This is War: Some Ideas For Gaining Equality

Today the New York State Senate voted against a bill that would provide marriage rights to homosexual couples. The outcome was especially disappointing as eight Democrats, generally the party with which gay people identify themselves, voted no, and even more disappointing as the State Assembly had resoundingly voted for it, and the Governor had promised to sign it into law if the Senate had passed it as well.

This development comes just over a year after California's voters overturned a judicial decision that allowed gay marriage in that state, through the state's referendum process.

New York and California are generally considered to be the vanguards of American culture, housing almost our entire television, movie, publishing and music industries. And the right-wing often decries those same media outlets as being excessively liberal, which would suggest that NY and CA are some of the most liberal states in the country. But within a year, both have rejected gay marriage.

Not to mention the total nonstarter that is the repeal of the national Defense of Marriage Act.

Let me make something clear here. Gay marriage is not a question of why or how, but of when. There are simply no legitimate arguments against what is ultimately a violation of the civil rights of a segment of the population. There is no precedent of any other institution, aside from its own military, that any American government, at any level, supports while that institution practices discrimination. The religious argument will not hold, as long as special rights and privileges are offered to married couples, as we have a pretty clear rule in this country that we cannot allow any religion, or even a collective of all the major faiths, to dictate policy. It's stated quite plainly in the Constitution.

So gay marriage is inevitable. In fact, it already exists in a handful of states, and it's simply a matter of time until the other states have to fall in line. Simply a matter of time. But if you ask me, that time should be now. Not next year, not after the next election cycle, not in a generation, not even next week, but now. It is an ongoing violation of civil rights and it must be stopped.

It's a war. These people want, for no meaningful or supportable reason, to withhold rights from you. They want to take, and hold, what is rightfully yours.

I am not an expert but I do have a few ideas, possible ways to combat this distressing trend.

1. Be visible. Remind all your friends and relatives that a vote for any politician who does not actively support gay rights is a vote against your rights. Your civil rights. If your pleasant but conservative cousin broke into your house and took your iPod, you'd be less chatty with her at Thanksgiving dinner. But you'll let her vote for conservatives who deny you your rights, in essence stealing something from you.

2. Ask your truly pro-gay straight friends to do the same.

3. Don't sign online petitions as a way to convince yourself you're getting involved. They're one hundred percent pointless.

4. Rallies at City Hall are fine and all, but they're probably not more effective than online petitions. The rest of the country looks at us and says, "Oh, look, the gays are angry and protesting in a place that no one goes. Well, no matter, they'll be over it tomorrow anyway." If you want to get noticed you have to inconvenience people, preferably your enemies. How about rallies at churches that supported the legislation that keeps us as second class citizens? Pro-life people don't rally at city hall, they rally at abortion clinics and make people uncomfortable. We should do the same.

5. For the especially brave and vocal, actually attend services at these religious institutions and disrupt them. The point to a protest is to make people uncomfortable, to challenge people on their beliefs. Stand up during the sermon and shout louder than the priest or preacher or whoever. When they ask you to leave, go peacefully, but loudly. Anger is fine in these situations but when in a place of worship you'd do better appealing to the congregation's sense of charity and decency.

6. Write or call your elected officials and make your opinion known. Our opponents do this, in droves. Even contact the ones you didn't or wouldn't support; they don't know who you really voted for.

7. Possibly also let these elected officials know that you will not be paying taxes until you are given the same rights as the rest of the population. This can be done on a state or national level. I'm no expert, but if you intend to do this, I think it might be best to calculate your taxes as normal at tax time and put that money into escrow. There might be a legal distinction between simple tax evasion and an act of civil disobedience, and holding your owed money in escrow is a way of demonstrating that it's the latter and not the former. This could be really effective if enough people actually committed to doing it, especially at the state level in states like NY and CA that have famously imbalanced budgets.

8. Be proud. If you expend a lot of energy putting down other segments of the community, be it the aberzombies or leering trolls, or anyone in between, you are part of the problem. We are all just people and we are all just trying to make it through the same history of repression and oppression. Other gay men are not your competition, they are not dragging you down, they are your brothers and sisters, and we're never going to get anywhere if we can't stick together.

Day 14.

I moved back to the east coast fourteen days ago. In these fourteen days I've shuttled around between places where I used to live: Philadelphia, New York City, and today I'm spending the day in Beacon, NY.

It feels like I've been gone a long time. It feels like I never left.

My only links to my life in San Francisco, all seven years of it, are a few texts from two friends both named David, some texts and calls from my best friend Kurt, and as much as this ever connected me to anything or anyone, Facebook. I realized this evening, standing outside my parents' house, smoking in a light rain, that I'm not going back. A two-week visit to the east coast was common for me, so maybe I didn't even think about it during that time, but now that I've brought the second week to a close, I realize, finally, that I'm not going back. To visit, sure, one day, hopefully soon, when I have money, maybe. But to live? Probably not ever again. I can't predict the future -- I can barely even paint a picture of the present -- but given the surprising sense of relief I've felt upon returning, I doubt I'll go back.

Yes, relief. My new life here isn't easy. I'm living in a temporary room, with four other housemates, with almost everything I own still boxed up, when I'm used to having my own space, my own time. I have a wonderful boyfriend but he lives in New York City so I've spent every weekend so far there, and the plan is for me to continue to do so, which has meant a lot of time on the bus, on transit of various kind, and a sense that I'm never quite home, never quite complete. And yet I feel an ease being here, in all these places, as if there was a tension about being so far away from my family that I'd been ignoring for seven years, a tension that's now released. My life here isn't easy but I'm happy, and hopeful.

I met some wonderful people in San Francisco, and I am really beginning to miss some of them. But I don't miss my life there. It was always a fantasy, running off to the island of misfit toys and pretending to be a grownup. What I miss about San Francisco, aside from certain individuals, is the very thing about my life there that was not sustainable: the endless free time to wander about. If I'd actually had a regular job there such that I could pay my own rent without endless drama about it, well, I might not have had such fun. So what I miss is the fantasy, and I realized it was time to let that go. So here I am, back where I belong.

Those Moments (poem)

It's another one of those nights, one of those nights that inspiration arrives, without a knock or a bell, and I should be in bed but instead I am writing a poem that I might hate in the morning. This is, as of one fifteen a.m., completely unedited, and I present it exactly as it arrived:

Those Moments

i wonder how it was
for you, to stand stricken
and paralyzed, afraid to believe,
unable to act

and i remember the look
on your face, remember
mostly in my nightmares,
i remember what i can

about those moments
before i was subsumed
snagged by the undertow
carried under a tide
of chills and aches and sweats,
watching only your face
stunned and stony, you
reaching for me, you
reaching

so is it strange for you,
i wonder, to hold these
photographs, here, this
bench where we sat,
eating oatmeal cookies,
in dappled sun, in light
while the darkness
was already working through
me. working, not for the naked
eye, not for your naked heart,
not for us, for the us that would
never be again.

and we sat for photographs, on
cobblestones, with bicycles,
and i wonder, if we had known
what might we have said,
if we had known, and i wonder
if for you, i wonder if it ever
gets any easier.

Pretentious Much?

In September of 2007, spurred in part by the suicide of a friend, I started writing poetry again. For four months, I wrote almost every day, producing a half-dozen poems every week. At the end of January, 2008, I stopped as mysteriously as I had started. So here's a handful of them, starting with the first in the series and ending, appropriately, with the last, with a few stops along the way that I think are particular standouts.

Moment (9.26.07)

i imagine the moment when everything breaks:
lightbulbs burst
fill the air with loose filament,
raining frosted glass,
wattage lost to a blinking sun.
and bricks crumble, our house,
a sandcastle to a thoughtless
restless tide, distracted
and consuming
everything we built
everything we thought
and we thought
we knew what safety was, how it felt,
wrapped around us like a cord,
that first cord,
wrapped around our throats,
and
i imagine that moment, light forced
into hiding, heavy, sleeping
against fluttering lids
against everything we made
and everything is pale,
finally still,
but you,
you are fluorescent
and iridescent
and you will not break
and you will not leave
you will not leave me in this place,
i imagine.

--

OCD (9.26.07)

made your bed now you ought to
made your bed now you have to

but i don't get it, i say i
don't see why and don't want to
ripple into this ordered thing my
bed made neat

i should take my dreams elsewhere, where
i will watch them rip
into the skin of the unripe
fruit of this unfinished
world, and

lie in it
sleep in it

--

Offering (10.15.07)

and when the light breaks
you bend
to gather the fragments
open your hands to the harsh edges
cutting the heel of your palm
shards of hope and broken light
assembled before me
the imperfect polished
to a perfect sheen
blinding the heel of my eye
your offering, a favor

I did not ask
I could not have known

--

9:12 (10.29.07)

the clock reads nine twelve
in the photo I keep staring at
of you against my yellow
walls, of you wishing
I would put the camera down,
of you smiling for me
in my bedroom at nine
twelve in the morning, and

I keep staring at this photo
remembering your body the
night before, just a few
nights ago, your body pressed
so close to mine that we
must have seemed as one,
and I was dreaming that
you'd never have to leave but
you're somewhere else now,
some different color, somewhere
as I sit with yellow walls
and memorize the details
of photos of you smiling,
of a clock that never changes,
and dream that this time,
maybe, time will stop for me.

--

5 and 2 (11.01.07)

1. our anniversary comes and will
go without event, without
recognition, just your name
which I do not speak aloud,
just your name burned forever,
branded into me

2. in those last days, I could
not have guessed that I would
ever lose you, or

3. how quickly, with a pop and
a siren, so much commotion
and noise, and noise, the
furious hand of our petulant god
rewriting my story with the
dash and a slash of his
unforgiving pen, crumpling pages
and re-imagining the scenery

4. his evidence previously unseen
but then at the end I
felt his hand
and saw it
and felt his hand
one fist to pummel me
into surrender while
one hand grabbed my neck
and I did not cry for
that was not his plan not even
part of it as I stood
powerless as a muted beast uncaged
afraid to dash for freedom

5. as I stood so powerless
across our tree-lined street as
sweet gums turned fiery red
and yellow and defied me with
misplaced beauty watching
like me across the street
where I stood
and watched you burn

6. there is no mythic bird,
or myth to our story, only
this: the turning leaves
still turn, and the wind
will rise and rise and
will carry them off
to burn and drift and
rest, to wherever it is
that you went that day

7. and i think of you, feel so
close to you, once again,
whenever i watch them
shove that ladder into
perfect sky

--

If Light (01.07.08)

if light
what then would
this world, I wonder

if light knew question
if light
could doubt its power
to illuminate, what
then would this world
I wonder what
or how it might look
lousy with pale shadow
if light
needed comfort or assurance
of purpose, if light, yes,
if light

--

Born Again (01.30.08)

in fragments sun
sliced and surprised
across my room across
your body without flaw
this gift your body
of earth this gift

born again as yellows
and blue eyes piercing

pain will not abate broken

fragments of angels
you flutter about me
and fall

My Music Career, R.I.P.

On my first visit to San Francisco, in September of 2002, as I was deciding that I would never leave, Barton showed me the music studio he had set up in his garage. I expressed that I'd always wanted to make music and he invited me to sit with him while he worked on a new song. I was thrilled and intimidated. We worked together a few times during that initial trip, and he wrote a pretty song that we, for some reason, titled Don't Stop. A few weeks later, on my second visit, I wrote a poem that would become the basis for the lyrics, although the lyrics in the initial version of the song were mostly provided by Barton. In the beginning, I was mostly ornamental. Barton wrote the music, Barton wrote the lyrics, Barton did the production, and I sat, and I watched. I continued to join him in the studio and observe, and for the moment, it was all I wanted, to just observe.

It took us a few months to complete the first version of Don't Stop. Shortly after we finished that, a friend of Barton's died unexpectedly, and he wrote Gone as a response. I helped a bit with the lyrics, and was beginning to offer suggestions about production. We finished that version of Gone in two days, which was surprising, given how long it took to finish Don't Stop. In February of 2003, we started work on a new song, originally titled Something To Call My Own but that title was later shortened. Again, my contributions were minimal, though I provided some lyrical tweaks and more suggestions about the production.

We also worked on refining a few of Barton's existing songs, Something Good and Take Me Up, but then something changed. A computer crash left us without a computer to make our music and we went a few months doing nothing. When we returned to production, with a new computer, Barton has purchased a number of additional hardware and software upgrades which meant that while he was still the veteran musician, and had a decade of experience on me with production concepts, he was no more experienced with the new equipment than I was and so we learned it together and in doing so, became a little bit closer to true partners in the musical endeavor.

It showed in our next track, Don't Let Me Go. What also showed in this song was the contrast and conflict between us that would cause our music to keep getting better and better, driven by that tension, but would ultimately cause that taut cord to snap. We both wrote separate versions of the lyrics that had completely different vibes to them, and ended up compromising, using half his bright and cheerful lyrics and half my moodier, darker ones. The song doesn't know quite what it wants to be, but the production values on it are light years ahead of anything we had accomplished previously.

We followed this up with another reworking of Take Me Up, and in the spirit of resurrecting old material, Barton played me a track he had written many years earlier but felt he had never been able to properly produce. The mixes he played me were flawed and messy but there was something in the song that I loved, something that spoke to me, so I enthusiastically suggested we give a new production a shot. That song was Tonight. We did a mix that was, again, so much better than what we'd accomplished before, that I think it surprised us both. We got caught up in the endless possibilities of the track and produced three additional remixes. The first one, the "Dimensional Mix," came easily, but we struggled a bit with the "Endless Sky" mix, repeatedly changing diretion. Later we would also produce the "Manifestation Mix" but only after some other things had happened.

Barton approached me about releasing Tonight. It was scary. I'd never given meaningful thought to the idea that we might actually put this music we were making out into the world for strangers to experience. Barton contacted a dance music promoter, Sergio, and I made some album artwork and we pressed CDs and vinyl. Scary. Once we had all the materials in hand and were ready to begin promotion, Sergio and his partner told us that they thought the "mix package" wasn't strong enough and we should hire a remixer for additional mixes. We hired Eddie X and it was also around this time that a record store owner named Victor introduced us to DJ Manny Ward, who loved our track, especially our "Endless Sky" mix. He agreed to work with us on a remix as well. With Manny's new mix, Eddie's five mixes, and our own new mix, we had enough for a second CD.

Tonight premiered at #48 on the Billboard Hot Club Dance Play chart, and ended up going as high as #38. We had charted on Billboard.

To follow that up, we decided to release Take Me Up. It was, honestly, never my favorite song, but we thought it might have some club appeal and therefore a good choice. We released two mixes of our own, plus a mix with Manny, and one from Eric Kupper. It wasn't doing as well as we'd hoped so we were forced to rush-hire Norty Cotto for an additional two mixes which we released on a second CD. Take Me Up peaked at #37 on Billboard, a tiny improvement over Tonight.

I dont recall the exact sequence of events, and would need to consult the dates on the archive tapes to be sure, but I think by this point we had written almost an entire album's worth of material, which we planned to release with the title "Visual Perception." Alongside Tonight and Take Me Up, we had Don't Let Me Go, and by this point I believe we'd already written and produced versions of Nothing Lasts Forever, Fill My Eyes, Moving In Darkness, a new production of Gone, Flying, and Honestly. I had graduated to full production partner, and had contributed lyrics to almsot all those tracks. I believe Honestly and Nothing Lasts Forever are the only exception. I wrote all the lyrics for Moving In Darkness and Fill My Eyes, though in working them into the music they were tweaked sufficiently to allow Barton a co-writing credit. I also started doing some production on my own. It was more efficient for me to lay down production groundwork and then tweak it with Barton, rather than wait for him to do it together, as he was in school for his Master's and working almost full time. In a number of these cases (Flying and Nothing Lasts Forever come to mind) I did a lot of the production work while Barton as out of town, and expected he would scrap everything I'd done, but most of it remains in the versions he will be releasing. I know I also did a lot of the production work on Moving In Darkness, and since I also wrote all the words and sing in it, I've always felt like that one, versus the others, was my song. Barton never liked when I referred to something as "mine' or "his," but my desire to take ownership of things stems from the fact that our partnership was so unequal when we began, and that the group was named after him. I always felt like it would be very easy to forget me, and in my way, struggled to make my voice heard, probably more than I needed to. And to Barton's credit, he did everything he could to assuage those feelings in me, occasionally to his detriment.

Moving In Darkness was in the running to be our third release, but we decided on To Call My Own instead. I'm going to skip the part about our ill-fated partnership with a female vocalist that delayed this release by months. We got mixes by Alan X, Josh Harris and Alex Santer, and of course our own takes and the Manny version. We also shot our first video for this song, which I directed, filmed and edited. Almost everyone involved in the project experienced some intense personal difficulty during the process. But it made it to #15 on Billboard.

Our last release together, fittingly, was a new version of Don't Stop. We gathered some strong mixes, our own and Manny's, as well as Josh Harris and Jaimy. I made a new video with a slightly bigger budget than the first. But the song failed to chart and some long-simmering personal problems caused Barton and I to split up. We didn't speak, really, for almost a year and a half. I signed a legal document relinquishing all rights and possible royalties to everything we ever did, but encouraged him to go ahead and release whatever he saw fit.

Recently he released a new version of a song he'd written before he knew me, one I'd never worked on. I thought that was nice but I was wondering if he'd also eventually produce new material or at least let out some of our work together.

Yesterday I found out that Barton is moving away, to Berlin, and I decided I should contact him to hopefully reconnect before he leaves, but he beat me to it, inviting me over for tea last night. It was really wonderful to spend time with him again after so long. It turns out he has the next release all queued up, and I'm not going to be the one to announce what his next single will be, but it's a song that, while written before he knew me, is one that we worked together on a number of times. I realize, coincidentally, that I've failed to mention the name of that song throughout this entire post, but it's one of the first songs of his that I ever heard, the first one that I fell in love with. It was supposed to be our fifth single and we had almost completed our own mix of it when things fell apart. I heard the final version of that mix last night, and while of course I am biased, I think it's really fantastic, the best work we ever did. I'm very pleased that he's going to release it. It's a bit sad, really, that this adventure had to end but it's been better for both of us, an it's sad that it ended just as we were improving so much, but I'm also happy to know that such a good song will be my final contribution. Making music was always a dream for me, and now I've done it, but I've also learned that just because you have a dream doesn't mean that you can or should make it real. My talents lay elsewhere, and listening to our last collaboration, I remember all the exciting adventures we had, the endless frustrations, and come to peace.

BARTON on Facebook
BARTON website

Instance

Often snippets of poems, strings of words, flicker in and out of existence in my head, but it's been a rare event, lately, for me to sit down and try to tease out a whole poem. I did that tonight, struggling to finish this as my eyes fluttered and my body kept reminding me that I should be asleep, long asleep. It's past two a.m. and if any part of me is still operating on eastern time, that would translate to five a.m. I finished the poem so I can go to bed, and maybe tomorrow I'll look at it again and see if I come to regret posting an unedited first draft of a poem written while about eighty percent conscious.

Instance

sunlight catches your face,
just a hint of it, filtered
through sycamore leaves, through
a raging patch of wild maples,
and i point the camera,
to reinterpret this perfect instance
of you,
ahead of me.
your smile, even faint, that smile,
causes the dappled light to pale,
stripping this forgotten world of majesty
in your presence,
and I,
imperfect in your presence,
press myself into the shutter, the
weight of every inherited flaw expressed,
at last, in the bending of my finger,
into that button, and at my most
powerful, I make the aperture gasp,
a simple click and whir, a simple
attempt
to hold

the tress do not sway, staunch and
stolid against the absence of any
breeze, and they grip their
leaves as armor, blocking me from the sun,
save scattered patches,
reinvented light.

so if i let this instrument speak, if
I taught it to sing, there would be
only one song and it
would be just this: you
were not not to be captured, you
wanted no earthy possession,
and you
were never here at all
in this place, with me. never
here

it comes
as a sigh, this morose truth,
as an exhalation, a
substitute for wind, otherwise so still,
and I press that button again
shooting only the air.

---
Next day, I don't hate it. Made a couple edits so this is officially a second draft now.

Beacon, Day 3

It's a heavy rain tonight, here in New York. I sit at my computer in the bedroom that used to be my sister's, and then my brother's, and is now, for a week, mine, and listen to the rain pelting the grass outside the window.

I got here on Wednesday night. My father picked me up at JFK and we drove up to Beacon without event. No one else was awake when we arrived, at nearly one a.m., and I came into this room and unpacked my backpag into the nightstand drawers and set up my laptop. There was some issue with connecting to the internet, which my dad and I spent about half an hour troubleshooting, and once that was fixed, I thought I'd go to bed but I didn't, watching television shows on my computer until almost four.

The rain sounds different. There used to be a woods, a seemingly endless expanse of trees, living, dying, and dead, just a few feet outside this window. The woods are gone. The trees are gone. The rain is not impeded in its fall, smacking the earth.

I woke up at nine on Thursday to the sound of drilling, almost like jackhammering, from the construction site next door, the housing complex they're building over what used to be the woods. It was raining that day, too, a different kind of rain, an unrelenting drizzle sometimes fading into a mist. I wanted to go out and take pictures but the rain never stopped, and the drilling never stopped, shaking the house and invading my skull. I lay on the bed and listen to the sound of it, and the sound of my mother surfing through her tivo menu, trying at times to watch more television. The drilling stopped at around four and I napped. The rest of the day drifted away, fading into mist, and I went to bed much earlier.

Lightning illuminates the few trees that stand, still, outside the window. I never see lightning where I live now and I'm reminded how I am inexplicably petrified of it. I have some memories of storms as a child, so scared, and my sister could not comfort me, her logic no match for my fear.

Friday began with more drilling. I really thought I might lose my mind. My mother called my brother, who had the day off, and I together to discuss the day's plans. She wanted to maybe do a short nature walk and then go shopping in Poughkeepsie, mostly for me, and then meet my father for dinner somewhere. My brother and I had planned to see a movie and he was displeased that the whole rest of his day had been planned for him, and displeased that his only other option was to not go with us and be stranded here without his car. He was a bit snippy about it and my mother said "Forget it," and stormed into her room. I stayed and talked with him out in the dining room, away from the drilling, and eventually he went to apologize to her.

It's probably narcissistic to think lightning would bother to strike me, out of a literally infinite set of possible coordinates, why would it ever choose me? And yet, I'm afraid, and yet, I'm tempted to run into the rain and let it cover me, taking my chances.

The plan changed. No shopping. We would go to Madam Brett park in Beacon and then go meet my father for dinner and then Noel and I could go to a movie separately later. Made sense. "I'm too accomodating," my mother said to me later. We drove to the park and my mother talked while my brother played his music so loud that I had to lean forward and strain to hear what she was saying, as she told us of misadventures she and my father had had the week before in Belgium. Then we walked, on a sunny and surprisingly hot afternoon, through the winding paths of this nature park, my brother always twenty feet ahead of my mother and I, and me always hanging back to make sure my mother was making out okay. We avoided hills and had to stop a few times. It seemed like Noel was there by himself, shooting rubberbands into the sky. At the waterfall, it seemed as if we were all there by ourselves, for a moment, as my brother went somewhere my mother couldn't go, and I ended up somewhere in between them, the compromise. Then we got into the car and headed north. We were meeting my father at 4:30, or thats what we thought the plan was, but a few minutes before 4:30 my mother was unable to reach my dad by phone to tell him we were nearing the restaurant so we stopped at Barnes & Noble to wait for his call. Outside the store I put on my headphones and smoked a cigarettte, waiting, as I usually do.

I try to forget the rain as I try to forget where I am. I did live in this room once, the summer of 1992, possibly the best summer of my life. But mostly I lived in the other room, where Noel is now, and I lived there with him and without him, from 1975 to 1997. This was my sister's room and I spent a lot of time in here as a child, looking over the books in her bookshelf, never reading any of them, while she stayed on her bed and read, always reading, and me, always waiting.

Dinner was fun. My parents talked more about Belgium. My mother asked me if I was an atheist and I said not quite, maybe an atheiette. Noel scared away a table of senoir citizens that was about to be seated next to us. He used the phrase "nice rack" as if an insult. I pretended that they moved because they overheard I was gay. I asked Noel to explain crypto-solipsism and I'm still kind of waiting for his explanation to make sense. The food was not particularly good, except for the fries, but there are moments when my family's dynamics makes me think, "I should be writing this all down," they're so crazy and funny, but I never do write it down, and those moments are unfortunately not as frequent as I might hope.

When I'm in Noel's room it's hard to remember that I lived there for twenty-two years, even though some of the same furniture remains. Well, one piece of furniture, the dresser that used to be mine. I don't want to remember. I don't want to remember who that person was. It's not me.

Noel and I drove home together after dinner, and realized we'd have to head back out immediately to catch the single showing of the movie we'd decided to see. My parents were at the grocery store, so I called my mother to tell her we'd be gone by the time they got back. I enjoyed the movie, and enjoyed seeing it with my brother. I don't see many movies so it means something to me, and this movie was an adaptation of a comic we'd both read, a book Noel had turned me on to a few years earlier. Afterwards we were tasked with going to Walmart to pick up medicine for our niece, who would be arriving in a few hours, and we never managed to find the right drug, but we didn't end up with an armload of junk food. I stayed uo much too late and I don't even know what I was doing.

I really do think I've become a different person but I haven't. Everything that I am now is an extension of, or reaction against, the boy I was then, here, in this place. The house has changed, stifled under suffocating layers of useless clutter, and the woods are gone from our windows, replaced by prefabricated housing units, and our bodies have all changed, heavier, slower, but in some way it's all still the same. I won't ecape it, and everyone I stand, memories shower me like the rain.

Today I woke to the sound of children in the house. My sister had arrived in the middle of the night, with three of her four children. Her husband stayed back in Baltimore with the oldest son. It was only the third time I've ever met my youngest niece, and I expected she would not remember me, but she did. I'm used to my nieces and nephews being shy around me but she was not. It made me happy. Later we all went to my grandmother's, minus Noel, who was at work. That was nice, uneventful. Then I went out, to go shopping, with my mother, my sister, and my oldest niece. It was a long day. We drove up to Poughkeepsie and right as we arrived at the mall, my mother realized that she'd forgotten her wallet and we had to drive right back to get it, a twenty minute drive on a good day but much longer in Saturday afternoon traffic. I was glad to spend time with them, as I never get to spend much time with Alara or Sarah, but I'm not sure that driving, driving, shopping, driving, shopping, shopping and more driving was necessarily the best framework. We got home much later than expected, with the plan that we'd order chinese food for everyone, except Noel had just gone out to get food for himself. We called but he ddn't answer, and when he got back, from Wendy's it turned out, he was in a very bad mood. He snapped at Sarah who'd been so excited to see him, angry that we'd taken so long, his blood sugar low. I retreated to my room for my dinner. Later I'd go out, to the kitchen, and clean. Just the dishes, the stove, and one counter, but enough to make a difference, enough to illuminate how absurd the rest of the kitchen is in its clutter. I felt good but then I got an email from someone who is essentially a stranger telling me things I didn't want to know about my ex-boyfriend. I found myself on the bed, on this strange lumpy bed, listening to the rain. Saturday night and there's no one to call.

I can't escape the remembering. This feeling of constantly chasing after something I could never catch. The heaviness of the secret I harbored for much too long. The heaviness. I want to be light, but there's never enough sun here, and free, but I'm encumbered with unwanted memory. I want to be weightless and without care, but I am heavy and always plunge to earth, like the rain, as always.

Slope Day: 1993

Today is a bit of a dark anniversary for me. And now I think I should confess.

Sixteen years ago, on May 7th, I experienced something that I have, blessedly, never felt since.

I suppose I should just tell the story.

In 1993 I was a junior in college, at Cornell, and at Cornell, on the last day of the school year the entire campus gathers on Libe Slope, a particularly challenging hill, to celebrate, the biggest party of the year. Three of the four years I was there that day was cold, dampening the festivities quite a bit, but that intervening year, 1993, the weather was perfect. I smoked some pot at home with my roommate Lisa and my best friend, Sharon, and I'm pretty sure we drank a bit too, though I don't actually remember that part, and then we headed out to the Slope. Thousands of our classmates were already there, drinking, smoking, tripping, whatever. Lisa, unfortunately, had to leave after not very long because she was working that evening, which left just Sharon and me.

Sharon and I had been best friends for pretty much our entire college career up to that point. We had met through mutual frinds, a group who all ate breakfast together, and we lived in the same dorm. In the second semester of our freshman year some circumstances conspired to bring us closer together, and by the end of that year we were inseparable. Predictably, I fell in love with her, and equally predictably, she did not fall in love with me. I was fine with that at first, just my lot and I accepted it, but as time went on, it grew harder to see her dating other guys and always wishing it was me. I was aware, even at the time, that this relationship was essentially a cliche mined by countless angsty teen films, but it wasn't just a cliche, it was real. No one has ever made me laugh the way she did, in the twenty years that have passed since I met her, and even though I turned out gay, my emotions were real. I soldiered on because her freindship was worth it, and of course I harbored secret hope that one day ... one day ...

Shortly after Lisa left the Slope, I started to feel a bit sick. I knew that if I took soem tylenol I'd be fine and there was no reason to stop the partying, but I'd have to go home and get it. I made a plan with Sharon: I'd walk home, which would take five minutes, take my pills and lay down for exactly ten minutes, and then return, another five, so we set a meeting place for twenty minutes later and I set off. And everything went according to plan. I rushed home. I took my pills. I rested and felt better. I rushed back. I arrived at the meeting place and Sharon wasn't there yet. I thought I might have even gotten there a bit early. I waited. I looked around and everywhere there were people, people I knew or ones I didn't, all in groups of two or three or five or ten. No one alone, no one but me. I waited. I thought maybe I'd gotten the meeting place wrong so I moved around a bit but kept my eye on the original place. No Sharon. No Sharon.

After I waited what felt like a sufficient amount of time, I started to look for her. I knew she was around, knew she must just have run into a friend, probably a mutual one, and lost track of time. Not like her to do that, but it was a special day and we were all a bit drunk and stoned after all. As I moved through the massive crowds I did see people I knew, people who offered me drinks and invited me to join them, but I always told the same story: I got separated from my best friend and I really want to find her.

No one was alone but me. Groups were camped out with picnic blankets and coolers. It was a perfect day. I encountered a number of guys that I had seen around in various places, from various classes or whatever, shirtless and drinking with their friends, and sometimes I'd stop my search to sit and watch these guys, none of whom knew me, envious, burning with my secret desires. Expanses of skin I'd never expected to see were suddenly everywhere, available for my eyes but still not for my hands, and the smoldering secret made me feel filthy. And alone. I'd never been more alone in my life.

I spent the next few hours like this, searching, stopping, searching, searching, until the sun had lowered and the party had thinned out so much that I could actually catalog every single person remaining on the hill and Sharon was not one of them. I went home.

At home I didn't know what to do with myself. I tried writing but I was too depressed. I was too depressed to do anything. Sharon called and I didn't pick up. She called again and she was crying and I still didn't pick up. Then, from my window, I saw her heading down the street towards my building, and I knew she was coming over, and I knew that when she buzzed I would let her in.

During the twenty minutes we'd been initially separated, she'd run into my friend A.J. and gone to his apartment to have sex. By the time she got back, I'd already left the meeting place. She'd looked for me but then run into another guy she knew, and left with him to also have sex. Do you forgive me, she asked, crying, heer head on my shoulder, as we sat on the sofa in my apartment and faced out on to the city. Of course, I said, but I didn't, couldn't, and maybe still don't.

That night my friend A.J.'s band was playing at Oliver's, the cafe where Sharon and I hung out, which was also where my roommate Lisa worked. I didn't want to go but went anyway, with Sharon, and sat right in the front.

None of this is what matters. This sort of stuff has happened to everyone and I've certainly had more unpleasant experiences in the decade and a half since then. But the reaction that I had that night was unique.

Watching my favorite band play, sitting next to my best friend in the world, I no longer wanted to be alive. The pain had gotten to be too much and it had dulled my vision such that the first clear thought to come out of that fog of depression was that I would kill myself. Not that I could, or should, but that I would, and not for revenge or attention or to make a statement. I just didn't see an alternative and I wasn't even thinking about the impact. My calmness about it was terrifying. After the show was over, I started to leave but Sharon begged me to take a walk with her, and I didn't want to, but somehow she talked me into it.

We returned to the Slope, united there at last, and I don't remember anything else about what happened there except an image fixed in my mind of the trash littered on the dark grass, under moonlight, looking like strewn bodies. But I'm relatively certain that Sharon, in forcing me to go for that walk with her, saved my life. I never felt like that again, and maybe I never let myself, but this has been a profoundly hard year with a lot o setbacks and even in that, I've never felt like death was a viable option. Maybe it's just because I was a kid. I don't know, and I guess it doesn't matter. I'm just grateful to be here.

Rainy Night Weekend

It's a rainy night, warm.

My thoughts are all over the place, some guided by my the predictable waves on my emotions, other veering off in random directions, and it makes me think that maybe tonight isn't the night for me to be writing, especially not my first post in almost three months. But I had too much sugar (half a pint of peach sorbet while watching television) earlier and I'm a bit wired for one a.m., and perhaps writing's what I need to wind my head down.

The sound of the rain is comforting. It connects me to other moments in my life, connects me to this life, and to some degree, to my insignificance. The rain doesn't care about me. It can't, and shouldn't.

I had a brutal and surreal weekend. I don't know why but the word surreal sounds like it should always bring some element of serenity or at least amusement, but I think that's a wrong impression based on too many Myst-like videogames, too many Dali prints. On Wednesday I suddenly developed a sore throat, or I should say, a swollen throat, but this happens to me often and I thought little of it. Thursday morning the throat issue was still there, but not significantly worse, so I went out as I usually do, coffeeshop and too much time sitting outside smoking cigarettes in the cold. I took a nap after that and when I woke from the nap I knew something was wrong, and was ever running a slight temperature, but I didn't think all that much of it. I agree to have dinner with a friend as I thought it would be good to get out of the house, and put thoughts of sickness out of my head.

When I stand at the window, I listen to the rain, and feel it on my face. Spring rain reminds me mostly of college, and I think of the person that I was then, twenty years ago. I imagine for a moment that I could visit him, that the rain could bring us together for that moment, but I am not sure that I would much like his company, or him mine. He'd probably like me fine, but would be scared of me, and I'd have to bite my tongue not to lecture him about everything he's about to do wrong. It's better this way. I listen to the rain. It feels good on my freshly shaved head.

Friday arrived with a different story. I had gone into what I thought was a full-blown flu, overnight. The swelling in my throat had become severe, the worst I seen it since that strange September in 1991 when I came down with the illness that no doctor could diagnose. That illness had started with a swollen throat and I had spent eighteen years dreading its return, and here it was, accompanied by a fever. I slept a lot of the day. I sent a message to Kurt asking him to come over but he was busy with work. I went to the Safeway to buy soup, lurching through the fluorescent aisles like the undead, and wondering if I might be infecting every person I encountered. I slept some more. Kurt finally arrived at six, or seven, and he wanted to take my temperature. 102.9. I knew he was worried and he didn't want to leave me with a fever so high, so I bundled up, got under my heavy blankets, and set about breaking it. It's an odd, rarely useful skill that I have, that I can break a fever almost at will, and when I was young, I could also bring a fever on at will. Eventually Kurt took a break from the night watch to go to the gym, promised he'd be back in a few hours, leaving me under six blankets, wearing four shirts and pants in bed, plus my bathrobe, and a knit hat, left me to my duty.

In quiet moments, my mind always wants to pull together a random and usually unnecessary connect. May fourth.... well, that's the day I started as a busboy at J.B. Danigans when I was eighteen years old. I struggle to remember that first day there and fail. May fourth is probably someone's birthday but I think May fifth is more popular. The seventh is much more popular, but that's still a few days away.

By the time Kurt returned, I'd gotten my temperature to 98.3. He was astounded and so relieved. He'd been worried that it might go higher and if it went higher, well then what would we have done? My throat was still bad but I felt like I was on the mend and I went to sleepy, pleased with myself. I slept terribly, the vestiges of my fever causing me to have the same dream over and over and over throughout the night, a series of images repeating, and sometimes they meant something to me, sometimes they didn't. I got up early on Saturday, aggravated by my inability to sleep deeply, and aggravated by the increased pain in my throat. I had reached the point where solid food was not an option, soft food was tricky, and even drinking had become a wincing affair. I couldn't swallow my own spit without practically doubling over. I tried to distract myself with television but the pain was intense so I decided to take a percocet to help allow me to function. It worked in that I could talk and swallow without making that horrible face, but eating was still out of the question. The numbness was nice, though, so as I felt the pain returning, I took another, then a vicodin, then another percocet, and another vicodin. At some point Kurt came, as did my dear friend David, but I spent most of the evening in a narcotic fuzz, drifting in and out of sleep. I wondered if this might be the way to beat this. I decided I had strep throat and found a bottle of unused amoxicillin in my drawer and I was good to go.

I wish the rain could quiet my head. I wish that sound, arrhythmic and peaceful, could overtake my panics. I wish I could overtake my own panics. I close my eyes for a moment and imagine there's someone else here with me, but no, just me. I thought it was Janice from the Muppet Show. I must be getting tired at last.

Sunday morning I woke up feeling better. I got out of my sweaty clothes and put on new ones. I ate a pint of peach sorbet, which David had brought the night before, as a substitute for breakfast. It felt like the swelling was going down and maybe I could drink without wanting to scream. I watched television, waiting for any of my friends to wake up. I discovered that my antibiotics were not really antibiotics at all, just Tylenol that I just have at some point put into a prescription bottle. I felt stupid. My stomach started to disagree with me. I found myself salivating and I knew that was a bad sign and the next thing i knew I was running, trying not to step on the cat who misunderstood my enthusiasm, for the bathroom where I threw up everything into the sink. The vomiting itself was painless, as these things go, but the aftermath was a new burning sensation on my sore and tender throat, and a loss of all the progress I'd made. I was listless and depressed and in a lot of pain, afraid to try to eat anything and especially afraid of taking more pills, though they might have helped with the pain. So I waited. Kurt found me first, a shell of the person he'd said good night to just twelve hours earlier. David arrived not long after. They brainstormed a bit on how to get me real antibiotics and this led to a trip to the same doctor i saw last year when I went unexpectedly deaf. The pain in my throat had become unbearable. I could barely drink, barely talk. I withdrew and wasn't even sure how to react when the doctor diagnosed me with a peritonsillar abscess. He gave me a shot of steroids to force down the swelling, a shot of an antibiotic, and a prescription for both. Hours later, still in unbearable mouth pain, waiting for either drug to ever kick in, David pointed out that I seemed dehydrated. I couldn't handle more than a small sip of water at a time so I wasn't really sure what to do.

The rain. I always return to the rain. It doesn't mean what I wish it did, but what does, really?

After David left, I came upon the idea of trying to drink through a straw. I don't know why I hadn't earlier, but I hadn't. Kurt found a straw in the kitchen and I was able to drink an entire glass of water in a minute, and another half glass. In a day of mostly setbacks, I needed that one little victory, and I perked up quite a bit. And then more, and as I noticed that either the steroids or the antibiotics seemed to be working. The pain had decreased. After Kurt left I dared to try to look into my mouth in the mirror. In the beginning, I'd been able to watch one side turn red and swell and then the other, but then the swelling had gotten so much, taking my tongue into the mix, that I hadn't been able to see much of anything. But my tongue had returned mostly to normal and so I could see... what had become of my mouth. It was shocking. The left side, a distorted and red swollen mass, had spread and spread and forced my throat off to the right side, my uvula an angry afterthought. The right side was equally red and misshapen but it couldn't compete for pure size. And at the very left of the back of my mouth, there was a hole, about the size of a tictac, and it appeared something was oozing out of it. I was repulsed and fascinated. It looked like something out of a science fiction show, my mouth, as redesigned by H. R. Giger.

I used to believe the rain could baptize me and make me someone new. Hell, maybe it did and I didn't notice. Now I find that all I want from the rain is to remember, to continue to remember, who I am and how I got here, as if this will ever be relevant somehow.

Today I felt like the ordeal had ended. I went to an ear nose and throat doctor who told me that the hole I'd seen the night before was a drainage hole and so, in essence, I had drained the abscess myself and saved the doctor the trouble. Score two for my immune system. I felt mostly normal today, dressed in clean clothes, showered and shaved, converted my sick bed into a nice place to sleep again. All over except for the healing. There was no brush with death, really, no danger to my health except in my most melodramatic mental ramblings. But still, one of the most unpleasant things I've ever endured, the combination fever and debilitating throat pain. I have no idea if was better or worse than other painful or sick or scary episodes in my life; my brain is not wired to make that computation meaningfully. But it was certainly dreamlike, in that my dreams during those days never strayed far from what was really happening, and it was brutal, bouts of pain difficult to recall even now. Three days gone and all I have to show for it is that I didn't die, didn't have swine flu as many tried to joke, and have a hole in the back of my mouth that still hurts like the begeezus if an errant bit of food or beverage looks at it funny.

I don't know what will happen next. But I have the rain, to help me remember and to help me forget. The rain, my occasional visitor, always to reminds me what I've lost, always to stand in its place, something like a friend, or someday.

Why I Came

It's my last night in Long Beach. Marcio's painting his living room and there's not much I can do to help, so I wait and watch, wishing I had more time, wishing I was already home. Gray walls. The green wall is already done, coated and coated again, blue tape removed, furniture returned to its place, but the gray walls are only half done and it's already late. I don't have much to say but there's not much else for me to do, while he paints, but reflect. Too much reflection is dangerous so I try not to think about the dozens of times I've been here before, all the odd, funny, wonderful and painful experiences I might have had, and just focus on the past two weeks.

The night I arrived, we waited for Marcio's friend to drive us to the grocery store, to buy food for our Christmas dinner and a dish that Marcio had to make for a work party. Wed already half-loaded up our cart when his friend found us to tell us he was leaving, leaving us with no ride home. Our options were to abandon the groceries, or most of them, or, as I suggested, bring the whole cart home with us. Yes, I can now number myself among the esteemed collection of folk who have wheeled shopping carts out of the supermarket parking lots. You think those things are hard to handle in the store itself? It turns out they are even trickier in the outside world, and maybe as a deterrent to potential thieves, they are incredibly loud. We laughed at ourselves as we brought the cart home and then we hid it in the alley behind the house. It's still there.

On New Year's Eve, we fought, about nothing, as always, but then we made up and occupied ourselves watching television on my computer until eleven thirty, when I suggested we go for a walk, just so we'd make the arrival of midnight a bit more memorable. Marcio was tired and it was cold out but we went anyway, after engaging in some Brazilian superstition involving lentils and bay leaves, wrapped up in our wallets. I still have it in my wallet and keep meaning up look up what this means. There was a dense fog, one of the densest I have ever seen, that made it feel like we were the only two people in the world, and if the situation had been different, if we had held hands, it might have been one of the most magical and romantic moments of my life. We had just arrived at the ocean, or where the ocean should have been, when my phone announced the arrival of the new year, and we kissed and hugged, in our heavy coats, and Marcio apologized for the fight, earlier, and so did I, and we stood overlooking the vast nothingness that should have been the ocean, listening to fireworks that we could not see.

There's other memories too: the sad wounded kitty, and the other kitty in the planter. Our multiple walks to Belmont shore and repeated stops at the Starbuck's there. The frightening gay mannequin. The unfortunate story of Ramon's mother and our even more embarrassing response to it. The party where everyone wanted me to define my relationship to Marcio and I was left with no prepared response. The new year's eve succulent adoptions, and the other planned ones that got thwarted. Hours spent in front of his computer or mine, watching our television shows, sometimes in the bed, and in the bed, cuddling, warm, but not quite as tight as we once did, even weeks before. The quiet in those moments when I had a fistful of things I wanted to say, but said nothing, a quiet unlike any other.

I'm glad I came. I've stayed too long but I'm glad I came. Despite the tagline of my website a decade ago, "change is good," I hate for things to change, and I hate to say goodbye, but I have to, and I have, and that, I suppose, is why I came.