Rascal's Lair

You are so beautiful to me . . .

2011-03-23T13:11:00.000-07:00

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

2010-03-14T11:37:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-05-19T22:23:00.000-07:00

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 somenthing you feel you HAVE to do (to be read as "Is she 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 . . .

2009-05-19T00:09:00.000-07:00

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?

2009-05-16T21:59:00.000-07:00

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 . . .

2009-05-13T22:49:00.001-07:00

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 . . .

2009-05-12T22:43:00.000-07:00

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.

Missing you . . . Tell me why the road turns

2009-05-10T23:43:00.000-07:00

It has occurred to me on more than one occasion since I started this blog that one reason I wanted to do it is because I need an outlet, one which, in the past, has in part been filled by a best friend. I have never been without a really close friend, in whom I could confide just about everything. It has been two years since my Kent-doll (as I always called him) died, & I miss him so much sometimes it hurts fit to die. Tonight is one of those nights.

We were never what I would call lovers, per se; not like I was with Michael, & not like he was with Albert, or Elliott, or Marty (all of whom I at least met, if not knew very well). Yes, we were partners, in that we lived together, shared the same bed, & were close very much in the way that Michael & I were. But the greater reality was that we were each other's consolation prize, for lack of a better term.

Michael & I were a couple for twelve & a half years, starting in September, 1991. I know that I met Kent before that, because my best friend at that time, Kirk, tried to fix me up with Marty, who had been Kent's partner then. Word to the wise: If you are going to try to fix your best friend up with someone, no matter how well you think you know them, it is always best to make sure that the other person is: A. Interested, and B. SINGLE!

Anyway, Kent's & my paths crisscrossed & intersected multiple times over the years, most memorably for me when he & Elliott (Marty was gone by that point) joined a bunch of us from the White Horse to go to see Dame Edna, on what I believe was her first pass through the Bay Area on tour. But it wasn't until he came to work at the White Horse, in the spring of 1998, that we really got to know each other, & became close. I never envisioned that we would ever wind up as a "couple" of any kind; rather, he & Albert (his partner of about five years ) & Michael & I were something of a foursome, going to shows, the movies, concerts, Gay Nights at Great America, that sort of thing. Kent, Michael & I went up to my family's vacation home in the Sierra Nevada mountains a couple of times, before Michael's health became to precarious for him to risk being more than a 15-minute ambulance ride from the nearest hospital, so Kent & I went up alone a couple of times. Albert went with us just once, I think just to make sure that there was no hanky-panky going on; I also think he was partly disappointed that all that was going on was the ground-clearing for fire prevention, followed by a day & a half of pretty nonstop drinking, smoking cigs, & playing pool, backgammon, scrabble, or dominoes.

I remember that, back in 1994 or so, when Michael had his first bout with an AIDS-related illness, which probably brought it home more clearly than ever before that he had this deadly disease, Michael all of a sudden starting talking about my fathering children. This was not a new idea, for us or anybody else, I suppose; but when he was in the Recovery Room after his initial surgery, & thereafter for quite some time, he would bring it up, over & over again, sometimes garnering a not very pleasant response from me. Finally, I cornered him & demanded to know where all of this was coming from, & he told me that "he just didn't want me to be alone & unloved after he had passed;" I promptly retorted that he didn't have any say in the matter, & that he was TOO tough an act to follow for me to ever consider being with anybody else, which was, & is still for me today, quite true.

So, then along came Kent, who inspired envy in some, & rapid full-blown lust in others. Truth be told, he never really appealed to me in that way, but he was just so much fun to be with & around, always smiling & laughing, always making jokes. Even at the lowest points, like when he got fired from the White Horse, he still cracked jokes about it, even though I know it hurt him like hell.

He & Albert came to a parting of the ways; Albert found someplace to live in the South Bay, & Kent came to live with me. It was what it always had been at first, purely platonic; he had his new job at a restaurant, I was still working from home, & when we weren't together at the bar, we were at home.

Then came the night I went to this party up in the North Bay, one of those adult sort of play parties. It was a Saturday night, Kent was at home for the evening, I had the car. And then, somehow, I realized I didn't want to be there anymore, so I said my goodbyes & came home. It was only about 10 pm, & I usually didn't get home from those types of parties until well after midnight. Kent was still awake when I walked in, & asked why I was back so early, & I told him; I would just rather be at home with him than anywhere else. A few nights later, I was awakened from sleep by his standing over my bed; he asked if he could sleep with me. I told him he didn't need to ask, but it was really up to Truman (one of my dogs, both of whom slept on the bed with me, Truman next to me, & Dorothy at my feet. I'll explain THAT name game another time). So he crawled into bed next me, Truman made room for him, & the rest, as they say, was history. It was not too long after that when I told him that if there was anyone in the world for whom I could be completely monogamous, it was him. And that was that.

So we had about a year like that. Again, it was really more about being each other's consolation prize; he still really loved Albert, I still really missed Michael. But hey, we were two middle-aged men (OMG) who loved each other the best way we could. I know he felt guilty that it wasn't more, & there was nothing I could do to persuade him that I was perfectly happy with the way things were.

When he had his accident (he was drunk at work, & took a really bad tumble, falling backwards off the upper deck of the outdoor patio at the restaurant, & slammed the back of his head against the cement pavement below), I didn't find out about it until about eight hours afterwards. I raced down to the hospital to see him; he was a little incoherent, a little bloodied from having bitten his tongue or something, but was clear-headed enough to tell me his father's name, & remind me of the name of the town where his parents lived. I called them, told them that he had been in an accident, gave them the info about the hospital, & left it at that. I was pissed that he had screwed up the day for us; we had tickets to see "Jersey Boys" that afternoon. I tried to exchange the tickets but couldn't; I sold one to a scalper outside the theater, & saw the show alone. I stopped at the White Horse briefly on my way home, let people know what had happened, & then went home; the hospital was about 30 miles away. I called & got what info I could, & told them I would be back to see him the next day.

His father called me to let me know that he & one of Kent's sisters were flying in the next evening. When they got to the hospital the next evening, they found out how drunk he had been, among other things, & his father called me in hysterics. I tried to calm him down as best I could, & told him I would be down the next day; after all, I had to work too. So I went down on Tuesday afternoon; I divested myself of as much jewelry as I could, & tried to butch things up a bit -- what a bloody waste of time. When I got there, & got my first glimpse of his father, I prayed it wasn't him. It was.

Kent's father is a pentecostal minister; his mother is a Sunday School teacher in their church. Kent's folks were the only members of the family who had been unaware of Kent's sexuality until a few years before when they came to visit him, while he was still with Albert. It was kind of difficult to disguise the fact that it was a two bedroom apartment, obviously occupied by two men, with only ONE LARGE BED. So there I was, with his father, who was dealing with baby boy in bed in a near coma, & baby boy's partner there beside him. A little overwhelming, wouldn't you agree?

Over the course of the next week, I was down to see him every day for a couple of hours, but again, it was almost 60 miles round-trip to get to him & back home, & I had to work, take care of the house, take care of the dogs & cats, & on top of all of that, convey daily bulletins about Kent's condition to our dozens of friends. I finally put together a daily log, not unlike this one, which I would email to everyone every evening, so that I wouldn't have to rehash it over & over.

Kent's mother came up about three days later; his sister Beth, who had come with his dad, returned home, & his other sister Jeri came with his mother. His entire family could not have been kinder to me; much more than I had expected, or hoped for. After about five days, Kent had improved & stabilized enough that they moved him out of the ICU. Eight days after the accident, I came down to the hospital &, while he was less alert & responsive, he was still alert enough to respond when he heard me call him McGyver, another of his nicknames, because he was Mr. Fix-it.

Then, that night, his father called me at about 10 pm to say that Kent had been moved back to the ICU; they weren't sure what was going on. I went to bed early, & told him to call me if there was any change. The call came at about 5 a.m. to get to the hospital ASAP. I got there about an hour later; Kent had had a massive brainstem stroke, & was considered brain-dead. His folks asked them to wait until Beth could get back before calling it. So began one of the longest days of my life.

I went outside, ostensibly to have a cigarette, in reality to fall apart. A really lovely operating room nurse was out there, & she held me while I cried, screamed, yelled, cursed, & basically got everything out of my system. Then, the phone calls started; by the time I had called six people in my cell's directory, the answer was "I just heard; I'm on my way." Within an hour, a host of people started showing up at the hospital to say goodbye. My wife & her partner were among the first to arrive; they would stay with me until I left the hospital that night.

Jeri & I went to pick Beth up at the airport a few hours later; at about 2 pm, they did the tests they needed to formalize the official call. I met with the transplant coordinators to arrange for his organ harvesting; Kent wanted to "donate his body to science," but I knew that having his remains to bury would be important to his family. Just before they all left the hospital, I asked permission to attend the funeral. His father said something about not broadcasting the nature of our relationship to the rest of the family; I of course agreed.

It turned out to never be an issue; the flight that I had booked a seat on was canceled at the very last minute (I mean the LAST minute; we were on the plane & belted in when they made the announcement that there was something wrong with the plane). I couldn't get another flight to get me there in time, so I left the airport & went home. And worked. That afternoon Beth called me to tell me about the funeral; in spite of his father's desire to have it be small & simple, it had turned into a Cecil B. De Mille extravaganza. My beloved Kent-doll was the most loved human being I had ever known; childhood friends of his who had not seen him in years flew in from far-flung parts of the country to be pallbearers. But no one from his "real" life was able to be there for it.

Nine or so months later, I went down to Arizona to visit both his grave & the grave of my first partner, Michael; Michael's family lives in Scottsdale. I made the hour long day trip down to where Kent was laid to rest; a dreary cemetery in the middle of the desert, with plastic flowers, since there was no irrigation to support the real thing. I was there for about 30 minutes, crying, & listening to Celine Dion on the car stereo, our favorite singer, singing "our song." Then I turned around & came back home.

I probably won't go back. I don't think I can. It's too painful, too poignant, to think that the two men I have loved most in the world are both gone, both buried less than 50 miles from each other, & I can never have them back. I don't need to visit a grave to remind me of that. I am reminded every day.

I hope you're both resting in peace, you sons-of-bitches. God knows, I'm still trying. That's one of the reasons I work on this late at night.

Which road will YOU choose?

2009-05-09T19:36:00.000-07:00

OK, before I start, two things: I didn't add an entry last night, because I was being a good boy & went to bed early (for me) to get a good night's rest for today's activities, which will be explained more fully below. Second, if you had not noticed, my previous blog titles have been lifted song lyrics that reflect (or I have to make reflect) the subject of the current entry; not so with this one. Now, moving on . . .

So, I have made a few (not so) subtle references to a major change that I have made in my life in just the past year; have you figured out what it is yet? (Family members, DO NOT CHEAT HERE!)

OK, so as to not keep you guessing, on May 29, 2009, I will have been sober from alcohol for one year.

This is a very, VERY big deal for me. As you may have guessed by the above statement, I am an addict. Alcohol is but the most critical of my substances of abuse. I am also addicted to cigarettes, shopping of a sort, driving fast, the TV show "Heroes," the Harry Potter books/movies, just about anything Sci-Fi, boxed sets of things, Swatch watches, oh the list goes on & on.

In my recovery, I have been an active participant in an organization named LifeRing (see profile). For those of you who have not heard of it, it is a secular recovery organization, with some very simple precepts: Our primary goal, & our number one priority in life, is to remain abstinent from addictive substances of abuse, NO MATTER WHAT. That is what we call, our Sobriety Priority. It is a self-driven, self-help recovery organization, in which we do not practice any steps, have sponsors, or (necessarily) rely on any other power than our own initiative, will, desire, & commitment to remain free of addictive, mind-altering substances. Those who "lead"our meetings are called "conveners;" from the Latin "con" or with, and "venir" to come. In other words, they bring us together to come with them on the path to sobriety.

This is not a capital "P" program; it is a lower case "p" program, in that, each individual in recovery customizes his own program, to his own needs, tastes, & requirements (before I go further, please excuse the gender-specific term use here; I have no wish to offend). So, some of our members also attend 12-step meetings; if it helps, GO FOR IT! Some meditate; if it works, KEEP IT UP! I, myself, choose to do neither of those things, for my own specific reasons, which I may address in another blog sometime in the future, if I am in a ranting kind of mood.

The idea here is to empower ourselves, & each other, on our individual paths, supporting each other with positive reinforcement & feedback. We do not judge anyone else's path; how can we? What brought me to my addiction is not the same as anybody else's; who can tell me what the "best" means is to maintain MY sobriety better than me? Only I know my past, only I can try to see what (mis)steps I took in that past that brought me to where I am today. On the one hand, obviously, some were good steps, otherwise, I wouldn't be alive to be sharing this with you today. On the other hand, again obviously, some were not so good, but I had to make my own mistakes, to determine what didn't work, & what might be possible alternatives for the future. Again, only I can make those determinations.

So, moving on to this weekend: This weekend is the annual LifeRing Expo and Congress. The Expo part was today, & I together with a woman from one of my meetings hosted a workshop/forum on substance abuse, addiction & recovery in the GLBTQQI community. Prior to that, I attended a workshop/forum on what being a convener is all about, because . . . you guessed it, that is one of the next steps I have chosen on my recovery path (whether or not it will be a mis remains to be seen). Unfortunately, due to other responsibilities (like making money, something I have not been doing much of lately), I had to leave after that to come home & work. But not before something else, slightly more important, came up & landed in my lap. Something which, as usual, instead of going "EEEEEWW!" & pushing off my lap, I picked up, & started looking at, & thinking about what to do with it.

You see, unlike that other recovery program, the extremely well-known one, we do not have a very large membership . . . yet. I am not good at guessing numbers in crowds or groups (I am a bean-counter type in that regard), so I won't hazard a guess. But the recurring theme (at least as I saw it) in both meetings was "Outreach." How do we increase our membership? How do we get the word out as to who we are & what we are about? How do we reach other addicts for whom those other programs do not work, or have not worked in the past? We don't claim to be any better, more successful, or anything like that, but we are different!

In other words, we need PR, or rather more PR!

Which, according to one of those online personality profile questionnaires that purports to tell you what line of work you are best suited for, is apparently right up my alley! And so, guess what, I volunteered.

As I pointed out, at one juncture, what we need is a "hook," a "pitch," a "slogan" if you will; something simple, direct, & easy to recall, but draws people in & start asking questions. And again, guess what? I may have come up with it. At least the folks I tossed it out to liked it. I'll share it in a while.

Once on that subject, of course, my little brain just started to churn away, & the ideas started coming, "& thick & fast they came at last, & more & more & MORE!" (Ten points if you recognize that quote). In fact, in the 45 or so minutes it took me to get home, I had to sit down three times to make notes about these various ideas. Probably looked kinda funny to passersby, but who cares?

One or two people expressed concerns about copyright infringement, which I will double check on, but hey, who doesn't borrow ideas? You tell me, who has come up with a single, completely original idea since the wheel? Huh? TELL ME, I WANNA KNOW MISTER!

So, without further ado, but with a minor preamble here it is:

Bill W., co-founder of that other program, said in his "big book" that "The roads to recovery are legion," or some such.

If so, which road will YOU choose?

Catchy, huh?

Oh &, by the way, this is not going to turn into a blog just about recovery; if it were to do so, I might come across as pretty one-dimensional which, again I assure you, I am NOT! But I will probably insert a warning at the top to let you know if that's what it's going to be about.

Y'all come back now, hear?

And we've got nothing to be guilty of . .

2009-05-07T23:08:00.000-07:00

Has this ever happened to you? You dismiss something out of hand as a flash in the pan, one-hit-wonder, not worth the time thinking about, only to discover, to your dismay/shock/horror that you actually like it, but did know they were one in the same? Now, don't lie, of course it has! How do I know? Because it has happened to me too many times to be a singular phenomenon.

No Julian, just you, you say. Bulls**t, I say.

I am referring to my guilty pleasures, one of which is . . .

wait for it . . .

BOY BANDS!

OK, here's the back story: Before it was boy bands, it was . . . Madonna! Way back when, you know, in the olden days, the '80s, I heard about this person named Madonna. Now, I had actually met, & worked with, a lovely lady with that name, in my first job, as a telephone operator for Ma Bell. She was African-American, & I had already experienced the phenomenon that African-Americans sometimes had names that were, to my not-yet-too-open mind, well, unusual. But for a white girl to be sporting that name was, to me, just an attention-grabber, & something she was obviously capitalizing on, just like with the wacky way she dressed. Am I right? Flash in the pan, not to be taken seriously, some no-talent bimbo that would be old news by yesterday, right? Well, imagine my shock/horror/embarrassment to discover that every weekend I was hitting the dance floor as fast as I could when "I'm Burning Up" I was in fact dancing to this no-talent bimbo's music. Which would continue, of course, through all of her hits of the 80's, into the 90's, & so on until I pretty much quit dancing, because I was no longer going out to clubs at those kinds of hours.

Well, so it was with the boy bands. I only knew the names, but not the music that went with them (HA!) so whenever one of their songs came on, I dismissed it as by those "Back-In-Sync-Take-That-Street-Boys," which is what I called them. Again, imagine my shock/horror/embarrassment to discover that one of my favorite songs, "Back for Good," was by Take That, that I really, really liked "I Want You Back" by N'Sync, & that I really REALLY liked "Larger Than Life" by BSB. I had no idea who this (studly but brain-dead) Nick Leshay who was married to that blond ditz Jessica Simpson was married to was, but boy I really liked that song that was by, guess who? 98 degrees! And so on, and so on, and so on . . . Michael indulged my tastes on this score big time, which was lucky, because this couple we hung out with a lot shared my insanity as well. And wouldn't you know it? My wife's college roommate worked for the PR company who represented BSB, so she could get us REALLY, REALLY good seats at REALLY cheap prices! The four of us saw BSB in concert two or three times as a result. Oh BOY!

Now, I agree, it's more than a little ridiculous for a man who is closer to 50 than 40 going apes**t over boy bands the way I continue to do. Case in point: Westlife, this Irish boy band I was recently turned on to (did you remember to check my faves list for today's update? They're there). Total fluke; some dude on one of my Yahoo groups which is actually supposed to be geared toward more, shall we say, adult entertainment, brought them up, posted some of their music, along with some pics of the group (another bunch of pretty boys), & I downloaded the music to get a taste, & was hooked!

Do you begin to understand the important role that music plays in my life? Almost all of my CD's are currently in storage, pending the sale of my house & subsequent relocation to god-knows-where, so I have had to make do with what I can get via music sharing, which, needless to say, is subject to the whims of others. Am I complaining? Obviously not; I am always open to new music, & new artists, and obviously even more open now than in the past. But this groupie act is beginning to wear on me.

On the other hand, while my vocal range is still pretty broad, it's easier to hit those lower notes than those of say, Barbra, Celine, or well, you get my drift.

So, what are your guilty pleasures, kids? Dare ya to share;-)

'Night!

Who am I? Can I condemn this man to slavery?

2009-05-06T22:39:00.000-07:00

A few words about profiles: I tend to have a hard time with them. Either they ask leading questions, then not give you enough space for the answer, or ask questions you don't really want to answer.

As to mine here, I was inspired on my way home tonight by something written by one of my favorite authors, Richard Bach, in his book "Illusions: Adventures of the Reluctant Messiah." In the "Messiah's Handbook," one of the statements is "Sometimes the simplest questions are the most profound. Who are you? What are you doing? Where are you going? Ask yourself those questions a couple of times a day, & watch your answers change."

I didn't fill out the profile here at first, because the space was so limited; my favorite books? Movies? Music? Are you asking me to choose from the hundreds of titles in my libraries, of books, films, & CD's? If there was a simple answer to any of those questions, I think I would be a pretty boring & mundane person, which I can assure you I am not.

So I came up with a pretty clever solution: I gave single answers to each one, just for today. Which is to say, I am going to add to each answer every time I add a blog entry, until I run out of space, at which point I will delete the top entries to make room for the next ones. This is, in fact, a form of extortion, you see; this way, in order to get a better, more complete impression of me, you have to keep coming back. Clever, huh? What a way to ensnare a captive audience!

I don't know about the picture, however. I initially used one of a more recent vintage; I have now changed it for one of my personal faves, which also just happens to be almost 20 years old. I am making this clear from the get-go, because I don't want anybody accusing me of misrepresenting myself by way of my appearance. So let me be 100% clear: That picture is my college graduation picture; it was taken when I was 27, & I am currently 46. Do I still look like that? To a certain extent, yes; the hair is shorter, & thinner, & lighter in color, & streaked with silver. But as I know I mentioned a while back, my ID may say I am 46, but I sure as h**l don't feel it, nor do I look it.

Another important part of who I am involves the cast of characters that are, or have been, a part of my life, most particularly at this stage of it. So let's start with my immediate family, past & present. Here they are, in order of appearance on earth:
My dad, Robert (Bob) Elliott, entered stage left 1917, exited stage right 1995.
My mom, Virginia Wilber Elliott, bloomed in 1924, faded away 1995.
My oldest brother, Floyd, burst on the scene 1950, left in less than a blaze of glory 1970.
My next oldest brother, Keith, lit up the sky 1952, disappeared with nightfall 1994.
My older sister, Jamie, high-kicked her way in 1956.
Then me, hatched 1963!
My younger sister, Anne Marie, pushed herself into the crowd 1966.
Jamie's first husband and father of her children, Richard, first encountered by me in 1983.
Jamie's daughter Megan, joined the party 1986.
Jamie's son Matthew, threw his first punch 1987.
My first partner, Michael, married me 1991, left my life 2004.
Anne Marie's husband, Charlie, snuck in under the radar with his daughter Bailey 1992 (I think).
My wife, Heather, elbowed her way in 1998.
Anne Marie's & Charlie's daughter, Olivia, popped in 2001.
Jamie's second husband Jerry, recruited in 2002.
My second partner, Kent, joined my life 2005, joined the angels 2007.

Try to keep the names & characters straight, there will be a quiz later.

What's in a name? The origin of Rascal and his Lair

2009-05-05T23:11:00.000-07:00

So, where did I come up with the nickname/handle "Rascal." Well, truth be told, it was my dad's nickname for me when I was but a wee bairn. Beat the hell out of "Jon," & all of its variations, i.e. Jonny, Jon-Jon, etc. I really hated that name by the time I was about five. Part of it was getting tired of not having a reasonable answer when people (read other rugrat kids) asked why there was no "h" in my name. As I recall, my first switch of moniker occurred in summer school, 1970. The new name chosen? "Seymour," believe it or not! I have no real clear idea where I came up with THAT one, except that I seem to recall that there was a "Seymour Kneitel," I think his name was, on the creative team behind the Popeye cartoons I loved to watch at my godmother's house after school. I tired of "Seymour" pretty quickly, but not the idea of changing my name. I think I switched around four or five times, but none lasted long. The only other name I recall adopting, at least briefly, was of all things "Pierre." Finally, as a concession to my parents' wishes, I did start going by "Jonathan," off & on until I was about 14 or so.

So you see, the name my parents gave me at birth never sat well with me. I know that my parents were very aware of this, & of my plans to change it legally when I was old enough. What is actually kind of interesting was finding out, years after I had changed it to Julian, that my brother Keith had wanted them to name me Alexander (for Alexander the Great; how gay is that?). If they had, maybe that would still be my first name at least. Now, how the choice was made is kind of funny.

To begin with, in my sophomore year in high school, I was befriended by one of my teachers, Danilo Pacheco. He was the one who started calling Jonathan, so that was what I went by from about 14 until 18. I still wasn't completely happy with it, however, & was working on a complete name change, meaning first, middle & last by the time I was about 16. For a while, "David" was in the running, rather strongly, but I really wanted something more unusual than that. But the final choice of "Julian" was in fact brought about indirectly by my mother.

See, in my senior year of high school, I had the opportunity to get a class ring. The choices of course were silver or gold band, with fake ruby or fake onyx as the stone. I opted for the silver & onyx combo; the ring was ordered & a deposit put down for it; the balance was due on arrival, by COD.

Well, however long it was after that the ring arrived, but I wasn't home at that particular moment. Mom was however &, not knowing what it was, she refused to pay for it. I got home later that day, & she proceeded to rip me a new er, bodily orifice (I am trying to maintain at least a PG-13 rating for this blog) for ordering something & expecting her to pay for it without question. At the time, I was collecting miniatures as a "hobby" & she assumed it was a dollhouse chair or something. Now, I may have been a little on the weird side in terms of my interests, but not stupid enough to do anything like that. Long & short, however, was that I figured out what it must have been, & let HER know, in no uncertain terms, what I thought of the situation (being raised Catholic, we all knew how to inflict a powerful guilt trip). Mom, of course apologized profusely, but the damage had been done - no class ring for me. To make it up to me, however, mom gave me a REAL gold ring with a REAL onyx setting . . . with the initial "J" set in gold in the stone. Out of consideration for her, as I really DID prefer that ring anyway, I mean, who would settle for fake over real in the first place, that cemented my first initial, thereby limiting my choices.

What I was looking for, ideally, was a name that I could handle all of the possibl e diminutives of. Now, in the past, I have told people that I took the name from the classical guitarist Julian Bream, but that is really only partly true (& a small part at that). You see, about the same time I came out of the closet as gay, in 1979, a certain film came out where the main male character was named Julian, & the character was called Julian, Jules, & Julie by other characters throughout the movie. The movie in question was "American Gigolo." Thus, my first name is an homage to the young & extremely HOT Richard Gere. And while only one person has ever addressed me as "Julie," I am of course now commonly & interchangeably known as either "Julian" or "Jules." A fun variant that cropped up in my mid-20's, courtesy of a sweetheart of a guy named Chris I knew from the White Horse in Oakland, where I was working at the time, was "Hooligan!" I LOVED that!

My new middle name was almost "Montgomery" for Montgomery Clift, & Clift as my last name was always in the front running, pretty much neck & neck with "Frost," for Robert Frost, my then favorite poet (my tastes have altered somewhat over the years). I'll get to that part of the story in a bit. However, I felt that it would be a little TOO pretentious to do that, I mean, I didn't want anyone thinking that I was Monty's and Liz Taylor's love child. Now, it so happened that, when I was confirmed as a Catholic "soldier for Christ" at age 12, the guy who sat next to me for the confirmation mass, rehersals & all, took the name Francis, for St Francis of Assisi, as his confirmation name. My confirmation name I had decided upon years before -- Thomas. I chose Francis specifically out of devotion to St Francis who, in my opinion, is one of the most deserving of canonization. St Francis, to me, is the embodiment of a man who took Christ's teachings completely to heart. These days, this is my only acknowledgement to my Catholic upbringing.

Finally, it came down to the nitty-gritty as to finalizing the name, in particular the last one. I was theoretically engaged to a woman at the time, & so I made the decision hers to choose. I asked her which should prefer to be known as Mrs. Clift or Mrs. Frost. She, obviously, chose Clift, & the rest, as they say is history. However, I should point out that, I was looking, in fact for a name that would look GREAT in lights, you know, I wanted to be a STAR! and I needed a star-power name.

So, there you have it, how Jon Wilber Elliott (ain't that a kick in the rubber parts) became Julian Francis Clift, AKA Rascal. The "lair" part is sweet & easy; while cleaning up the house to get it ready to be seen by potential buyers, I discovered one of my brothers photo albums from the 1970's with pictures of him in all kinds of different places, including with a friend at Rudolph Valentino's house in Beverly Hills (I guess, I don't know LA that well). Rudy's home was called Falcon's Lair; I kinda dug the name. So I used it to name my home LAN (Rascal's Lair), & now the blog.

In my little town...

2009-05-05T01:40:00.000-07:00

Today, I walked over to the post office to get my mail & while I was walking the streets of Albany, I was again struck by how different this place looks from what I recall as a child. Yes, folks, I have lived all over the world, only to wind up in this one mile square berg where I spent the first 14 or so years of my life. Yes, yes, I know, how terribly Dorothy Gale of me. On that note, I remember Liza doing a musical number in one of her concert tours that I saw, about some woman who traveled the globe searching for her soul mate, & upon finally meeting him, discovers to her shocked amazement that they have been living next to each other, on Riverside Drive in Manhattan no less, for years. And, if you don't know the Liza I am referring to, give up your gay card! What? You say you don't have a gay card? Well, e-mail me your address & I'll send you one of the ones I created, just for these kind of homosexual faux pas moments.

Moving on . . .the Albany CA I recall from my childhood could very easily have been clipped from a "Leave it to Beaver" or "Here come the Nelsons" episode. You think I jest? Albany in the '60s & '70s, believe it or not, was the SF Bay Area center of . . . wait for it . . . the JOHN BURCH SOCIETY! Yes, indeedy, the local office of American Opinion was still at the southwest corner of San Pablo and Solano Avenues as late as 1981. I remember seeing it, never having noticed it before (hey, in 1981 I was still a self-absorbed teenager) & asking my mom if she knew what it was. I was shocked! In retrospect, however, it explains why I never laid eyes on an African-American unti I was five years old. That's how white bread this town was then.

Anyway, the other misconception I (still) had about this town, which was completely blown away today, was that it was mostly, as in 99.9% single family homes, occupied by their owners. Well, just in the past 48 hours, I have seen more duplexes, triplexes, quadriplexes, and apartment buildings than I ever imagined were actually here! No wonder they can cram 10,000+ people into this teentsy little berg. It also explains the size of the schools. No wonder the preadult population here requires four and a half elementary schools, as well as the middle school and Albany High. And a half, you ask? Well, I am not sure what MacGregor School is up to these days, but when I was a student there, it was K through 3rd grade.

Again, anyway, all of the businesses I was familiar with, some of them quite intimately, are mostly gone now. Zarri's deli, the best non-Jewish deli I have ever had the pleasure to eat at, is still here. But that's about it, when I think about it.

Another thing that I noticed, which has got to be an age thing, is that I get worn out just walking to & from the post office. Now that is just ridiculous to me. It is only a mile and a half round trip; I can't be that out of shape, can I? Oh wait, yeah, that's right, my birth certificate does tell me I am closer to 50 than 40 now, even though my head, not to mention my inner child, refuse to accept that fact.

Again, regarding my didactic memory, just walking the streets brings up vivid childhood recollections, even if some of the landmarks are gone. One of the things I do recall well was that I was a gregarious, outgoing kid, who had little inhibition about talking to strangers on the street; I am not too sure when or where my shyness and reserve developed from. Now, however, there seems to be a grumpy old man surfacing from the shadows, who I am not particularly thrilled to be identified with.

It struck me just within the past few weeks one of the truly striking differences between then & now was my relationship with my neighbors. As a kid, I knew the names of every family on the block, plus a lot within a two to three block radius of the family home. Now, however, I only met one of my close neighbors within the past few weeks, just since I put my house on the market. I have no idea the names of the people who live in the houses two doors down from me on either side. Isn't that sad? I remember when my eldest brother Floyd died, all of our neighbors from within a two & three block radius showed up at our house with food (I had no idea what that was about, but hey, I was only seven at the time). In contrast, when my first partner died, a little over five years ago, the only neighbor who remarked on it was my next-door neighbor Angela, & then only because the ambulance came to take him away, & not her for a change. Did I get food from her? Not exactly; she invited me out for brunch one day not too long after Michael passed, but other than that . . . no, wait, she did offer me a joint, I think, but don't quote me. But that's another big change from my kidhood; an elderly woman in her 70's offering me marijuana?

I did one other thing today, prompted by the initiation of this blog last night; I bought a notebook to write down ideas for blog entry themes. My brain seems to be falling over itself coming up with clever little missive titles, such as: "If raindrops on roses & whiskers on kittens are really high on your list of favorite things, maybe you need to talk to a shrink!" and "What do all of those Harry Potter fans under the age of ten, who are not British, make of some of the terms in those books?" I mean, do they know what "trainers" are, as in articles of clothing? I don't.

Well, that brings me to a close this time. Again, my camomile tea seems to be kicking in. Time for bed. Good night. Come back soon.

Starting here, starting now

2009-05-04T03:38:00.001-07:00

Since beginning this process of selling my house, more and more frequently I have been waking up in the middle of the night and finding it impossible to get back to sleep. As usually happens in these cases, my mind starts to do this skip-to-my-lou through a vast catalog of topics, as often as not completely unrelated to each other, except in MY head. So, self-important narcissist that I am, I decided to start committing these roller-coaster rides of the cerebellum and cerebrum to the 21st century's version of paper.

While I, of course, find myself fascinating, others may or may not; hey, the only way to find out is to throw it out there to the universe & see what kind of pies get thrown back at my face, virtual or otherwise. So here we are.

Have you ever -- well, actually of course you have, if you are technologically advanced enough to have found this page -- received one of those emails with a butt-load of otherwise inane, innocuous questions, sometimes choosing between two things (croutons or bacon bits, chocolate or vanilla, S or M), sometimes asking for a list of faves (books, movies, sexual positions), that you are supposed to fill out & send to a bunch of friends, "including the person who sent this to you; you might find out some surprising things about each other"? Well, in just the past few days, to my surprise, my older sister Jamie, who you would assume would be aware of such things, did not know that I was in a rather serious motorcycle accident when I was just a few months shy of my 18th birthday, which resulted in my knocking out all of my front teeth & required some reconstructive surgery. You would think an older sibling would HAVE to be aware of such a thing, wouldn't you. Now, of course, not everyone has my memory for details, but something this major happening to one's first degree relative, their "baby brother" as it were, would qualify as something she would know about, right? Well, obviously wrong, at least in this case. Of course, if MY memory does serve me correctly, & don't bother to challenge me on this kind of point, because you WILL lose, she was living in Atlanta, Georgia at the time, so she never saw me as the postadolescent toothless wonder that I was for a couple of months. Now, my younger sister, Anne Marie, would have to know about this, since she reported it to our mutual orthodontist, who naturally threw a fit; after five years of his hands in my mouth to give me a beautiful smile, I go & f**k up his handiwork. Can you blame him.

Actually, it SHOULD have been a more life-altering experience than it was; you see, it was the first time I ever had actual consequences of driving under the influence. Yes, folks. truth be told, I was stoned off my ass on pot. The only real lesson I took to heart from it was really to avoid driving while stoned on drugs; in fact, I did quit smoking pot for a long time afterwards, & to this day, it is one of the reasons I approach marijuana, medicinal or recreational, which such trepidation.

On the other hand, it came as a total surprise to Anne Marie to discover, only a few months ago, that I am a rabid baseball fan (GO GIANTS!). Her response to that piece of info was short & to the point: "YOU?!?!" I know, I know, I hardly look the type. And while I am not addicted to the sport, I mean, I can't spew batting averages & winning stats ad nauseum about the game, it is really the only team sport I have ever enjoyed watching. It is of interest to me, at this stage in my life, to realize that my dad never took me to a baseball game -- basketball, football, tennis, yes. I am not even aware of UC Berkeley even HAS a baseball team, though I am sure they must. I wish he was around so that I could ask him why not.

So yeah, even at the advanced age of 46+, I can still pull a few surprises out of my hat with which to surprise, or even shock, my family members. Friends too, although that is a hell of a lot easier, believe me.

Take my friend, Cheryl, for example. I don't really know how long we have known each other, but at least more than a year, since she met the pre-sober me, & that part of my life journey ended almost a year ago. Now, Cheryl knows, as do all of my friends, that I am a performing arts culture queen, as in theater, concerts, ballet, etc. But she was shocked to learn that I, um, well hate is such a strong word, but here it does truly apply, yes, I HATE opera. Not rock-type opera, of course; as a lapsed Catholic who was a teen in the 1970's, I had JC Superstar force fed to me by the nuns, those bitches, & the first professional stage show that I recall seeing was "Evita," which still ranks in my top three personal faves, though I really wish they would reimagine its presentation. I'm sorry, Hal Prince, I know you are God in the eyes of some, but come on, it's been 30 years, can we try something new here? Now, before you ask, yes, I have given opera what I consider to be a fair shot; I have been to the opera four or five times. I just can't get past it though. I told Michael, my first husband, after we did a three show program through the SF Opera, that if he wanted to continue to go, I would find someone to go with him, since we were going on his dime, well, more than a dime, but you know what I mean, but that I was done. We did go once more, though, when the Best of Broadway included Buz Lehrman's "La Boheme" as part of one season, but still, yech! No thanks.

So here it is now, almost 4:30 a.m., & I have been up for two hours, & theoretically need to be up for work in another two. See how it is? Well, it seems that the camomile tea is finally doing its job, since I am getting a little drowsy. But hey, for my first blog, this was fun. Hope you enjoy the read. Feel free to ask any questions my cerebral meanderings may have inspired; while you may not like the answers, trust me, I will have them! Not to mention, a question or two of my own, for pondering, mulling over, provoking thought and/or dialogue (if not diatribe), etc.

Stay tuned, kids. Something tells me this might be the beginning of an interesting little adventure.

Night night now.