements for large companies or political candidates. A disproportionate number of churches was represented which made me a little uneasy, but thankfully the Flying Spaghetti Monster was represented as well.

Many of the floats had Michael Jackson music playing, or some kind of tribute to him. I have to admit it was pleasing to see a marching band do the Thriller dance. I saw Gitai march with his Dojo, and people breaking boards with their ninja moves. I saw Ducky and Matt walking together with Michael's workmates. Ducky had removed the sleeves from his t-shirt to show off his hot arms. I called out to them and they came over to the sidelines to give me a happy birthday hug. The best group I saw marching had a banner that said "Legalize Gay Cupcakes!" I don't know what this means, but I love it just the same.

When we got bored watching the never ending parade, I made Travis walk with me back to Seattle Center, and stand in line behind two drag queens in wedding dresses for some dubious Chinese food. We met up with Jonathan and walked around, watching the people play in the fountain in their underwear. The gay parents with their gaybies. The hairy legged lesbians with no shirts on, bare tits dangling in the breeze. The old men in speedos with wrinkled asses. The twinks in body glitter. The gays in wheelchairs, and the gays in suits and ties. Jonathan lamented his inability to connect with guys in Seattle, while Travis kept his eyes peeled for people with nubbins. My senses were mostly overwhelmed, and the thousands of people around me were starting to make me claustrophobic.

Travis and I walked back up the hill and parted ways. I walked to the grocery store to pick up a few things in anticipation of Anna's imminent arrival. Then I watched Rachel Maddow (my new lesbi-crush) clips on Youtube until her taxi arrived.

Anna got out of the taxi with her bags and her guitar, and I hugged her. She seemed to almost glow and radiate warmth and sunshine. After she changed clothes, we walked down to Chez Gaudy for my birthday dinner. I was unsurprised to discover a sign on the door when we arrived, saying that the restaurant was closed so that the staff could enjoy gay pride. "It begins." I said, but Anna wouldn't let me sink into a funk. There was some internal debate before we walked to Barrio on 12th for some gourmet Mexican food. The service was pretty bad, and the food wasn't much better, which was disappointing since I'd had such a good experience there with Jeremy. But afterward we got some frozen custard at a place that opened up across from Chop Suey and that righted things.

We talked about her parents and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict over a shared sundae with brownie, custard and hot fudge. Then we walked down Broadway where she found a pair of sunglasses to replace the pair she'd lost somewhere in the airport.

The day after your birthday totally sucks. You're just older and there are no presents. And you have to go back to work. That it's a four day work week is some consolation. There are fireworks and parties to look forward to this weekend. After that it's a long time until Labor Day. Living for weekends and holidays is getting old. Right now I welcome a change, any change, to shake up the status quo.

Coffeehouse Blues

"Large, soy, no-whip hot chocolate!" The barista exclaims as I approach the counter, obviously pleased with his recollection of my hot, tasty beverage of preference. Impossible to hold it against him, his soft blond curls. That he has memorized my order has less to do with his anamnesis than the fact that I am, if nothing else, a creature of habit. I am horrified to realize that I have become a regular.

When I talked to her later, Anna points out that there are worse things than patronizing a coffeehouse. I could always be the "Norm" of the VD clinic. "Your usual double dose of penicillin?" Still, it bothers me that I am so predictable. I start to tell the barista, "No, this time I'll have a mocha," but think better of it. I really like hot chocolate. I can accept that I am boring as long as I'm happy in my routine.

My green t-shirt smells like him. His scent seems to permeate every thread of the fabric. Masculine and strange. The disconcerting sense of his presence in his absence.

I sit at a table by the window. The reflection of my face is superimposed over the building across the street. Rust red brick building covered entirely by thick, green ivy. Swollen clouds of a ruptured sky bleeding the orange and purple brush strokes of sunset. So beautiful it doesn't seem real. Downtown, above the jagged spine of skyscrapers and construction cranes the clouds are dark with rain. My reflection in the window faded like a rub-on tattoo, disconnected from my being and any meaning. A pair of chapped red lips, upturned in an absent smile and newly formed wrinkles at the creases of my mouth. Cheeks darkened by the scruff of 5 o'clock shadow. A face that's punctuated by a pair of eyes, blue, that are themselves windows. The reflection of a reflection, an infinity of coffee cups and longing.

I do not like the taste of coffee, but I love the way it smells, in seas of teacups steaming. Despite not liking coffee, I spend an inordinate amount of time in coffee shops, honing my mythology. The night before, he'd said, with stalwart certainty, "You are a Buddhist." I don't remember what prompted this assertion, but I remember thinking how little he must know me. I explained that Buddhists are interested in surrendering the sense of self, and I spend more time than anyone else I know analyzing, contemplating and inhabiting myself.

My anachronistic desire to be a writer, despite the fact that no one reads books anymore. The string of foolish decisions that have led me from being "Most Likely to Succeed" to sitting in cubicles and coffee shops and on park benches, counting joggers, counting leaves, counting the wrinkles on my hand. One more wrinkle than my wrinkled heart can stand. Counting every breath I breathe. Anything to keep from thinking.

I'm supposed to be working on my alleged novel. But instead I pull out an old journal from 2007 and read about what I was thinking and doing then. A worn, brown journal full of the black felt tipped scrawl of my messy writing. Words that become more tiny and insistent spidering toward the edges of the page, because it's so important that I fit in as many of them as I can, to describe how I feel to my perennially fascinated audience of one. I wonder if I'd been raised by apes or wolves, how I would perceive the world around me. How could I differentiate between objects and feelings if I didn't have the words for them? What would thought be comprised of without words? Can you feel lonely if you don't have a word for loneliness?

Maybe one day we'll evolve beyond the need for language. We'll be able to telepathically communicate our needs and desires directly from one brain to another and be intrinsically understood. All of the untranslatable longing and confusion will be unnecessary. Words obsolete.

On 11/17/2007 I wrote in my journal: "In the coffee shop there is a dark haired young man with a black jacket and a red scarf. He is both a young man, sitting in a coffee shop alone, and at the same time he is the idea of a young man in a coffee shop alone. Which is more provocative? The young man with his individual likes and dislikes, a distinctive voice, a distinctive smell, a body and a mind full of faults and desires. Or the idea that a young man in a red scarf is sitting in a coffee shop alone?

Either he will leave, or I will leave and neither of us will have spoken to the other. If noticed at all we will remain archetypes, filed away in the other's subconscious. The idea of a man sitting in a coffeehouse alone.

I cannot speak. I cannot connect verbally with other people, which is why, no matter how meaningless, how counterproductive, I am bound to the dream of being a writer. I don't have a choice. Writing is simply the best way that I'm able to connect with people. I understand this about myself. That without my words I'd be stumbling around like a man with no senses, touching no one and being touched by no one.

A blond woman with fake fur around her collar sits between me and the young man in the red scarf, which is just as well. He's already served his purpose. Walking home from work the other night, in the rain, I was stopped at an intersection when I witnessed an accident. A car skidded on the wet street and rear ended the car in front of it which was stopped at a traffic light. I thought how lucky they must feel, on some level, to have momentarily escaped the mundane routine of their daily lives. To have made a connection with another person."

Back in the present, I am sitting across from a girl with pink hair, pink eyebrows and a low-cut pink blouse. She smiles at me and I smile back. I put my journal away and pull out a book he'd given me. Letters to a Young Poet. An early birthday present. He'd given it to me the night before, and no sooner was he out the door, than I'd pulled the iridescent ribbon away and ripped apart the white wrapping paper. I am an only child, and I have no patience. I am touched by the thoughtfulness of the gift, and the understated inscription on the front cover. "A special book for a special person." He signed it "Fondly."

My shirt smells like him. Remembered, his kisses, so insistent. Remember falling momentarily out of myself. Out of the moment. How I started thinking about the story I was writing, and my mind wandered into the safe, familiar territory of my impotent prose. Curled naked on my bed. His fingers tracing my spine.

This morning, a call to my father to wish him a happy father's day. I talk to him exactly twice a year. Once on his birthday and once on father's day, and the conversations are awkward and identical. I could play a recording of responses and he wouldn't be able to tell the difference. I rush out the "Happy Father's Day!" And he asks about work, and I lie and say it's fine. I ask him what my mom did (Today she took him to Long John Silvers because that's where he wanted to eat.) This year he is newly unemployed and unable to find a job, and feeling depressed and useless. I tell him that he's worked hard all of his life, he should just relax and enjoy the time off. But he doesn't know how to relax, or what to do with himself. Long, uncomfortable silence before I ask, "Is momma there?"

This weekend I buy myself a digital video camera as an early birthday present to myself. I sneak into my office building for a bit of gorilla film making. Somewhere in the building I can hear the cleaning ladies who come in on the weekend, laughing. The sound of women talking in Spanish. I set up the tripod at my cubicle, and do a few quick takes of an old performance poem I used to do in my Poetry Slam Days. "Heaven's Customer Service Line." If I ever figure out how the editing software works, I'll post it on Youtube. Another way to document the world around me without connecting to it. A lens to hide behind instead of a pen.

It's strange to be at work when I'm not working. It feels like I'm being especially subversive. Which pleases. Earlier I'd had brunch with Matt and all the Mikes and Aaron, Jason and their friends. We sat in the Broadway Grill, a bright blue building decked with rainbow flags in honor of Gay Pride. Ducky comments on how buff my chest has gotten while I preen like a spoiled peacock. I sit at the edge of the table, and seem engaged, scooping up my eggs and home fries with a piece of french toast, and try to be engaged, by my thoughts are elsewhere. Clouded and sporadic as a vagrant storm. A long wait for food and a longer wait for the bill, no refilled drinks. Hugs all around and nice to meet yous.

I go from there to home to the grocery store and home again. I go from coffeehouse to coffeehouse. Illuminated by my laptop, or hiding behind a book. Every time the doorway opens, hinged and gasping like a startled ghost, I look up to see who has walked in. I fold up discarded poetry and drown it in my coffee cup (full of hot chocolate.) Write "I sit across from you in coffeehouses too afraid to speak to you." Then delete it. A young man sits across from me in a worn, blue, western style shirt. And Willie Nelson sings "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain." And it rains. But just a little. And I want so badly to feel the touch of another person against my skin. To really feel it. Fingers that flicker across my flesh, that bore holes into the very fabric of my universe and unravel it. Unmaking my mythology until every object is divorced from all meaning. There are only lips and hands. A body pressed against another body.

My thoughts are crabs that sideways walk along the beach of coffee seas. The embarrassed sinking ships of long misspent poetry. Tracing trails of cheesecake crust across a plate. Find myself staring at the hint of dark brown hair at the unbuttoned collar of a stranger's shirt. His jaw. His lips. His eyes. He sees me seeing him, and he smiles. I look away. Fold in on myself like a Japanese bug of paper origami, drowning in cooling coffee seas. Close my book and put my laptop back inside my bag. Roll up the power cord. Put away my cup and plate. The air disappears from the room, and I'm outside. Blue eyes crying in the rain.

Lancipedia: Things That Begin With the Letter A

Anderson Cooper:
Silver haired god of my idolatry. He's classy and sexy. He's clexy! I want to hang out with him and talk about politics, art and world travel. Maybe while we're talking about globalization and the marginalization of unskilled labor in developing nations over a glass of 1787 Chateau Lafite, he'll let me sit on his lap and lick his ear.



Alien Abduction:
Like Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster and the Chupacabra, I am totally obsessed with stories of aliens and alien abductions. If I stumble across a story on the Discovery Channel or A&E about UFOs and alien abductions, I cannot change the channel. I'm paralyzed.

While I'll readily believe nearly anything if there's a documentary about it available on youtube, I tend to be a little more skeptical when it comes to alien abduction. My main problems with abduction stories is that they always happen at night, usually while the abductee is sleeping. Why doesn't anyone else in the house wake up or notice that the abductee has been abducted? Why do they only "remember" the abduction under hypnosis? When it happens in a densely populated place, why doesn't anyone see the person getting beamed up into the alien ship?


Still, one of my most enduring fantasies as a child, growing up in rural Texas was to be abducted by aliens and taken back to my home planet. Mostly because as a gay, atheist, vegetarian poet, I felt pretty much like an alien myself.

Anna:
One of the central figures of my mythology. In the 6th grade I read a book called The Hero and the Crown, where the main character is a girl with red, curly hair who is an outsider who ends up being a hero. I always had this fantasy of a curly haired girl moving to town and being my best friend. Though we didn't meet until after college, I can still almost remember Anna and I growing up together. Of sitting across from one another in the school cafeteria. Being in the school plays. I just can't imagine a time when she wasn't in my life.

We met when I started working for a nationally renowned non-profit that helps cancer patients that will remain nameless. Our fledgling friendship was nurtured by dancing to 80s music at the Atomic Cafe in Austin. When her band started playing in the local clubs, I'd go and show my support for her music. I was amazed and a little intimidated by her immense talent as a musician, a singer and songwriter. Later when she went solo, I became her roadie, groupie and biggest fan. We'd load up her car and go play shows, and then go to IHOP afterward and talk well into the night about how the world made so little sense to us. Being subversive and not cut out for cubicle life, we bonded further when first she was fired from the job for repeatedly dropping the F-bomb in earshot of our clientele, and then I was fired for writing a scathing satirical piece on an online employee forum comparing the organization unfavorably to George Orwell's 1984.

Our bent for pessimistic exclusivity along with a perfect storm of neuroses led to a few implosions. Still, we reforged our friendship when we both found ourselves living in Southern California. Later, a road trip through the Pacific Northwest with her would lead me to Seattle (for better or for worse.) Though there were times when we lived together when I wanted to encase her in carbonite, I've never felt closer to, or as understood by another person. She just gets me. And I get her. And that is special and worth preserving.

Now that we live in different states once again, I miss her. She has always been a huge support and inspiration to me. I could write entire novels about our adventures together, but suffice to say I love her. I'm proud to call myself her friend and still her biggest fan.

To check out her music:
http://www.myspace.com/annamadorsky


To become a fan:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Anna-Madorsky/60056240495


If you'd like a CD, let me know!


Apotemnophiles:
People who remove otherwise healthy limbs because they have a fetish for being amputees. I first encountered this condition when reading the novel Geek Love, which I highly recommend. I'm always fascinated by people's fetishes and would love to know what transpired in someone's formative years to make them get off on having an arm or leg chopped off.

Austin:
Growing up in the bustling metropolis of Iola, TX, and going to college at Texas A&M in College Station, Austin was a liberal oasis in a roiling sea of conservatism, and like a siren, it called to me. Travis county was the only blue county in an otherwise red state, and as soon as I was done with college this is where I went to live.

I lived in Austin for four years, enduring the hippies and oppressive summer heat. I'd jog through Zilker park. Feed the ducks near Barton Springs. Watch the hordes of bats flittering from beneath the bridge at sunset. Go dancing at the clubs on 4th Street, or on Red River. Catch music on 6th Street. Gorge myself on honest to goodness Mexican food. I did my part to "Keep Austin Weird," which is the city's motto. But by the time I arrived, the presence of Dell, Apple and IBM had already done their part to erode the weirdness factor and dilute the quirky town with their corporate culture.

Still I'm fond of the city, and were it not for the 114 degree summer days and, well, all of the Texans, I'd still probably live there.

Arcade Fire:
My favorite band of this century. I saw them in 2004 at Neumo's in Seattle. At the time I described the show like watching the Bad News Bears win the big game. Every song was an anthem, and every crescendo of sound felt like a triumph. Like watching the dorky kids in band from your junior high given free reign to be creative, they were full of energy, and inspired me to want to go out and dance and sing.


A couple years later they were headlining the Sasquatch Music Festival along with Bjork, it was amazing to see how far they'd come. They still play with all the energy and integrity that they did at the smaller venue.


Angst:
I has it.

Anthropomorphization:
My lancePhone is my best friend, and I'd marry it if it was legal in this state!


Angelina Jolie:
For a while I'd have this recurring nightmare that Angelina Jolie was chasing me. She'd finally grab me and throw me to the ground and force me to have sex with her. At first I'd resist, saying "No! No! No, Angelina!" Then I'd finally just give in and succumb to her raw sex appeal. "Oh! Angelina!"


While I am totally 100% gay gay gay, I think Angelina Jolie is the one woman I'd play straight for. I want to tattoo her lips across my nether regions. I want her to spank me and make me like it. Mostly I wish I was a little more "ethnic" so she and Brad would adopt me.

Archipelagos:
Sitting in my cubicle I long for two things, death and to be sitting on a tropical island somewhere drinking an exotic blue drink from a hollowed out coconut with a scantily clad native man fanning me and handing me ice cubes.


Atheism:
I wasn't raised in a religious household. My dad went to church occasionally, but my mom eschewed it altogether, citing the hypocrites adorning the Sunday morning pews as a major turn off. I only started going to Sunday school when I was 6 because my girlfriend at the time went. I never really bought into the whole "Jesus" thing, but I was frightened enough by the prospect of eternal hellfire to hedge my bets and pretend I did, just in case.

Ultimately I just couldn't swallow the rhetoric. If the Earth was only 6,000 years old, where did the dinosaurs fit in? I didn't understand how it was a monotheistic religion, but there was the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. And God knocked up Mary with Jesus, but they were the same person? By age 12, I threw up my hands and called bullshit on that. My Sundays were spent instead watching Godzilla movies and listening to the weekly top 4o. Both much better ways of spending time than worshipping a mythological being that thought I was an abomination anyway.

Art:
I usually don't get it.

Apocalypse:
My favorite genre of movies are post apocalyptic films in which a lone person or small group of people is fighting the elements to survive. I long for the liberating rush of anarchy.

The world operates under rules that make no sense to me. I may dutifully go to my cubicle every day and put money in my 401(k) and pay my taxes, but inside I'm balking, and asking myself, "Why?" I want something big to shake up the status quo. Be it some global pandemic, or zombie outbreak, I want a massive deconstruction of all of these societal rules that I had no part in making, and no desire to maintain.

I just think that I'd thrive if I was living in the moment, scavenging for food, and doing what I had to in order to survive. Then I wouldn't have the luxury of dwelling on the past or worrying about the future. It would be the end of existential crises! Or maybe I'd just curl up in the fetal position and whimper. Either way it would be better than cubicle life.

Los Angeles I'm Yours!

Thursday 05/21/2009:
"Cash only." The cabbie says as I hand him my credit card, the ride from LAX to Anna's apartment having been more expensive than anticipated. I point to the sign above the seat that says "Credit Cards Welcome!" He begrudgingly accepts my card, with one last, "Don't you have cash?"


Saturday 06/14/2003:
My old journal reads "This is the fourth day I've lived in Los Angeles and I hate hate hate it."


05/21/2009:
The first time I've set foot in Los Angeles in nearly five years. The pastel colored columns of LAX against a hazy, soot blue sky. The surprised nostalgia of Dr. Seuss Palm Trees swaying gently in the early morning breeze. The names of familiar streets roll past. La Cienega. Sepulveda. Fairfax. Santa Monica. Sunset. Anna lives in Los Feliz, which, she tells me, the locals pronounce Los Feel Us. She lives directly across from a Scientology compound, and I'm not sure if this is a harbinger of good or ill fortune.


06/14/2003:
Bryan watches me skulking around our apartment, looking for the thermostat. "Darlin'," he says. "I didn't want to tell you this, but there's no air conditioning."


05/21/2009:
The parking meter says "FAIL." I take a picture of it with my lancePhone. Brunch at a cafe called Fred 62. Hot, latino waiter with chiseled, tattooed arms. Breakfast enchiladas with egg whites that taste amazing. The food in Seattle seems so bland by comparison. Unused to wearing them, I forget my sunglasses on the table, and as we leave the waiter runs them out to me, shouting "Sir! Sir!"


06/22/2003:
Bryan and I play Scott Walker's "We Came Through" and sing along to commemorate our victory over the first two weeks in Los Angeles. We have Thai food delivered with chocolate shakes.


05/21/2009:
An ice cream shop called Scoops in Hollywood has wonderful rotating flavors such as Roasted Corn, Corona and Lime, Pink Riesling. I get a scoop of brown bread and a scoop of banana oreo and vow to come back every day of my vacation.


Wednesday 07/16/2003:
"How do you like it here?" The young man, who will later be known as Sick Boy, asks me in the elevator at the brokerage firm where we're both working as temps. His pale, skinny tattooed arms. Damp, black hair, slicked back. The sleeve of his starched, white shirt brushes against me. I find it strange that he chose to stand so close to me in an otherwise empty elevator. I reply, "It pays my way, but it corrodes my soul."


05/21/2009:
"I think that's Chris Kattan." Anna says. I'm not wearing my glasses, so I cannot corroborate. We're sitting in a restaurant in Hollywood called Cheebos, waiting for Danny and glo.


07/16/2003:
The brokerage firm is surrounded by about 20 firetrucks, ambulances and police cars. A helicopter flies dangerously close to our 11th floor window. No one is working. News crews are gathering below us. We turn on the TV to see what's happened. "I think there must be a hostage situation next door." Donia says. Another helicopter flies past.


05/21/2009:
Anna lives beside Griffith Park, and we take a long, late walk up the dusty trails. A coyote scurries down the trail past us toward the street. Anna howls to call him back away from the busy road. The coyote pauses. Looks. Slinks away.


07/16/2003:
An 86 year old man plowed through the Farmer's Market on the 3rd Street Promenade, killing 10 people and injuring 63. From my building, which overlooks the Promenade and the beach, we can see the injured being led to a make shift hospital. People being carried away on stretchers. I'd just been down on the Promenade for lunch about 45 minutes before the carnage. Shaken. Work the rest of the day is impossible.


Friday 05/22/2009:
Anna drives us to the Santa Monica Pier near the 3rd Street Promenade where I used to work. We walk down the boardwalk which looks shabby during the day. At the beach we take off our shoes and socks, and wriggle our toes in the wet, salty sand. The Pacific ocean is ice cold. The sand is burning hot. Nearby a crew is shooting a music video of a bunch of hot, swimsuit clad young people dancing. A director calls "Cut!" over a loud speaker and assures everyone they did a great job.


Tuesday 07/22/2003:
Sick Boy has become my constant companion during breaks and lunches at the brokerage firm. We walk around the block while he smokes a cigarette, and he tells me about his time in the Marines, his girlfriend and his heroin binges. I marvel that in the eyes of the brokerage firm, a heroin addicted high school dropout and I are equally viable employees. He is a "bad boy" and I want to lick his hairless, tattooed chest.


05/22/2009:
We drive to Long Beach for lunch at a creperie. We split a savory curry crepe and a sweet tiramisu one. Drive past Anna's old apartment where I was horrified to discover that she used her oven for storage, and there was nothing in her refrigerator except Hot Pockets.

Tuesday 09/16/2003:
I leave for work to discover long stemmed roses waiting on my doorstep. More roses draped across the windshield of my car. A note from the Jewish Doctor that he'd had a great time the night before. He was thinking of me. I clipped the flowers and put them in a vase, on the pale blue porcelain tiled kitchen counter. The day in the cubicle is suddenly not as oppressive.

Saturday 05/23/2009:
Anna and I take the L.A. subway (yes there is one) to Chinatown to a club called Club Violaine where we saw two shoegaze bands, Modern Time Machines and Dreamtiger. We danced to the Cocteau Twins, and saw a girl who used to dance at the Ruby on Clockwork Orange nights. To get into the club, I had to be patted down by security, but Anna just walked right through. A nice man from Atlanta had given us the skinny on the subway as we were leaving, and told us when to catch the last train back, but we missed it anyway, and Anna hailed a cab to take us home.

Thursday 09/18/2003:
I go see Anna perform at the Foxx Club. Sit at the bar with Emily, the booking agent who apparently went to the Tammy Faye school of mascara application. Her face looked like a bowl of pancake batter that two wriggling, black spiders had fallen into. The show is good though Anna complained that she couldn't hear herself in the monitor.

Sunday 05/24/2009:
Casbah Cafe. I pick at a slice of cheesecake covered in fresh mixed berries and sip on some pretty wonderful hot chocolate. The decor in the place is like a hippie's dream of a Moroccan whore house. Lamps and colorful rugs. "She's really good." The couple next to me says of Anna, as she plays guitar. Later they buy a couple of her CDs and I feel proud that I'm friends with the musician.

Thursday 10/23/2003:
In my cubicle, I suddenly feel incredibly dizzy. Wonder "What's wrong with me?" I look up and see my co-worker bracing herself in the doorway of her cubicle and realize that I'm not dizzy. We're having an earthquake. Look out the window and see the horizon swaying back and forth. Think "I cannot die in this building with these people." I shoot out the exit and down the stairs in less than a second. On the ground, no one even noticed the tremor, but on the 11th floor, we certainly felt it. Miss the tornadoes and thunderstorms of Texas. At least you can see them coming.

Monday 05/25/2009:
"He kind of looks like you." Anna says of the monkey, sitting despondently in a corner of his cage at the Los Angeles zoo. The strange thing is, he did kind of look like me. The monkey and I regarded one another for a long time, as streams of visitors filed past with corn dogs and ice cream cones. I am ambivalent about zoos. On one hand they're full of animals, and they teach kids about wildlife and conservation. On the other hand, the animals are confined to small areas and gawked at by fat suburbanites and their fat, sausage toed kids. They pace around the cages or just lie there, bored and depressed. Or maybe I'm anthropomorphizing. Or maybe I'm depressed.

Monday 11/03/2003:
"Can I kiss you?" Sick Boy asks from the passenger seat of my car. I brush my magenta hair out of my eyes and say, "Okay." His tongue in my mouth. My eyes open, looking at the palm trees outside. "I've wanted to do that for a while," he says. Think to myself, that was odd, considering he has a girlfriend, and I'm dating the Jewish Doctor. Later at work, we never mention it again, and I start taking my breaks 30 minutes earlier to avoid him.

Saturday 05/23/2009:
Griffith Park Observatory. The city is spread out below us like a model landscape. Beauty in the jagged silhouette of the downtown skyscrapers that look like the spine of some dinosaur whose name I would have known as a child. The blue sky. The hills. The Hollywood sign. Anna's long, curly hair blowing in the breeze. The beauty of Los Angeles is somehow more impressive to me than other, more natural landscapes, because it exists out of man's sheer will for it to do so. The imported trees and flowers lining the streets of Beverly Hills. The palm trees of Santa Monica Boulevard. The canals of Venice. Hollywood Boulevard. Mann's Chinese Theater. I want to memorize it all. I don't know when I'll be coming back.

06/14/2003:
Another parking ticket. The second of 9 that I'd get that year. In the mail there is a packet of coupons that sums up Los Angeles. They are all for teeth whitening, botox, tanning salons, and plastic surgeons. It is a city of beautiful people and celebrities. "Wolverine from the X-men movies works out here!" Had been one of the selling points when I'd gotten my gym membership. The buildings on Sunset were covered in movie or perfume or underwear advertisements that were several stories high. The never ending strip malls were full of models and would be actors. And there was me, the latest transplant. Short, pasty white, with thinning hair. Of course it couldn't last.

Tuesday 05/26/2009:
One last drive through West Hollywood. Buzz Cafe, the coffee shop I'd liked no longer exists. Eat Well and Griddle Cafe are still thriving. Danny treats us to lunch in Beverly Hills at a restaurant called Bossa Nova. Afterward we get macaroons at a French cookie shop. Part of me wishes I could stay forever. There are so many other remembered adventures and so many new places to explore. Danny hugs us goodbye at the corner. Anna drives me to the airport, where a plane is waiting to take me back home to Seattle.

Paint By Number: Hot Sweaty Monkey Sex

It's Not Easy Being Green:
"I'm in the mood for more Wallace and Gromit." He e-mailed me the next day. As euphemisms go, it wasn't too shabby. Sunday was our third date, and after drinks and dinner we'd gone back to my place to "watch Wallace and Gromit," a claymation sensation from the UK, but more importantly an excuse to get a little closer.

I was glad I'd worn my just-in-case underwear. Just in case. We were in my bed watching "The Wrong Trousers" and hadn't even gotten to the point where the evil penguin tries to steal the diamond from the museum when our own trousers were on my bedroom floor. Intense making out quickly ensued.


When Wallace an Gromit ended, I put in Sinead O'Connor's, "Year of the Horse," and we 69'd to "Troy." Afterward he came. Then I came. Then he had to go to catch an early flight the next morning. Maybe we'll run into one another in Los Angeles. We'll be in touch.


After he leaves, I'm hard again. I don't know what's wrong with me. I can tell Spring is in full swing. The sun is finally out. The tulips are in bloom, and I want to make out with every boy! I feel insatiable.

Idol Hands (And Other Appendages):
The theme for Idol night was "something phallic" and the night certainly lived up to it's name. I'd made enchiladas because they were easier than stuffed zucchini. The usual suspects were there, and we were gathered around Matt's TV, watching Adam and Monkey Face butcher a pretty awful song co-written by one of the judges, noshing asparagus, breadsticks and donut holes.


Aaron brought a couple of friends with him who were new to the mix. Astro, another transplant from Austin, and Hamster, an ex-military redneck who said "shit" a lot and told us he was auditioning for a job as a stripper on Friday and needed pointers. The gang was only too happy to oblige, and before I knew it, Hamster had his pants and shirt off, and Matt and Jason were trying to give him tips on gyrating and hip thrusting 101.


Michael turned to me and asked "What's happening?" I just shrugged and pulled out my iPhone to snap a few quick pics. Hamster had a nice body, but an unfortunate farmer's tan that may or may not have added to his appeal. He wasn't very coordinated though, so Matt tried to show him how to shake his bon bon. Matt has the controlled hip movements of an expert belly dancer, and watching him shake it kind of turned me on. Hamster requested they play some Lynard Skynard. Matt smoothly replied, "I'm gay."


Later I tried to strike up a conversation with Astro since we had Austin in common, but the conversation turned into his fetish for being stabbed. The people around me were comparing scars and I was wondering where I was, and why I was there. Then Matt pointed out that Hamster was now completely naked. I looked over, and there he was in all of his white trash glory, as other people stood around talking casually with drinks and plates of food as if a naked guy standing in the middle of the room was what happened every Idol night.


Feeling like things were going to a place that I wasn't going to be completely comfortable with any minute, I gathered up my leftover enchiladas and left. Shawn asked, as I was leaving if I was hoping to avoid the orgy. I was.


Back home in my apartment, I watched the Daily Show online and obsessively finished the remaining enchiladas. Upstairs, my neighbors were engaged in their nightly marathon of loud, obnoxious vag sex. As the woman began faking her orgasm, I turned on x-tube to spend a little quality time with myself.

What if I was Romeo In Black Jeans? (The Death of Romance):
I've always considered myself to be a romantic. I've looked for love in the bottom of a coffee cup, in the produce aisle at the grocery store, beside me on an airplane, flying to Los Angeles. I've never been driven by the need to get off as much as by the need to connect with another person. In a world where sex is everywhere, on TV, in movies, books, video games, in advertisements, in the bathrooms of bars, in bushes and alleyways, all I've really wanted is intimacy. A person I could share my life with.

Being immersed in movies like Casablanca and Breakfast at Tiffany's in my formative years, I grew up with this idea that somewhere out there, just waiting for me to discover him, was the man who would be my soul mate. He could be anywhere, and every single time I'd go out, I'd expect to meet him. Then, inevitably, I'd go home, alone and disappointed.

After years of trial and error, well, mostly error, I've been forced to become a lot more realistic about love. I understand that love is a verb. It's something that two (or more) people decide on and work on, continuously. Unlike many men I have a lot of difficulty divorcing sex from emotion. I want to have sex with someone that I have feelings for, and conversely, if I'm having sex with someone, I usually develop feelings for him. The two have always seemed so inextricable.

Despite this desire for intimacy and romantic love, I have managed to amass a sizable number of notches on my metaphorical bedpost. I've been sexually active since I was 18. I'm 32 going on 33. After a while, the numbers start to add up. The resulting sex life borders on ridiculous farce, peppered with awkwardness, humiliation and regret.

Numbers:
3. Jeff-What we settle for. I wasn't even remotely attracted to Jeff, but at 19 I'd convinced myself that English was more important than chemistry, so liking the same books was enough, and maybe sexual attraction could be learned if I just kept practicing. Because of the lack of attraction, I'd had to be inventive. We tried everything from role playing to bondage. Remember him on his knees in front of me in a studded collar and leash. The person in the collar had to do whatever Master wanted.

43. Twenty. At 30, having a cute 20 year old hit on me in a coffee shop was a huge ego-boost. His full lips and floppy hair. Remember him rummaging through my books after our second sexcapade. "Can I borrow this?" He'd asked, holding up my copy of Maxine Hong Kingston's Woman Warrior. Sure I'd said. "Good." He'd responded. "Now you'll have to see me again." I really miss that book.

21. Kamal. New Year's Eve, the year before I moved to Los Angeles. We'd spent the evening at a bar called Oilcan Harry's in Austin. He'd spent most of the night hitting on other guys, so I was surprised at midnight to find his tongue in my mouth, and more surprised when he followed me back to my apartment. He had a faintly goat-like smell and bristling back hair like a wild boar. I was self conscious due to a huge zit right above my ass crack. Still we were troopers and did it twice to ring in the new year.

9. Strep Throat Boy. Because he lived in Austin and I was still in school in College Station, I'd drive two hours to his apartment. It was my "preppy" phase, and he remarked that I was like his son coming home from college every time I came to visit with my overnight bag (despite the fact that he was a year younger than me.) Remember lying on his bed, him straddling me. His pierced belly button, and cute prick as it bounced up and down, slapping my stomach.


32. Strip Checkers. Had his own PR business. Remember driving down Wilshire in his red convertible to his sky rise apartment in Korea Town. He'd take out the checker board and we'd play strip checkers. The first one naked was the loser and had to do whatever the winner wanted. Fun, all the way up till he moved to Las Vegas.


34. Garth, the Jewish Doctor. Remember walking up the stairs to his office on a Saturday when no one was there. On each step I'd remove an item of clothing until I reached the top and was totally naked. Remember hearing the laughing voices of the cleaning ladies talking in Spanish, and rushing as quickly as possible inside his office where he sucked me off. Remember how he'd call each body part by it's scientific name as he kissed it. This is your scapula. This is your clavicle. This is your sternum. The sterility quickly bored me, and sex became more like a visit to the doctor. All business.

17. Neil-The Choreographer. He'd recently moved to Austin and wanted to make new friends. We met for coffee and then went back to my place for hot, sweaty monkey sex. We did it so hard that my bed collapsed in the middle of it, but we kept on going until we were finished. He left me with a broken bed and a case of crabs.

2. Brian-The Italian Stallion. He claimed to be "bisexual" at the time. He belonged to a frat and had a roommate at the dorms, so he always came to my place. He was kinky with pierced nipples and a gorgeous body. Remember how he wanted me to strangle him once to prolong his orgasm. But because the only thing we had in common was sex, I stopped seeing him to have a relationship with Jeff. The mind reels.

16. Simon-The Music Student. We went skinny dipping in the pool at his apartment complex. At 6'5" I decided that he was impractically tall, and when, the next day he called to see when I wanted to hang out again, I did not return the call.

23. I can't remember his name now. We met at a coffee shop. I James Deaned up to him in a t-shirt and blue jeans. He was a vintage corduroy jacket, balding with a cigarette. We talked about the leonids, and I asked if he was one of those people who could name the constellations. He wasn't and I was disappointed. Back at his apartment we made out, but his annoying, yapping dog kept jumping between us whenever we'd get close.

38. Mr. Foot Fetish-What else to say. I'm open to people's peccadilloes, but every time he shouted "Yeah, touch my socks!" I just wanted to giggle.

46. Jesse. Things were getting hot and heavy and we'd moved from his sofa to the bedroom. When he said he wanted me to "fill him up" I thought I was only too happy to oblige, but when I asked him if he had any condoms, and he said no, he liked it raw, my desire and erection disappeared all at once. The willingness of guys to bareback in this day and age is horrifying to me. I left.


40. Chad-The Barista. "You're very strange." He'd said. At the time I was pretending the dragon tattoo on his left forearm was having a conversation with the tiger tattoo on his right forearm. After a night spent cramped in my tiny bed and a morning waking up to him giving me head, he turned to me in all earnestness and said, "You're not going to blog about this, are you?"

7. Tony-The Sagitarian Mathematician. He was a visiting professor while I was in college. A month spent wrapped in his pale, blue sheets. Remember his fondness for Leonard Cohen. Remember talking incessantly on his last night, before he was set to leave for Chicago. He barely said anything, until the morning when I was getting dressed to go to class. He turned to me and said, "I could stay here if I had a reason to." But I was too afraid to give him a reason.

14. Robert-The Pity Fuck. After Chinese food in his matchbox apartment, sitting on his bed. His pants came off and I just paused and blinked. I am in no way a size queen, and lord knows I don't have the equipment to be in a position to judge anyone, but I wasn't sure if his was a penis or a congenital defect. I didn't know what to do with it. I was embarrassed to touch it. If he'd been an otherwise interesting person it wouldn't have mattered so much, but because he was painfully boring to boot, I went ahead and had sex anyway, but later invented some lame excuse why I couldn't see him again.

47. Justin (I think)-The What the Fuck. When we talked online his profile said he was 5'8" with a 7" penis. In reality he was 5'3" with a 5' penis. Which would have been cool if he'd just been honest about it in the first place. But the picture in his profile was also about 10 years old. He asked if I was into poppers. I had no idea what they even were, but was pretty sure I was NOT into them. After he gave me a massage, I let him go down on me anyway. Block. Delete. Learn.

20. Harris-The Greek Flight Attendant. When we met at Mozart's coffee shop, overlooking the lake, I'd felt indifferent. He was average in every way. Yet there was an undeniable sexual draw to him. Something on a molecular level. Pheromones maybe, but whatever it was, when he suggested we go back to his apartment, I was only too eager. Once there we proceeded to have the Best. Sex. Ever. Twice. A few nights later I came back and again the sex was amazing. But we had absolutely nothing in common. He listened to Avril Lavigne and watched the American Pie movies. So when he started getting boyfriendy, and wanted me to spend the night, I stopped seeing him. Foolish.

Conclusions (This Weather Has Me Wanting Love More Tangible):
Love may very well be a verb, but Lance is also a verb. And Lance has physical needs like any other red blooded American male. It occurs to me that I've always approached sex backwards. I finally realize that I should start with chemistry, and if that's there, then see if we have things in common. Not the other way around. And while this may seem glaringly obvious, it's taken me 32 years to learn this lesson.

I still want to find that one guy. My other half. Despite my serious dubiousness on the existence of such a person. I still have my Sunday morning fantasy. Waking up spooned beside him in a patch of sunlight. Kissing his shoulder. Reading the Sunday Times in bed. Slow, sweet sex followed by Sunday brunch, us walking hand in hand.

In the past, I had trouble having sex with someone if I couldn't at least imagine the possibility of a future full of his and his matching bath towels, a loft apartment and our adopted Chinese baby. But now I've managed to finally draw a line between love and sex. I'd like to have both, but I can have one without the other. I can let my body instead of my heart be my guide, and follow it for a change. I can't help but think that instead of all of those romantic movies, I'd have been much better off spending my time just watching porn. Or even better, making some of my own.

Facebooked

De-Friended:
Scrolling over my profile, my fingers poised over my mouse ready to move on to a quiz telling me which character from the seminal 80s hit TV show, "Small Wonder" I am, something catches my attention. I freeze. I have noticed that I seem to have one less friend than I did the last time I was on this screen. Someone defriended me.

Try to remain calm. Think, I'm a big boy. It's just the Internet, it isn't real life. But I am seething. Someone doesn't want to be my friend! Click on my Friends list and scroll through it, trying to root out the culprit. Search out people that I've recently added who I don't really know, but as far as I can tell, they are all accounted for. Which means, the person who has severed ties is someone that I actually know, and I am devastated.

Wonder if I've offended someone. It's entirely possible considering my penchant for posting status updates about my sexcapades, drinking, swearing and denouncing various gods. Isn't that all part of my charm? None of my recent updates seems particularly offensive. But you never know. People are so sensitive. Certainly I've defriended my share of people. But who would defriend me?

Scroll through my remaining friends one by one, going over the connections, how my friends relate to one another, hoping something will give me a clue as to the identity of the person who is shunning me. But to no avail. For the life of me, I can't figure out who has flown the coup.

Evolution of My Internet Addiction:
Facebook isn't my first trip to the rodeo. It is only the latest in a long string of online crutches to help me engage in society without having to, you know, engage in society. As a teenager I had a Prodigy account and a dial up. I'd dial in and peruse forums and bulletin boards (mostly about gay sex) that seem archaic in comparison with what's available today. In college I graduated to Internet Relay Chat, chatting up strangers from all over the world under various aliases, spending hours downloading one picture of a naked guy who may or may not turn out to be hot by the time it was done. Then there was gay.com, where I'd spend hours in front of my computer screen having cyber sex with someone who may or may not have been (but probably wasn't) a Calvin Klein model into obscure poetry with advanced degrees in quantum physics.

I had a Myspace account, but the pages were crammed full of ads, and automatically started playing awful music, and everyone was younger than me. In the end, when all I ever seemed to get was spam for Hot, Teenage Asian Girls, I deleted the account altogether. Friendster never really caught on. So Facebook it is.

Living thousands of miles away from most of the people I love, I initially set up a Facebook account to keep in touch with friends and family and to make new friends. At first I accepted every friend request that came my way, but once there were more strangers than friends on my list, I had to do a purging, and from then on I only accepted requests from people that I actually know in real life, or people I intend to know.

But unlike the other online social networking sites, with Facebook I am thoroughly, unequivocally and unrepentantly engrossed. At work, I click over to Facebook roughly every 10 seconds. At home I stay logged in, refreshing as necessary. Nothing thrills me more than seeing a little red square with a number on it, letting me know that someone has commented on my status.

Peeping, Poking, Protesting and all the Other P's of Social Networking:
I think that part of the thrill fo Facebook is it's inherent voyeuristic nature. I have watched relationships dissolve in a string of status updates. I've learned about births and deaths. Mostly I learn what people have for lunch, and what color their auras are. But no status update is too banal or mundane to not be of interest to me. In fact, the updates my friends make where they're just at home, making dinner or watching TV are the best. Because I can totally imagine my friends in their houses going about their daily lives, and it's like I'm there too. Sharing those activities with them. Hrm. Now that I think about it, maybe that's why I got defriended. Probably not everyone is interested in sharing my orgasms with me.

One of my favorite Facebook applications is the poking feature. I poke 6 or 7 guys on a regular basis. Sometimes several times a day. It's like flirting without the possibility of rejection.

Facebook is also a great way to get involved. In fact, my commitment to social causes is almost entirely relegated to joining them on Facebook. I can support Amnesty International, Gay Rights, end world hunger and animal abuse all by clicking a button. I love that I can feel good about myself without having to actually do anything! I did my part!

Quizzes, Top 5s, No Info, Friend Collectors (Pet Peeves):
Facebook does have it's drawbacks. While I love looking at my friend's posts and status updates, I hate hate hate having to sift through the multitude of quizzes and Top 5 lists that inundate my news feed. While answering the occasional quiz is fun, answering 50 quizzes in one sitting is just a bit much. Nobody cares which character from the seminal 80's hit TV show "Small Wonder" you are! (I'm Vicki, the precocious robot girl, obviously!)

I hate when I get a friend request from someone I went to college or high school with and they haven't filled out any personal information. The whole point is so I can see if they're still a conservative asshole, if they're married or knocked up, if they're still a total loser or not, their religious affiliation, their favorite TV show. When they don't fill this information out, there's just a void, and I have nothing to go on to potentially feel better about myself by comparison. Lame!

By far the worst are the friend collectors. People who have over a thousand friends who I know are just adding me to increase their friend quotient, and not because they have any real interest or investment in getting to know me. I add them anyway, because maybe they'll comment on my status updates, and maybe they'll read my blog.

Comments to Status Updates = Self Esteem. Identity and the Ontological Necessity of Constant Info Streams in the Cyber Age:

Scrolling through my profile, I see a status update that garnered almost no responses. I know it's wrong, but I can't help but feel dejected. Because other people commenting on my status updates is pretty much the only way I can assess my value. How do I know people love me unless they comment on my posts telling my how funny and clever I am?

When I get 50 responses I feel like everybody loves me. I'm on top of the world. When I get 3 or fewer, or Flying Spaghetti Monster forbid, ZERO responses, then it's as if I'm just not understood, not seen, not wanted.

With Facebook, you can control your image, put a positive spin on your lackluster life. Throw up photos of you from 5 years ago when you were still cute. List all of the movies and music you're into that you think will make you seem the coolest. If it weren't for the co-workers that are on my friend list, I could totally say I was President of the company! Who would know? I can pick and choose the face I want to present to the world. And maybe if I present my best self, then I'll become that person. Maybe Facebook is the best tool I have to ramp up my personal evolution. In the meantime, I'll post that quiz, poke you and wait for the comments to come rolling in.

Happiness Part II

Accept the Things I Cannot Change:
Unable to write, I put on my red hoodie and walk out into the rainy, Seattle evening. I walk to the big, gay Starbucks on Olive. A cute, deaf guy holds the door open for me. I mouth the words, "Thank you." Inside I order a venti soy no whip hot chocolate from a mullet coiffed hipster. The deaf guy smiles at me. I smile at him. Tell myself (again) that I should seriously consider learning sign language in order to increase my potential dating pool. Get my hot chocolate and leave. Walk back home in the rain, content with having been smiled at, having shared a connection no matter how brief. Warmth that isn't just the chocolate.

Anna was telling me about a conference she took part in recently where one of the methods of coping with tension and feeling better about one's station is to compare yourself to others who have it worse than you. The idea is that you're supposed to think, "Well, it could be worse. I could be deaf." And this will make you happier about yourself and grateful for what you have.

The picture used to illustrate this point in the conference was the famous photograph of the emaciated Sudanese girl with the vulture hovering over her. A poor choice, Anna pointed out, considering the fact that the photographer killed himself not long after taking the photograph. But thinking about the suffering of others only serves to make me more depressed about humanity in general. Thinking about the cute, deaf guy at the coffee shop just makes me feel bad that he's deaf, not happy and grateful that I'm not.


Wonder if he's happy.


Things I just have to accept:

• There is no justice or fairness in the world (see the continued career of Perez Hilton)


• Most of the people in the country have different values than me (see all of the middle states, with the exception of Iowa apparently)


• Suffering is needless and often random (see December 26, 2004 tsunami)


• The GAP sells all cotton clothing at really reasonable prices (see the dark heather gray argyle v-neck sweater)


• I may never be a published writer (see Me)


• I may never find myself in a committed, long term relationship (see Old Maid)


• I will always be short and bald(ing) (see George Costanza)


• Being talented and hard working doesn't guarantee success as much as being lucky and marketable (see Jessica Simpson)


• Logic and rationality is not valued as much as comforting superstition and myth (see Scientology)

Suddenly I'm standing in front of an Existential Information Kiosk in the Mall of Life, and there's an arrow that says "You are here." How I got here is no longer the issue. I've made decisions that led me here. I can take ownership of them, accept them. But now the question is, what decisions can I make to get to where I want to be? How can I change? From where do I draw the strength and the courage to do what needs to be done?

Courage to Change the Things I Can:
6:30 am. The upstairs neighbor's alarm clock begins to go off. Hear him roll over and hit the snooze button. This repeats every 5 minutes for the next hour and a half, until my own alarm goes off and it's time for me to wake up. I coil and uncoil like an angry snake and fantasize about driving a harpoon through my ceiling, impaling my neighbor, painfully killing him.

Walk down the hill to work in gray, anemic rain. Soaking wet, a drowned rat in a cubicle maze. Stockholm Syndrome is the only thing that keeps me there. Wonder how many rationalizations I have to go through to justify having spent 40 hours a week for the past 4 and a half years in a cubicle, doing a brain numbingly boring job that offers no challenge or reward, other than paying my bills. Kind of.

"You look awful." My boss says. "Are you feeling well?" Admit that I think I'm running a fever. "You need to go home." She says and sends me home.

Walk back up the hill to my 3rd degree apartment, feeling increasingly worse with each step. Change back into my pajamas and crawl back into bed. Lie on my back staring at the ceiling that looks like play doh, like crumbling chalk. Think "Happiness is a choice!" My fingers curl into fists. I probably have Swine Flu. I'm probably dying. But at least I'm not at work!

Sometimes I fantasize about being hit by a car on the way to work. Sometimes I fantasize about winning the lottery. Mostly I long to be laid off so that I can stay home, draw unemployment and write full time. Often I sit in my cubicle, staring out the window at the gray, Seattle horizon, feeling trapped and helpless. In my twenties I would have just quit a job I didn't like and bank on the fact that I could find something else. In my thirties, I don't quite have the same daring. There are obligations and expectations. And in these difficult economic times, quitting a job without having something else lined up seems more than a little foolish.

I'm worried that I've put so much stock in being a writer that nothing else I do will satisfy me. That if I get another job, I'll feel just as oppressed and dissatisfied with it.


But I am not helpless.

Things I'm doing to make positive changes in my life:

• Every week I scour the want ads looking for jobs that are more in line with what I want to do, with what I'm passionate about. I try to send my resume to at least 3 places a week.


• I'm working on a short story to submit to a short story contest for new writers. The deadline is May 31st.


• I work out. I run. I eat healthy lots of fresh, organic vegetables. I'm cutting down on sugar and caffeine. Mostly.


• I've signed up to volunteer for a non-profit organization here that is fighting for marriage equality in Washington State.


• I'm being more social. Going out, meeting new people. Staying connected to friends I already have.


• I'm trying to be more positive and optimistic (despite the myriad reasons not to be and all historical precedent.) oops.

Wisdom to Know When to Stop Binge Eating (or They'll Have to Pry These Cookies From My Cold, Dead Hands):

Sunday morning, healthy again. We are naked in my bed, my arm around his chest. Kiss the tattoo between his shoulder blades. The smell and taste of him, simultaneously strange and familiar. We watch an episode of South Park then throw our clothes on and walk back up the hill. Stop at the Farmer's Market. Look at the flowers and fresh vegetables. The Sunday morning revelers strolling along with canvas bags and bunches of herbs. Get an apricot kolache. Get brunch at a vegan cafe on 15th St, near his apartment. At the corner, hug him goodbye.

Later meet up with Brian at Bauhaus and then walk over to Charlies for a late lunch. My mom calls. Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" ring tone. Wish her happy mother's day. Ask how things in Texas are. She wonders when I'm coming home again. This summer, sometime. Talk to Brian about religion, unemployment and American Idol. Watch Battlestar Galactica. Go to the gym. Have leftovers for dinner. Bubble Bath. Despair that a month of eating nothing but comfort foods has covered my 6 pack abs with a layer of fat. I only had them for a week! Walk in rain to a coffeehouse with my laptop. Work on a short story. Talk to Anna on the phone. Think about getting a brownie, but decide not to.

At home, pick up yesterday's mail. Another friend's marriage announcement. Another bill. But mostly ads from grocery stores and coupons that go right into the recycling bin. Watch another episode of Battlestar Galactica. Read some Margaret Atwood. Curl up in bed. His lingering scent still on my pillow. Half smile. Half sigh. Sleep. Dream.

Happiness Part I

Hitting the 4th Wall:
"I feel like a pariah." Travis says. We are sitting at a table strewn with empty glasses of gin and tonic in Cafe Metropolitan at a gay Facebook singles mixer. The rest of the people who turned out for the event are standing with their backs to us, in pairs or small groups, not so much mixing and mingling as much as talking to the people that they already know.

"Is there anybody you want to be introduced to?" I ask Travis. I figure I can be bold when it comes to acting on someone else's behalf. "Gay people all look the same to me." He says, surveying the crowd. Squinting at the gaggle of faggles in button up shirts, I'm hard pressed to disagree. There is a uniformity in their business casual sensibilities and designer drinks.

I wasn't holding out much hope of meeting anyone, myself, but figured at the very least I could get a good blog entry out of it. My fate had pretty much been sealed when we walked through the front door and were greeted by a pair of enthusiastic lesbians (the only two women there.) "You two are so cute, I should give you two raffle tickets each!" One lesbian said. I smiled uncomfortably as the other lesbian directed us to sign in and put on a name tag. I wrote my name with a smiley face with way more optimism than the moment warranted, and we made a b-line for the bar. I felt like I was just a red fez away from being at a Shriners convention, with just as much chance of getting laid.

"I'll have a Tom Collins." I told the fastidiously unkempt bartender, all gray t-shirt and peach fuzz. He didn't instill much confidence when he asked "That's with gin, right?" The mind reels. Travis ordered a White Russian and I looked around at the assembled faces for some kind of recognition. Mirrored eyes reflected only wary, uncertain glances. The air was heavy with the amalgamated aroma of popular men's cologne and desperation.

Standing in the back of the room, waiting for the raffle, Travis asked if it made him a bad person that he hoped that the Swine Flu became a huge pandemic. I assured him that it didn't. That I hoped it wiped out 90% of the population, and I could move into someone's abandoned loft apartment, and loot the supermarket for canned goods, and read novels all day. But with my luck the remaining population would be all the people that I hate. Assuming that I was one of the survivors.

"Why are you sitting by yourself?" A man with two toned hair and a black dinner jacket over a red t-shirt asked me while Travis was closing out his tab. He said his name was John (they're always named John), and I told him I liked his hair. He then told me about the process he went through dying it and his eyebrows to match with more detail than I was prepared to receive. I smiled and nodded, looking over his shoulder, hoping Travis would hurry back.

John walked away after mumbling that it was nice to meet me, and Travis returned, and the two of us left to go get some Italian food for dinner. "Do you want to do this again next month?" Travis asks. "Yes." I answer without reservation, because I am an eternally optimistic, amnesiac. "Next time we'll make more of an effort to mingle." We agree.

Breaking the 4th Wall:
"Happiness is a choice." The soothing, male voice intones over the podcast. Having never seen the owner of this voice, I can nevertheless totally imagine the man that it belongs to. He is an owner of cardigans. An eater of surreptitious, late night twinkies. A wide, pasty, bearded face. The Id draped in a sheepskin of compassion. The sensitive, straight man to whom the secrets of the universe have been revealed, who will share those secrets with me. For 4 installments of only $79.95.

Turn off the podcast. Listen instead to Wolf Parade's "This Heart's On Fire." Eat a slice of toasted pita bread with jalapeno artichoke dip. Chalk the failure up to research. I wanted to write a blog about happiness. A clever, but sincere entry about my pursuit of happiness and the zany adventures I'd had trying to attain it. But who am I kidding? I'm the least qualified person I know to write about the subject.

Not that I don't experience happiness. The night of the singles mixer, for instance. Travis and I were sitting in Amante's waiting for our dinner to be served. I was still drunk, and Travis was warning me about Ukrainian pickpockets, and I was giggling. The food arrived, steaming. A handsome man across from us in a black t-shirt with tattooed arms. The clanking of silverware. Travis's face and flickering candles. In that instant I was happy.

Understand. Happiness is only comprised of tiny, fleeting moments that don't hold up to analysis. As soon as I start picking them apart and trying to understand them, they vanish. Happiness is not dwelling on the past or worrying about the future. It's about being in the moment. And this is where I falter. Being prone to over-analysis of...well, everything, I'm dissecting the moment before it's even ended. Dissatisfied until it's been eviscerated. Because I'm not content with unexpected, unpreserved moments. I want this happiness to be sustained. To draw it out. To make it last.

A Brief and Incomplete List of the Things That Make Me Happy:
chocolate
bubble baths
zombie movies
rolling in a pile of warm clothes fresh from the dryer
croissants filled with nutella
reconnecting with an old friend
making a new one
monkeys
the way the air smells after it rains
spooning in bed on a Sunday morning
curling up with a good book and hot chocolate
lying in the green grass listening to good music
Cyndi Lauper videos
running
learning something that changes my perception of the world around me (for the better)
falling asleep in someone's arms
laughing until I cry
digging my toes in wet, salty sand at the beach
eating an ice cream cone before it melts
dancing till 4 in the morning to my favorite tunes
talking to a friend who's far away
meeting up with a friend who's right here
exploring
singing in the shower
contemplating beauty
feeling understood
chocolate chip cookies fresh from the oven, melting and gooey
black and white French films
sad songs
watching a father holding the hand of a small child in the park
buying flowers at the Farmer's Market
seeing someone else's point of view
meeting someone new when anything seems possible
kissing for hours
walking in the rain
holding hands
speaking with silly accents
sharing popcorn at a movie
unopened presents Christmas morning
watching the sun set, the clouds all pink and orange like they sky is on fire
flying
landing
kickboxing imaginary vampires in my pajamas after watching Buffy
feeling comfortable enough around someone to be myself
going to concerts
being at big gatherings of people with whom I feel some camaraderie with
having solitude
video games
hugging
writing in my journal in a coffee shop
feeling recognized and seen

The kind of happiness I'm interested in isn't of the fleeting variety. It's the perceived contentment of a life lived that is true to one's self. The warm security of having established a lasting connection or made some tangible impact on the world. Success, even if it's only on a small, personal level. Realize, the quickest way to diminish happiness is to try to write a blog about it. But I feel compelled to try anyway. So here goes.

To Be Continued....

The Imaginary Lives of Invalids

Friday
Take the antibiotics anyway. Who knows what bacteria are crawling, undulating, building infectious cities beneath this pale skin? White and blue veined like a fetus. Like those translucent shrimp I had in college. Skin that never sees sunlight. Remind myself to stock up on vitamin D supplements.

I shouldn't take the antibiotics. The doctor said I didn't have strep throat, so I'm just making the surviving bacteria that much stronger, helping them up their evolutionary ladder, mutating them into the X-Men of bacteria.

The Internet says that bacteria have pretty much always existed. Dinosaurs, by contrast, were around for about a 165 million years. Humans haven't been around for more than a million years or so. Bacteria predate us all. My co-worker doesn't believe in dinosaurs. Wonder if she believes in bacteria? Wonder what alien anthropologists a million years from now will think when they uncover the remains of our empty cities. The uncovered Jonas Brothers MP3s. The rusty skeletons of Las Vegas casinos. Corroded warheads, weapons of mass destruction. Empty bottles of Mr. Pibb. What will be our legacy? Bacteria, cock roaches and midget porn?

Saturday
Move from the bed to the couch and back to the bed again. Watch the 5th and final season of the television show Angel. It was such a good series. It didn't have the emotional resonance of Buffy. The unrequited romance that I found so appealing in that series. But it has the clever dialogue. Is darker. Has it's own appeal. Wish that I existed in the Buffy Verse. That I was some bad-ass mystical being with tons of abilities, fighting on the side of good, to vanquish my evil foes. Assuming I was good, which is kind of a leap of logic considering how greedy and self-serving I am, and the fact that I nearly always identify with the villain in movies. They always have the more interesting story lines and motivations. I'd probably be the dangerously sexy bad guy who joins up with the good guys to fight our shared enemy in the final battle. I'd have all the best lines. And the cutest shoes.

Manage to spend the entire day watching the show. DVDs punctuated by energetic moments where I dance or kick box the air. I have moves! Find myself moved to tears in the final scenes of the show. Probably just the fever. That and the fact that I'm moved to tears so easily. Sad books, Oprah episodes, Campbell's Soup commercials. Anything can set me off.

Pour a glass of wine that he left over. Does wine go bad? It already tastes like vinegar. How can you even tell? Every sip makes me think of dying Easter eggs as a child. Scroll through iTunes looking for just the right song, but no song is exactly right. Not Sigur Ros. Not Coltrane or Stan Getz. Then Nina Simone. Lilac Wine. That's right. That's what I want to hear.

Light a candle. Run a bath. Mr. Bubble is my most enduring relationship. Leave my clothes in a pile by the bathroom door. Wish I could keep going. Peel out of my skin. Shed my muscle and bones in a corpulent mass of twitching this and bloodstained that. Imagine some incorporeal part of me, not bound to the limitations of this body. Imagine astrally projecting myself across continents and time. Slipping like steam through a crack in the bathroom window and floating up toward the stars.

But I am only this body. Sink into the tub. Goose flesh arms of blue webbed veins. The muscles of my legs. The ridges of my abdomen. The swell of my chest. Tiny blond hairs. Eyes closed. My hands explore my limitations. Fingers that can trace from memory the motions of lips and tongues and hands that have gone before.

Think candle wax. Think steam. Think skin. The throb of heat that ripples up from below my stomach and spreads through my chest in a shuddering breath. The playlist ends and I am spent. Water that disappears down drains. Towelled dry and complacent. Exhausted. Blow out the candle and curl up in the hollow of my throat. To sleep. To dream.

Sunday
My body is a war zone and all sides are losing. My limbs are lead heavy, and I feel like a three toed sloth, moving incredibly slowly from the nest I've made on my bed to the nest I've made on the couch. I have a fever blister the size of Alaska on my upper lip. In fact, you can see Russia from it. After two weeks of an all comfort food diet, and no running, I've gone from abulous to scabulous.

Lack of groceries necessitates going to the grocery store, despite the fact that I'm hideously disfigured on par with Joseph Merrick.

Shuffle as quickly as I'm able to the nearest grocery with my canvas bag. Do not make eye contact with anyone. Lips are numb from the cold sore medicine. Every boy when I go shopping is ridiculously attractive and completely my type. But I am in no position to see or be seen and I rush through the aisles, self conscious, not meeting any glances. Feel like a burn victim.

Were it not for the man behind the counter at the Greek falafel place, I would have gone the entire weekend without speaking to another person. Without coming into physical contact with another person. Black wiry hair of his hand that brushes me as he hands me my change. An insignificant contact, amplified by the knowledge of the absence of contact. Any contact.

Back at home I take to bed again. Imagine what it would be like to be comatose. To just go to sleep and not wake up at all. None of life's problems would touch me. Or maybe wake up 20 years from now in a nursing home somewhere. Of hearing about how technology has changed things, and the state of the world, and can gays finally marry? Are there finally hover cars and teleportation? Think of all the years I wasted asleep.

Against my better judgement I create an "I don't want to go to work tomorrow" playlist. The Talking Heads, "Road to Nowhere." Boomtown Rats "I Don't Like Mondays." Radio Head "No Surprises." Music to slit your wrists by.

Call Anna but mostly she talks. Feel as if I'm a somnambulist. Sleep walking through life. And all I want to do is wake up. Or stay asleep forever.

Monday
Rats scurry down the sidewalk, talking on their cellular phones, worried about the rising cost of cheese and their credit ratings. The unending squeak of their voices. The urgency of their scurrying. Sharp, uncertain movements. Their furry faces protruding from expensive, designer suits. Rolled up copies of fashion magazines, celebrity gossip beneath their furry arms. They are very concerned about mortgages and non fat yogurt.

Think. The worst thing that can happen at work is that I get fired from it. This is the most comforting thought I can muster when confronted with Monday mornings. Am dismayed to discover the red light on my phone indicating I already have voice mails. Do not check them. Too fragile.

Look at the news online. Worry about Stephen Hawking. He's been hospitalized with a respiratory ailment.

The day is full of reports that need to be run. E-mails about mistakes that I have made. Deadlines that are not going to be met.

In my cubicle I turn into a giant, red monster. I smash the beige, carpeted cubicle walls with my giant fists. Shatter the reinforced glass of windows. Hurl my computer toward the bus station across the street. Stomp down the beige hallways, smashing skulls and wreaking havoc.

At 5, walk from the desk at work, where I sit in front of a computer screen (two of them) up the hill to my apartment where I sit in front of a computer screen.

Talk to boys online. Instant message friends. Peruse the web. Am amazed and horrified by the specificity of fetishes on a pornographic video site. At this point in my life I've seen it all. I've watched, fascinated and repulsed as people had sex with amputees, dwarves. A man being penetrated by a horse. Like Caligula, I cannot unsee these things. There are other sites that show people being killed. Clips of a man being beheaded. Of the planes flying into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. Of children starving. Women being beaten. I exist in a universe populated almost entirely by people with different values from my own. And the thought is troubling. There is no horror that a writer could invent that mankind hasn't already perpetuated on himself.

Later in bed, the Nyquil is already putting me to sleep. Before I fall asleep, the giant, red monster returns. Smashes the day. Destroys the reports. The unrequited hopes. The awkward conversations. The missed connections. The horrors of the day. Tears everything apart, until the day is in pieces and a new day can begin.

Tuesday
Tuesdays are the worst. They're like Monday all over again. Not the middle of the week, and definitely not the end. At least with Monday one has the fading remnants of a weekend to cling to. Tuesday all illusions of happiness have been fumigated and choked off by the DDT of reports and conference calls and corporate e-mails.

Realize how disgruntled and burnt out I am at work when I find myself buying a lottery ticket at the deli with my morning soda. Hope on a scrap of paper, no matter how statistically improbable, is still hope. For deliverance from this life, into another, better one.

The day is painfully slow. Outside it is sunny and 70 degrees. Sit in my cubicle, looking out the window at the beautiful blue sky. Imagine winning the lottery. Imagine traveling the world. Designer shoes. Imagine buying a loft apartment in another city somewhere. A place with better weather. Hardwood floors and intricate gourmet dinners. Candlelit and starlit balconies. There are about 100 thousand million stars in the Milky Way Galaxy. Surely there's one or two I haven't wished on yet.

After work go back to my apartment. Too tired and too embarrassed by the remains of my cold sore to venture out. Am thankful for the excuse to not be social. To not sit in coffeehouses unspoken to. To not go on dates kissing or not kissing a boy who is or isn't interested in me. The past two months of non stop going out has left me exhausted and craving solitude.

Blue corn chips in a blue bowl. Watch a movie on my computer. Read a bit of Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake. Check the winning numbers. Needless to say I did not win the lottery.

Wednesday
Vomit on the sidewalk. Step over it. Hold my breath. I always had such a weak stomach growing up. But living in the city has desensitized me. Everywhere I look there is something repulsive and ugly. Trash strewn sidewalks, littered with debris. Green, polluted skylines. Mirrors.

Beauty too. Haphazard and surprising. Like the unexpected iridescence of oil in rain collected puddles. Clouds reflected in the glass facets of a half finished building. The heaving chest of a shirtless young man, running up the hill as I walk back to work from lunch. The red of his cheeks. The sheen of sweat. The sound of his breathing as we pass one another.

Relieved that Stephen Hawking is on the road to recovery.

One of my cases goes to trial. The judge is in California, so his assistant calls to arrange the conference call. She calls my desk, despite the fact that I gave her the phone number of the executive conference room. 10 minutes of me rushing back and forth between my desk and the conference room trying to get in touch with the judge. The trial itself goes by fairly quickly. Our lawyer does all the talking. The judge rules in our favor. The lawyer compliments me on my organization of the case. Says that next time I won't need him. I can represent us on my own. I say, "Thanks for empowering me." He is nice but condescending. Am glad when he finally stops talking because I really, really have to pee.

Meetings with the new CEO. His name is also Lance, and every time someone says it, my blood boils. Already I've gotten two e-mails and a meeting request directed to him. Hope that HR makes a mistake and his paychecks are directly deposited into my account.

Thursday
Walk to work in rain. At the deli, a drunken, Native American man is leaving as I arrive, shouting something about white people. He takes one look at me and says, "Fuck you too, white boy!" Before leaving.

Wet as a drowned rat, I round the corner and a car full of women honks at me repeatedly, shouting, "Lance!" I wave, half heartedly as I scurry to my building. I have no idea who the women are, but assume that I work with them.

At work, read on CNN that the 3 vials of a virus are missing from a Maryland Army base. Imagine being one of the few survivors after 95% of the population is wiped out by some unruly super-virus, engineered by the military. Empty streets. Looting supermarkets and bookstores. How long until the electricity stops? Is life possible without the Internet? Remind myself to stop reading the news.

Tonight I'm set to see Leonard Cohen at WaMu Theater. I'm excited to finally see him. He is part of my sad bastard triumvirate, along with Tom Waits and Morrissey. I've been determined to see him before he dies, and tonight my chance has finally arrived. Assuming he doesn't die between now and then. He's 74. Things happen. Hope that it's not raining when I walk to the concert. Wish that my cold sore was more completely gone in case I'm seated beside some cute Leonard Cohen fan. Feel like I have leprosy. I should have a burlap sack over my face. "I am not a monster!"

Tomorrow I'm determined to get back to the gym. To run at least a little. To recover my abs that are now MIA, after two weeks of gorging on pizza and macaroni and cheese. Not that it matters. Not that anyone other than me will even see them.

Grab another pastry from the break room. Lament my utter lack of willpower. Outside the sky is gray and the streets are gray. A monochrome horizon. See the people walking on the sidewalk in the distance. Red jackets. Black umbrellas. Wonder if they're going to work in one of the buildings downtown. Or if they have the day off. Or if they're unemployed. Or if they work nights. Wonder about the lives of others, and how they stack up against my own. Wonder if they're happy. Wonder if I'll ever meet or speak to them?

Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: Sickness, Sexiness, and the Songs that Shaped Me

1. Time After Time

Saturday night. According to the thermometer (oral, not rectal you perverts) I have 103.7 degree fever. The interweb says that anyone with fever over 105 degrees should contact a medical professional. Fever over 107 degrees can lead to brain damage. I take some Nyquil and wait for it to knock me out.

When some people are sick, they like to be pampered and taken care of. Bryan, for instance, would lie in bed, shivering and ask me to bring him crackers and juice. Being an only child, my initial impulse would be to think "Why isn't someone bringing me crackers and juice? When is it my turn?" But I would always stifle my need to be the center of attention. I'd bring Bryan his crackers and his juice, put a cool wash cloth over his forehead, make soothing sounds, and just resent him quietly.

When I am sick, however, I don't want anyone near me. I want to be left alone. When Bryan would try to hover and ask if there was anything he could bring or do for me, I'd hiss and feebly claw at him like a dying Skeksi.

Saturday night there is no one for me to tell to leave me alone. I shiver uncontrollably beneath a pile of blankets, my face is burning up, so hot you could fry some tofu cutlets on it. My throat is swollen and sore and it hurts to swallow. When the shaking finally subsides, I lie in bed, awake. Too weak to get up and do anything, too unfocused to follow a movie, music is the only distraction I can handle. I put on my headphones and put my lancePod on shuffle. The first song up is Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time."

Cyndi's album, She's So Unusual was the first album I bought when I was a little kid. My parents didn't listen to music. We didn't even have a radio in the house before I came along. My introduction into music was a little television gem called Solid Gold, hosted by Dionne Warwick (who was Whitney Houston's aunt or something) and featuring the elaborate and risque choreography of The Solid Gold Dancers!

Solid Gold introduced me to music, and my first loves. Cyndi Lauper, The Eurythmics, Michael Jackson, Prince, and Sheena Easton (note to self, see if you can find "Strut" on iTunes). Cyndi sent me, through her music and her videos, the most important message a person could send a sensitive and artistic little gay boy growing up in the South. It's okay to be yourself, especially if being yourself means having purple hair and wearing eyeliner.

2. Let's Dance in Style, Let's Dance for a While

I was going to spend the night out at a club somewhere, getting my groove on and shaking my thang, but the unexpected, sudden debilitating illness had nixed that idea. The week before I'd been dancing to "Blind" by Hercules and Love Affair at Re-Bar and a cute, indie boy in a v-neck t-shirt sporting an ironic mullet had danced with me. I'd glanced at him and he'd smiled, but he didn't talk and I didn't talk. The song ended and I'd fled. I thought maybe I'd run into him again. Or, maybe meet some other hipster in some other dive bar. Or most likely I'd just have fun dancing with myself.

The first time I ever danced was with Courtney and Nikki when I was 18. We danced at a club called Xtreme, which was notorious for the patrons being hopped up on ecstasy. Courtney and Nikki were dancing, and I was standing, entranced by the pretty lights. If I believed in the transmigration of the soul, (or, you know, that people even have souls) I'd be convinced I was a crow in a former life, since I'm so attracted to shiny things. Anyway I was looking at the pretty lights and some girl came up to me and asked me what I was on, and I panicked and joined Courtney and Nikki on the dance floor, amazed that despite never having tried to dance before, I was actually pretty good at it.

In college I requested the songs "Closer" by Nine Inch Nails, "Cream" by Prince, and "Just Like Heaven" by the Cure so many times at the only gay club in College Station, TX that after a while, the DJ began to play those three songs as soon as I walked in the door. One night I was sitting at a table with a group of guys who'd asked me to come sit with them, when a woman came up to the group of us and said (to them) "You guys are so beautiful, you could all be models!" (and to me) "And you...you're a very good dancer."

At the time it didn't seem like much of a compliment, because I'd much rather be told I could be a model, but later, when a guy told me that watching me dance had given every guy in the room a hard on, I learned that being a good dancer had it's perks too.

Mostly I just loved losing myself in the music. Of having my body be an extension of the beat. In Austin, I'd go to Atomic Cafe (later Elysium) with my friend James and we'd dance to Nitzer Ebb's "Join in the Chant" and NIN's "Down in It" and Skinny Puppy's "Deep Down Trauma Hounds," until we were sweaty and exhausted and the lights came on at 4 am.

In Los Angeles, Anna and I danced at Clockwork Orange to Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Smiths, The Cure, Blondie, the Motels, Pulp. She in something black and lacy. Me blue haired and leaving a trail of body glitter in my wake like a rave inspired Hansel and Gretel. (I think I'm still finding pieces of this glitter 5 years later.) Then we'd follow my trail of glitter to IHOP and talk about how out of place and unconnected we were over Swedish pancakes and my favorite (no longer on the menu) International Burrito.

Now in Seattle, I mostly dance at Re-Bar or occasionally the Cuff, where the music is so random you never know if you're going to hear the latest techno offering or a remix of Hall and Oats "Out of Touch." I love being on the dance floor, dancing to a song I love, surrounded by a group of other people who are dancing too, who love it just as much, who are singing along. And nothing else matters but the song and the dancing.

3. All By Myself

Being in your 30s and alone on a Saturday night, feverish and bedridden, wallowing in self-pity is unavoidable. Listening to Antony and the Johnson's "Hope There's Someone" while in this fragile state is not advisable. But I do it anyway. My thoughts race and I start wondering, "Who is going to take care of me when I'm old and sickly?" "What if I never end up with someone?" "What if I alienate all of my friends?" "What if my fever goes up to 107 degrees and I get brain damage and lose my ability to speak or walk and have to move back to Iola, TX with my mom?"

Imagine being unable to type or to tell the people I care about that I love them. Hot pathetic tears squeeze out of the corners of my eyes. Things like this make me sick, but in a case like this, I'll get away with it.

4. Caroline Laughs and it's Raining All Day

Sunday falling in and out of sleep to the sound of rain pelting against the window. Despite being grossly unpopular, my cell phone will not stop ringing from the other room. My ringtone: Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Want to Have Fun." After the fifth time I clutch my fuzzy blanket around me and crawl to the living room. The apartment, in just a day and a half of being sick, looks like New Orleans after hurricane Katrina. Without the poor, wet, homeless people and bloated corpses floating by. There are empty boxes of Vietnamese take out on the counter. A pile of clothes on the bathroom floor. Towels and Kleenexes everywhere. Stacks of books and DVDs. Empty glasses. The detritus of my life starts to gross me out.

When I reach the phone, it's my mom and I pretend to not be sick so she doesn't worry incessantly. But because she can always sense when I'm lying I let on that I'm a little sick. She's relieved that I have no plans to go out anywhere. She feels safer when I stay at home. Hang up and turn the sound off on my phone. Then get a text from Jonathan asking if I need him to take me to the doctor, or to pick up anything from the store. Am thankful for friends.

My mom was really comforted when I lived with Anna because "At least then someone would notice if I was missing or lying in my room, dead for three days, and call the police." Anna is a musician, and I loved nothing better than to sit in a patch of sunlight in our living room, listing to her figuring out a new song on her keyboard, or strumming her guitar. Some of the happiest times in my life were putting up fliers, loading up her equipment and trekking with her to a club for one of her shows. I was her roadie and her groupie and her biggest fan.

To check out Anna's music, click here: http://www.myspace.com/annamadorsky

There's something about seeing a piece of music performed live that transforms a song into a living entity. There is a connection between the musician and the audience, and the audience members with one another. Someone prone to magical thinking might consider being at a good performance, being in the presence of God. Living with Anna demystified musicians for me, but if anything heightened that magical feeling of connection to a piece of music. Because now I realize how much work and love goes into making it.

Aside from Anna, some of the best performances I've seen were: Patty Griffin with Courtney. The Cure with Jeff. Caetano Veloso with Bryan and Virginia. Tori Amos with Jonathan. Morrisey with Anna. Arcade Fire with Nate. Antony and the Johnsons with Travis. All of these performers and performances will be etched forever in my memory, so that when I hear a particular song, I'll think of that moment and that person and remember how happy we were.

5. Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Sunday night I wake up, bathed in cold sweat. My underwear and t-shirt are soaking wet. The sheets are wet. The pillow is wet. I get out of bed. Strip out of my clothes. Towel myself off. Pull the sheets off the bed, and the pillow cases off my pillows. Put towels down, just in case, and go back to bed. The fever broke, and I'm exhausted, but can't sleep. Try to decide what I should listen to. My lancePod is an eclectic hodge podge of nearly every genre of music, with a heavy bent of 80s, alternative and indie tunes. And far more Willie Nelson than I can really justify.

As a kid I listened to mostly Top 40 stuff. Which was often good, like Erasure or Depeche Mode, but often included Phil Collins, Kathy Dennis, Roxette and Taylor Dayne. It was only the last couple of years in highschool that Nirvana showed me that I didn't have to like EnVogue and Mariah Carey. I could choose something else. I left childhood with a firm rooted love of OMD, Depeche Mode and REM, but also knowing the lyrics to every single one of Journey's power ballads.

In college I replaced my Madonna posters with oversized posters of Trent Reznor and Kurt Cobain (I Hate Myself and I Want to Die). I listened to mostly industrial and grunge, tempered by sad/angry chicks like Sinead O'Connor, Tori Amos and Ani Difranco.

After moving to Austin, I learned to embrace the Austin sound and got into Patty Griffin, Robert Earl Keen, Willie Nelson. And Branched out into Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchel. And Bryan introduced me to Brazilian music and Nina Simone. I stumbled onto Belle and Sebastian and Bright Eyes on my own. Remember amusing Bryan with my interpretive dance routine to Richard Thompson's "Vincent Black Lightning 1952."

In Los Angeles I found The Postal service, the Decemberists and Rilo Kiley. Remember seeing Jon Brion and later Jill Sobule at The Largo with Danny and glo and eating afterward at Cantor's Deli. The guilty pleasure of listening to P!nk on the way to work in Santa Monica. The song that will always remind me of Los Angeles though, is Scott Walker's "We Came Through" since Bryan and I weren't sure we were going to make it past that first, painful week.

In Seattle I cement my hipster status with offerings from Arcade Fire, Helio Sequence and The Wolf Parade. But Sunday night none of this is what I want to hear, and I finally settle on Belly's album, King.

There are songs I associate with places and songs I associate with people. The first time my Kindergarten girl friend broke up with me, I played Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time" over and over again. As a depressed teenager I listened to REM's "Everybody Hurts" on repeat. A CD single Courtney had given me on Valentine's Day our Senior year. Now when I hear it, I think of her. Playing the video game Metroid makes me think of Erasure's Chorus album, because I listened to it while I played that game one summer.

When I sing myself, it's only in the shower, out of tune and off key. I sing Cyndi Lauper's "Money Changes Everything," Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark," and Leonard Cohen's "Everybody Knows." Like the Smurfs before me, I Lancify songs. "Well I see Lance every night in tight blue jeans..." There is a real joy in belting out a song, covered in soap suds.

6. Thank You

Convinced that I've been afflicted with strep throat, I spend Monday afternoon waiting in the doctor's office. The last time I had strep throat I was still in college. I'd driven to Austin where I made out with a boy who would later earn the dubious moniker "Strep Throat Boy." A couple days after making out with him I came down with strep throat, and the next week, I drove back with my penicillan and tickets to Lilith Fair. Remember how he remarked about what a coincidence it was that I had strep throat, since he'd had that a week ago! Remember wanting to punch him. Rember that despite his twinkish appearance, I was surprised to put my hands up the back of his shirt only to encounter a thick pelt of fur on his back. Remember freezing and saying "Oh." Before shrugging and continuing to make out.

Despite the fact that I was feverish and achy, and that the hot Texas summer was over 110 degrees, I was determined to attend Lilith Fair. So Strep Throat Boy and I spread out our blanket, and I lay, burning up, slathered in sunscreen and listened to Liz Phair, Erykah Badu, Bonnie Rait, Natalie Merchant and Sarah Maclachlan. We stood under a communal shower with a bunch of lesbians to cool off. Strep Throat Boy refused to take off his shirt because he hadn't waxed his back and was embarrassed of his back hair, and I wouldn't because, well, I'd never take my shirt off in public. It was complete misery until it got dark and finally started to cool off. When Natalie Merchant sang, "Thank You" we changed the lyrics to "I want to spank you, spank you."

I will always associate that song with that moment and remember the giant blue blanket of a Texas sky. The stars stretching forever. Of wishes made and forgotten. Sometimes imagine that my heart is made up of the songs I love. The ones that move me. The break up songs. The songs about loneliness and heartbreak. The songs that make me want to dance and sing. The songs that make me want to cry. The songs that make me smile, that make me remember. The songs that make me believe that love is possible. That these things exist, out in the real world.

Back in the doctor's office I find out that I do not have strep throat after all. If I had, I could take antibiotics and it would go away. But instead I have some unknown virus that I just have to wait out. Take lots of fluids and Tylenol for my fever and hope for the best.

Walk home in the rain. Stop for comfort food. Cookies and macaroni and cheese. Back home I clean my filthy apartment and do some laundry. Wash my sheets and towels. I'm feeling a little better. Turn on my iTunes and hit shuffle. Look forward to what's going to play. There's a certain excitement in knowing it could be anything. A deep and heartfelt gratefulness that music has been my constant companion. That it continues to move me. That as I've grown, I'm still able to be moved.

Measuring Up: Short People Got No Body

"You're not that short," he says, lying beside me in bed. "Really?" I ask. "How many guys do you know who are shorter than me?" As I absently play with the metal bar piercing his nipple. "One." He admits, laughing, and the conversation is pushed aside in lieu of hot, sweaty monkey sex. But not forgotten.

In fact, "You're not that short," seems to be the most common refrain I hear from the people who know me. The average male height in the U.S. as of 2006 is 5'10". I'm 5'5". Is the unwillingness of my friends to acknowledge the fact that I'm short, just them being "nice" because of the perceived negative connotation that goes along with being short, or am I just overly sensitive?

When I asked Bryan, who at 6'2" is the ex boyfriend I spent the most time with, if he had any funny anecdotes about the disparity between our heights, he'd replied, "I never thought you were all that short." But I remember Jo, the proprietress of the Victorian Farmhouse, a bed and breakfast we stayed at in Mendocino, referring to us as "Penn and Teller." I don't remember us performing any magic tricks.

Walking down the street in Austin with my friend James on the way to Elysium, a goth bar for 80s night, the subject of height came up. I'd mentioned off-handedly being short, and he'd seemed confused. After I told him I was 5'5", I remember him being shocked because he thought I was 5'8" or 5'9", even though he was 5'9", himself, and obviously I was shorter than him. "You have a very tall personality," he'd told me, by way of consolation.

While it may fall below the radar for most people for whom height is a non issue, when you are vertically challenged, like me, you can't help but notice the disadvantages of being differently statured.

• With few exceptions, kissing every guy I've ever dated has required standing on my tip toes.
• Changing light bulbs means balancing precariously on phonebooks stacked on top of my rolling chair.
• If something I need is on the top shelf at the grocery store, I just decide I don't really need it after all.
• Finding clothes that actually fit me is next to impossible. I walk around in jackets with sleeves extending to my fingertips and pants rolled up at the cuff. Or shop in the little boy's department.
• I can't see the stage at concerts.
• At the movies, it is inevitable that the tallest person in the theater will sit directly in front of me.
• I dance, unnoticed, in clubs where my fellow patrons stand head and shoulders above me, looking over me as if I am invisible.

Far and away the worst part about being a wee person is the feeling that I'm summarily dismissed by people or just not taken seriously. I seem to fall into the "cute" or "adorable" category usually reserved for teddy bears, bunny rabbits and babies dressed like lady bugs. I'm a 32 year old man, and people I don't even know at the grocery store or the mall will sometimes pinch my cheeks or pat my head.

Then there are the well meaning friends who, presumably as a term of endearment, refer to me as "Little Lance," as if that's anything other than insulting. I would never refer to someone as "Fat Hector," or "Black George" or "Bald Stu." Only when it comes to height is referring to someone's physical appearance deemed appropriate and not demeaning.

Being short has been a part of my concept of self since I was kid. All through school I was always the shortest boy in class. I was always in the front row during class pictures and school productions. I was always being mistaken for someone much younger. Being 12 or 13 and mistaken for a 7 year old while you're at the dentist is pretty humiliating. Prior to (and possibly a contributing factor to) giving up my belief in God, and turning to comic books, video games and Sunday sci fi matinees, I used to pray every single night for God to make me taller. (Oprah would say I just didn't want it badly enough.)

Parents and family friends were always consoling me with stories of some distant relation who had a growth spurt and grew a foot taller over the course of one summer. So I waited and waited for a growth spurt that never happened. In the mean time I was teased and bullied mercilessly throughout Elementary school, Junior High and most of High School (not that everyone wasn't bullied for something, but I was already nerdy and gay, I didn't really need to be short too!). I hated being short and fantasized about inventing a shrink ray that would zap my bullies and reduce them to minuscule versions of themselves that I could then mercilessly pummel.

It was only in college that being short and waifish suddenly seemed like an advantage rather than a handicap. In a culture where youth is prized more than anything, looking like a teenager served me well in my early dating years. But as my twink status faded, so did my appeal, so that in my 30s, what was an advantage now seems like a detriment. Instead I feel more like a novelty for "tiny" collectors. Guys over 6'4" can't seem to resist me, which would be great if the ins and outs of dating a person a foot taller than you weren't so impractical. Sex should never require a booster seat.

While my height was really a sore spot for me growing up, as an adult I didn't think about it much. If I thought about it at all, it was "So what? I'm 5'5". Who cares?" Then I recently had a doctors appointment and the nurse who took down my weight and then measured my height completely shattered my reality as I've known it.

I am not 5'5". Technically I'm 5'4.75". When you're below 5'8", every fraction of an inch counts. Learning that I wasn't really even as tall as I thought I was (or as tall as my driver's license says I am), made me think about my height all over again.

There are plenty of studies of heightism that suggest that short people are discriminated against. It's been suggested that the average salary for men goes up about $800 annually per inch. Taller men are more likely to be hired for jobs, and once hired are more likely to be promoted. When asked to choose the most attractive person from a line-up, women being studied almost always chose the tallest man. Sperm banks don't even want the deposits of short men, regardless of their other stellar characteristics. In movies and on TV, the short guy is always the butt of jokes, and almost never the leading man.

Whether or not any of this is applicable to me, on a personal level, I don't know. I doubt I've been unduly discriminated against. But it's food for thought. Like the other physical and mental traits that make me a unique snowflake, being short isn't something I can change. I can only accept it, and revel in my individuality. Still, I can't help but wonder if my life would be different if I were taller. Would I be more successful? Would I be more likely to have a successful relationship? Would I be happier?

In an alternate universe I'm 6'4" and probably an arrogant jerk with my own set of complexes and neuroses. But at least I can see Lily Allen from the 21 and up section of the Showbox. In this universe, I meet Faux Me for Thai food and when he exclaims "You're so tiny!" I only shrug and smile. What else can I do?

Take Me Drunk, I'm Home or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Embrace Alcohol

"I've found my happy place." Friday night, sitting upstairs in a leather bar called The Eagle with Michael and Devon. I am a light weight, so a third of the way through my drink I'm already tipsy. We are sitting in the corner, beside a sling that is suspended from the ceiling. Beside us some tattooed and pierced patrons play pool, pointedly ignoring us. Catherine Wheel's "I Want to Touch You" is playing overhead, and I do.


Friday night Gin & Tonics have become a near-weekly event for me. It's hard to believe that prior to moving to Seattle, I could probably count the number of times I'd been drunk on one hand.

Unlike, well, everybody else, I didn't do any experimenting with alcohol and drugs in highschool. They called me "The Epitome of Goodness" back then, and the nick-name was well earned. I didn't do anything even remotely bad. I never even said a bad word until Sonya, Nikki and Christy graduated, and as their parting gift they made me say the word "fuck," specifically "I want to fuck you all night long," in the hallway beside the gym on graduation night. It seemed like such a big deal at the time.

The reason for my aversion to inebriation was twofold. The biggest part was shame about being who I was. To the Southern Baptists I grew up with, being gay, along with eating shelfish and wearing cotton/poly blends, is an abomination, deserving of death. So I was determined to show everyone how good I really was. That there could be no question of my morals. That my behavior would be spotless. So I didn't drink, or smoke, or do drugs, or have sex, or swear. Because of this I developed a reputation as being a "goody-two shoes" which doesn't really make sense because doesn't everyone wear two shoes?

The other impetus for my abstinence was the fact that I was afraid that if I drank, I'd lose control a little, and start making out with every boy. Then everyone would know that I was gay. Which was just silly because everyone knew that I was gay anyway. People had been asking me if I was gay since I was 5. But as a conflicted angst ridden teenager, this seemed like a genuine fear. So because of this, I ended up feeling like even more of an outsider, an observer of my friends who were going through the traditional rites of passage, while I sat on the sidelines with my Madonna and Erasure CDs, at home on my computer, online, writing gay erotic fiction, and dreaming of college.

Wastin' Away Again in Margaritaville

The first time I ever drank an alcoholic beverage I was 19. Jeff had made a romantic, candlelit dinner, some pasta dish served with port which seemed really sophisticated to a country bumpkin like I was at the time. Jeff's apartment was full of posters of wizards, burning incense and pewter sculptures of dragons. The port smelled and tasted just like vinegar, and all I could think of was that I should be using it to dye Easter eggs. The taste was so foul I didn't feel compelled to try alcohol again until after I'd turned 21.

It was the 4th of July, nearly a week after my 21st birthday, and Jeff and I bought 440z Strawberry Daiquiries from a drive-through liquor store in College Station, TX. Only in Texas does it make sense to have drive-through liquor stores. Jeff was so drunk he couldn't back out of the parking space in front of our apartment, but this didn't deter us from driving to campus to see the fireworks that night. Remember the explosions of fireworks in the sky. The blurry, double-vision of showering sparks, of seeing Jeff's grinning face and feeling detached, divorced from my body. Of floating above it all. Away.

I Was Drunk the Day My Mom Got Out of Prison
Bryan was passed out in our bed, sprawled diagnally across it so that there was no room for me, and I was pissed. We'd been to some party hosted by his physics nerd friends. He drove, and said he wasn't going to drink much. Fast forward a few hours later, and he was soused, and it was up to me to drive us back home. In his car. Without my glasses. Despite the fact that I was nearsighted and couldn't see too far in front of us, he demanded that I drive through the Taco Cabana drive through for nachos. "I must have nachos!" He repeated, despite my protests. So we went through the drive through and got his nachos. My fingers wrapped so tightly around the steering wheel that my knuckles were turning white. The next morning he woke up and played David Allen Coe over and over. I went to the kitchen to passive-aggresively bang pots and pans loudly.

The biggest problem with not drinking is that drunken people are fucking annoying when you're the only one who's sober.

Still, Bryan provided a safe environment for me to tentatively get my feet wet in the world of alcoholic beverages. The first time I got really, super drunk, I was with him, watching a lounge band called The Recliners. We were observing some old man in a mustard colored jacket hitting on younger women. I was on my second Tom Collins, and the room started spinning. I needed Bryan to help me walk to the bathroom, and later, I needed him to help me back to the car. Remember he and Courtney and I sitting in my old apartment, me drunk on wine coolers and declaring that Bryan was my "Pumpkin bug!" Remember Dave and Lizz-Ayn coming over for bad movie night, watching The Exorcist II and giggling. Was it the wine cooler, or was James Earl Jones dressed as a giant locust?

What the Hell Am I Doing Drinking in L.A.?
"I'll have a Tahitian Lady." I'd told the Austrailian bartendar at Motherlode, a crowded bar in West Hollywood. I was there with Bryan and his actor friend, Dudley. It was Dudley's idea that we order the girliest drinks we could think of to celebrate our induction into gay L.A. life. Bryan ordered a Pink Squirrel. I can't remember what Dudley ordered, but it was something totally gay.

Apparently there's no such drink as a Tahitian Lady, (I'd imagined something blue with an umbrella-ella-ella) so the bartendar made me something called a Black Widow which tasted deceptively like gummi bears to me. After a few sips, I was bouncing here and there and everywhere. We followed that with shots of something called The Velvet Hammer, which was like liquid marshmellow that went down smoothly before knocking you on your ass. I was drunk enough and bold enough to pee in the trough urinal in the bathroom of a crowded gay bar, despite my long-standing aversion to public rest-rooms.



Happy in the Haze of a Drunken Hour...
"If you could be anything at all, what would you be?" He asks me.
"A proctologist?" I answer, smirking.
I was in a dive-bar in Belltown with Anna and a Morrissey impersonator. The Morrissey impersonator had spootted Anna at one of his shows and invited her (and a friend) to join the band for dinner. She'd brought me. For some reason I was pretending to be her cousin. We developed a whole elaborate back-story for me. I was visiting from the East coast. I was a grad student, and I was Jewish. I'm always Jewish when I'm pretending.

The wannabe Morrissey was some smarmy asshole from L.A. who just wanted to get in Anna's pants, and approaching midnight, I was the only obstacle in his way, at least from his perspective. Anna had long been a Morrissey fan, and making out with Morrissey had been a long standing fantasy, and this was her chance to (kind of) see it come to fruition. Finally, a look from Anna tells me that it's time for me to leave, so I stumble back to my apartment. Remember the night was foggy, and I'd gotten turned around and walked the opposite direction, toward Puget Sound, before turning around and walking back up the hill toward home.



The Piano Has Been Drinking, Not Me

"Are you in AA?" I hear this question over and over. Every time I decline a drink, or get a diet coke instead. Prior to the past few months, I still rarely, if ever, drank. The truth is, I don't like the taste of alcohol, or the sensation of being drunk. And since I'm a lightweight, I get drunk at the drop of a hat. So I usually just forego the "pleasure" altogether.

I've never done well with social convetions. I don't really care how other people perceive me, and I don't feel the need to compromise who I am and kowtow to rules of behavior I had no part in making. But as I've gotten older, I understand that sometimes it's okay to bend a little, for the sake of integration. Being a prude makes other peopel uncomfortable, and puts them on the defensive, because they think that you're judging them when they imbibe. Tired of being the constant observer of strange customs, I decided to actually partake a little.

So now when I'm out, I'll nurse my gin and tonic. The strange flush of welcoming and acceptance washes over me. Drinking is like a strange brotherhood that I was never part of. I get it now. The social lubricant aspect of getting sloshed. Some people are quiet drunks. Some are sad, or angry. I just get giggly and affectionate and tell people I love them whether I do or not. There's nothing that I'd do drunk that I wouldn't do sober. I've still never been so drunk that I passed out or threw up or had a hangover the next day, or did something I regret. But it has brought me out of my shell a little bit, just by virtue of being connected to a larger fellowship. The brotherhood of drinkers. And to you, my brothers (and sisters) I say, "Let's go get smashed!"

Ambivalence, Cookies and the Emerald City

“I’m going to take a stab at this.” He says, sitting at my table, his knee pressed against mine. Gray shirt stretched tightly over his muscular chest. The thin lines beside his vibrant blue eyes as he squints in concentration. “Neil?”

He has met me three times now, and forgets my name every single time. I point out that I remember his. John. Not that it's a competition. “Are you seriously going to make me guess?” He asks.

I let him off the hook. Tell him (again) that my name is Lance. “It’s a verb.” I tell him. “Just imagine me jousting you.” I grin.

“I actually think I’ll remember now.” He says, smiling. He introduces me to a friend of his. “Do you want to come sit with us?” He asks. I tell him maybe next time. I have some writing I want to do. “If I remember your name next time will you have coffee with me?” He asks. I smile and tell him I will. “I’ll remember next time for sure.” He says. We'll see.

The afternoon is gorgeous. A beautiful sunlit day. Pale light streams in through the window. The ivy climbing up the building across the street. The handsome young men who sit with faces illuminated by their laptop computers glance up at the unaccustomed sunshine.

That was last Wednesday. I'd called in sick to work, and had spent the day in cafes and coffee shops, pretending to read, looking at boys and working on my supposed novel. I'd told myself once that I would stay in Seattle until I finished my novel, then I'd move on to another city for another fresh start. But time requires re-evaluation, and the fact that I may never finish my alleged novel makes me wonder if I shouldn't just cut my losses and make a fresh start now.

In July I will have lived in Seattle for 5 years. The mind reels. It feels as if I'd only just arrived from Los Angeles a few months ago. Remember the road trip through the Pacific Northwest with Anna. The meteor we saw barreling through the sky outside of Portland. A glowing green orb, so big we expected to arrive in the city to find it in ruins. Remember the waterfalls. Running up a trail to the snow covered peak. The snake curled on a rock. Then Seattle. It felt like the city was kissing us. We felt embraced.

I fled from Los Angeles with my tail between my legs and Seattle welcomed me. Or seemed to. It was easy to thrive here. I've managed to get the best paying, most tolerable job I've ever had. An apartment of my own. The city is beautiful, and has a lot to offer, but I've just never felt married to it. There's just something about the people here that makes them seem cold and distant. Aloof. Making friends has been a real challenge, especially considering my own anti-social tendencies.

In Austin, or Los Angeles, if I sat reading in a coffee shop, people would invariably ask me what I was reading, strike up conversations. In Seattle, no one speaks, and if you speak to them, they seem to either panic or brush you off. Finding a group of friends here has been a struggle, and when I meet people, or feel a connection to them, they're usually not natives. They're fellow transients who seem just as bewildered as me. After thinking about why this is, I reached the conclusion that it must be the weather. For 6 months or more, it's cold and gray and gloomy and people hide in their apartments, so that when they're out again, they don't know how to interact with other people.

Here's a great article that shows I'm not alone in my assessment.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/pacificnw/2005/0213/cover.html

It's taken me 5 years to finally secure a group of friends that I hang out with on a regular basis. Before the past few months, I felt alone and isolated in the city. Lost, with no real connections. Feeling like it was impossible to penetrate the wall of ice that seems to separate people in the city from one another. I've had to force myself to be more outgoing and social to compensate for the anti-social tendencies of my fellow Seattlelites. And it's been hard, but rewarding.

Friday night, after running, I sit alone watching RuPaul's Dragrace online. A text from Jonathan, and I'm in the shower and out the door for drinks at the Elite. I meet up with Jonathan, Bill, Chris F. and their friends. Gin and tonic and my head is swimming. Run into Travis and talk for a bit. There is a moment when Jonathan's expression catches in my heart and I want to hug and comfort him. But he goes home, and everyone goes home and it's just Chris and I, talking about old friendships. A warm and pleasant conversation.

Saturday is cold and gray. Tattooed Mike calls and says that he was out too late, he isn't up to yoga, so I go by myself. Walk in the cold rain to the gym. Skirt past vomit on the sidewalk. A homeless man hunched under the awning of an apartment building asks me for change, but I say "Sorry," and walk on.

The gym is warm. The receptionist knows my name and says "Hi Lance," before I've given her my ID card. Upstairs the hip hop dance class is running late, so I wait beside a group of people touting yoga mats. A beautiful man asks me where the extra mats are, and, because he's so beautiful, I cannot speak, so I just point to the pile of mats in the back corner. In class, he sets his mat beside me, and when I glance at him he smiles. I want to say hello, or something, to speak at all, but when the class ends, I put on my shoes and quickly flee.

I have Indian for lunch and walk around town, shopping. Buy an argyle sweater. Buy Synecdoche, NY on DVD. At the video store, the burly man with tattooed arms behind the counter recognizes me from my zombie obsession days and says "Hey Lance, long time no see!" I tell him about a new zombie t-shirt I have with zombie bunnies on it. He says I should come see him more often. I tell him that I will.

Later at a coffee shop, I'm waiting for Travis and pretending to read again. The man sitting across from me, an older man named Doug, strikes up a conversation. We talk for a while about our lives. His last relationship. The business he'd been co-owner of. His life growing up in a small town. I tell him about my ambivalence regarding living in Seattle, and he agrees. He says he's lived here for 22 years now, but still sometimes thinks of moving somewhere else. California maybe.

Travis arrives, and he and I drive to a restaurant in Capitol Hill called The Cellar for some Italian comfort food. When we get to the restaurant, the lights are dark and the door is bolted. Uncertain where to go next, we get back in his car and drive downtown. It's Saturday night, approaching 9, and parking is impossible. Every time we find a parking space, another car grabs it before we can. It's approaching ridiculous and reminds me of a time back in Austin where Anna and I tried and failed repeatedly to obtain vanilla shakes. We finally find parking and walk to 2nd street in Belltown, and find another little Italian place. The waitress is cute, but the food is mediocre. As always, the conversation is a pleasure, and Travis makes me laugh.

When we're done eating, we walk to the Open Circle Theater where we meet up with Shawn and Brian for a late night, theatrical production of an episode of the A-Team. Spencer is there, performing as the main villain. He hugs me and remembers the T-shirt he made me years ago that I'd never made arrangements to obtain. The show is hilarious, and I'm surprised to see my co-worker, Aaron, playing Mr. T. At intermission Spencer gives me the T-shirt. A red shirt that says Northwest Boychoir on it, with a big picture of She-Ra in the middle. I love it.

On Sunday I meet up with Robin for lunch at B&O Espresso. The food is good and it's nice to see him again. He tells me about his recent trip to Colorado for his brother's wedding. He walks with me to the grocery store afterward where I buy the fixin's for chocolate raspberry cookies. Later, I sit in a coffee shop and talk to Doug again for nearly an hour. Awkward goodbye where I try to shake his hand and he tries to hug me.

Today it is rainy and gray again. Spring never arrives. It stays cold and gray until summer. In winter the entire city is under water, and I swim to work through fish and seaweed. Everything seems slow and dull and under pressure. Once again, the desire to flee is something I feel on a cellular level, pulsing through my veins along with my blood, and driving me to action.

In college I'd fantasized about one day moving to Seattle. The desire was fueled entirely by Seattle's reputation for constant rain. The idea of a gray, rainy city really appealed to the part of me that is romantic, that romanticizes melancholy. But after a couple of years of living with gray skies day in and day out, of walking out in rain, and back in rain, the romantic sheen has lost it's luster. These days I fantasize about sunshine. Of sprawling out on a sunlit beach. Of warm air against my skin.

There's nothing binding me to the city, really. No romantic relationship. No career. No mortgage. For all intents and purposes, I'm a free agent and can go anywhere. But picking up and leaving isn't as easy to do in my thirties as it was in my twenties. Some of my youthful daring has disappeared, and I worry more about being able to find another job. About starting over in a new place and having to make friends all over again. About losing the friends I've already made here.

But the city doesn't really feel like home. Probably because I've been so ambivalent about it for so long. I don't know whether I should just commit to Seattle and work on trying to forge a better life here, or to go somewhere else, somewhere with sunshine and friendlier people to start again. And if I were to leave, I don't know where I'd go.

My parents want me to move back home to Texas. To live in Austin. And Bryan has offered to let me stay with him and his boyfriend in their house until I was able to afford an apartment of my own. It's tempting. I love Bryan and it would be nice to be close to him again and my other friends in Austin. Living in Texas I could spend a weekend here or there with my parents and I wouldn't have to spend my vacation time going to see them instead of going to Europe like I'd prefer. But Austin is so hot, and so full of Texans, I don't know if I can go back there. I'd have to get a car again, and I don't want to ever do that. Going back at this point would feel like defeat.

The city I really want to live in is San Francisco. I always have a wonderful time when I visit. There's such great food and the city is so beautiful. The people always seem so friendly. I already know people there. But the rent is so expensive, there's no way I could live there, with the same quality of living that I enjoy now. I'd have to get a roommate (or two), or live so far out of the city that my day would be taken up with the commute, and still it would be a struggle to survive. That is daunting. I know that one day I will live there, but I'm not sure if I'm ready for it yet. So I don't know what to do.

Seattle has a lot going for it. It's compact, and has decent mass transit, so I don't need a car to get around here. The people are socially responsible and recycle and the politics are progressive. The city is literate, and there is no dearth of comfy coffee houses to sit and read in. It's beautiful, and surrounded by mountains and water. And while it's taken a long time, I finally do have some friends here. Plus I'm already here, so I wouldn't have to move or re-settle someplace new. So maybe I should just hunker down and make the commitment to Seattle. Work on finding a career and a new, cozier apartment here. To try to just be happy where I am.

Last night I baked cookies to bring to Matt's tonight. Chocolate raspberry cookies. I cannot be ambivalent about cookies. They didn't quite turn out like I'd hoped. The first batch I tried last week was burned beyond recognition, and apparently baking soda and baking powder are two different things. This week I tried again, but I couldn't find one of the ingredients, so I kind of spliced two recipes together, and the results were a few dozen, spongy, bitter cookie shaped things, that I'm too humiliated to bring, that I'll no doubt be eating myself for weeks since I hate the idea of having wasted all of the time, effort and money on them.

Right now I'm sitting at work, and the sun has come out. I bask in the warm light, even though I know it will only be fleeting. Especially because I know it will only be fleeting. I eat one of my bitter, spongy cookies, and it doesn't taste as bad today as it seemed to last night. Maybe I'll bring them to Matt's after all. Right now I just enjoy the sun, the break from work and anticipate a night of warmth, of spending an evening with new friends.

The Hippie

“My friend thinks you’re cute.” 1999. I’m standing on the rooftop of The Forum, a club in Austin in rapid decline. The fake, white columns are dingy. The Dukes of Hazard bartender has seen better days. The guy standing in front of me is the reason the term twink was invented. Short and thin and blond and young. His “friend” is standing bashfully behind him. Tall and lanky with soft blond curls and long eyelashes. “What’s your friend’s name?” I ask. The twink winces and says, “Actually I don’t remember.” “Is he a good friend?” I’d asked then, laughing at them. “I just met him.” The twink admits.

The “friend” introduces himself, and stumbles a little, and I tied his shoe for him because he was too drunk to do it for himself. He was British, and his accent and cherubic face quickly endeared him to me, much as his inebriation had endeared me to him. We talked for a while, and then he walked me to the parking garage where we were both parked. We leaned against my green, Dodge Spirit, making out. His tongue in my mouth was a question mark, and the only answer was going back to my apartment. He followed me in his car (he was more or less sober by then), and when we got to my place, he took one look at my heavy, antique furniture, my Hopper prints, my fireplace and balcony and said with a fair degree of disgust, “You’re a yuppie!”

I was so offended. How dare he! I was an artist. A bohemian. I burned patchouli incense. I created poorly rendered, water-color paintings and performed dramatic, confessional poetry. And while it’s true that at the time I had a decent job and nice things, I wasn’t the Andrew McCarthy character from a mediocre 80s film. Inside, I was the Jon Crier character from a mediocre 80s film. Luckily his revulsion at my perceived social standing didn’t keep him from going down on me.

In Texas I lived across the street from a video store. When I felt like renting a movie, I’d get in my car, drive across the street, get a video and drive back. When a friend from out of town came by and suggested we walk to the video store, I was floored. It had honestly never occurred to me that walking was even an option.

My first job, back in 1995 was at a grocery store. I was at the check out counter, and people would ask me things like, “What aisle are the olives on?” And I’d say, “Aisle 15.” And 10 minutes later the customer would storm back and angrily let me know that there were only 12 aisles. I’d just shrug. I was only making minimum wage, and could give a fuck. For small talk people often wanted to debate the merits of paper or plastic, which I also didn’t give a rat damn about. Paper was biodegradable and recyclable, but involved cutting down trees. Plastic was recyclable, but non biodegradable, but didn’t result in the destruction of the Brazilian rainforest, for all I knew. When a person, usually a professor since it was a college town, would come up to my check out with his own canvas bag, I’d roll my eyes and think to myself, “What a freak.”

In 2003 I was in Los Angeles at a club called Motherlode in West Hollywood. I was on a date with a lawyer, who was very much like James Spader from some mediocre film from the 80s. He was about to move to D.C. for a position with the government in immigration law. I asked him whether he was going to deport people or try to keep people from being deported. He said both, and told me he was impressed that I’d asked because usually the guys he met didn’t know or care what immigration law was.

Through the course of our conversation it came up that I was a vegetarian. That I didn’t watch television. That I drove a Korean economy car. (Woo!) And didn’t have a cell phone. He asked, in all earnestness, if my parents had been professors. We walked through West Hollywood and he told me how refreshing it was to talk to someone who wasn’t “So L.A.” He wondered what I was doing there. I wondered that myself. I was slightly repulsed by the pretentiousness of his designer clothes and way of speaking. In a park, on a swing, my revulsion didn’t prevent me from letting him get to 2nd base.

Bryan and I lived by UCLA. Remember walking to the gym, past a movie premier at one of the theater’s in Westwood, a stretch limousine with Reese Witherspoon, the red carpet, and seeing someone’s hummer sticking out of a garage because only the front wheels would fit inside.

Seattle 2006. Thanksgiving with Chad and his vegan friends. The conversation turns to the World Trade Organization Protest of 1999. About the irony of the guy tearing down the Nike sign who was wearing a pair of Nike shoes. They are passionate and I am annoyed by them both individually and collectively, not for their ideals, which I agree with, but for the self-righteous manner that they express them. It borders on arrogance, and I feel compelled to defend my conspicuous consumption. Hear myself going into devil’s advocate mode and saying, “If a 9 year old Indonesian girl loses a finger stitching the GAP label into my sweater, well, that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make for all cotton clothing at reasonable prices.” Alienate myself from everyone at the table, though it is thoroughly satisfying. Sit in bed later with Anna, watching some mediocre Andrew McCarthy film form the 80s, eating Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, laughing at the hippies.

2009. Friday. Leave work at the non profit that helps the indigent and elderly with health insurance at 12:30. Trek up the hill (since I no longer drive a car) and meet Michael for lunch at Jai Thai. Good food. Lovely conversation. He’s the only adult male who has to pee more than I do, and there's something satisfying about this knowledge. After lunch, I go to the grocery store with my canvas bag and get the makings for vegan chocolate raspberry cookies. Get home before a sudden deluge floods the gutters and soaks everything. Sadly burn the cookies completely beyond all recognition. Even my bath towels smell like burned cookies.

Friday night, trek over to Bill’s and meet up with Bill, Jonathan, Joshua, Faux Lance and Ollie for more Thai, Bill Maher and Welcome to the Dollhouse. More good food and good conversation. I wear my “Save the Planet” t-shirt that I got from The Hard Rock Café on a high-school drama trip to Dallas. When the movie ends, I’m sleepy and the first to leave.

On Saturdays I go to yoga. It’s a generic, “fitness yoga” class offered through my gym, but yoga nevertheless. The new instructor leads us through a series of increasingly complex vinyasas, and by the 112th downward facing dog/chaturanga/up dog combo, I’m ready to pass out. By the relaxation asanas I feel like I’m made of rubber. After yoga I always go to the all you can eat, Indian buffet on Broadway. Gorge myself on curried vegetables, saag paneer and naan.

Saturday afternoon I have a coffee date with Rod, a guy I’d met online. As soon as I see him in the coffeehouse, I realize that he and I had gone out once before, three or four years ago. He apparently doesn’t remember at all, even though we’d met at the same coffee house and sat at the same table. I listen, amused as he tells me the same story of how he was in the shower at the gym and a sleazy guy in the shower next to him had pressed his tumescence against the plexi-glass separating the two showers. The conversation is pleasant, and when, as he gets ready to leave, he says that we should do this again, he’d call me, I just smile. I already know he won’t. He already didn’t.

As Rod leaves, Travis arrives and we walk over to The Elite for drinks. The lesbian behind the counter makes me a gin and tonic and she fills the tall glass about 2/3 full of gin, and 1/3 full of tonic. A fourth of the way through my drink I’m drunk and goofy. I hear my voice getting louder and more obnoxious. Everything we say seems hysterically funny. Travis cannot drink all of his third drink, so I drink half of it too. We tried to gauge just how soused we were by trying to determine which of the bears playing darts we were drunk enough to make out with.

We walk to the Italian place across the street and order calzones and wait to sober up. My veggie calzone is about the size of a skateboard, and tasted like a little slice of garlic filled heaven. I still have the giggles. After talking for a while longer, we walk back toward my apartment and Travis’s car. Hug at the corner and go home.

Sunday, after the gym, a coffee date with Mike (a different Mike). This one is tall, covered with tattoos and was wearing a cowboy hat. We meet at Victrola on 15th street. I get a soy hot chocolate. He gets an Americana. I can’t stop looking at the colorful ink designs on his arms and neck. Remember my thing for guys with tattoos. After coffee we go back to his place and I play with his dog for a little bit. Then we walk the dog through Volunteer Park, and he tells me about his life and I tell him about mine. We get back to his place, and then walk around the block another time. He invites me in again, but I decline and hug him goodbye.

As a child in the 80s I always wanted to somehow make the world a better place. Back then I thought that just by listening to “We Are the World” I could somehow help feed the starving people of Africa. That by buying a “Save the Planet T-shirt” I really could. Not understanding that my conception of saving the world was just a different kind of consumerism. The mass marketing of humanitarian causes, slickly packaged like pieces of the Berlin Wall they used to sell at the mall.

As an adult I still want to make the world a better place, but I’m much more cynical about it. Having worked for non profits for nearly 10 years, and seeing the waste, the bureaucracy, the CEO’s salaries. Having walked to work and had to step over homeless people curled up in doorways. Having seen people who needed help and turned them away, it sometimes seems so hopeless. I feel like only a huge, apocalyptic deconstruction and restructuring of society could ever right all the wrongs and make any meaningful change in the world. And I feel helpless.

I try to do little things, passive resistance against a strict machine. Like not using dangerous chemicals. Like not eating meat and contributing to an inhumane industry. Like not buying products made in sweat shops by 9 year old Indonesian girls who get 2 cents an hour and blindness for their efforts. I’m slowly replacing all of my personal hygiene products and cleaning products with organic, locally manufactured goods, even though organic toothpaste tastes like ass. I use bar soap instead of body wash to avoid unnecessary use of plastic bottles. I buy fresh vegetables and food from farmers markets and the local co-op. My messenger bag is made from recycled plastic bottles. My underwear and socks are made in the U.S. by people who get a competitive wage. When I go grocery shopping, I take my own canvas bag. If possible, all of my clothing would be vegan, and hand woven by Inuit women from Issaquah.

I was already moving in this direction when I met J., and in getting to know him, and seeing how committed he was to his ideals and doing what he could to make the world better, I was really moved to try to follow his example. If nothing else he was at least a catalyst for me improving the quality and direction my life. I can’t change the world in a big, dramatic way, but I can make little choices and changes that affect my life directly, that will maybe have a ripple effect. If other people would start making little changes too, then maybe the world really could improve. Maybe it’s already improving, and the past 10 years are proof that conservation and ecological responsibility are now part of our collective consciousness.

Walking down the street by my apartment Sunday evening, I hear someone shout my name, and turn to see Mike, the tattooed Mike, getting out of his car. He was meeting a friend, and we’d coincidentally wound up at yet another coffeehouse. He joked that I was stalking him, even though I pointed out that he was in my neighborhood. He laughs at how random it is that he ran into me. He walks with me and we talk some more. He thinks I’m cool. He thinks we should hang out again soon. Maybe he’ll come to yoga with me Saturday. Inside the coffeehouse, talking about food, I tell him about my vegan cookie fiasco. He looks at me, not in disgust, and says, “You’re a hippie!” I just smile. I can live with that.

American Idol and Modern Man's Existential Dilemma

On Tuesdays I walk over to Matt's to watch American Idol. Prior to this season, I'd never actually seen American Idol. I was aware of it, peripherally, in the same way I was aware of the Olsen Twins, the Jonas Brothers and Debbie Myers Green Bags. They were all things that I knew existed out there in the cosmos somewhere, but not things that would have any relevance or place in my actual life. Plus, it's hard to maintain one's elitist snob cred while watching a karaoke inspired reality television show.

The only reason I started watching at all was because Mike invited me, and I wanted to nurture our burgeoning friendship. Partially because I'm trying to expand my social circle to include...well...more than just me, which really makes it a social point and not a circle now that I think about it, but mostly I was hoping that Matt and Mike would have some cute, single friends that I could potentially date, or, barring that, have hot, sweaty monkey sex with. I'm eternally optimistic when it comes to the prospect of hot, sweaty monkey sex, despite the glaring lack of historical precedent.

Being an antisocial shut in with stunted inter-personal skills, my interactions with other people in a non virtual world usually range from mildly awkward to extremely uncomfortable. So it's been a relief that, despite my complete obliviousness to some social cues governing appropriate alcohol consumption and correct use of catty remarks at the expense of minor TV celebrities, the host and his friends have all made me feel warm and welcome.

Mike opens the door. He's orange crush in a T-shirt. A bear hug that lifts me off the ground. Matt is at the kitchen sink, cute in a white v-neck. As is customary, I brought the host an offering of foodstuffs in exchange for my continued tolerated presence. Hummus with kalamata olives that I'd made myself on a weekend cooking binge. I worried that it was bland, and that the tahini was dangerously old. Can sesame paste ever go bad, and how could you tell?

The Hermeneutics of Pop Culture

Jason arrived the same time I did. I'd met him before at Broadway Grill for Daniel's brunch. Remember thinking he was really funny. Jason is a pop culture guru. "I have on good authority that Jorge is hung." He says. Jorge is the Puerto Rican crooner with unfortunate eyebrows who was axed from the show the week before. "On whose authority?" Matt asks, and without missing a beat, Mike replies "His hairdresser's."

The God of My American Idolatry

I sit in a chair beside Matt. His witty wisecracks and faux accents tickle me, and he and I usually are in agreement when it comes to the performances. There are two rules when watching American Idol. 1.) No talking during the performances. Groans, grunts, and moans are all okay. 2.) No talking when Simon is speaking.

If the pageantry of the performance is akin to a Greek tragedy with the otherwise superfluous Ryan Seacrest doling out the back story on the performers, plastering their pathos and heartbreak in high definition on celluloid for our entertainment, then the panel of judges is the Greek Chorus. They let us know how we should relate to the drama as it unfolds.

There are four judges this season. Randy is the black judge. He likes to call people "dog" or "baby" because he has to show the kids he's still dope. Or is that phat? Or just fat? His major qualification for being a judge is the fact that he is a former bassist and backing vocalist for the 80s power-ballad sensation, Journey.

Next there's the chick that isn't Paula. She likes to point out when people do or do not "hit those notes." Like Randy, she's generally innocuous, but somehow manages to be even less interesting.

Then there's Paula. She's like a train wreck. If the train was full of barbiturates and booze. She eschews complete sentences for a more fragmented and post modern means of communicating. Sometimes she seems to have fallen asleep. Often she's confused. Normally she's the good cop and just tells people that she likes what they're wearing. If she actually criticizes someone, then the rest of the judges laud them with praises just on principle. I think she once did a music video with Chester the Cheetah.

Simon is the God of my American Idolatry. He created the show, and is almost solely responsible for it's gargantuan success. He's the Russian judge. The harsh judge with the low scores, who does not brook insolence. The thing is, his criticisms are generally always spot on. I mostly just want him to spank me.

You're Not a Sell Out if Nobody Buys It

The show is not about who is the most talented artist, the most creative, or even the best singer. It's about who is the most marketable. The performers are a mini-cosm of America, and American Idol is the last bastion of the American Dream. The possibility of celebrity and wealth. The fifteen minutes of fame for a generation who were raised to believe that if something isn't televised or downloadable or blogged about, then it doesn't exist.

The performers do their best to represent the most people. Diluting any real talent or creativity they might have to make it palatable for the masses. There is the cornfed, Southern white guy everyman. The 47 year old 16 year old girl with wine colored hair. The chick who sounds like Fiona Apple. The token black chick. The chick with the pink in her hair. The Jonas Brother's flaming gay cousin. The Indian guy who looks like Bert. The blind guy and the interchangeable white guys who all kind of look and sound the same, whose names I can't remember.

They give their best interpretations of songs from the Grand Ol' Opry oeuvre. Cornfed guy, who has a natural advantage is largely forgettable. The 16 year old does a good, safe job. The other white guys who aren't blind or gay all sound the same to me, as does Bert. Token is uneven. The drama queen does a strange, but interesting take on "Ring of Fire" which is one of my all time favorite songs, the Social Distortion version, not the Johnny Cash one, which is also good. This song is, days later, the only one that I remember.

We all hate the blind guy and understand that he's only coasting by on pity votes. The other Mike, the one who sits on the floor, who is on the pulse of things musical, comments on the Bruce Hornsby quality of his piano plinking before Randy makes the same observation. Fiona Apple chick had the flu and was recently hospitalized, so seems all the more impressive with a solid performance.

Matt is hardcore, and keeps a notepad with their names and rankings. I find myself totally engrossed in the spectacle, despite myself. I understand for the first time how people who watch sports must feel. Rooting for your favorites to win. Hoping for the embarrassing downfall and ultimate humiliation of those you feel are undeserving. Or maybe it's just me. But I find myself hooked. Looking online the following night to see who got axed. Unfortunately this week it was Alexis, the girl with pink in her hair who was one of my favorites.

I'd Rather Be Famous Than Righteous or Holy, Any Day, Any Day, Any Day

At 10:00, Idol ends and I start turning into a pumpkin. I'm always the first to leave. Because I'm usually in bed by 10:30 on school nights, now that I am become an old foagie. I pack up the remaining hummus. Everyone liked it, or they were at least nice enough to say that they did, which was appreciated. Hug Mike goodbye. Wave to everyone else. I never really know how to say goodbye to people.

Walk home the four or five blocks to my apartment. The air has gotten cold by then. My apartment, when I arrive, is warm and inviting. Understand, for all my hermit-like tendencies, that when I am social, when I feel connected to other people is when my life seems to have the most meaning. That American Idol is a way for me to overcome my ontological retardation. Until the season ends and I'm on to Iron Chef.

Pet Cemetery (or Dead Puppies Aren't Much Fun)

My first memory is seeing my dog, Muffin, get run over by a car when I was three. I can clearly picture the blue sedan that hit him. Muffin's little body rolling to the side of the road. The apologetic driver. I feel like I understood, even then, what it meant. That Muffin was dead. That I wouldn't play with him again. This early childhood trauma probably goes a long way in explaining my morbid fascination with all things dark and unusual, my affinity for the Cure, and my ill advised Goth phase.

But Muffin was just the first in a long string of grizzly pet deaths. If anyone ever disturbed the hallowed back yard of my family home where all of their bodies were interred, they'd be horrified by the sheer volume of bones belonging to my lifeless companions.

So here's to my dead pets, chronicled by species. They may be gone now from this world, to romp and frolic forever in a field full of catnip and fire hydrants in the sky, but they'll bark, gnaw on shoes and scratch up the furniture forever in my heart.

Cats: Empirical Evidence That Cats Do Not Have 9 Lives (or always land on their feet) To the Tune of "People Who Died"

Tucker was prancing near electrical wires.

Fluffy was flattened by my mother's car tires.

Patty ate some rat poison, 7 years old.
She looked like 65 when she died. She was a cat of mine.

Tiger got shot by a near sighted neighbor,

Nugget looked liked he'd been run through with a saber,

He was missing part of an ear and his right eye,

He was the last of my cats to die.

And Nugget, I miss you more than all the others,

and I salute you, brother!

Those were kittens who died. Died. Those were kittens who died. Died. They were all my cats...and they died.

The Birds: Nevermore. (I Think We're Plucked)

Lenny and Squigy were parakeets I had when I was 4. Remember one of them escaped from their cage and spent a long portion of the day underneath the refrigerator until my mom was able to slide him out with a broom. My mom left their cage on the front porch overnight one cold, winter evening and Lenny or Squigy (I could never tell them apart) froze to death. A few weeks later the other followed suit. My mother speculated that it was heart break. Quel Triste.

The green Easter chicken was a cute little pastel chick. Back then you could buy little pastel colored chickens at the feed store around Easter as novelty pets. They were dyed before their eyes opened. Terribly cute as a little chick, the Easter chicken soon lost his baby feathers and grew up to become a menacing rooster who terrorized us. He lost an eye when his head got slammed in the swinging door of our front porch when he was a chick. When he became territorial and claimed the utility shed as his own we could get around him by carefully walking around his blind side. I spent an entire day on my monkey bars as he waited for me on the ground, presumably to peck me to death. My father later gave him to my uncle who was into cock fighting who used my chick as a punching bag for his fighting roosters to practice on.

The duck, another Easter present, died mysteriously while we were gone for the day. He may have been a goose. We were never quite sure. Duck, duck, goose? Who could say? He didn't seem to like swimming when I dropped him in the lake. We were also not sure what happened to him. We returned from a short trip out of town and he was dead. I always fancied that he died of ennui.

Sleeping With the Fishes:

Every Halloween the school would have a carnival, and one of the prizes for Plinko was a bag of goldfish. Every year I'd come home with a few dopey orange fish, only to have them floating on the surface of their bowls within a day or two. The last one I decided to set free. So I dumped it into the creek beside our house. The creek that our sewer ran into. For all I know, he's the only one still alive, no doubt a mutant monster fish. The fisher King!

I also had a suicidal, gray fish who would swim in circles around his bowl, gather momentum and then leap out, flopping and gasping on the floor. I'd always scoop him up, drop him back into his bowl and he'd be fine. I usually left a book on top of his bowl so he couldn't jump out when I wasn't there. But one day I forgot and came in to find him lying on the floor. Dry and dead.

I later graduated to an aquarium. I had an algae eater. Some translucent shrimp you could feed colored food pellets to and see sliding down their gullets. Some other small, non-descript fish. They managed to survive for a while, until I introduced a more exotic, colorful fish into the mix. The fish apparently carried some kind of bacteria that covered the fish and slowly ate away their fins until they all died.

All Dogs Go to Heaven

After Muffin, I had a little bulldog named Scruples. I can't remember how Scruple's died, but I remember the neighbor's grandson, Cody (who is no doubt a serial killer, or in prison now), poking his little corpse in the privates with a stick afterward. *shudder*

Charlie was a golden retriever that belonged to me for a day. We didn't even have time to bond. He jumped over a remarkably tall fence with his collar and leash on and hung himself.

Trixie was a black Llasa Apso. In the summers my mom would shave off all her hair and she'd run around, rolling in the dirt. She got knocked up by the neighbor's Alaskan Husky, and, not wanting the babies to be born out of wedlock, I dressed them up and performed a wedding ceremony. Trixie was remarkably long lived for one of my pets. She became senile and lost her teeth, and Courtney would make fun of her flatulent sounding little bark. When we moved from the country into town, she had to share a small pen with my dad's coon-dog. She died, unhappily, shortly thereafter. And even though it wasn't my fault, I felt like I'd let her down and was riddled with guilt for years.

Cute Dead Things: Death Be Not Proud

In addition to the more traditional pets that most kids grew up with, I had a slew of other pets who also died gruesome and painful, heart-wrenching deaths.

At five we had a pet pig named Jo Jo. One day we loaded Jo Jo up into the truck and took him to a pre-fabricated warehouse on the outskirts of town and left him there. A few days later we went back and returned, not with Jo Jo, but with a bunch of meat wrapped in white butcher paper. Maybe it was just hope inspired cognitive dissonance, but I never connected the white packages with Jo Jo. One morning over breakfast I asked my mom what had happened to Jo Jo and she casually replied, "You're eating him." I paused in mid bite, horrified. I never ate bacon again.

I had a bunny rabbit named Rufus, who, when young, was small enough to live in a cage in the house. I'd spread out newspaper and let him hop around. This lasted for a few days. My mother, who never wanted to have animals in the house (she maintained that my father and I were bad enough) banished him to a coop outside. At first I was really good about playing with him and giving him special treats. But when the video game Metroid replaced him in my affections, I quickly forgot about him. I was deeply disturbed to hear that he'd died of a snake bite a few months later.

My father, the hunter, killed a slew of animals that were with child and brought the offspring home to raise. We had a little baby deer for a time. Remember holding it in my lap, bottle feeding it while it trembled. As soon as it was big enough it hopped the fence and high-tailed it out of there. Probably only to be shot by my father at a later date. There were two little wild hogs who dug out of the pigpen and escaped as well. A little raccoon who was cute as a baby with his rubbery little feet, was less cute as a hissing, angry adult.

Dinky was a black gerbil. A Christmas present. He had a wonderful cage with orange tubes and wheels and a plastic shoe that he lived in. He chewed up colored pieces of wood and made nests. He ate sunflower seeds. He didn't like to be held, but he did like to have baths in the sink and would stand on his hind legs, turning slowly as we blow dried him afterward. One day I was supposed to clean out his cage, but I was lazy, so I just left it on the front porch to "air out." I guess I forgot to shut the door completely when I fed him. I walked out to find Trixie, my senile Llasa Apso carrying him around in her toothless mouth like he was one of her puppies. His limp, wet body. I suspect he died of a heart attack long before Trixie gummed him to death.

The Survivor

Minouche was born on Halloween, October 31st, 1995. He was a gift from my first real boyfriend, Jeff, in college. There were two kittens in the store. A little gray furry boy kitten and his sister, who was black. I liked the idea of having a black cat, but the girl was just laying there sleeping, and the boy was playful. Not wanting some boring cat, I opted for the boy.

As soon as we got him home, I realized he was pure evil. I'd hold him, and he'd stare at my face with cold, calculating eyes before going for my nose with his sharp little teeth and claws. He had fleas. He was needy. I couldn't leave him alone, even to take a shower, without him standing at the door crying. He'd climb up me while I was standing at the sink. He never, not once, went to potty in the litter box.

And Jeff hated him. Hated the attention and affection I'd lavish on the kitten instead of him. After Jeff kicked Minouche out of our bed, I kicked Jeff out. But I couldn't deal with Minouche. I didn't want the responsibility of taking care of him. So when I went home for Christmas, I took him with me to my parent's house and left him there where he thrived and always went in the litter box.

For a while he'd sleep in bed with my parents, until he started biting their elbows if they moved too much. My mother seemed to like him, giving him a rhinestone studded collar and re-naming him Mutt. Then one day she came out of the shower and was getting dressed. Mincouche leaped off of her dresser, onto her naked back and clung there. The next day my mother had him fixed and de-clawed.

These days Minouche is a giant, hulking beast who mostly sleeps, curled up on the dryer in my parent's laundry room. He does sometimes "hide" behind the French doors separating the living room and the dining room, waiting for someone to walk through so he can go for their ankles. He'll throw himself at a person's feet until they start rubbing his belly, which he'll allow for a few seconds before sinking his fangs into their wrist and kicking with his still clawed back feet. I'm convinced that his evilness is the only thing that has kept him alive so long. Or maybe the curse has finally been lifted, and it's safe for me to have a pet again without risking it's ultimate, untimely, gruesome demise. I probably shouldn't run the risk, but I have always wanted a chinchilla.

The Country Lance and the City Lance

My mother has never been outside of the state of Texas. She is perversely proud of this fact, and wants nothing more from life than to work in her yard and go "junk" shopping with her sisters. As a sensitive, artistic child with an affinity for Cyndi Lauper and Nietzsche growing up in the tiny, rural town of Iola, TX...I mostly longed for an alien abduction to rescue me from Hicksville. Being a gay, atheist, vegetarian, I'm pretty much the closest thing to an alien my parents can imagine anyway.

My father's nickname is Snuffy, and though I love him dearly, he embodies everything I detest about the country. He is willfully ignorant when it comes to recycling, cultural diversity, and decoupage, and righteously overzealous about hunting, frying everything, and blaming all of the world's problems on foreigners. Especially if they're some shade of brown. He chews tobacco and likes to "punch cows" with his friend Mike. I don't know what that entails, but I know I don't like the sound of it. I wanted a childhood full of symphonies, museum trips and poetry readings, and what I got was one of Rodeos, County Fairs and Iola's annual "Hay Day."

When I was seven I was convinced that I was adopted. My biological parents, who were maybe too young and free spirited to take care of me when I was born, were no doubt able to take me back into the fold seven years later. I fantasized about them coming to rescue me from the country, to some posh apartment in New York City where we'd listen to jazz and eat intricate gourmet dinners before catching a Broadway show. I was so certain that there was some other cultured, sophisticated family out there somewhere, pining away for their lost child, that I confronted my mother with my suspicions. I asked her flat out if I was adopted. I told her it was okay, I could handle the truth. She looked at me and said, point blank, "Yes. You're adopted." And she went through her files to find my "adoption papers." I was getting more and more excited by the prospect when she handed the papers to me. My spirit sank when I saw that it was my birth certificate and she and my dad were clearly my biological parents.

We lived out in the middle of nowhere at the time. There were no kids around to play with. I entertained myself by performing magic shows and skits for my mom, or went off in the woods setting booby traps for dragons and unicorns. I fished for crawdads with bits of bacon on a string down by a creek that bordered our property. I stayed on my monkey bars for an entire day, afraid to come down for fear of being attacked by our surly, one eyed rooster.

Our nearest neighbors lived about a half a mile away, and when their son was diagnosed with leukemia, and they were in Houston for his chemotherapy and radiation treatments, I was given the chore of feeding and watering their cows, horses, and their chickens and collecting eggs. I don't think I've ever detested the country more than when I was standing in a smelly chicken coop with my hand underneath a fat, clucking hen, feeling around for eggs.

My father has a thick, almost unintelligble accent. I was in Junior High before I realized that "bob war" was really "barbed wire." And that "gottomatty" was "God Almighty." In highschool I heard a recording of my voice, and the thick southern accent was so horrifying to me, that I resolved then and there to get rid of it. From then on I'd over-enunciate everything, and my father's friends would make fun of me when I answered the phone. But it paid off. Now people are largely unaware of where I'm from, and the accent only comes out again when I've been talking to my parents for an extended period.

In the country everything moves slowly. Even people's talking. Even time. In the country there was nothing to do. On rare trips to the mall, my little cousins and I would go up and down the escalator over and over, because we thought it was a ride. My mother and her sisters would sit on my grandmother's porch for hours talking over one another, naming various townfolk and how they were related to one another. "Remember so and so, he was married to so and so's sister, the one with the peg leg who was institutionalized but then was married to that insurance salesman who killed his wife on a hunting trip, and they had that pretty little girl who was a mute. Whatever happend to that little girl? She run off with that little so and so boy and had a baby, but the baby wasn't his and then she got fat." So I read books while my cousins joined the army or the KKK or got pregnant.

At 18 I couldn't wait to get away from cows, country music, barbeque and rednecks. I painted my fingernails black and dyed my hair. I drove to Austin and went to raves. I went to symphonies and museums. The opera. I slammed poetry. I listened to jazz and made intricate gourmet meals. The country was behind me, and I was determined not to look back.

In the city no one smiles and no one looks you in the eye. If you accidentally make eye contact, you're destined for a run in with a bag of crazy. In the city I walk on trash strewn sidewalks littered with used condoms and syringes. I step over homeless people. Walk past homeless men masturbating in alleyways. Walk past the punks on broadway with their pierced faces, their tattoos and colored mohawks and try to imagine them as my mom would see them. How horrified she'd be. But I feel such an affinity for them. Like the man who walks aournd town in flashy, brightly colored suits with his hair and his beard dyed to match whatever color he's wearing that day. These are my people, and I feel much safer and more comfortable around them than around the rednecks back in Texas.

I have stripped at a club in Los Angeles called Starshoes at an event called "Skinny Boy Burlesque." I have been mugged walking home from work in Seattle, or anyway, attempted as I was easily able to intimidate the crystal meth infused mugger into walking away. I eat Ethiopian food and Indian and Thai if I feel like being boring. I sit in coffeehouses and pretend to read. I, for the most part, live the life I envisioned as a child.

At this point in my life, I've lived in the city nearly as long as I lived in the country. I have become a city person. I walk quickly, with purpose. I like the anonymity of being among so many people. I like the excitement generated in the air, the currents of energy. That something is always happening. When I visit my parents in the country, I have trouble sleeping because it is too quiet. Too still. I miss the constant sound of traffic and the sirens. I'm startled awake by a barking dog or a passing train. I live nearly as far away as one can from the town where I grew up and still be within the 48 contiguous states. But as far as I've traveled, I can never really get away from the boy who grew up wearing cowboy boots and walking through green and gold pastures. I sometimes feel like no matter how hardened I become, no matter how sophisticated, the world will always be filtered through my country eyes. And part of me likes that I am still shockable. That I still seem wholesome (by comparison) to my city compatriots. And when I see the giant skyscrapers, or the glimmering lights of downtown as I walk out of my apartment, the yokel inside me sometimes stops to gawk.

I cannot reconcile these disparate parts of me. The country Lance and the city Lance. They both exist, uneasily inside me. Most of the time the city Lance is in charge and comfortable in the gray and concrete urban landscape, but sometimes the country Lance needs to get out of the city. To walk barefoot through dried mudpuddles. To feel the satisfying crackling of earth beneath my feet. To smell the trees. To be surrounded by things that are green. To rejuvenate myself so that I can go back into the city once again and sustain the energy that continues to fill me with a sense of wonder and connectedness to my fellow city folk. The misfits and the rejects. The transients and nomads, like me.

In Remembrance of Hair Past

Awareness of the horrible tragedy destined to befall me first hit me at my grandfather’s funeral. My grandmother stood, looking as pale and lost as an old, gray turtle out of it’s shell. My mom handed me a stiff Kleenex from her purse. And there they were, like my grandfather before them. The chrome domes of my uncles and older cousins in their borrowed suits and ties. Stark and pink in the Texas sun. And me. In my early twenties. Horrified. Devastated at the impending loss. There could be no doubt I was going to go bald!

I’d always been sheltered from those stark realities. Death. Premature baldness. But ever since that day, standing among three generations of my follically challenged family members, male pattern baldness has been a specter looming over me.

In my mid twenties when it became more and more obvious that it wasn’t going to skip a generation, I tried to wash my hair gingerly, afraid that if I scrubbed too vigorously it would all just fall out in clumps then and there. I vowed that I wasn’t going to be one of those pathetic men trying vainly to make a comb-over look like anything other than what it was…an embarrassing and vain attempt to fight off the angry dick slap of mother nature. If I was going to be bald, I’d do it with dignity and grace. I wasn’t some shallow ass-hat who’s entire identity was bound up in something so superficial and random as protein filament. I’d shave my head and that would be that.

But that wasn’t that. As it thinned, I panicked. I put wax in my hair to adopt the carefully disheveled look that all the hipsters of the time were aspiring too. I kept this up until my 30th birthday with moderate success. Avoided swimming pools and hair-dressers. But by the time I hit 30 I couldn’t even maintain the pretense. So true to my word I shaved it all off, and have kept it shorn ever since. Hats are my concession, or my crutch, despite the fact that everyone who sees a man in a hat presumes he’s bald underneath anyway. But there are practical reasons too. When you don’t have hair, your noggin can get really chilly, especially in the Pacific Northwest. Then there are the risks of sunburns. Skin cancer. So I can rationalize my hat dependence without feeling like a total poser.

Luckily (I’ve been told) I have a nicely shaped head. (I love being damned with faint praise.) I work out an insane amount, partly to compensate for the lack of hair, because with the hair all of my confidence kind of disappeared too. In wisps on my pillow. Clogging my drainpipes. Wrapped around my hair brush. I just didn’t feel attractive anymore. Like when people see me, they look right past me. Like suddenly I was invisible.

I thought that if I was buff, I could pull off the shaved head thing a little better. I’d be a younger, sexier, shorter version of Mr. Clean. Mr. Clean is hot. Mr. Clean exudes sexiness and masculine virility. People want to have sex with Mr. Clean. Plus I was afraid that if I was skinny and bald, people would mistake me for a cancer patient. As it is, I’m afraid my sexometer registers on par with Uncle Fester. And nobody wants to have sex with Uncle Fester.

Of course it might be easier to accept if there was some kind of equal distribution of hair in the universe. If for every faux hawk, there was a no-hawk. But as it is there are people walking around sporting mullets. Mullets! And I am bald. Balding. It isn't fair! That’s what bugs me most of all. That there are people so undeserving of their thoughtlessly coiffed manes, talking on their cell phones in their cars, or in line at the grocery store. I want to scalp them and claim their pates for my own. To wear the pilfered hair as a trophy.

Over the years I’ve had every hair color known to man. I’ve had curly hair. Straight hair. Spiky hair. Floppy hair. A buzz cut. I’ve done it all. In a way, baldness was my final frontier. My scalp’s final resting place.

Some guys seem to be into it. Many people say I look more butch with a closely shorn cut. Sometimes a guy will ask if he can touch my stubble. But when I look in the mirror I can only see what I lack, and not what I have. Even though I totally think bald guys are hot. I worry that I’ve just conditioned myself to believe that to retain whatever small bit of self esteem I’ve managed to cling to in the past 3 years.

There are possible baldness cures in the works. Stem cell research looks promising. There are companies doing research who claim that they may have a product on the market as early as 2010. So by the time I’m 34 or 35 it’s conceivable that I may have hair again. I’d like to think that by then I’ll be so comfortable in my own skin that I wouldn’t even need it. But I’m fairly certain that if such a product was available, I’d give up a kidney to lay my hands on it.

Until then, I pour a 40oz out on the street for my lost hair. I take off my hat. Let the cool breeze caress my naked head. Hold up my chin, and walk (with 50spf sunscreen) into the new day.

Wolves

When I was younger, my grandfather had a pet wolf. He’d trapped and killed the wolf’s mother without realizing that she had a small pup. So he brought the pup home and bottle fed it and raised it like a dog. When Wolf was young he looked just like any other puppy, an oversized head, droopy ears, paws that were too big for his body. Wolf grew up to be a friendly, curious animal, playing with my younger cousins as if they were all members of the same pack. But Wolf was not a dog. There was a feral quality that came out at inconvenient times. He was protective and snarled and growled at strangers like the mail man and the guy who read the gas meter. If you were foolish enough to bring food over, he was all over you, nipping at the bag as if he was starving.

My grandfather’s property was bordered by train tracks that ran along the northern edge, and one night my grandfather said that he found Wolf’s body lying by the tracks. He’d been hit by a train during a lonesome, late night walk. I always wondered if that had really been the case, or if my grandfather had shot him because he knew that the adult wolf was going to be too dangerous to live among people, and too unused to fending for himself to survive on his own. I never asked. As children we were told so many stories to protect us from the harsh reality of things.

Around the same time I was collecting Jasons and desperately trying to lose my virginity. I was 18, and thought the prospect of turning 19 and still being a virgin was too humiliating a fate to subject myself to. Jason II and I had been dating for a few weeks. Because I was living with my parents during my first year of college, I had a curfew of 1:00 am, and there was a 45 minute drive from Jason II's back to my parent's house. Every time things were just getting good, I'd have to stop and leave. It was frustrating for both of us.

His M.O. was always the same. We'd go to a movie. Then have dinner. Then sit on his couch and make out in front of the TV. The night it finally happened we'd watched Dolores Claiborne, which is a really underrated film. When it ended he asked me if I was hungry. I was starving, but said no. We went back to his place as usual. He was a senior at the same college I was a freshman at, but I suspect not any more experienced than I was.

Sitting on his couch, listening to the Ready to Wear soundtrack, so that Ini Komoze's "Here Comes the Hotstepper" will always be associated in some Pavlovian way with painful penetration, we went through the motions of our standard mating ritual. I was talking non stop nonsense as his hand crept up my thigh, until it rested between my legs and I froze. "Why'd you stop talking?" He asked. Smiling. He was kakki. A fraternity. A polo shirt. But I let him kiss me anyway.

"Can I fuck you?" He'd asked. We were in his bedroom then. Naked and trembling, and I was ready for it. A month of shedding our skins, to finally slither into one another's systems. Watch him sliding on a condom and covering it in lube. Clueless as to what to do, on hand and knees before him. And it hurts. And I inch up further and further on the bed until I reach the headboard and can go no further. Stare at the numbers on his clock until they are burned into my brain and I can see the after image of them when I close my eyes.

Driving home the sky was seven shades of gray whether my eyes were closed or open. Traffic lights stretched across rain swept streets, blood red like a baby’s scream. Remind myself to breathe. To drive when the light is green. Thinking over and over, “What was that?” The bones of butterflies were turning to dust inside my stomach. Lead heavy, a gray and aching sediment. All I wanted to do was crawl into my own familiar bed and cry. I never wanted to do it again.

When I got home my parents were waiting for me. "Who were you with tonight?" They asked. Courtney, I'd answered. "Courtney called looking for you. Who is Jason?" They take away my phone. They don't let me leave the house except to go to school. At school the next day a calculus test. I bubble in circles on my scantron without looking at the questions in a room that is vomit green. In the parking lot, a black sports car hits my car, because I don't see any damage, I tell the driver not to worry about it. Only when I'm trying to drive again do I realize the axle is bent and I have to turn the wheel sideways to go straight. This doesn't stop me from driving 80 miles per hour home and getting a speeding ticket. It felt like everything in the world was wrong.

"From now on you'll act normal." My mother had said. "From now on you'll be normal."

***

In Los Angeles, Bryan and I lived across the street from a veteran cemetery. The identical rows of identical tombstones marking identical graves were aligned with military precision so that it seemed more businesslike than funerary. Imagine the zombie nightmare that would happen if some nuclear waste from outer-space seeped into the ground there. Bryan estimated that there must be 20,000 corpses. I always wondered if I would you try to blockade myself in our apartment, or make a mad dash to my car, bludgeoning cannibalistic cadavers hungry for brains with a frying pan along the way. Would I wake up Bryan, or leave him as bait to divert the lifeless throngs of ravenous animated dead? These questions will probably never be answered.

One evening Danny was over for dinner. I'd made my famous eggplant parmesan, and we heard a chorus of howling. Bryan and I were perplexed until Danny explained that there was a pack of coyotes that lived in a wooded corner of the cemetery. I was a little spooked, and amazed that a pack of wild animals could live in the middle of such a big city.

A few weeks later I came home from a night of clubbing and debauchery and in typcial L.A. fashion couldn't find any parking, so I parked a few blocks away from our building. Walking down the treelined sidewalk, I turned a corner and rounding the corner from the opposite direction was a large and ferocious looking coyote. We both stopped and regarded each other for a tense few seconds. Then I slowly turned and walked the other way, and so did the coyote.

***
When I was a young child, my mother used to read me a poem called "Little Boy Blue" by Eugene Fields. It was about a little boy who dies in his sleep, and his toys keep waiting forever for him to come back and play with them again. My mom is never going to win any parenting awards, but in her defense, I made her read it to me over and over. I loved it.

Growing up is like dying. Only slower and more painful. I realize now that in order to become an adult, the child has to die. Some wide eyed wonder has to be surrendered, or the world would be unbearable.

***

In Jason II's apartment. Throbbing and sore. Carpet burned and cathartic. I spill a glass of juice on his nightstand. He says not to worry, he'd clean it up. It won't stain. I knew that it was true. There was no mark of it's passing. Just a shirt on my floor that smelled like him. An empty glass and one less claim to innocence.

***
Seattle. Two years ago. Twenty and I had just gone to the Seattle Cheese Festival. He'd handed me cube after cube of gouda on toothpicks, until I was sick of them and just started putting them in my pocket to dispose of later. He held my hand and drug me along from booth to booth. We parted ways in front of Pike Market. Kissed one another in the rain in front of all the cold, wet tourists. He went to a coffeehouse to study. I went home to do laundry.

Walking downtown through an eerily empty street, I encountered a woman walking from the opposite direction with a dog. No leash. The "dog" was huge and white and looked just like a wolf. The sky was made of ash. As I passed them an ambulance rumbled by somewhere in the distance and as the siren wailed, the dog stopped in his tracks, raised his head and howled.

***
I howl. Am howling, silently at the gym, in my apartment. In my cubicle at work. Padding along on my furry feet. Solitary. Hungry.

***

Think about my dualistic nature. The wolf/lamb dichotomy. The way my mind envisions it, I'm comprised in equal parts of a lamb and a wolf. These two parts of myself coexist with the lamb embodying gentleness, warmth, and a childlike sense of wonder. The wolf embodying aggression, competition, and desire. I realize I've been nurturing and protecting the lamb, at the expense of the wolf. Prizing the supposed virtues of a docile, lamb-like existence, of stilted timidity, and thoughtlessly following the path before me. And the wolf is starving.

As one year rolls steadily into the next I think it is time to feed the wolf. To prowl. To go after the things I desire and claim them as my own.

The Valedictorian

I am a fraud and everybody knows it. Vintage jackets and cashmere sweaters can't disguise it. Forced smiles and dinner party silhouettes do not belie the truth of my lack-luster relationships, my shipwrecked career path, the detritus of my stillborn dreams. The wreckage is all around me. An infinite number of rationalizations cannot shield me from the truth. I am a failure ad infinitum.

Things started out so promising. The last two summers of high school I was already taking college classes, trying to get my core courses out of the way so I could fly through college and graduate early. When I graduated, I was Valedictorian. Most Likely To Succeed. Remember graduation. My mom in a red, flowery dress. As part of the ceremony the grads handed a rose to their mothers and they hugged. Remember my mom commenting later about how awkward our hug was since we never really touched. Remember my speech. The 10,000 Maniacs lyrics. Some bullshit about how the children are the future. Teach them well and let them lead the way. Oh wait. To quote Dina Martina, "If I fail or I succeed, at least I fail or I succeed!"

College didn't go quite as smoothly as I'd hoped. I didn't know what to major in. I didn't know what to do with my life. I was lost. I started out as a drama major, mostly just to annoy my parents. Then switched to journalism. Then to English. Finally I ended up a sociology major because sociology was interesting, and I was bamboozled by a charismatic professor who tricked me into thinking that there were a lot of things one could do with a degree in sociology. My advisor told me that I had enough credits to declare a second major in English, but I waited too long to submit the form, so I ended up just getting my degree in sociology.

For the most part I didn't go to class unless it was something I was interested in. I was working full time and going to school full time. Depressed in a stifling relationship I didn't have the strength to get out of. I'd usually just show up on the first day, get the syllabus, find out when the tests were and show up for those. Remember going to my English history class to discover that there was a pop quiz on Samuel Pepys and the black death. Having never read a single line of the textbook, I ended up just writing inventive little stories about how aliens from the planet Gyruvia built Stonehenge. I got a C on the test, and a note from the professor that he really enjoyed reading my answers, and that if I'd put any effort at all into studying I'd have made an A. (After the semester ended, he asked me out on a date.)

It ended up taking me four years to graduate anyway (and one extra semester for a required government class that I thought I'd already taken). The idea was to take a year off to regroup, and then I'd go to grad school. But 11 years on that still hasn't happened. I did take the GRE about 6 years ago. I did really well, but I never applied for any grad schools because I still didn't know what to major in. The only thing I was interested in was creative writing, and I didn't think grad school would teach me how to be a writer. And the idea of getting into even more debt at this point for something that probably won't yield anything in the way of moolah is not too appealing. Now my test scores have expired anyway.

Instead of continuing my education, I ended up working and getting caught up in the "real" world and all of it's trappings. Work has been a patchwork quilt of cubicle mazes with no cheese at the end to give any incentive to muddle through it. Although they've varied in industry and location, my jobs have been pretty much uniform in their propensity for corroding my soul and making me long for death.

My first real job was for the State of Texas, qualifying people for Medicaid and Medicare. The cool thing was I had my own office. The un-cool thing was the job itself sucked donkey balls. I spent the entire day interviewing people who smelled like hot garbage and determining whether or not they qualified for government assistance. The people who I felt deserved the help most almost never qualified, and the people I felt were just abusing the system always did. It was really demoralizing, and two months into it I quit and went to Paris.

Next I worked for an evil credit card company doing customer service. I got off work at 2 am, and developed a strange group of late night friends who'd meet in all night diners. But not being able to go out and do normal things wore me down, as did the job itself. I still wonder how I managed to do that for a year.

After that I worked for an internationally renowned non profit that helps cancer patients and their families, spending the day answering phone calls and e-mails from people who were dying. Remember taking a call from a man who was diagnosed with stage IV pancreatic cancer. He was going into hospice and didn't know what it meant. I had to explain the role of hospice to him, and explain that he wasn't going there for treatment. He was going there to die. Remember him ending the call by saying, "I just get lonesome sometimes." Remember him thanking me. Remember taking off my headset and crying afterward. I worked there for about two years before being fired for criticizing the CEO's salary on an online discussion forum. (He makes more than the American President, non-profit my ass.)

In Los Angeles I did data entry for a brokerage firm for nine months, before taking off my tie and leaving my access badge on my boss's desk with a note that I wasn't coming back. Remember the secretary, a 300lb glacier of a woman who had a mug that said, "World's Best Secretary!" on it. I always thought that was pretty fucking arrogant. Remember the earthquake that made me horrified that I would be buried under rubble and die with a bunch of corporate ass-hats. Remember the view of the Pacific ocean. Of sailboats rolling on the waves, and after quitting, sitting on the beach with my toes in the salty sand.

For the past 4 and a half years I've worked at another non profit. First answering the phone and now in the Appeals department, telling people that "No, they cannot have their MRIs." Remember the man trying to justify why his insurance should buy him a hot tub. Remember sitting beside the window, watching baby seagulls learning to fly outside. While a trained monkey could do my job, the monkey would probably have at least gotten promoted by now, or developed a serious case of existential ennui. I feel like I'm descending rather than ascending the corporate ladder. Wonder what's next? Should I be practicing my phrasing for "Would you like paper or plastic?" "Would you like fries with that?"

Having nothing better to do, I doodle. Draw 8 squares on a blue post-it, one for each hour of the work day, and fill each square in as the hour passes. Look up the cost of living in New York City. Imagine living in an apartment above a bookstore in Manhattan. Or Greenwich Village. Walking among the beautiful, Italian men in Chelsea. Hard wood floors and gourmet dinners with wine and Jazz. Try to complete a cross-word. Imagine a future where my name is one of the answers. Imagine myself as 35 across.

I live alone in a small, one bedroom hovel, beneath a couple of elephants who’s nightly sexcapades and occasional bowling often keep me awake and punctuate the non existence of my own love life. I've applied a trial and error method to dating. Mostly error. Having watched far too many romantic comedies in my formative years, my romantic expectations are completely askew. My love life could be chronicled in a comic strip full of awkward late night blunders, regrets, missed connections and rejections. But really, love is my biggest drive. The desire to find it. The desire to keep it.

I go to the gym. I make dinner for myself and eat it by myself in front of my computer screen. Hoping for some kind of electronic impulse to find it's way to my desktop. Love. Or something like it. Digitized and sterile. Messages sent from one apartment to another. Or lost, somewhere in the ether. Sitting beside a phone that never rings. Tupperware lunches for tomorrow's work day. Attempt but mostly avoid working on my supposed novel. It's about a 30something man who sits alone and works in a cubicle at a job he mostly hates. Write what you know! Dutifully submit short stories to writing contests or literary journals. I'm collecting rejection letters in a drawer. Eventually I'll be able to wallpaper my house with them. If I had a house.

Home. There is no corresponding place that I can imagine that accurately matches the feelings this word conjures up. No place really feels like home to me. Home is a sit-com memory, and I am nostalgic for a life I've never lived. Imagine opening my door to discover that Alice has made her famous, vegan pot roast. The rest of the Brady's are rehearsing for American Idol try-outs. Despair that the Facts of Life are not a fact of life, and Tootie will never borrow my roller-skates. George Jefferson will never call me a honky. I will never be 35 across. As I approach the age of 33, I feel like I have nothing to show for it. A disconnected life filled with mistakes, false starts and miscommunications. There is no denying it. The valedictorian has failed in every measurable definition of success. Ad infinitum.

Are You a Boy or a Girl?

Are you a boy or a girl? Growing up I'd always hear this question from strangers in supermarkets, in restaurants, at gas stations. My mom would be embarrassed. I would be embarrassed by proxy. My mom would correct people when they called me "she" instead of he, but they still said it.

The androgynous haircut I had for most of my childhood didn't help. No matter how I was dressed, people would still ask. Or ask me why I was wearing boy clothes. I was always small and thin and waifish. There was always something in my manner that defied people’s concept of what a “boy” should be.

Anytime I stood with my hand on my hip, or drank with my pinkie sticking out, my mom would correct me. I didn't understand what I was doing wrong, or why it bothered her so much. But from a young age it was reinforced that I couldn't be myself. That the natural me wasn't acceptable somehow. So I did my best to build a persona that was acceptable. I got perfect grades. I never misbehaved. I never drank or smoked or said bad words. I never experimented with drugs or did the things that kids usually do…just to show that I was good. That I had value. No matter how hard I tried, though, I could never do things right. I could never be what they expected. I was always a disappointment. Even if they didn’t say it, I could feel it. When I joined the drama club instead of the baseball team. When I played my Cyndi Lauper albums. When I’d do my best Tina Turner impersonation to “Private Dancer,” it was clear that I wasn’t the child they’d wanted to have.

Kindergarten: The boys were all playing football. The girls were all cheerleaders. I sat on the sidelines. I didn't feel like I belonged to either group. A girl in my class came up to me and asked why I wasn't playing football with the boys, and I said that somebody had to be the audience. That's what I've always felt like. The outsider looking in, observing these strange customs with no purpose and no place.

7th grade: Our coach/history "teacher" was helping prepare for some banquet going on that night. We were borrowing spare tables from the church down the street. He instructed all of the boys to get into a truck to load up the tables and all of the girls to stay in the cafeteria and line up chairs. I walked up to him, confused, and asked him where I should go. I honestly didn't know. I remember how disgusted he looked when he told me to get in the truck with the rest of the boys. But I didn't feel like one of them. I remember feeling like I was too dainty and fragile to be lifting tables. I ended up just holding the door for the "real" guys.

Anything typically associated with masculinity gave me anxiety. I couldn't even say words like strong or muscles or spit, because they seemed so alien. Before my voice changed people always mistook me for my mom on the phone. In high school at a football game, a man said of me, “She's cute.” Only to be corrected, “She's a he.” At the UIL one act play, I was Hermes, and again, another theater group asked, "Was that a boy or a girl?" The girl's bathroom or the boy's bathroom. I always remembered thinking, are these my only options?

By the time I was in Junior High, the question, for the most part, had changed. It had now become, "Are you gay?" I'd always answer, "No!" Horrified. Being very sheltered as a child, I didn't know exactly what being gay meant, but I knew it wasn't something you should be. I thought it had something to do with wearing sweaters and being swishy, (Three's Company being my only reference point.) I was never “confused.” I knew that I was attracted to guys and not girls. I'd figured that out at 10 or so when I first started masturbating.

At first I'd try to fantasize about me and some hot girl, but something just felt wrong about that scenario. My thought process went, "Why would some hot girl have sex with me?" So I substituted myself with a hot guy. That was closer. But then I thought, this is my sexual fantasy, and I'm not even in it! And before I knew it, my brain had taken the next logical step and replaced the girl with me. It was like a bell resounding in my stomach. And I remember thinking, "Oh." And that was that. (I never questioned why a hot guy would be having sex with me.)
But the question of exactly who I was and how I fit in persisted.

In college, wearing vinyl pants and a velvet shirt, both purchased from the girl's section of Hot Topic, I was dancing at a straight club with my friend Kathy. My hair was longer then, and dyed red. A drunken frat guy came up to us, we assumed to hit on Kathy, when he looked at me and said, "You're beautiful." I panicked and said, "I'm with her!" He still didn't get it. Walking to my car afterward, a truck full of guys catcalled after me and said, "Hey space-girl, nice pants!"

“You’re a very handsome man,” the guy at the coffeehouse tells me as I wait for Travis to show so we can go to a concert. Now I look like a man. My features have become more masculine. I have a well defined jaw, usually covered in stubble. A receding hairline. A muscular, man's body. A hairy chest. There is no doubt now when people see me how to categorize me. But even when sex is established, questions remain.

Gay people are no different than straight people. There's still the need to classify. To pin one another down. To know where you stand. Butch or femme. Top or bottom. Which category do you fit into? People see me, the way I walk or my mannerisms, the tight t-shirts I wear and make assumptions that are usually wrong. I don't want to be pigeon holed. I just want to be sexual. To do what feels good. As it turns out, more often than not, I'm the one on top. But not always. I'm attracted to guys who are masculine. I'm attracted to guys who are feminine. I'd prefer being with someone who didn't have some assumed role in bed. To let whatever happens happen.

I never felt like a girl trapped in a man’s body. I never dressed in drag. But I never watched a football game either. Or tried to change a tire. I still walk along a line in between somewhere. Identifying with both, and ultimately with neither group. These days I’m mostly comfortable in my own skin. I enjoy being a man. But the embarrassed little boy who could never be himself will always be part of me, will be reflected in the way I interact and the way the world is filtered through me. I carry him with tenderness and tell him to walk unafraid.

Bryan

Today is his birthday. We met in 1999 when I was 23. We met online, and I decided before I'd even met him that he was going to be my boyfriend. He had no choice in the matter. I'd based my decision on his cute mug, dig those cheekbones!, the fact that he was studying physics, was a vegetarian and liked Tom Waits. Those were simpler times.

We talked on the phone, and he suggested that I stop by his place and hang out since I was on my way to I Luv Video to return some movies anyway. (I never made it to the video store.) Instead we instantly started making out, and were rolling around on his floor until we were surprised by his roommate and his roommate's boyfriend who were returning from a night out.

From then on we were fairly inseperable. He went with me Christmas shopping to find porcelain chickens for my mom. On New Year's Eve when everyone was certain Y2K was going to wreak havoc on everything, and I was sick in bed, he came over to my apartment and made me soup. When he was out of town for work, I stayed in his apartment and watered his plants. We never talked about being boyfriends, or being exclusive. We just woke up one day and there we were, a year later, living together. Happy.

Bryan introduced me to Jazz, Soul and Brazilian music. Stan Getz and Joao Gilberto. Coltrane. Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes. Caetano Veloso, Os Mutantes and Buena Vista Social Club. One of my happiest memories is a day we spent getting ready for one of our famous dinner parties. Just us in our warm apartment, chopping up vegetables and making sauces while listening to Nina Simone's Nina and Piano on his little, salmon colored record player. Everyone's gone to the moon!

I was trying to be a vegetarian when I met him, and after we got together, I became one in earnest. Bryan was a vegan at the time (except when he made an exception, which was fairly frequently, let's face it!) He's the one who taught me how to cook, how to cut an onion, how to make homemade pasta sauce, the beauty and wonder of nutritional yeast. It's funny to me that now I'm the hard core vegetarian and he's become a total carnivore. I love cooking with Bryan. I think the best part of the day is when we would make dinner together.

Remember going across the street for breakfast burritos in the mornings. Ali, the proprieter would inevitably say, "No vegetarian left. Your brother take the last one!" No matter how many times we explained that we weren't related.

Bryan was the first boyfriend I had that I really slept with (actual sleep not hot sweaty monkey lovin') on a regular basis. When we first started dating I was scared to move for fear of waking him up, even though he was sprawled across the whole bed, leaving me a few inches of space. Fast forward a few years laters, when I'd just shove him back over to his side of the bed and yank the cover from him. Remember one night when he leapt out of bed and yelled, "That snake just bit me!" I was horrified, and leapt out of bed myself, pulling the blankets away, wondering if there was an actual snake in our bed, before realizing he'd just had a bad dream. We went back to sleep and the next morning he didn't even remember it. It took me forever to get used to sleeping with another person. And when we were no longer together it took me even longer to get used to sleeping alone again.

I also have Bryan to thank for my introduction to bad movies. Thanks to him I've seen Battlefield Earth, Can't Stop the Music, Sgt Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band the Motion Picture, Best Little Whore House in Texas, Crossroads, and The Exorcist II. Remember sitting with Dave and Lizzayn and Courtney, watching bad movies and drinking. Such good times. Because of Bryan I met a whole group of wonderful people who I love, and who have made my life so much better by their presence. For that I am most thankful.

Bryan also has his strange peccadilloes. The things that would drive me crazy. Like how he'd put the toilet paper on the roll so that it rolls from the bottom and not the top. How he'd fixate on a song, usually a really awful one, and play it a thousand times until I couldn't stand to hear it again. Other things were more endearing. Like how he'd get angry about things like potholes and write letters to the City. His strange distaste for Paul Rieser, ketchup and the Christmas Cone will always stay with me. As will his strange endearments for me: Mon Petit Beaucoup. Crazy Mr. Two Socks. Nudibranch. Two Hundred Pound Tumor Ridden Duck. A Cup Full of Toes.

Our personalities always seemed to mesh so perfectly. He was laid back and nerdy, but (I think) amused by my dramatics and my silliness. I know that he has never ceased to amuse me and make me laugh. Which is why he continues to be my bosom friend. He is now the benchmark by which all subsequent prospective boyfriends are measured. That's a high bar to aspire to.

Because of Bryan I finally had the courage to leave the state of Texas and explore other parts of the country. He's enriched my life so much, and has always been a source of love and support for me, even when I drove him crazy or made decisions that he didn't agree with. We've known one another for nearly 10 years, and I hope that we continue to be BFFs for the rest of our lives.

So Happy Birthday, Bryan! I love you and I miss you.
--Lance

The Church Goers

I grew up in a tiny little Texas town called Iola. Iola is a bustling metropolis of roughly 500 people, the majority of whom I'm related to in some way or another. There is one paved street in Iola. Main St. There is a post office, a school, a grocery, a filling station, a cafe and a feed store. There was a bank, but it recently closed.

There are also 7 churches. A Methodist church, a Pentecostal church, a Church of Christ, a Lutheran church, a Missionary Baptist church and two Free-Will Baptist churches that bookend either end of town. I would be hard pressed to explain the differences in ritual and theology among these churches, but suffice to say that to the parishners, there are distinct and important qualities that separate them, and each flock casts a wary, mistrustful eye on the other six. Despite this surplus of churches, I had somehow managed by the age of six to have never set foot in any of them.

It wasn’t that my family had anything against the baby Jesus. In my grandmother’s house, for instance, there are two pictures hanging in the guest room. One of Jesus and the other of John Wayne. John Wayne's picture hangs ever so slightly higher. My mom made me say my prayers every night before I went to sleep. Mostly I prayed for super powers and to be taller. But we were never church goers, as it were.

I began going to church because I was hopelessly smitten with a girl (I was six). Because she went to Sunday school, I was going to go too. So every Sunday I went to the Evergreen Free Will Baptist Church with my bible and a dollar for the collection plate. Jesus always seems to need his $$$. Right away I had questions that the Sunday school teacher couldn't answer. Like If the universe was full of nothing and then God created the heavens and the earth, who created God? And exactly how do dinosaurs fit into a 7 day creation theory? And if God could really do anything, why didn't he make people good, and stop natural disasters and diseases? My questions were met with consternation and resistance, until finally I was told to stop asking questions, to just accept everything the bible said, and be quiet. And give Jesus my dollar.

Iola is a poor, ru