Amongst the bears (again)

I had forgotten all about it until a guy at Peet's asked me, on Friday, "So, are you going to the Harrison Street fair on Sunday?" Oh, right, that. I'd avoided it in the past, as I'd avoided all bear themed events, but the year before, after becoming friends with a bear enthusiast, I had discovered that the bears are actually FUN, so I'd attended Harrison Street with two friends and had a great time. So the debate: do I go again this year? My friends that I went with last year have since moved away, and I no longer have friends here to do that sort of thing with, at least not on short notice.

Today I thought, well, maybe I'll go, but I'll walk there and bring my camera, and take pictures along the way, so if it's too much for me to be there by myself, I can always retreat behind my friend the camera, and if the whole thing turned out terribly lame, I could justify the trip as a walk with my camera into a neighborhood where I rarely take my camera. But at two o'clock, with the winds already gusting outside my window, I thought, well, I'm not sure, especially after getting the news about Salvatore. Marcio encouraged me to go, so I decided to go to Peet's, and there I ran into a friend who lives in that neighborhood and although he wasn't planning on attending, he assured me it would be warmer down there. (God bless San Francisco's micro-climates!) So I went, and he was right.

I wasn't there long before I ran into Tony. Tony lived down the street from me in Brooklyn, but moved here recently. Although we'd barely known each other at the time, we'd shared a room at IML in 2002, and had sort of permanently bonded as a result, so it was great to see him, and it turned out that he is now living right around the corner from me. I hadn't intended to drink, but he bought me a beer, which I wanted mostly to get a bad taste out of my mouth. (Maybe gum would have been a better idea, but I didn't have any.) And once I started drinking, I was pretty much assured to spend a good long while there. I stayed with Tony for a while but we got spearated when I ran into other friends... and then other friends ... and then .. you get the idea. I always forget that this is a small town and I've lived here more than half a decade and despite being quite shy, I seem to know a lot of people. Some I hadn't seen in a while, others I'd hung out with just this past Friday, and I even met a few new people. I only had two drinks, and turned down an opportunity or two to go to the Eagle afterwards, so hopefully I won't be hurting tomorrow.

In the past, these sort of events always left me feeling inadequate: not hot enough, not cool enough, whatever. But today I had the opposite reaction; just enough affirmation from strangers (some who were quite, um, friendly!), just enough pleasant interactions with people I know and enjoy, all without needing to get hammered (or worse) to feel okay about myself., all without needing to embarrass myself for the sake of further validation (don't ask), and I managed to keep my spirits up despite running into my ex. (More on that, perhaps, another time.) A good day, and a surprising turn from a morning that saw me unable to finish my breakfast because I couldn't stop crying. Yes, a good day, and the only bad part was that Marcio wasn't here to enjoy it with me.

Requiem Salvatore

It was mid-June, 1998, a lightly drizzly night, and Peter was out sweeping the street, and I was out with him. It wasn't uncommon for us to be outside that late, when the streets of South Philadelphia would be calm and quiet. Days earlier we had lost our roommate's cat Muffkin, so when I heard the soft, plaintive cries of a cat somewhere nearby, I went looking for their source, believing I might be the hero and I might have found the missing cat. What I found instead surprised me: under a car, a strange-looking creature. "Is it a cat?" I wasn't even sure. We lured it out with Muffkin's food and it immediately started following me. The colors of its face were unlike anything I had seen, split right down the middle, which I woud later find out was the mark of a tortoiseshell cat, and I would also later find out that tortoiseshell cats were always female. She was so dirty that when I pet her, my hand came back black, but she seemed friendly, and her dirtiness suggested she'd been on the streets for a while. I wasn't sure what to do, so we decided that we would walk inside for a minute, and leave the door ajar, and if she followed us in, we would keep her. And she did, and so we did.

A crazy cracked-out neighbor passed, and in his crazy way, grabbed the mail out of another neighbor's box and scattered it on the street. Peter picked up the loose mail, and he name on the envelopes was Louis DiSalvatore, and so we named this strange new creature Salvatore.

The next day she disappeared in the house, was gone the whole day, and when she reappeared, she had completely cleaned herself. She would run to the window when she heard my voice on the street and bound down the stairs to greet me when I arrived home. She liked Peter just fine but she loved me. She had a litter of kittens a few months later, and Peter's brother accidentally let her out before we were able to get her fixed, so she got pregnant again. She was so attached to me that she jumped on my lap to let me know that her water was breaking, and let me carry her up to the cardboard box we'd prepared for her and her soon-to-arrive kittens, and I stayed with her for the entire delivery as I had the first time, but this time she needed my help pushing out the first of the babies. He was coming out feet first and she was having trouble getting him out because his feet were getting caught, so I had to help her push him out by grabbing the kittens paws and pulling as gently as I could, in time to her pushes. The baby came out healthy, and five more followed.

When our house was filled with cats, Sal was not known for her personality. She was always a bit touchy about where she would allow you to touch her, and was the only cat I had who would swat or nip. But when she was away from other cats, she'd revert to the sweet kitten I'd fallen in love with years earlier.

She survived getting hit by a car in front of our house, right in front of Peter's eyes, and I still remember him screaming for me from the street, inconsolable. Like a cat, she had gone and hid after the impact, but we had found her, and she'd let us bring her inside. She'd been fine.

She was the third of our cats to come live with me in Brooklyn, after Olive and Pea, but shortly after she arrived I had to move to San Francisco and I left them all there. temporarily. Pea returned to Philadelphia, and Olive came here to SF, but Sal stayed in Brooklyn with my friend Wayne. I always imagined we would live together again one day, that I would come back for her and bring her here. I saw her earlier this month when I was visiting Wayne, and she clearly remembered me, and it was so good to see her. She's a reminder of a simpler time in my life, before I'd quite formed, before I'd become whatever it is that I am now, before I'd gone through my problems with Peter and eventually moved away to a raft of new problems here. She knew me before I knew myself, and I had rescued her from the street, and we loved one another without wondering why.

This morning Wayne texted me to tell me that Sal was gone. I know she is just a cat, and not even the nicest cat I've ever known, but I'm taking this one kind of hard. I couldn't rescue you this time, my little girl, but I hope you're happy wherever you are, and I hope you still remember me, because I remember you.

Neighbor Night

Last night, I decided to go out with my neighbor Garett. We've lived in the same building for three or four years, and while we've hung out socially before when we would bump into each other, we've never actually planned to go out together before. I was looking forward to it. Garett is awesome.

I started by going upstairs and hanging out with him in his apartment. I've lived in this apartment just shy of five years, and have been friendly with a number of other tenants (most of whom have since moved out), but I have never set foot in any other apartment in the building before. It was really quite interesting to see what Garett had done with his space, versus what I've done, considering that our spaces are almost identical. He has a better view than I do, but I also have a lot less stairs to climb to mine, and my plumbing fixtures are cooler than his, but he has a bedroom door where I just have a doorway. It was a bit like hearing a radical remix of a familar song. We drank whiskey and listened to music and talked about our neighbors and smoked a cigarette on the fire escape.

Then we went to 440, which of course used to be called Daddy's, and Garett calls it Debbie's. I only discovered 440 a year and a half ago, but went there a lot in the six months leading up to meeting Marcio, and since I've been with him, it's been pretty much the only place I've gone. It's walkable, which is nice. On the walk there, in front of the gym, I ran into a friend I hadn't seen in almost a year.

We stayed at Debbie's for two beers, or maybe it was three, and then went to a bear-themed dance party south of Market. I texted Marcio: "of course they have food at the bear party" but what they didn't have was PEOPLE, so we didn't even get one drink there, but went instead to the Lone Star, one of many places here that I've never been. The Lone Star is a bear bar, I guess, though it was also pretty empty, and the most memorable part of that experience was that there was a table of Krispy Kreme doughnuts right inside the door. Yes, it's true. Yes, I had one. We stayed chatting in a corner of the back patio until closing and then we came back here. We had one last beer in my apartment, for the symmetry of it, and then Garett went upstairs and I went to sleep.

And then ... today. I ask myself how on earth I ever used to manage to go out two or three nights a week, considering that today I had a headache all day and never even managed to leave the house, and my biggest accomplishment was a three and a half hour nap. Seriously - less than a year ago, I would have had a day like today but then gone out again tonight, and possibly again Monday night. How on earth did I ever get anything done? It's nice not to feel like I have to do that all the time.

An Untitled Poem

Flakes of light scatter across me
like ashes, fallen from heaven:
forsaken, burned for your memory,
for you,
the creator, yes, my lightsmith, finally
the summation of nothing and
everything, finally
the remainder of all divisions,
finally

burned as in effigy, brilliant,
then multiplied: against zero,
and now

the light has its trajectory: down,
across me, and the face you built.

They move too fast, and I hold tight,
frightened that you won't stop
and frightened
that you already have.

(8.14.08)

Most poetry comes to me when I'm trying to fall asleep. I hadn't written a poem in many months, and I was fine with that since I'd been working so hard at my fiction instead. But this came to me about ten days ago, again while I was in bed, and I reached out of bed and typed most of it into my iPhone. I'm grooving on technology.

This Is Not Livejournal

I haven't posted much lately, have I? Goodness, I'm already making excuses for myself, and my excuse this time is that I don't want this to turn messy like my livejournal did. I started my livejournal in 2002, probably around the same time of year as I started this, while I was living in NYC. I was not very happy at the time, and shortly after, I moved to San Francisco, which was extremely difficult for me. As a result, my livejournal turned into a place where I dumped consistently moody, distantly poetic ruminations. It couldn't have been fun to read and eventually I stopped when I thought that I was only making my situation worse by putting that much negative energy out there.

So I have plenty I could say here. But I really don't want to delve into every little thing that bums me out, even though my writing tends to lean in that direction. So, yes, my boyfriend lives hundreds of miles away and I can't afford to go visit him, and I've moved beyond stress into panic about my lack of an income, and I struggle every day not to feel like a total failure. Yes, it's a struggle, but somehow, I think it's a struggle that I'm still succeeding at.

This Is Cafe Floré

It's one of those days in San Francisco: the morning was a bit cool and foggy, but as the sun began to burst through the fog, I sought refuge from the wind in the enclosed outdoor area of Cafè Floré, where I feel the sun changing the chemical makeup of my skin. Most interesting here, and most telling, are the people sitting around me.

To my left, a pair of nondescript, middle-aged, but somewhat handsome German businessmen, both wearing pinstriped dress pants.

To my direct right, there is a person whose gender I can't determine, with fuchsia and orange hair, who is apparently Parisian, listening to a flamboyant American guy who is involved in film somehow and has been speaking at length about the wonders of Christina Applegate, and later, Elizabeth Montgomery.

Across from me there's a set of tourists. I know they're tourists because they're speaking a language other than English and taking photos of one another with a small pink camera that has a matching carrying case. I'm not sure what language they are speaking. I think it's German again, but it's hard to hear them over the English being spoken to my right. It's two men and a woman and I'd be lying if I didn't admit I'm curious what their relationship to one another is. One guy is incredibly handsome and looks very familiar to me (but probably isn't), the other guy is not as good-looking but dresses to maximally show off a fantastic body. The woman is pretty but seems out of place, like she thought she was going to be attending a cocktail party. One of the guys shows affection both to the woman and to the other guy.

Next to them is a couple who eat and don't speak and look they're someone's parents. Are they from here? Hard to say, but there's an untouched pack of Marlboro lights on the table.

And the fun part is, it's like this all the time here.

Adventures in Technology

Marcio arrived this morning, a bit later than we'd hoped because it turns out that Greyhound is evil. Or worse than evil: inefficient. I went downtown to meet him and while we were down there, I suggested we check into getting him that much-coveted iPhone. So we stopped into an AT&T store, and they informed us that there were none in stock, so then we hit the Apple Store, where we were cheerfully informed that an iPhone could be ours in mere ... well, hard to say how long the wait in line would be. So we got into the queue like good little soldiers. A tour bus drove by and the driver, who I promise you is not as funny as he thinks he is, said "Those people are already waiting in line for the 4G which comes out next year." I think he was inspired for his joke by the fact that Marcio had a pillow with him. "It's crazy that we're waiting in line for a phone," the suburban dad in front of us commented. Crazier than waiting for Rolling Stone tickets? I wondered.

We waited about 45 minutes in that line and then we were cheerfully whisked into a super secret special area in the front of the store that was cordoned off for all non-apple store employees and all people who were not ready to convert to the cult of 3G. Our baptism would be witnessed by all. Except it wasn't, because the transaction didn't work quite as hoped: as always, I have to make things unnecessarily complicated, a swirling mass of family plans and upgrade eligibility. But I should point out that our failure was handled as cheerfully as everything is always handled in the Apple Store. I want some of their kool-aid. So we had to go back to the AT&T store next to get our sim cards swapped. I've had bad experiences there, but not today. Oh no, not today. Today I met Andrew who was the most pleasant, efficient and knowledgeable customer service agent I could possibly have hoped for. If Andrew doesn't already have a fan club, I might start one.

And then it was done. Marcio has his iPhone and he can't keep his hands off it. It reminds me when I got mine, which was actually only a few days before Marcio and I met. How romantic, or something like that.

Feeling Antisocial

I'm back in San Francisco, been back for two days. It's typically gloomy for August, and that's what I expected, and not so bad after two weeks of 80s and 90s in NY and PA. But I have this strange sense that something has changed in my absence. Yesterday I came to Peet's coffee to write, at what should have been an off hour, and it was so crowded I could barely find a seat. This morning I went to Sparky's for breakfast and it was so noisy there that I found myself shoveling food into my face to escape the noise. More so than usual, that is. Now I'm back at Peet's again and it's crowded again. It makes me want to just go home.

Maybe it's me. Actually, probably it's me. Maybe I'm discombobulated after two weeks away and a seriously disrupted sleep schedule. Maybe I'm upset because last night I had dinner with a friend who is moving away (again). Maybe I'm secretly distressed at getting lured into caring about the contestants on Shear Genius, despite promising myself that I wouldn't. Yes, that's got to be it.

Why is it so unpleasant to get stuck in the airport?

1. You cannot lose sight of your carryon luggage for even a second. I can't tell you how much I want to put my backpack down. I really, really want to put my backpack down. What did I pack in here, the Statue of Liberty?

2. There's often nowhere to sit, and never anywhere comfortable.

3. Everything is so expensive. Don't you think a kiosk selling bottled water for $1 would sell more than twice the kiosk that charges $2? Hah.. is it even possible to find water for as cheap as $2 in an airport?

4. Everything is sterile in appearance and probably seething with germs. Not that I care, of course.

5. You can't trust anyone. Trust is un-american!

6. Those competing PA announcements could drive anyone mad.

7. Anticipation of the inhumane torture that awaits in the air.

8. I'm sure there's plenty that I forgot.

Welcome to Nowhere

I am in JFK airport, waiting for a delayed flight to take me home. It's not so bad: the flight was pushed from 9:10 to 10:30 to 10:45, but an hour and a half is nothing. It's my own damn fault for getting here 90 minutes early. At 10 pm on a Wednesday, the airport is probably as empty as its going to get, which lends a certain aspect of the surreal to the experience. Yeah, I always love me some surreal.

The yard or me?

This is me at the side of my parents' house, circa 1986:



I have a vague memory of this picture being taken but what's funny is I don't remember who took it. I know it was taken with my Canon Snappy, quite possibly by Noel, who would not even have been 10 at the time. Yes, I think it was Noel.

This morning I took a picture from a similar vantage point, without me in it:



What's changed more, the yard or me? You can see the destruction of the woods that were behind the house, which I referenced in an earlier post, and you can see how the shrubs haven't gotten any significant attention in a long time, and if you really knew what you were looking for, you would see how much the pin oak that borders the left side of both images has declined.

But some things haven't changed. I'm still wandering in the yard, taking pictures of leaves and stuff. The house stands as a quiet figure in both pictures, quiet, not hinting at all the white noise going on inside.

I go home tonight, back to San Francisco, and once I'm no longer here in Beacon, no longer in contact with the world that I spun out of, I'll probably stop posting on this recurring theme. Probably. Well, possibly.

Tulipfera

I think it was 1998, and Peter and I were driving in a U-Haul away from Waterloo Gardens in Exton, Pennsylvania, when we decided to stop at another, much smaller nursery on the way home. There we found a sad little tulip tree in a pot for $50 with an additional 20% off. At the time, I was experiencing an intense fondness for tulip trees so we decided to get it. What's the point of having a U-Haul if you can't buy big stuff that you don't need?

We took the tree home and put it in a pot on the front step. Outside the pot, it was probably five or six feet tall at the time, and its trunk was no more than an inch in diameter. It was cute, but to keep it in that pot wasn't what was meant for a tree like that: tulip trees grow to be the largest tree in the northeast, and so trying to grow it in a pot forever would be like trying to raise a lion in a shoebox.

A year or so later, we brought the little guy to my parents' house in Beacon, NY and planted it there, next to the garage. I can't say it's gotten the best care or the most attention, but in the seven or so years that its been there, it's grown to become significantly taller than the house.

I have my issues with visiting here, but I do love to see the tulip tree. Last week I finally pruned off the lowest limbs, probably removing every single limb it had when it arrived here, and so now I can actually go and stand under its canopy. I think this tree will possibly be here long after I'm gone, and it gives me a great amount of pleasure, like a sense of parenthood but also a comforting knowledge of my insignificance on this planet. The tulip tree reminds me.

I've planted or participated in the planting of probably about two dozen trees, maybe three, almost all in Phildelphia, and almost all of them are still standing. It may be the most important thing I've ever done. The tulip tree reminds me.

My big gay life, part 1.

Since I've gone to the trouble of putting an adult warning on this piece o' blog, I might as well post something other than photos of cute children and pretty flowers. Maybe I should introduce myself a bit more?

This is me. I took this picture of myself at my boyfriend's apartment in Long Beach. Did I take my shirt off for the benefit of the camera (benefit being a relative term, of course), or was it already off because, well, it's hot down in southern California? Only my hairdresser knows for sure.

This is my boyfriend, Marcio. I took this picture outside the garage in the back of the building I live in, about a month after we met. Did he take his shirt off for the benefit of the camera? Hell yes. Does he like this picure? Probably not.

Here we are at a big gay dance party in San Francisco. Big! Gay! Do I feel self-conscious being shirtless in public, next to him? Um, yeah. Are my eyes always that large? I hope not. Marcio and I met at a dance party and this was the first party we attended as a couple, nine months later (lest you think we're big gay dance party whores). I cropped a bunch of people out of this picture and I hope they aren't offended.

Marcio's birthday party. I know this picture is cute and all but to quote countless sorority girls, "Oh my god, I got so drunk..." For the record, I quote sorority girls all the time, but I try not to act like one.

This is Olive. Like her dad, she has a somewhat sordid past. And like her dad, she got fat.

On the ferry to Larkspur, approximately a year ago, taken by my Dad. I post this purely to prove that I do know how to smile.

I have a million more pictures I could put up but I'm not yet convinced that anyone cares, and it is kinda late. I go back home in two days, so I'm starting to try to shift back to California-time, but I should probably occupy myself more productively than blogging into a void.

Yes, Charlie ...

Turns out this guy was NOT Santa. I must have known that, because I look desperate to get off his lap.

I just had an idea for a Hollywood screenplay in which some guy tracks down the fake Santa in a picture from his childhood and maybe becomes convinced that the guy really IS Santa Claus. Sorta Miracle on 34th Street meets What About Bob? I have no intention of writing it, but in the right hands it could probably be pretty funny. In the wrong hands ... it could be deadly.

Stimpy: So what'll happen?
Ren: That's just it. We don't know. Maybe something bad, maybe something good. I guess we'll never know... because you're going to guard it. You won't touch it, will you?

Like most kids, I knew Santa didn't exist well before I was willing to admit it to myself. I say "like most kids" without even a shred of scientific data to back up such a claim, only my pathetic to desire to belong to a group larger than myself. I wasn't nearly as bitter about the deception as some other people were (my brother, who as a teenager would find ANY excuse to be angry, is one example), because I think I felt that the magic of childhood couldn't be spoon fed from the adult world, it was simply not their place to invent it for us. I invented enough on my own. Blah blah blah... I should get back to that screenplay that I'm not writing.

Cuteness alert

This is my niece Thalia. She is two but I've really only seen her three times, and two of those were in the past week. She is fascinated with me, but frightened of me as well. "She's probably scared of facial hair," her sister Sarah informed me. I am fascinated with her as well, possibly because she looks so much like her mother (my sister, who was my best friend growing up) and I think she seems to have my mother's personality exactly, the sort of girl who could rule the world but probably won't. Yes, I'm quite fond of her.

And here is my nephew Alex. He is four. We were in the car on the way to Philadelphia when I took this picure. He got a bit cranky later, but at the start of the trip, he was quite content with Penny and Ticky. He likes me because I put him on the ceiling. And you know, I'm fine with that.

Ultimately this post was an experiment in the insanity of twenty-first century technology. Can I really take a picture on my phone and email it directly to my new blog? Yes, Charlie, there is a Santa Claus.

Somewhere Safe

the problem with death is that you have some hundred years and then they can build buildings on your only bones.
- ani difranco

Tonight, at twilight, I wandered, finally, into the space that used to be the woods behind my parents' house. Yes, the woods symbolized my childhood and so their loss is a bit intense, but I'm pretty well aware that my childhood is long gone, and I've advocated my parents getting out of this place for years, and if they had, I don't think I would have given the loss of access to the woods much thought. But standing in a wood-chip strewn clearing that used to be a wooded thicket was still a bit depressing.

Later, I would remember running along that trail with my sister, always playing her games, or taking my bike in there and seeing how much bodily harm I could cause myself when no one was watching. Later, I would remember jumping off the small cliff and banging my knee, limping home, and I would remember the game where we jumped from island to island in the swamp, and one or both of us would invariably fall in. Later I'd remember passing through the woods by myself, to the trailer park on the other side to visit my friend Andrew, really the only friend outside my sister that I had in my childhood, and I'd remember the time we went skating on the frozen swamp and got so lost that I eventually ended up peeing on myself. Later, at sunset, as I made my way back into the house, I'd think about all those things, but as I stood in the clearing I didn't concern myself with any of that, noting instead that with all the landmarks flattened and removed, there was no way to remember where Phaedra, our first cat, was buried. I don't even remember Phaedra, what she looked like, but I remember visiting her grave in the woods thirty years ago, and for some reason, tonight, accompanied only by fading sun, I felt an inexplicable compulsion to find her remains and bring them somewhere safe.

I Welcome Me

I've been meaning to come back to this for a while now, one entry on the disorganized to-do list that runs in my head all the time, but just like last time I ventured into this arena, I was inspired to do so by my brother. He mentioned last week that he was blogging again, and I thought, oh yeah, I've been meaning to do that too. I might have even said it out loud. This evening I read one of Noel's posts, typically sad and brilliant, and a topic close to my heart, and it propelled me into typing this up, these thoughts, my random thoughts.

It's been a weird week. I'm back in the house where I grew up. In the past week I've spent time in almost every city where I've ever lived. The worlds I left behind seem to be doing just fine without me, but all embrace my return graciously. I get overwhelmed. The sadness I feel at the act of living, of watching everything change and shift, is almost unbearable at times, and indistinguishable from joy.

We had a party for my dad today, but Noel was at work and Alara was sick and slept through it, which left me with no allies. I did fine by keeping my presence minimal, and spent most of my time hiding in the cell they've got me sleeping in.

They destroyed the woods that lay behind my parents' house, to be replaced by a housing complex, and at Peter's house in Philadelphia, where I was yesterday, there's a hideous structure being erected next door, blocking the view of the sky, the view of the city. Magic exchanged for madness.

I think I'd like to write something funny, but for now, I have this.

And now, uh, you have it too.