You are so beautiful to me . . .

I am beside myself. I cannot believe that Elizabeth Taylor has died.

I am still processing this information, and it will not compute. My brain is unwilling to accept it.

My sister asked me last week, for the millionth time, "How do you remember shit like this?" Believe me, honey, if I had an answer for that, I would hopefully also have an answer about how to turn it off. But I don't obviously. And why do I bring this up, you may ask? Because I remember the day that I first became, well, obsessed with this woman.

It was back in 1977. My brother had come over to our parents' house, and by coincidence, "Suddenly Last Summer" was on that afternoon, on the channel 7 "3:30 movie". This was, of course, in the days before all those stupid talk shows glutted the afternoon airwaves; this was programming presumably directed at those women who were at home (in other words, not at work), had kids who were home but otherwise occupied (i.e. homework, not drugs, computer games or whatever), and maybe had the time to sit down and watch something of "quality". And so we sat down to watch it - not because of Elizabeth Taylor, but because of Montgomery Clift, who he had a major thing going on about.

And I remember seeing that face for the first time, and being completely bewitched. And it only got worse over time. I got the only biography available about her from the library, a big, thick book that was definitely not a journalistic effort, because as I recall, the first six or so pages were all about how the planets were aligned just so at the time of her birth, and her birthday had this significance in terms of numerology, and how it all pointed to the fact that it was an event unlike any other before or since - I am NOT kidding! This was not a biography, this was an ode to a living goddess (at least in the writer's mind). And I devoured it - read it cover to cover at least twice. And I remember it listed her filmography (to date) in the back, which I then wrote out for myself, and started scanning local theater listings for any of her movies to go see. And the TV listings as well (remember, of course, that this was LONG before video or DVD's). And then, I started reading the books that were the source materials for the movies (or at least the ones that were around - Dreiser's "American Tragedy" that became "A Place in the Sun" - not light reading for a teenager, of course, went completely over my head; "Raintree County", "Butterfield 8", and of course, all of the Tennessee Williams plays that she made movies of, "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," "The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore," and naturally, "Suddenly Last Summer".

And then there was - my scrap book! I MADE a huge scrap book, and by that I mean LITERALLY MADE one, using 12x18 inch newsprint sheets, bound with cardboard, to accommodate the magazine covers that I collected with her on them - all of the "LIFE" covers she was on, plus any others I could find. I went to the library, and starting in 1932 (her birth year), I went through the periodical directories looking for anything and everything that was printed about her in magazines deemed "worthy" of listing in them - "LIFE", of course, but also "LOOK", "Vogue", "Harper's Bazaar," and the list was endless! After all, she was one of the most beautiful women in the world, not to mention one of the most notorious! And I collected, and collected, and mounted them all in this huge scrapbook I had created. Which was then lost in my move from the West Coast to the East Coast. When a friend of mine flew out to visit me the summer after I moved, he was supposed to bring it with him, but left it in the car of the person who took him to the airport, and never recovered it. Damn him!

And then, when I was taking art classes in high school, I started drawing her, from the photos in my scrap book - it got to where I could practically draw her face without a picture. And finally, after being overheard talking about her and Montgomery Clift by some gay guy in San Francisco, I received what was to me the ultimate complement, that I "looked like I could be their love child", with my eyes and coloring! And that was even BEFORE I dyed my hair black!

Naturally, as I "grew up" (to use the term loosely), the obsessive nature of my fanaticism slacked off considerably, but never completely. Like, I named my motorcycle "Bessie Mae," because that was Montgomery Clift's nickname for her. And that's just the one example I will cop to here.

But then, as AIDS started to rip through the very fabric of my life, Elizabeth took a step that forever deified her in my eyes - she became THE celebrity in the fight against AIDS! The first Hollywood notable who was willing to step up and talk about the "gay cancer" as something to be fought, not just to be afraid of! Who wasn't afraid to touch, be seen with, or talk to these people who were otherwise treated as "lepers" by just about everyone, even in the gay community. God, how much MORE I loved her for that!

Her loyalty to those she loved was completely unflagging and eternal. Her commitment to what she thought was right was unshakable, even if the same couldn't be said about her marriages. She was an inspiration to me constantly. And all I ever wanted was to meet her, just one time, just to say "Thank you." For everything that she has meant to me over the years, for everything that she had done for the fight against AIDS, for the unbelievable contribution she h ad made to the world.

And now she is gone. And I no longer have the chance. DAMN IT TO HELL!

. . . Think of Missy and Heidi who knew all along, Everybody's got the right to go to the prom

The above title comes from the song "Missy and Heidi" by Romanovsky and Phillips, who wrote about a young lesbian couple who went to their senior prom together in Manassas, Virginia; I am unclear about when (YOU Google it if you really want/need to know) but it was prior to 1992, since that is the copyright date on the song itself.

Now obviously, my reason for writing about this concerns the young lesbian couple in Mississippi, whose school canceled their prom in order to prevent them from attending. The justification was the usual blah-blah-blah bullsh*t, but the reality of course is simple homophobia.

I heard about this online, of course, but what really brought it home hard was when my straight, married doctor brought it up when I saw him on Friday last; that someone from "outside" of my world was not only aware of it, but wanted to discuss it. Such is the current power of the media, not to mention the Internet.

I felt compelled to write/talk about because my own story on the subject has always been one of particular pain for me, and the benefit of 30 years of hindsight, pseudo-adulthood and greater knowledge of the world, how it worked then as opposed to now, etc. has not lessened the pain.

The year was 1980, and I was a senior at John F. Kennedy High School in Richmond, California. I had come out of the closet as gay the previous summer, and in the fall became one of the "charter members" of a newly-formed support group for gay men under 21; please remember that, at that time, for anyone who was coming out, the resources available for meeting others were EXTREMELY limited, especially if you were not old enough to drink legally, as the GLBT culture was primarily focused in bars and clubs as the cornerstone of social networking. Well, in the spring of 1980, the subject of proms came up, and as a lot of us were approaching high school graduation, we were a bit stymied. As it turned out, one of our number, Tim Curran, took a guy, not a boyfriend per se, but still, as his date to his senior prom that year. I too announced my intention to do the same, and I asked a guy named Bryan Woodard to go with me; he said "yes." But for the most part, it was not an available option for most of us, so we created the "FIRST GAY PROM" (emphasis added for those who have tried to steal our thunder over the ensuing years).

My date for that event was a woman I had met at school, Marusia Allen. My justification for this was that, if I was taking a guy to the "straight prom," I should take a woman to the "gay prom." How incredibly enlightened and politically correct and so forth, but the reality is, I DIDN'T have a date for the Gay Prom (in unison, everybody -- "AWWWWW!!!).

Cutting to the chase, however, I don't know how it happened, possibly through the connections of the photographer we got to take our "prom pictures", but there was a reporter there that night from the Oakland Tribune; she interviewed me, Marusia, and a number of other attendees that night. Those interviews became the building block of a three-part article published in the Tribune about the realities of being young and gay and male at that time and in that place; an article which was to have rather significant fallout, and not just for me.

Now, I was not of age at the time, so they could not publish my full name; they just used my first name for the article. Marusia, on the other hand was old enough, and gave her full name for publication. And it not take long for this to come to the attention of the powers-that-were at Kennedy, and as a result, I and my parents were called in for a meeting with the principal and the dean. We were informed that, if it truly were my intention to bring a same-sex date to the prom, that they would not allow me to purchase tickets, "for my own safety," as they put it. Now, I had not told my parents I was taking Bryan; another female friend, Amy, had agreed to front for me, so this was really BIG news for them. What was worse, however, was that they sided with the administration, and informed me that they would not allow it either. My reaction was typical adolescent self-righteous anger and angst; I got up and informed them all that I was dropping out of school. And stormed out.

I don't know quite how I managed it, but somehow I got to my friend Paul's place in Berkeley without my parents stopping me; he happened to be home for some reason, even though it was the middle of the day in the middle of a work week. Paul, ever the assimilationist, told me more or less to take what I was being given and be thankful; after all, it wasn't like my parents had thrown me out when they found out that I was gay or anything, I should in fact consider myself lucky. Which, again in hindsight, was more or less true. So I swallowed my angst, went back to school, apologized for my outburst, and went back to class.

To more fully explain the "for my own safety" stuff, what one must understand is that, Kennedy High School had been built in the 1960's, during the beginning of the desegregation movement. And someone, with a complete lack of forethought, had laid out the district plan so that it included both upper-middle-class Caucasian students from El Cerrito (where I lived) and lower-middle-class African-American students from Richmond. The resultant school was actually little more than a prison; the original building (still standing) is a huge rectangular structure, built around a central open "quad", which has NO WINDOWS. The only ways in or out were through the massive steel front doors, which could be locked from the outside -- if a race riot ever broke out in the school, all they had to do was lock those doors, and the only way out would be straight up, through the three-storey tall open air atrium over the quad. Caucasian students were the minority there; still are, for all I know. So I think that they THOUGHT that this was justified rationale.

It was, however, an example of how out of touch with the actual pulse of the students they were, because, you see, most of the other students wanted NOTHING to do with me, not even TOUCH me. It was a matter of shock for most of them that I "admitted" I was gay in the first place; for most of them, they thought it was contagious, some form of "cooties." Now, I have no way of knowing what might have happened had I been allowed to go, but I do know that Marusia, who was African-American, did go with a white male date, and that didn't spark any riots. So maybe they were being overly reactionary, maybe not; I will never know. All I do know is, I didn't get to go to my senior prom.

Now, of course, that was 30 years ago. In the interim, there have been several, not TERRIBLY high-profile, in the overall scheme of things, similar situations, where the prom-goers had the backing of their parents, plus the ACLU, etc. to enable them to go. There have also been other, alternative proms like ours (BUT, AGAIN, NOT THE FIRST!!!!) created for the same purposes as ours. And there has also been a HUGE shift in the course of the world and its communication network, i.e. the Internet. And so Melissa's plight in Mississippi is now world news, and attracting world-wide attention, something that I or anybody else could possibly have envisioned back in 1980. But obviously, the passage of time, and progress, has not impacted the minds of the powers-that-be at her school. Which is unfortunate.

Now, my take on it now, when I first heard about it, was that one of three things would happen:

First, nothing much. And I frankly didn't believe that was a reasonable prospect, not when the rest of the world is watching.

Second, that the students of the school themselves would take it upon themselves to protest. My experience of teenagers, having been one myself not TOO long ago, is that they HATE for "adults" to make decisions for them, particularly when those decisions do not directly impact the adults in any particularly significant way. And the "adults" in question here are obviously operating with a completely out-of-touch reality system, if they think that what would have been SO upsetting for them when it was THEIR prom would have the same impact on their offspring, who are of course, in many ways, infinitely more sophisticated than their parents, despite still being what they are, which is high school students. But I have been equally surprised (not to mention disappointed) to hear that the reaction has been so, well, luke-warm on their parts, as I would have been had there been no response at all. Where is the adolescent angst that I remember having at that age?

My third scenario, and which I deemed most likely, was that some well-meaning gay or lesbian (hopefully a celebrity - can you hear me ELLEN? This is your neck of the woods we're talking about) or better yet, right-thinking straight celebrities, say Brad and Angelina, who have publicly declared they will not marry until that is an available option for ALL Americans, would step in, rent the biggest ballroom in the swankiest hotel available, and host a prom for them. And I was close - or at least so far as I have heard, since a gay male hotel owner in New Orleans has offered to do just that, is my understanding.

But, what it all comes down to, in my little universe, is this: IT'A A PROM, for crying out loud. IT IS ONE NIGHT! Do you fools honestly think that the fact that two girls came to the prom together as a couple is what EVERYONE is going to remember? HELL NO! But what they will remember is the maelstrom out of a molehill made by a bunch of ignorant "educators" who have yet to figure out that this is the 21st century, that we are no longer individual citizens of our little bum-fuck towns in the middle of nowhere, we are citizens of the world, a much bigger, brighter, more diverse and interesting place, and when you make stupid mistakes, as likely as not, it is YOUR stupidity that is going to become the focus of attention, not the matching genitalia of two of the prom-goers.

Or so I would hope. Just my take on it, you understand.

UPDATE FROM RON ROMANOVSKY: Performance of "Missy and Heidi"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGp14a-hd8o

Oh the world can change, it can change so much, with that one simple word: Married!

In the process of going through stuff from the storage unit(s), I came across a bunch of stuff I had stuck on the fridge, one of which was an article about Britney Spears' six and a half hour marriage, & the whole anti-gay marriage sentiment about "protecting the sanctity" of marriage. What a joke!

OK, the subject of marriage for me is an extremely complicated one, for a great number of reasons. I will try & address them coherently, & in some kind of order.

To begin with, & to clarify, I am both widowed AND divorced. Yes, you read correctly. In the midst of my two relationships with my two main men, I was also married to a woman, for almost nine years. More about that in a minute.

Michael & I could never have gotten married, but not just for the legal restrictions. You see, for the majority of our relationship, Michael was on Medicare-MediCal. If we had been married, he would never have qualified for MediCal, so we would have been responsible for all of his medication bills, which at their height, if I recall, were running about $6,000 per month. Why? Because I made/make too much money, so he would not have qualified. On the other hand, without those meds, it would have been an awfully short-lived marriage, if you get my drift. So, sometimes, for some people, marriage is just not a practical option.

When Gavin Newsome began the whole thing of offering marriage licenses to same-sex couples, Michael had only been dead for about six weeks. There was a man who had been staying with me, mostly to keep me company, at the time; his name is Karl. I saw him only a few weeks ago. Anyway, he suggested that we go & get married, just for the h**l of it; I actually considered it very briefly, like for half a fraction of a split second, before vetoing the idea. Thank heavens I didn't go any further in that direction; it would have really made things crazy to be a widowed, gay bigamist on top of it all!

On the other hand, however, Kent & I talked extensively about registering as domestic partners. We had even gone so far as to download the paperwork from the State & started to fill it out, when I realized that I would HAVE to get a divorce in order to do it legally. Unfortunately, this time Kent passed away before we could pursue it any further.

Which brings me to the subject of the (now ex) wife. Her name is Heather. We met in the late summer of 1998; she had just graduated from college, & was starting her graduate work at UC Berkeley, in Special Education & Special Needs Kids. The first time I laid eyes on her was, where else, at the White Horse in Oakland. I was sitting at my usual seat at the bar, & noticed this really cute boy playing pool in what would eventually become the smoking lounge. Well, I guess I wasn't being terribly subtle, because he (she) came out & over to me & "WHAT?" she said. That was when I realized that she had breasts. That was also how we met.

Well, she drifted in & out of my life for next several months; it turned out that we had the same breed of dog as pets. She was with a woman named Alex at the time, & when they went away for the Christmas holidays, I did a sort of dog-sitting thing for them; by that I mean I would go to their place in Oakland every day to let their dog out, & then sit with her for a while. Not play, mind you: This was the biggest feminist-separatist-lesbian dog I have ever encountered. The one & ONLY time I ever tried to touch her, she snapped at me & bit threw the metal band of my wristwatch; it was what saved me from a trip to the Emergency Room, & I never made that mistake with that dog again.

Well, Heather & Alex split up in the spring of 1999, as I recall. By that time, I had gotten my first DUI, & had to do the DUI program for first timers, one location of which just by coincidence was across the street from my house. The person leading this program, it turned out, was a lesbian. I didn't realize, & she never mentioned, that I was not supposed to wear anything that advertised bars or any type of alcohol, & for the duration of the class, I wore my White Horse jacket. The day I finished the course, she went into this tirade with me about how there was more to being gay than just gay bars, blah, blah, blah, etc. Where she crossed the line with me was when I said that the folks I hung out with at the bar were my friends & family, & she responded that "they weren't my friends, they were just my drinking buddies." Well, I lost it completely, told her she had just insulted a bunch of people she didn't even know, & to just shut up & give me my certificate of completion for the courts. Then I stomped out.

That night, I was still upset, still stinging from that comment, & I was at the White Horse, & Heather was too, and she picked up on my mood. When she asked what was wrong, I asked her "You're not just my drinking buddy, are you? She too was a little upset by the question, & told me off about it. Well, one thing led to another, & I went home with her that night.

It wasn't until a few months later that I realized that I was in love with this woman, & wanted to marry her. I asked, & she told me she couldn't answer until I had talked about it with Michael. So I went home & told him. At first, of course, he was just shocked/stunned/flabbergasted (you choose the word you think most appropriate), but then, he asked me: "Is this something you feel you HAVE to do?", to which I responded, "Are you asking me if I'm pregnant?" When I explained that, no, I just wanted to marry her. Eventually, he gave in, & was even my best man at the wedding (performed in Reno) & eventually got totally comfortable with the idea. So Heather & I tied the knot about three mos later.

Well, when Michael died, she was one of the first people I called with the news; she & her then-partner came to his memorial & stayed later than anyone. That was the first time my sisters met her. Again, as I mentioned in one of my earlier blogs, she & her current partner came to the hospital, were almost the first ones there, in fact, & Heather stayed with me until everyone, including Kent's family, had left, & then escorted me back to the White Horse, & finally saw me home.

Well, flash-forward to one year ago, approximately: I was in rehab for my alcoholism issues, & I get this message to contact Heather. So I called her, & just like the night we met (she does not waste time with "unnecessary" pleasantries if she has a bug up her ass, which she did), she did not ask how I was doing, or anything like that, oh no no no no, nothing that pleasant, it was: "And WHY am I not on your approved caller list? Hmmmm?" To which I could only answer, when I first got there & checked in, they took my blood pressure, saw that I was a walking mega-stroke waiting to happen, & pumped me full of Librium; hell, I was lucky to get anybody's names on there! I only remembered one of my sisters, & only because I had her home phone number memorized, that was it.

Well, she calmed down considerably, & THEN asked how I was doing, & why I was in rehab, & so on, & could she come see me because she had something she HAD to talk to me about. So she showed up a day or two later, with the news (& the papers) for the divorce. Well, I was not terribly surprised; the State Supreme Court had ruled same-sex marriage was now a constitutional right, in this state, & she & Liz (her partner & wife to be, obviously) wanted to get hitched, which they could not do as long as Heather & I were still legally homo-husband & lesbian-wife. So after asking if she didn't want to wait until after the election (she said the attorney said that even if Prop 8 passed, it wouldn't be retroactive), & being informed that Liz wanted to be a July bride (OK, now, see how I wasn't paying attention? I didn't realize they were talking NEXT MONTH), she pushed some papers at me & told me where to sign. Little did I know that she had already set up (temporary) housekeeping in Reno more than a month before, & hence it was sometime in the first week of July, 2008, that I became not only the Merry Widower (sort of Merry, don't ask), but the Gay divorcee as well (I don't know how to accent the first e in divorcee, so have to use the feminine), but didn't even find out about THAT until Labor Day weekend, when my then roommate came home from the Labor Day lesbian barbeque she went to & announced that my wife had remarried! And was I invited to the wedding? NO!

So anyway, here we are now, almost a year later, & more than a month since the Supreme Court handed down their (ill-thought-out) opinion saying that Prop 8 is proper. And I am asking myself, what difference does it make to me now?

Well. all I can say is, really, having been there, on both sides of the legal coin, being "really married" to a woman, as well as being with two really wonderful men as partners, I don't really care one way or the other if I can get it formalized again with a partner of either sex, since I simply don't envision it happening again. Why so, you may ask? I'll tell you why: My heart just can't take another one.

There are a number of song titles/lyrics that I could have used for this particular blog, & two by that boy band Westlife I just discovered come very strongly to mind right now, the first being "I want to grow old with you" and the second being "Have you ever been in love?" I have a really hard time hearing either of those songs, because, you see, I have been cheated out of the opportunity to experience the first one, TWICE moreover, & boy have I ever been, & having that happen again would be the death of me, so I would be cheating the other person out of it.

Because, you see, this time around, I won't settle for less than everything, since I have already had it two & a half times. I am not accepting any more consolation prizes. And I don't think that there's anybody out there for me under those terms.

Please, though, don't feel sorry for me. I wouldn't change what I have had for anything. I just don't want to go through it again. I have cried enough tears for this lifetime.

Plus, now I can drag out those tired old torch songs & start singing 'em again. Look out, Shawn Ryan! You have competition;-)

. . . and they're made out of ticky-tacky, and they look just the same . . .

Yes, more boxes of books (& other stuff) & more flashbacks, more history, more mixed feelings.

I brought home probably a total of ten boxes over the past two days, & started to come across other things besides books. A couple of the boxes were labeled (not by me) as "CD's, showtunes." Imagine that! A gay man with showtune CD's. Quel surprise! But of course, everything you can imagine, from obscure & little heard of stuff to stuff that makes you wanna go "HUH?" to the ever predictable everything Sondheim has ever done, sometimes in multiple incarnations, like "Assassins," both the workshop version with Patrick Cassidy (screw David & Shawn, what a yummy he was), & the Broadway version with Neil Patrick Harris (now seriously. Did anyone ever question that Doogie Howser was a homo? Really!). And again, of course, "Les Miz", "Phantom" (both London & movie soundtrack; how they made that movie without me in the title role, I will never know), etc. Oh, & a bootleg copy of "Chorus Line."

A couple of the boxes I brought home specifically because they were labeled "Kitchen Stuff." What "stuff" turned out to be was all of the crap in the "utility drawer," you know what I mean. About a gazillion batteries of every possible variety (that's why I keep buying them; heaven knows, no one can EVER have enough batteries); multiple tubes of Crazy-Glue, all unusable, except for those very clever "single-use tubes" that some genius finally figured out was probably the ideal way to package it, I mean, how many times have you stood around the kitchen with the freshly opened tube of Crazy-Glue, looking around desparately for something else to glue, since you just opened it & otherwise you know it's going to go to waste; picture hanging hardware; assorted rolls of type of various varieties, everything from electrical to packing tape; phone cords of various lengths; assorted random tools, which you used once, then put in that g*******mn utility drawer & promptly forgot about it, so you had to buy another one when you really needed it, & then shoved that one into the now bulging to ready to explode utility drawer. . . well, I'm sure you know what I mean.

The books I have begun to catalogue on this very laptop I am currently typing from. I am only at 250 or so volumes, & already I am burnt out. Thank heavens I am not SO anal-retentive that I have to break them down into every possible subgrouping before cataloging them. So far, there are only three basic categories: Fiction (of whatever genre, from poetry to stage plays) with only anthologies split off separately; reference (which of course includes all of my art history books, medical reference books & dictionaries for work), & everything else; which would include all of my books collected in my preteen and teen years, specifically about dollhouses & minatures, which was a great passion of mine in that era.

After encountering about a dozen books in that latter subject, I started thinkng, "What am I to do with these;" I mean, do I have any fantasies at this point of taking this up again as a hobby or what?

The solution that finally came to me was ridiculously simple, & falls in line with the overall goal: Pack them away as a unit, & move on. At least I'll know that this one box has nothing but this stuff in it, so if I decide to dispose of it later, or reopen it, or whatever, at least there'll be a focus of that particular interest.

So, now to move on.

Could it be that it was all so simple then?

Trips down memory lane are not always smoothly paved; more often than not, they are awfully bumpy & full of pot holes.

So today started excruciatingly early (i.e. 5 a.m.) as I had to take Anne Marie, Charlie & Olivia to the airport for their flight to Hawaii for their tenth wedding anniversary. Which means, among other things, that I have their wheels for a week, which translates to I can do things one can't do in a Miata; in this case, bringing back things from the storage units, a few boxes at a time, to be gone through & decide what needs to be kept, what needs to be pitched, & what might make a dime in a garage sale.

A little back story here: When Michael & I moved into this house in 1996, Michael's brother came up from Arizona to help us. I love David dearly, but sometimes he gets ideas into his head that cannot be changed. This was one of those times. I picked him up at the airport, & brought him back to the old house, all the way harping about the fact that NOT EVERYTHING WOULD BE MOVING WITH US! Specifically, we had a ton of books, with a substantial number of duplicates (I had inherited my brother's library when he died in 1994, which included a lot of titles that we already had, with the exception that a lot of his books were first editions, signed, sometimes personally, of some of the early, great, groundbreaking works of Gay Literature. Who wanted paperback copies of "Dancer from the Dance" and "A Boy's Own Story" when I had hardbound first editions signed by Andrew Holleran & Edmund White, with the dust jackets intact? Or for that matter, what did I need three copies of Randy Shilts' "Conduct Unbecoming" for? Keith had bought copies for himself, me, & our father, & of course I wound up with all of them). So, I told David "not to pack anything without asking first." Like 18 times.

So we went & picked up the U-Haul truck, David followed me back to the house, & I went to get lunch at KFC for the three of us. And in the 45 minutes (TOPS) that I was gone, David broke down the entire guest room, which of course included the bed that he was going to be sleeping in, as well as pulling ALL of the books out of the bookcases & packing them up in boxes. Without taping them properly. I came home to this &, of course, blew my stack! What about "Don't pack anything without asking, David?" He just shrugged & continued packing. And, of course, whenever one of the boxes of books was picked up, the bottoms fell out, & books went flying.

Well, as a result, a whole butt-load of stuff came with us that wasn't supposed to, & wound up staying in boxes for the next 13 years, until we had to clear out the house to be shown for selling. I promised myself that I would , when the time came, open each box, & figure out what should have been disposed of. Well, now that I am not relocating (yet), I have started bringing boxes home, five of them today, in fact, and started sorting through them. Needless to say, it has turned into something of a shock to the system, in more ways than one.

To begin with, one of the boxes contains nothing but carefully wrapped barware that, of course, belonged to Kent. Like I need extra-large martini glasses! Those things were supposed to go to Goodwill or Out of the Closet. But I guess that my blog a few days ago about Kent has gotten a lot of unresolved grief out of my system, so it wasn't that bad. It just means unpacking all of that stuff, & then repacking what I don't want, need, or have any desire to have taking up space in the house again.

But the biggest surprise was yet to come, & I am still unsure as to how to deal with it. In an "Office Depot" bag, I have unearthed stuff from my past from the 1970's! There are letters from my mom, my sisters, & various assorted friends & other family members dating back to 1975! There are a host of birthday cards from my paternal grandmother, all of which were late,with notes apologizing time & again for forgetting my "special day. " Letters from old girlfriends, addressed to me at Harvard. And most shocking of all, my bound diary from that era of my life, when I almost died from a then as yet-undiagnosed illness (later identified as TMJ syndrome) which put me in the hospital for about a week & a half, as I was dying of starvation as a result of being unable to open my mouth to eat.

Now, you must understand that this was a really emotionally traumatic time for me. Shortly before the onset of this strange illness, my parents separated (briefly), so there was obviously a strong psychosomatic component there. But also, that was my eight grade school year, when I was dealing with a true bitch-on-wheels, a nun by the name of Sister Kathleen Rose. I found out many years later that the monthly faculty meetings regularly degenerated into conversations about what to do to "prevent" me from "corrupting" the other boys at my Catholic Elementary School with my "homosexual tendencies," always initiated by her. Mind you, I was all of 12 at the time. Never mind the fact that I had virtually no friends at all, so who was I going to corrupt, let alone how? It was during that school year that I took my first drink. And I personally hold her responsible for all three of my half-assed suicide attempts.

So anyway, finding these things has brought up an awful lot of stuff, which I am still trying to process.

I'll keep you posted as to the outcome of this!

Give me a homosexual, who loves in a homoemotional way . . .

Ah yes, back to song lyrics, & a little brevity . . . don't worry if you don't recognize the song. And sorry if the last two blogs have been a little on the heavy side.

So anyway, about the blog title: It's from a song by the same title, by a great couple of guys who go (or went) by the handle Romanovsky & Phillips. I was first introduced to their particularly funny & fascinating slant on reality back in 1988, by my dear friend John Niec.

He, I, & a horde of our friends went to the Gay Day Parade in San Francisco that year, & John brought along a boom box with their tapes, & played their music through the entire thing. We had actually seen them in concert not too long before that, & we both knew all the lyrics by that point, so we entertained the crowds (on line waiting for the Port-O-Potty's, at one point) with our renditions of their great little tunes; the following lines always got applause:

"And I don't understand all those classified ads, filled with desires that I've never had:
Straight-looking marine seeks straight cop to please?
How straight do they look when they're down on their knees?"

Anyway, given that funds were limited for me at the time (isn't that always the excuse?) I made bootleg copies of the cassettes to take back to Europe with me, which was where I was living at the time; only came home briefly during the summers, for three years. I then shared them with my friends back in France, Italy, & Switzerland, & birthed a European following for the guys I described as "the gay Sonny & Cher show."

Flash forward a few years, after Michael & I got together, & I tried to interest him, but to no avail; he was more of a indie-punk type (an indie-punk attorney? You betcha, I can sure pick the oddballs, can't I?). Anyway, I kept my eyes & ears open, & every time they came back to the Bay Area, there I was to see them. At that point, we were self-supporting & doing pretty well, & so at one of the concerts, I broke down & bought all of their CD's (even though I knew Michael would kill me when I got home; no matter how well we were doing financially, he always fretted about money). I got on their mailing list too, so I would have advance warning when they were coming back, much to Michael's chagrin.

Well, then we moved into this house, & the local Post Office being their usual efficient selves, any further bulletins ceased. It wasn't until a few years ago that I thought to look them up on the 'net, & there they were, webpage & everything. No longer performing together regularly, apparently, & hadn't released anything more recent than those CD's I already had, but Ron (the cute one that I had a case for from the get-go) had done a couple of solo CD's, so I got those too. I then got on their email list, but didn't hear anything from them. So again, they fell by the wayside in my memory, resurfacing occasionally, like every time I went through the ever burgeoning CD collection, to wean out & sell to Amoeba the things that I/we hadn't listened to in at least a year. And then, today . . .

I got an email from Ron Romanovsky, announcing an upcoming performance!

Ohboyohboyohboyoh . . . sh*t! In NEW MEXICO! Well that just bites! I barely have the money to go to the grocery store, let alone New Mexico! But hey, it was great to hear from him/them, so I shot back a response, asking when they might be back locally. And he answered back, almost immediately! So I answered back to THAT email, getting a little gushy (did I mention that even at my advanced age, I'm still just a TINY bit star struck over my idols? I didn't?!?!? Well, now you know). And told him to check out this blog for a plug.
And I think I scared him off.

I do hope not. And if you do read this, Ron, don't worry, I'm not the stalker type. If we ever encountered each other face to face, I would probably turn &, while not run, at least move briskly in the other direction.

And then blow you a kiss when your back is turned.

I'll light the fire; you place the flowers in the vase that you bought today . . .

All of this drama, almost losing the house to foreclosure, still not knowing for sure if I have or haven't, & I missed one very interesting, very important thing; this is still HOME! Different, for sure, all scraped out, everything (almost) that made it home before in storage for staging the house to be shown for sale, but still home. And now, if it stays home, it's almost like being in a different house entirely, which also means starting over (again). Only this time, it's right.

I was going through all of the cupboards in the kitchen tonight, all of them almost completely empty, & then I noticed a couple of things that were still here; among them, the tea kettle that Michael & I bought for my mom for Mother's Day when, 17 years ago, I think? Must have been, because we bought it at Gottchalk's down in Palm Springs, so that means it was in 1992.

It is one of those kettles that looks like a chicken. Kitchy as hell, I know, just like the cow butter plate that we got that Michael just loved. Michael had, well, to be kind, little or no taste when we first met; he had one huge strike against him the night that we met, which was this god-awful BRIGHT gold sweater, with navy bands around the collar & cuffs. He was finishing up law school at Berkeley, & we met at a fundraiser at the White Horse for the UC Berkeley Gay & Lesbian Alumni Association. I was the one with taste, obviously, I mean, I chose him, didn't I?

Anyway, to be honest, I don't recall the exact details of the story, of course, being that I was still very much in my drinking days at that time, but one night, I think it must have been Thanksgiving, because we were eating at the formal dining table, which means it was a holiday, & Mama told this story about Clucky, her pet chicken (Mama grew up on a farm in South Dakota). I think it was a runt or something; the similarities to the story of Wilbur the pig in Charlotte's Web come to mind when I think hard about it, but Michael just loved that story. Just thinking about it months later made him crack up. It was one of the many things about my family that fascinated him; that there were so many of us, five kids all told, although of course Floyd (my oldest brother, remember) had died when I was seven. In Michael's family there were only four, him, his parents, & his brother David. I remember being floored when he told me that, growing up, his mom would ask what people wanted for dinner, & if all three men wanted something different, she would make three different dishes for them, with enough for two of whichever one appealed to her for herself. Not in our house; mom made the decision of what she would cook, she cooked it, & we ate it, no conversation, no arguments, & if you didn't clean your plate, you could expect it waiting for you for breakfast (cold string beans, YUM! I kid you not; although that didn't last long by time I & Anne Marie came around).

But a lot of things about us baffled him as well. Case in point: Christmas. Christmas is my favorite holiday of the year; everything else seems to be mostly about food in some way, & I am not, nor have I ever been, a "foodie." I have said for years that, if I could get all of my nutrition in pill form, I would happily take them & avoid eating at all costs, unless something really hit me with a craving, which still happens occasionally. I was looking at the latest set of circulars from the grocery stores today, & saw a sale ad for London broil, & my mouth started watering.

Well, back to Christmas; to begin with, Michael was Jewish, & over the 12 1/2 year course of our relationship, I flirted with the thought of converting several times. In fact, the last time we went down to visit his folks, for Michael's 40th birthday, less than three months before he died, I asked his mother about how to initiate the process. She just told me to find a rabbi to talk to, & I had every intention of doing so, & then I discovered that ALL of the classic holiday specials from my childhood were available on DVD. I ordered them ALL from Amazon, & when they arrived, I sat down & watched them all, back to back, over the course of say two days. And then I told him that Christmas was just too important to me to let go of.

Anyway, the first Christmas we were together, my mom decided she wanted to experience a New York Christmas. Both Anne Marie & Keith were living in New York at the time, so my parents & I flew to the East Coast for the holiday. Well, we packed in everything we could that was "Christmas in New York": we saw the Nutcracker at Lincoln Center, followed by dinner at Tavern on the Green (the most boring ballet in the world, in my personal opinion), the Christmas show at Radio City, followed by dinner at the Broadway Deli, & on & on. Well, Christmas has always had this strange effect on Anne Marie, & she tended to get a little whacky, by which I mean hypersensitive in the extreme, such that the strangest things in the world could set her off, & then Christmas could, & often as not did, turn into something other than the joyous holiday it should be. This was one of those years.

I have never been entirely clear what happened, but Anne Marie & Keith got into a battle the night we went to Radio City. We were all staying in Hoboken, New Jersey (where they both lived), and took the bus into Manhattan, & the two of them were screaming & cussing each other out the entire way in. Mom was so upset, she cried through the entire show at Radio City, & couldn't eat a bite at dinner afterwards.

Well, Michael, you see, had also flown to New York to spend the holidays with his family out on Long Island, which was where they were living at the time. On Christmas Day, I went into NYC to Penn Station to meet him & bring him back to Hoboken with me for Christmas dinner. Mind you, he had never met either Keith or Anne Marie, but he knew about my feelings for Keith, who I adored, admired, loved, & looked up to, almost to the point of adoration, so he was understandably nervous. So, I met him at the Penn Station, & basically warned him that the atmosphere at Keith's, which was where we were eating dinner, was through the roof, & to be prepared.

Anne Marie showed up not terribly long after we got back, & the tension level jumped a good 25 points at that juncture. She had brought all of her gifts with her, all of them hand made boxes, with paper that SHE had made, & each one containing a Christmas tree ornament, also hand made by her. She handed out the gifts, & then proceeded to sit in a corner & stare at the floor the entire time, until the party broke up.

Next day, dad called both Keith & me to tell us to get over to Anne Marie's apartment, where mom & dad were staying (Michael & I were staying at Keith's. Well, dad started to read both of us the riot act for "ruining your mother's holiday", & I listened for a couple of minutes, before saying that none of this actively involved me, & I should really be with my husband. So I went back to Michael, & well, we took advantage of the alone time.

Whatever went down at Anne Marie's apartment did the trick (probably plenty of that good ol' fashioned Catholic guilt my family has elevated to a fine art), & when we all went to dinner that night, Keith & Anne Marie sat together, practically in each other's laps, giggling up a storm. By comparison, it was probably THE highlight evening of the entire trip!

So, as we were walking back to the various apartments, Michael asked me, & I honestly have no idea how serious he actually was, who the beautiful blonde woman was who had been sitting with Keith. When I said, "Anne Marie, of course," he stopped dead in his tracks, looked me straight in the eye, & said, "So who was that at Keith's on Christmas, her evil twin Skippy?"

We had another variation on this kind of thing the following year, which was actually more painful & embarrassing for me, since by that point, Michael had gotten to know my family a lot better. All I will relate about that one was, when we left the house to go back to Palm Springs, where we were still living at the time, Michael turned to me & asked, "So, remind me again, what is it about Christmas that you love so much?" He kind of had a point, no?

Well, from then on, Christmas became a little easier, though I don't quite know why. I do know, however, that Michael, as a Jewish man, got a big kick out of the combination of having both a Christmas tree AND a menorah for the holidays. He LOVED shopping for ornaments for our tree. I did too, & still do. In fact, in the ensuing years, having the tree has been a more sporadic thing for me, but the menorah that I bought for him for our seventh holiday season together has remained on the mantelpiece of this house year-round since then, & I have lit it every year since he died. I even have the prayer memorized. In both English & Hebrew.

And, like all good Jews, I go to the movies on Christmas Day every year. But I don't do Chinese food. I still love my Christmas turkey with all the fixins. AND watching those goofy Christmas specials, especially Charlie Brown.