Two Bad Days

MONDAY PART ONE

While I wait for the train at the Beacon station, after telling my mother during our goodbye that I was doing fine, I find myself choking up.

Ninety minutes later I start crying at the urinal in Grand Central but no one notices because the bathroom is already filled with deranged people.

I manage to get to work, my new job which is actually the resuming of an old job, and I'm tense. Thirty minutes later I get a distressing phone call and thirty minutes after that I am exiled outside, asked to clear out for a while while my boss works on another project. I wander through Brooklyn and try to take pictures.

I end up in Brooklyn heights, at a familiar Starbucks, and buy an oatmeal cookie and an iced tea. I intend to head to the Promenade but stop on the steps of abandoned store, with my cookie and my drink.

I put the Starbucks bag in my pocket because I can't bring myself to throw it away. I feel like a piece of trash caught in the wind.

I want to go home and remember I don't have one.

MONDAY PART TWO

I found a deer tick on my side today, already engorged with my blood, fat and flat like a pumpkin seed. I've had lyme disease before and I've said well past the point of it being funny: I don't recommend it. When simple pulling doesn't work, I offer to have it cut out of me.

It will be fine, I suppose, but this discovery makes me think about my mortality, about what should be important.

I'm on the subway, shuttling under the water to the train station, where I'll go to what passes for a home. I'm uneasy. It feels like this train, this tunnel, could be a passage to another world, to the other world. The car we're in is neither overcrowded nor sparse, and I study the faces of strangers. On this train all our lives are rendered meaningless by our anonymity.

I remember.

It's hard having to go to the doctor alone, he said.

I stepped closer, thinking I would be sweet. You don't have to be alone any more, I said.

We're all alone, he said.

I catch myself remembering, aware that my memories feed off me. They grow engorged, eclipsing the future I should be planning.

I wish there was a way to cut them out.

(4.12.10)

TUESDAY PART ONE

I'm just a cliche. I know it, standing and smoking a cigarette in the rain, listening to sad songs and crying.

I remember when you first told me you loved me, where we were standing. I could go stand there now, but you're not here. I'd cried then too, almost, because I'd been thinking the same thing and I'd been afraid to say it.

Maybe I should have been more afraid.

I didn't want to be that person anymore, so afraid of getting hurt that I'd keep myself outside the fray. I still don't, instead continuing to poison myself with fond memories and hope. The sad songs don't help.

Now I think I know why you won't see me.

TUESDAY PART TWO

The pain is different now, familiar. I've been here before. It's not a welcoming place but I know the terrain. That part is comforting.

There's a sadness, mostly for what's gone, but partially for the fact that I think I know how the story will go from here.

(4.13.10)

Writing Contest: "No Chocolate"

I was assigned to heat #17, the genre of Romance with the subject "taste test." This is what I came up with.


NO CHOCOLATE

There’s no chocolate. It doesn’t seem possible that there would be pumpkin cinnamon or hazelnut with blackberry icing, and a dozen other flavors that Jeffrey’s never heard of, but not a single simple chocolate. He scans the display window again, as if he’s made a mistake. No chocolate. Well, this changes things.

The young woman behind the counter, with her shoulder-length hair streaked with purple, streaked with blue, appears to be putting bins of loose tea leaves into alphabetical order. “Excuse me,” he says, and she pretends not to hear him, and so he clears his throat and tries again, a bit louder.

She turns around quickly, flushed, as if he’s caught her doing something naughty. “I’m so sorry, she says. “I didn’t see you there.”

Jeffrey blushes as if he’s the one who’s been busted. “Do you have any chocolate?” he asks, and gestures to where they should be.

“Oh no,” she says. “Sorry, but you have to get here pretty early in the day if you want the basics, this close to Valentine’s Day.” She has a tattoo on the back of hr arm, a heart rendered into tiny pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, with three pieces absent near the bottom. On a better day, he might have asked her about it.

It’s only mid-January and he finds it hard to believe that people are stocking up on baked goods this far in advance. “But Valentine’s Day is a month away,” he protests.

“So is my birthday,” she says. “If you want to come back with a present.”

Jeffrey laughs, grateful that she’s reminded him that this was supposed to be something fun. “I just might,” he says, as he leaves.

*

The cupcakes were Danny’s idea. That feels a bit weird, on a number of levels. It’s weird enough to take romantic advice from Danny at all, but Jeffrey knows what it means and appreciates the sentiment. It’s also weird to be recycling someone else’s gesture, or so he thinks, but not so weird that he needed to come up with an idea of his own.

He sits outside the bakery, looking through his purchases, while Danny laughs at him from the cell phone he’s got pressed to his ear. “I still can’t believe you’re already in trouble,” Danny says.

“Shut up,” Jeffrey says. “You know it’s not like that.” Even though that’s exactly what it’s like, Jeffrey isn’t about to let Danny be right on this one.

“I know you and I know exactly what it’s like. You had to cancel something at the last minute and now you’re in the doghouse.” Danny takes a bit too much pleasure delighting in Jeffrey’s romantic foibles. It’s transparent and makes Jeffrey cringe.

“Sure, whatever,” Jeffrey says, remembering again: this whole thing is supposed to be fun.

“Oh, and you’re welcome,” Danny adds.

There’s now three sets of the cupcakes, three pairs. Two are chocolate ones from the grocery store down the block, two more are chocolate from a Starbucks, and the last two are mocha chip with chocolate frosting, from this bakery. The bakery has gotten only great reviews, and everyone says, “You have to try the cupcakes.” Unfortunate that they don’t have the flavor he needs. Jeffrey wishes he’d gotten another coffee, sensing that this isn’t going to go as he hopes.

*

“I don’t really like surprises,” Chase says, pouring each of them a glass of water.

Jeffrey had gone and bought a small gift box after leaving the bakery, lined it with paper and carefully placed each of the six cupcakes in it, before heading here, hoping still for the best but noting that hope was dwindling, and quickly. “You’re still mad at me.”

“Mad? No, I’m not mad,” Chase says, joining Jeffrey at the table, and setting the water glasses on the table. “I don’t believe in anger. I’m disappointed.” He won’t make eye contact. They’ve only known each for two weeks.

Jeffrey pushes the box of cakes towards Chase. “Here,” he says.

The box was from a store that Jeffrey had thought he would never enter, full of useless, overpriced gifts, scented candles and personalized key rings, floral-printed wrapping paper and floral-printed gift bags. He’d happened to find this box, the perfect size, and tried to forget that it cost almost as much as all the cupcakes together.

Chase eyes the box for a moment, while they both sit, silent, and then he removes the bow, methodical, and then the lid, while Jeffrey holds his breath.

*

The cupcakes sit on the table, a different table, still in their expensive box, still untouched, and Jeffrey stares at them as if they might offer advice. He thinks about calling Danny but remembers Danny saying something about being busy. He wants a drink, wants company, and the cupcakes are not sufficiently entertaining.

He remembers when things were going well with Chase, just days earlier, and a conversation he’d had with Danny.

“I do not believe you’re dating someone named Chase,” Danny said.

“We’re not dating yet,” Jeffrey replied. He wasn’t sure what the right word would be, but dating was not it.

“Whatever. What kind of parents would name their kid Chase?” Danny paused a second but when Jeffrey didn’t answer right away, he’d continued with his monologue.

“I’ll name my kids Pursue, Hunt, and Endless Quest.” His voice rose as he got himself excited.

“I didn’t name him,” Jeffrey said, “and we’ve only gone out twice, but I do like him.”

“I’m sure you do. But he can’t be as handsome as me, can he? Not possible.” Danny laughed a bit at his own joke, and Jeffrey didn’t answer.

Now he can’t help himself, can’t stand sitting alone in a room with a box of unwanted cupcakes, and he sends Danny a text message: “Didn’t go well. Want a cupcake?”

The response, his phone ringing, is almost instantaneous.

“The weirdest thing just happened,” Danny says. “I was just going to call you. Come over and yeah, bring the cupcakes.”

Danny only lives a few blocks away, which was very convenient when they were dating, maybe less so during those awkward first few weeks after the breakup, but now quite useful again. It’s a little past midnight and Jeffrey is glad he doesn’t have to drive anywhere. He heads out, clutching that same bag of cupcakes he’s been carting around all day.

*

Danny takes the first cupcake and bites, chews thoughtfully. “This is good but not spectacular. I’ll wager this a Starbucks cupcake.”

“Save the guesses for the end,” Jeffrey says. “You have frosting on your nose.”

Danny ignores him and goes for the second cupcake. He studies it for a few seconds and then manages to shove the entire thing into his mouth. “No,” he says, “this one has to be the Starbucks, first one was grocery store.” He says this with his mouth full of cupcake, still with frosting on his nose, and Jeffrey can’t help but giggle. “I’m a pro at this, you know.”

“I know,” Jeffrey says. “You invented this game, I remember. I was there.”

“I remember,” Danny says. He picks up the last cupcake and studies it, turning it over in his hand and then finishes it with three quick bites. “So this is that fancy bakery.”

“Amazing,” Jeffrey says. “You managed to get them all wrong. And you still have frosting on your nose.” Then, without thinking much about it, he reaches out a finger to wipe the icing from Danny’s nose.

“Did I tell you I entered a writing competition?” Danny says.

Jeffrey shakes his head.

“Yeah. I thought it might help me, especially tonight, dealing with you out on a date with some frat boy. It’s just a short story thing, maybe silly. They assign us a genre and a subject and we have to come up with a story. I got mine about a minute before you called and I was going to text you, it’s so funny.”

“Well, what?”

“First tell me what happened with Mr. Chase.”

“He’s allergic to chocolate, and claims he told me this last week.” Jeffrey cringes even in the retelling, remembering the look on Chase’s face as the surprise was revealed.

“Oops. Sorry.”

“Well, it’s only a little your fault. You suggested the cupcakes, but you never said chocolate. So?”

“My assignment, well, I am supposed to write a romance story. I am supposed to write a romance story about a taste testing.” Danny says, raising his eyebrows for punctuation. “I thought it had to mean something,” he adds.

Jeffrey doesn’t say anything for a moment, or two. Then he picks up one of the uneaten cupcakes, rotating it in his hand, studying it. He remembers a feeling, with Danny, a sketch of something almost lost. He remembers the night, years before, when Danny had surprised him with the original cupcake taste test, and he smiles. He puts his finger into the icing, and puts that same finger to Danny’s face.

“You have frosting on your lips,” he says, and leans in.


http://www.nycmidnight.com/2010/SSC/challenge.htm

Wish me luck.

An Eighth Grade Composition Assignment! Really!

I just found this, a composition that I wrote on Dec 17th, 1985. In case it isn't obvious, this is totally a work of fiction:

When people think of Christmas, they think of a happy, jolly time when everyone is happy and kind. Wrong! Some families, maybe, but definitely not mine.

On this day, five weeks ago, it was two days before Christmas. Well, we were decorating our tree (we always do it late), making cookies, and wrapping presents all at the same time. My mother was screaming and my father was drunk, as usual. When we were finally finished, we put the presents under the tree, and put the cookies on a nearby table. Suddenly, the tree fell, crushed the presents, smashed the cookies, and killed our dog.

So we went on a mad dash to get new presents, a new tree, more cookies, and a new dog. None of which we found.

The next day, Christmas Eve Day, was a mad dash once again. This happened every year. We found a tree, presents, cookies, and a dog. When my mother and I came home, it was night-time.

We soon discovered that my father was missing, and we went hunting for him, as we did every year. Usually we found him laying a gutter and then we went home. This time was different. We found him in a gutter but when we got home, our house was missing.

I looked up in the sky and I thought I saw a tiny sleigh.

"...and I heard him saying, as he drove off, out of sight, 'Merry Christmas to all, and to all, a good-night."

Not Smoking, Now

Twenty years ago today I made quite possibly the dumbest single decision of my life. I accepted a cigarette on the ride home from school. I'd been an offbeat, gawky, nerdy teenager and in the second half of my high school career I was willing to do anything to change that image. It seemed at the time that smoking, along with drinking, along with whatever else, might prove that somewhere inside me was a kid who had potential to be cool. This is all my fancy way of admitting that I caved, with little resistance, to peer pressure.

I remember that first cigarette, a Marlboro red in Mike McCollum's car. I remember the taste.

I don't know why I gave myself over to it so quickly, so willingly, but within a month I was a serious smoker, maybe not addicted yet but perversely anxious to get there. Less than a year later, I was smoking a pack a day, inching towards two.

I let it define me. I thought it defined me.

I never really tried to quit, for twenty years. I never went a day without at least one cigarette, and most days I had dozens more than just one. I always said that the day would come, one day, when I'd be ready to quit, but I don't think I ever really believed it. It's hard to imagine stopping an activity when you're doing it every fifteen minutes, every day, for decades. I thought it defined me, and I didn't know who I'd be without it, and I was scared to find out. Maybe I knew the day would come but I couldn't guess when.

December 11th, 2009, I went out for a smoke, unremarkable as I paced around outside Richard's building and listened to "One" by U2 on headphones, unremarkable except when I flicked it away I knew it would be my last. All that time and I was right: when the moment came, I recognized it, and when that moment came, quitting was as easy as starting had been. I had imagined I'd be cranky, crazy, sweating, sick to my stomach, who knows what else, but I wasn't. I was still me, just not smoking. And twenty-five days later, I still am, still just me, not smoking.

It didn't define me.

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.