Wacky Shit from All Over!

Jesus Died on the Cross So Kathy Griffin Could Win the Emmy!

(best headline today!)

The Miracle Theater in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee spent $90,440 for a full-page ad in USA Today that condemns Kathy Griffin for her jokes about her Emmy rather than using the money to feed the hungry or to do something like, ya know, like Christian, with the money.

Personally, I’d like to know where a pissant theater company, anywhere, gets that kind of bread to blow on bullshit ads rather than putting on actual productions. If you ask me, them getting that kind of scratch was the real fucking miracle.

The Senate passed a bill condemning MoveOn.org for the Betrayus ad (thereby sending a clear message loaded with irony to the rest of the world about our double-standard regarding free speech.)

No matter how you slice it, domestic partnership versus full-blown marriage is still the same old “separate but equal” baloney that kept blacks in their places for nearly a century. But bullshit is bullshit despite the window-dressing of bigotry wrapped in religious fervor. (I've yet to see these same folks who blast gays condemning people who eat shellfish or pork… or who sleep with their wives during their “unclean” times, despite the fact that all the injunctions come from the same historical source).

But the enlightened Renaissance Man in Sacramento obviously disagrees.

And why am I still not hearing people demanding that government get OUT of the marriage game altogether?

Yom Kippur starts at sunset today. To all my Jewish friends, may you have a Blessed and Serene Holy Day of thoughtful introspection.

And for all my Gentile friends, tonight is one of the two best nights of the year to do anything (movies, eating out, theater). So get your asses in gear and make plans!

Mazel Tov, everybody!

A Gay Lolita

"Okay," some folks have asked me, "if you knew you were gay when you were six, name some of the people you had childhood crushes on?"

Alrighty, then. Time to visit the vaults. Only one of them was a real, everyday person to me. The others were all actors on tv.

Age 6: My 1st grade schoolbus driver, Frank. I wanted to be alone with him, but I didn't know why.

Age 7: Clint Walker aka "Cheyenne." Hunka-hunka furry, burning love. Again, I wanted to be alone with him... somewhere else.

Age 9: Will Hutchins aka "Sugarfoot." He was dreamy and soft and, well, kind of gay. Not at all like that Bear I was in love with at age 7.

Age 11: JACKPOT. Gardner McKay in "Adventures in Paradise." Man, did I want to be alone with HIM on that 3-masted schooner, somewhere in the South Pacific where nobody would ever find us. Forever.

Age 11: Peter Palmer in the movie musical, "L'il Abner." I sat through it 3 times on one Saturday afternoon. When I left the theater a blizzard had hit us and I had to slog home through 9 inches of snow. He later made a guest appearance on the Tennessee Ernie Ford TV show and I still remember what he sang. How gay am I? He really was a dreamboat.

Age 12: Sigh. Another dreamboat with a deep voice. Tom Tryon as "Texas John Slaughter" (a Disney series, no less!). I had seen him earlier as the monster/alien husband in the Grade-Z epic, "I Married a Monster from Outer Space", but I forgave him for that once I fell in love with him.

In all that time, sorry to report, I never once wanted to be alone with any woman I saw on tv or in real life.

Ergo sum... honey, I'm so gay I poo rainbows.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

Nowadays.

Well of course it is. Homo Sex is a threat to national security, naturally. Or unnaturally. Probably just as big a threat as Osama. Or Milk Duds. Or something.

And Eurasia has always been at war with Oceania.

Is it just me or are the crazies out in force these days? George W. Bush's Iraq War now appears poised to last until I'm dead. Hillary's trying to flog yet another healthcare plan that doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell. Some student in Florida got tased by the cops (and don't think for one minute that I believe HE's as pure as the driven snow, either... I smell a great big, publicity driven rat behind that story). And tased? Puhleeze. In my day the National Guard invaded your campus and shot four of your classmates dead for shit like expressing your opinions regarding war. Tasing is for pussies. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young will NOT write a memorable song about some publicity-hound getting tased.

Meanwhile, President George W. Shitforbrains forces generals and ambassadors to kiss Congress's ass on his behalf.

Greenspan finally starts spilling the beans. So does Rummy.

Over half the people under 30 think that the US and Germany were ALLIES against Russia in WWII (what the fuck planet have they been living on?)

Some dumbbell on The View thinks the world is FLAT.

The Senator from Idaho may like to suck some cock or get butt-fucked on the DL now and then, but he is MOST EMPHATICALLY NOT GAY!

And denial, apparently, really is just a river in Egypt.

Sometimes I wonder when Jeebus is finally gonna come and get me out of this madhouse?

The End of the Gay Ghetto

Joe of JoeMyGod posted a piece yesterday about the slow death of the gay-bar scene throughout America. He raised some good points about a loss of a piece of our gay culture and history.

But it also signals the beginning of the end of the ghettoization of gay people. For better or worse. And you can feel either way about that, and that’s fine.

When I came out, a process that I started as a teenager in the early 60’s, all I wanted to was to “fit in.” I wanted to be like everybody else (except for my family, who were drunks and idiots). I wanted to meet other people “like me” but I didn’t want to have to skulk about in back alleys in search of dark, unmarked, bars in order to find them. I didn’t think I should have to do that.

I knew that God had made me, that God didn’t make garbage and that I was no “mistake.” I also seriously doubted that some Jewish virgin had squeezed God’s baby through her Poo-nanny. So that was the end of me and Catholicism and the beginning of me and my fabulously queer self.

Eventually, though, I did skulk down back alleys into dark bars in order to find others like myself. I even had a lot of fun in those places. But they were always redolent of “shameful hideaways” where out-of-towners from Pissant, Utah, on the prowl in the Big Cities of the East and West Coasts, could get a little same-sex nookie while “on a business trip”, secure in the knowledge that the wife and/or hubby remained safely tucked away back home, where they belonged. Out of sight and definitely out of mind … for the evening.

And for that reason, these joints also often smacked of self-loathing. I never knew how self-loathing I was until I started looking at my past behavior as a gay person and in terms of all my destructive addictions. Booze, drugs, cigarettes, rampant sex… all of them overindulged in to the point of doing serious physical damage to myself.

Then I got sober. And I started peeling away the layers of denial about what I’d done and the reasons why I’d done it. And I saw the self-loathing that lay beneath it all.

So, if we’re moving to a “post-gay” world, where we’re as common as the next door neighbors and it’s just as cool for gay people to cruise each other at the supermarket as it is for Hets to do it, then so be it. I embrace it. In fact, I believe the whole point of the “movement” over the past 38 years has been to get us to this point.

When I sobered up and started feeling better about myself it seemed that my need to constantly reassure myself of my inherent worthiness started to disappear. I began realizing just how cheaply I’d sold myself into the bondage of addictions in the past.

I hope I’m sober enough now to recognize it if I ever start killing myself again.

Triangulation

I had a good time at the roundup. I saw some recovering folks I know from meetings all up and down the east coast. There were some really good workshops on Saturday on everything from "Dating in Recovery" to "Roles and Codependency."

Growing up in a dysfunctional, alcoholic family really gave me a boatload of false ideas about relationships. One of the biggest was that they were fearsome things, easily destroyed and that one should never express one's feelings regarding them.

When you're Irish and Catholic that leads to communication via triangulation. For example, if I was pissed at you I would never tell you about it. That would be far too confrontational and combative and might piss you off, which would never do because I'm the only one entitled to be pissed off in our little dyad.

I would, however, share that information with our 2nd cousin, Delia, who lives in Detroit. My thinking would be, "Delia has a cooler head... she'll be able to dispassionately pass along my pissed-offedness to you without pissing you off in the process." I would expect her to mediate the so-called issue, to resolve it with you in MY favor, and to get back to me with the results.

Don't laugh. This is how my family operated.

Regrettably, it's how I continue to operate in some areas. I'm much better now about setting boundaries with people. I'm fairly certain that the world won't end if you get pissed at me, so I'm willing to risk it.

But it also spills over into my ability to interact with people I'd LIKE to have a relationship with, including potential romantic partners.

Example. I find Mr. A attractive, therefore I will throw myself at Mr. B in the hopes that A will get jealous enough (or interested enough) to come over and say hi. It would never occur to me to go say "hi" to Mr. A because he might laugh in my face and say, at the top of his lungs, "HI? As if I'd ever marry you!!!" Or something to that effect.

You can see how socially disabled I am.

That happened this weekend. I found some tall guy very interesting. Naturally I never spoke to him and every time he looked at me looking at him I pretended I was looking at something or somebody else.

And, of course, I immediately started chatting up some nearly insane person sitting next to me, who was thrilled at the attention and was probably mentally renting a U-Haul for the big "move-in" next weekend. With me.

After 9 and a half years of sobriety I'm STILL trying to learn how to be a teenager.

The Philly Roundup is October 12, 13 & 14th, just three weeks from now.

Maybe I'll have better luck next time.

Or not.

New Jersey Roundup!

Some of you lovely folks who really should get hobbies might remember that I went to the Rehoboth (DE) Roundup last winter, over President's Day weekend. Well, it's the start of a NEW roundup season already.

In a few hours I'll be heading out all the way across Route 33 from Hightstown, NJ, through Freehold (home of "The Boss") then to Route 18 and finally to beautiful, out in the middle of fucking nowhere, Tinton Falls, NJ for the newly resurrected New Jersey Roundup - 2007 Edition. So no more postings this weekend unless I get real ambitious Sunday night, after I get home.

The Rehoboth Roundup was enormous (+400 attendees), well organized, great workshops, plenty of fun activities and GREAT speakers from various 12-Step programs. If our first NJ roundup in many years is half as good as that, then there is hope that it might continue on again next year.

Roundups are kind of like websites. There comes a time when they sort of "go viral" and suddenly become enormously popular (like the P'town and Rehoboth and Miami Roundups). Word of mouth actually accounts for a lot in terms of building popularity for them.

Next month is the Philly roundup, which I'm also looking forward to attending.

So, naturally, I've spent the morning cleaning the bejeebus out of the apartment at home... just in case. Oh, alright. Just in case I meet Mr. Right and he wants to move in this weekend.

Just kidding.

Sort of.

As you may also recall, I got some definite interest during the Rehoboth Roundup and I'm kind of hoping that'll be true this weekend, too. The big difference being that this Roundup is happening less than 40 minutes from home (Rehoboth is a good 2 hour drive from where I live), so it's more likely I'll meet someone who is GD (geographically desirable) than it was in February.

Yeah, I know that sounds crazy. Hey! I'm a drunk! (recovering)

Now if you'll excuse me, the toilet definitely needs a shave.

xxxooo

Lies and Whispers

It's that time of the election-cycle (by which all things in the US are truly governed) when everyone who hopes to lie their way into higher office set about to "re-align" their stands on just about everything (divorce, abortion, me) in hopes of capturing the hearts and minds of the largest possible number of voters (idiots).

It also leads to the need for really big lies, such as the half-assed crap like we heard on Monday and Tuesday from Frick and Frack (Petraeus and Crocker) on the subject of George W. Bush's War in Iraq. Time is running out and they know that the best they can hope for is to stall until it's some Democrat's problem.

They're no fools. They're out there taking the heat off Bush now because they know that there'll be a PAYDAY for them in the future in return for being good little soldiers now. All they have to do is sincerely lie to Congress. They don't even have to be convincing. All that matters is that, when the time comes for THEM to run for office, they'll be able to claim that they were good soldiers and true patriots and they honestly believed the bullshit they were saying at the time and, therefore, we should vote for them.

Truth means nothing in our country. Spin is King.

Nazi Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels knew this.

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

I believe that we have a conspiracy of fools and liars running the country these days, funded largely by self-serving, egotistical institutions that have zero interest in serving the public good or upholding the true values upon which our nation was founded. I believe that politicians (and the left and right-wing think-tank flacks and corporations behind them) are out to do two things... to get these politicians elected and then to get them re-elected. Period. After which they will do their best to serve the money behind them.

Over the decades my life has been dragged through the mud time and again by people who couldn't care less whether I lived or died. I was merely collateral damage to them in their war against each other. And every American of zero note, such as myself, is as expendable as Kleenex in their battles against each other.

When I witness, as I have this week, the spectacle of Washington running amok and doing what only Washington can do best, lying, cheating, stealing, backstabbing and posturing, it makes it very hard to care about anything or anyone other than myself.

I think I need to speak to my sponsor.

Best Headline Yesterday (9/11 Anniversary)

"The only thing flying around the Pentagon today is bullshit." Wonkette

There was a time, many eons ago, when I wanted nothing more in life than to be outfitted with a Hasselblad camera (2x2 format) and sent into the jungles of far-flung places by the National Geographic Society. That time was called "High School" and I don't have many fond memories of it (I doubt that few actually do), so jungles sounded like a fine idea to me. Needless to say, God and my family had other plans.

The other thing I wanted was to be a big Broadway star. That didn't happen, either.

However, I did manage to become a big fish in a small pond at the University of Delaware between the summer of 1973 and the spring of 1976. During that time I managed to finagle my way into over 19 productions, everything from big "main stage" flapdoodles all the way down to teensy shows at the Student Center cabaret named Bacchus (after the Greek God of wine and alcoholism).

The other day I posted a picture of myself in our summer theater production (1974) of "Damn Yankees."

Today, for your edification, I post the above photo from our Winter Session (U. of Del. - January, 1974) production of Mr. Oscar Wilde's "Lady Windermere's Fan," "fan", so-called because I have the hots for her.

It's a Victorian fluff of a nothing about, well, about Lady Windermere and her fan. Well, actually two fans. One is a literal fan which she inadvertently leaves at the home of a bachelor gentleman (me) who is her "secret fan."

It's loaded with high-falootin' English talk, tons of famous Wilde bon mots ("My dear, the only thing worse than being talked about is NOT being talked about!") and ravishing costumes, as evidenced above (that's me on the right) decked out in the height of 19th Century Evening Foppery.

The gentleman to the left, whose name I do recall (and he was actually quite a looker under all that makeup) shall remain anonymous. However, he is a famous chef these days somewhere in the East and you may have actually seen him on TV at one time or another. And that's the end of that. Don't bother pressing, I shan't say another word. My lips are sealed.

Besides, I don't think he's out to his mommy yet. Or anybody else.

Anyway, I hope you get some sort of perverse kick out of watching me cruise down memory lane.

G'day, Possums!

I See Dead People

It'll come as news to nobody that today is the sixth anniversary of the occasion of a bunch of Islamic Martyrs, hopped up by the thoughts all those virgins they were going to get in Paradise, hijacking a bunch of planes and flying them, at flank speed, into the WTC, Pentagon and earth of western Pennsylvania, killing thousands of people.

I've already blathered here about my whereabouts and doings that day (I was in NYC - my brother and I engineered a breathtaking escape from the east side to the west side along 53rd street and fled north along the West Side Highway and out to New Jersey over the GW Bridge).

Others had breathtaking tales to tell of harrowing escapes from near certain death, or heartbreaking tales of personal losses. Not us, though. The biggest loss I experienced that day was the death of Father Mychal Judge, the chaplain of the FDNY. Not because he was a priest, nor because he was a chaplain. I mourned his loss because he was Irish (and proud of it), gay (and proud of it) and a recovering drunk like me (I was proud of that).

But it was later, on TV, in magazines and on the internet, that I got to see real close-up photos of deaths, either after the fact or as they were about to happen (i.e., shots of "jumpers" from the towers). Those deaths weren't particularly heroic, but rather horrifyingly desperate, born out of a total lack of any other available options.

It was not hard to develop a somewhat morbid fascination with the events of that day. They had funeral masses all day long, every day, for weeks on end at St. Patrick's Cathedral, just a few blocks south of my office building. I still smoked in those days and every time I went outside, there'd be ANOTHER funeral procession lining up to march down Fifth Avenue (I got real sick of bagpipes during this time and I usually love bagpipes).

Eventually, though, they ran out of body parts to mourn and bury, and the rawness of the events of that day faded (although it took weeks for the plumes of smoke from the great pit where the towers had stood to finally stop).

And then, somehow, six years went by.

Yesterday I took the day off to attend the funeral of a 2nd cousin in Philadelphia. Father Al was 81 and he'd been in poor health for some time. For me I didn't experience a sense of loss at his passing so much as I sensed that the last tenuous threads of that part of my family were coming undone. I became desperate to attend the funeral in order to try to reconnect with that part of my tribe.

I'm very glad I went. I saw my childhood sweetheart (yes, a girl... we were androgynous little things at age 8-9) and told her I was sober. She then confessed that her mother had died of alcoholism, along with the kid we played with across the alley AND his father. I spent a lot of quality time with relatives I never even knew I had. It was a long, exhausting day. I couldn't have imagined a nicer sendoff for Albert than for his extended family to get together to celebrate life.

It's nice to remember the dead, but I'd much rather celebrate the living.

Ah, Show Biz

Click on photo in order to (as Joe of JoeMyGod says) "embiggen."

Some people have asked me why I have such a teensy picture of myself in my profile. Well, up until this past winter, frankly, it was the most recent picture I had of myself. Yes, yes, and I was semi-disguised behind sunglasses, too.

But after a year of blogging I've decided to rummage through the pictorial trunk and see what else I could come up with to give you, Dear Reader, a couple of yuks.

I've already posted the picture of myself in boot camp, which was pretty scary. I looked like an anorexic miler.

But after the service I started to fill out a little and did some college theater. I have a bunch of photos of myself in various productions there, but this is my all time favorite photo of me (I'm the tall one, 2nd from the left) in my all-time favorite show (Damn Yankees). I loved singing barbershop quartet with the other guys (2 of whom I'm still in touch with). We did it in summer stock, on a nightly rotating rep basis, along with "Death of a Salesman" and "Hotel Paradiso." Let me tell you, it was confusion every night in the dressing rooms trying to figure out if we were supposed to be depressed or overjoyed.

To this day the closing night of Damn Yankees remains one of my most cherished memories of my college years. By then the show had developed a following in our college town of Newark, Delaware, and the place was packed with DY groupies who anticipated every joke and gave us rousing ovations after every song. And the more they loved and gave to us, the more we loved and gave to them. The intense feelings of euphoria poured across the apron of the stage in both directions that night. It was magical.

It was especially flattering to me because some fan kept stealing my headshot from the company bulletin board in the lobby throughout the run of the show. I think we had to replace it 3 or 4 times.

I had bigger roles in my 4 years of stage acting, certainly more "important" roles in Shakespeare or Chekhov, but none of them ever gave me the sense of joy and satisfaction I got from playing "Smokey," a member of the quartet, in "Damn Yankees."

Service

One of the tenets of faith in 12-Step sobriety is that, ultimately, we get clean and sober in order to be of service to others. In fact, we say that our "primary purpose is to stay sober and to help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety."

Everything else in our lives becomes... not unimportant, but certainly secondary to our sobriety. It has to be that way because without our sobriety (first) we wouldn't have anything else. We'd lose life partners, children, careers, fortunes and health if we started using again.

Sometimes that "service" we render to others takes the form of one-on-one sponsorship of a newcomer. A sponsor's job in recovery is, simply, to lead the newcomer through the 12-Steps of recovery. It's not to be "the fixer." It's not to be mommy or daddy, or Dear Abby, or Bank of America or Triple AAA. But it is to share the sponsor's "experience, strength and hope" regarding their own experience with the Steps. Period.

And sometimes that service comes in the form of serving in some leadership function or another. Here's where it gets tricky. We have no President or Chairman of the Board or, indeed, much "management" at all, to speak of. As we say, "our leaders lead, but they do not govern" and anyone, anyone at all, can be "recalled" from a leadership position at any time simply by means of a "group conscience." These positions are always an honor to fill.

Back in May I was elected by my home group to lead a Friday morning beginner's meeting here in Manhattan. This was the third time I've been elected to this post over the past seven years. The length of the term is six months. I have a co-chair and we alternate Fridays from July 1 through December 31.

For reasons nobody quite understands (God?) this Friday morning meeting has grown by leaps and bounds over the past 7 years. This morning (my turn) we had 75 people turn out for it. We ran out of time before everyone could "share." When I see that this is going to happen I try to pick out newcomers in the crowd to call on because they are the most likely to drink. The old timers might cop a resentment over not being called on, but in the immortal words of my sponsor, "screw 'em if they're that overly sensitive."

He's right, of course. He always is (he also monitors this blog - "LOVE YA, BRO'!"

I look forward to Friday's meeting more than any other in the week. When I sit up in the front of that room and see the looks on the faces of people who are trying, like me, to get better... when I witness their struggles and their losses and their victories, small and large, I am overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude and with a profound belief in God and in miracles.

For any day that 75 alkies and druggies don't pick up a drink or a drug is nothing short of a friggin' miracle.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

More later, but for now....

The Unbearable Yuckiness of Being

My life, for the most part, is one unending string of serene moments. That's been the case ever since I stopped drinking ... and suffered through the first couple of years of sobriety.

Whenever life got disruptive, even for a little while, it generally involved some interaction I was forced to undertake, or to endure, with my biological family of origin.

Things had been pretty quiet on that front for a few years now until a phone call came on Monday evening from my aunt informing me that her first cousin (and my late mom's), the family priest, had passed away that day.

Albert (his name) had, by all accounts, started out in life as a prissy little thing who loved dressing up... like a priest. I remember comments being made about how he was always holier than everybody else and would walk around with a rosary draped over his hands. They packed him off to seminary when he was 18. I can actually remember attending his ordination in Connecticut even though I was only 4 at the time. He was then sent off to Puerto Rico to do his time as a parish priest somewhere in the mountains (no cabanas or beach boys), coming home only occasionally to preside over baptisms, weddings and funerals.

In time I became an altar boy and celebrated mass with Albert a couple of times at the local parish church.

But eventually I outgrew Roman Catholicism (when I grew pubes and realized that they were wrong about me) and I once shocked Albert by playing "The Vatican Rag" by Tom Lehrer for him. Things were never the same between us after that.

We lost touch for years, others kept up the family cohesion. Eventually he got reassigned back to the states. In 1995 I copped a giant resentment over the fact that he wouldn't come home from Pittsburgh to preside at my mom's funeral. I ran into him and his brother, Victor, at my aunt and uncle's 50th wedding anniversary a few years back. Albert had had a foot removed because of diabetes and his brother now helped him around.

After that we started exchanging Christmas cards every year. His were religious but not odious, mine were secular but respectful. We'd both jot a short note to each other expressing our sincere wishes for the health and happiness of the other in the coming year and that would be the end of that.

And now he's gone.

The family (his brother) won't have much to say about the funeral arrangements. The Order he belonged to will pretty much dictate policy in that regard. And trying to find out their plans is like trying to pull sanctified teeth.

Meanwhile, I'm forced to interact on a nearly daily basis with a bunch of people I really don't have very much in common with these days. They tend to be racist, bigoted, homophobic, alcoholic, drug-addicted (legal), co-dependents who love to live their lives as self-inflicted victims. I've been thinking that they'd gotten even nuttier in the last 15 years.

But I was telling this to a friend of mine in recovery earlier today and he said, "Maybe they're not any crazier than they used to be. Maybe you're just a helluva lot saner."

And all of a sudden I was overcome with a feeling of yukiness. How am I supposed to love these people when I can't even stand to be around them anymore?

Fantasyland!

When I was a kid, watching the grand opening of DisneyLand in Anaheim in living black & white on channel six out of Philly (ABC), I was enthralled to find out that they had various "theme areas" to the park. There was Frontierland (because Davy Crockett was a Disney franchise), Tomorrowland (with it's sleek RocketShip), Adventureland (with it's Pirate Ship) and Fantasyland. When my imagination turned, as it often did, to the subject of my rescue, when the Knight in Shining Armor (my father) rode in to rescue me from the clutches of the Evil Queen (my mother), he and I were then always torn between riding off into Tomorrowland or Fantasyland. Generally, though, we came down in favor of Fantasyland.

I got enabled (a lot) by people who wanted to control me over the years. The adults with whom I lived while I was raising myself, the Navy, some well-meaning but totally controlling friends in college, lovers, bosses, et al. President Shitforbrains got enabled a lot, too, by the finest politicians and institutions that his daddy's money could buy. Eventually I hit a bottom and had to face a lot of realities, real fast. There's nothing like waking up in a jail cell on a Sunday morning with a DUI and no bail to get your attention.

And there's nothing like a quick trip to Iraq to give Assahola Bush a slap or two in the face, regarding the "real life" he's been ignoring for years now.

There's a wonderful piece in The Huffington Post about it today. Go check it out, here.

It's a funny thing about Fantasy. It can be whatever your pea-sized brain needs it to be. Whatever serves your immediate and unbending, unyielding, needs. Fantasy. Great word that. It implies a total denial of current reality.

Speaking of that, one of my favorite moments of all times in the theater comes in "Angels in America" when a doctor confronts Roy Cohn with the truth about his disease. Roy absolutely, vehemently, denies that he is "gay." Oh, he may have had sex with men, but he is not gay. He threatens the doctor with ruination if the doctor even utters the thought that Roy might be "gay." Roy sums up his feelings about it thusly, "whatever it is that I am... it's NOT THAT!"

And that was the end of that. Oh yes, he took it up the butt from a string of handsome young men (proteges all), but he was NOT THAT.

Pacino was (well, wasn't he always?) over the top in his performance of the scene. But he definitely captured the essence of what Cohn was all about. Absolutely controlling and dictating what people even thought about him. Or, at least, he tried to.

That's why, slightly later in the play, as Cohn lay dead of AIDS in the hospital, one of the most breathtaking pieces of sheer theatricality I have ever seen in my life occurs when the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg (played by Meryl Streep in the HBO production) steps out of the shadows to say Kaddish over his corpse. It brought tears to my eyes and spoke volumes regarding the subject of forgiveness.

Anyway, Dubya is a lot like Cohn. Controlling. Pigheaded. Absolutely Right and everyone else is absolutely wrong. A dictator. Cruel. Self-centered. Egotistical. Completely unsolicitous of others unless he's gonna git sumthin' outta it.

There are two types of people in his world. Himself and all the little people.

He should only be so lucky as Roy Cohn when the time comes for someone to say Kaddish over him.

And speaking of denial, see also the latest on Larry Craig. He's still hiding his queerness behind his children. As though he were the first gay guy to get married and sire kids as beards.

My Big Fat Sober Life!

I got way too busy to blog yesterday. They closed the office early and lawyers, being lawyers, they like to cram as much crap into Fridays as possible (because they don't do a friggin' thing all week), so that meant cramming even more crap into even less time than usual.

I had dinner with a friend of mine last night. A(nother) nice straight guy, divorced, with a 12 year old, pubescent daughter who has definitely taken a turn to the dark side (paging Darth Vader). But I never turn down a home cooked meal, if I can help it. And it's fun to watch hormonal teenagers in action and to wonder how I managed to survive my puberty. I think I postponed it until I was 20, which helped in the houseful of drunks I grew up in.

I crashed early but I was up at the crack of dawn today to shop. Tomorrow is my friend John's annual Labor Day Picnic, Ice Cream Social and Tractor Pull, which I wouldn't miss for the world. It has gotten to be a dubious habit of mine to bring my world-famous "Kitchen Sink Salad" which starts with loose spinach (a pound), Hearts of Romaine (chopped), crushed walnuts, shredded carrots, sliced red bell peppers (cleaned), red onions, mushrooms, mini-cubes of cheese, grape tomatoes, mandarin orange slices, croutons and tossed with a combination of Caesar and Ranch salad dressings (Maries).

I have to put it into a couple of those disposable aluminum oven roasting pans in order to transport it over to Pennsylvania for the party. It takes about an hour to get there and I like to keep it in the fridge right up until the moment of departure.

Anyway, it takes a fair amount of time to assemble the ingredients and to pre-prepare some of them, such as chopping the lettuce then washing and rinsing it and then stowing it in plastic bags in the vegetable crisper overnight.

The party will start at 2:00 p.m. (EDT) tomorrow, but I'm the coffeemaker for a Sunday morning 12-Step meeting, too, and I'll have to run over to the town hall tomorrow morning to get the coffee going, then come home and finish assembling the salad.

Oh, yeah, and I have to stop and pick up a sponsee I'm taking to the picnic with me, too.

I'm happy about all that. I'm really happy because some new shoes I ordered showed up yesterday. A pair of Sperry Topsider deck shoes and (be still my boyish heart) a pair of Jack Purcell low-top gym shoes which take me right back to my miserable youth! But Lord, I do love those sneaks!!!

Oh, and I've been sharing at my meetings about this being the 10th anniversary weekend of my emotional bottom, when all I wanted to do was die.

And my phone has not stopped ringing since yesterday with calls from people in recovery telling me how glad they are that I didn't get my wish that weekend 10 years ago.

I'm glad, too.

Have a lovely holiday, everyone!

!!!Baby's First Birthday!!!

Today is the first anniversary of JoyZeeBoy - The Blog.

I haven't been a daily poster and for that I am truly sorry. If there's one thing I've learned in sobriety, it takes constant, daily attendance at 12-Step meetings in order to get and to stay sober.

And it takes constant and daily posting to learn what a crappy writer I really am. Not to mention pompous, pedantic, petulant, pedestrian and, at times, downright pubescent.

But I procrastinate.

Sometimes I feel like I'm flying when I write. The words come out so fast I can't keep up. This especially happens when I'm writing about where I was in my drunkeness compared to where I am now or, really, anything to do with sobriety. Sometimes the words have to be dragged out, especially when I'm really pissed about something (usually a politician).

Sometimes I hit the "Publish" button and when I check it out on-line everything is perfect. Other times I have to edit and re-edit the piece until it finally makes some bit of sense.

And sometimes it's just hard to think of anything to write about. That's when I feel really "less than." I feel like I should always have something to say, something to contribute. But when I find myself feeling that way I try to remember that I don't share at every 12-Step meeting, either. Sometimes it's enough for people to just know that I'm there.... rather than where I used to be, 10 years ago.

I don't have a huge readership. I know a handful of my regulars (Bev, Alan, Steve & Luke) but other regulars I don't know at all. I just know that they're from Maine, Missouri, Lancaster (PA) and Los Angeles. But I appreciate every one of you and hope that sometimes I say something that makes it worth your time taking a look.

I got the impetus to start writing this because of Bev. Sometime around the turn of the century I hit bottom and she started her daily blog, "Funny The World" which, if you haven't read it, you should.

I started reading her daily postings about 4 years ago, then I started to read Steve's blog, "Living in the Bonus Round", and things just took off from there.

Now I'm an internet junkie (being a good alcoholic I do a lot of "transferrance" with my addiction(s)).

But I don't regret a single word I've posted here all year.

Until, of course, they come to haul me off to Gitmo because I think President Bush is an incompetent jerk.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME, EVERYONE!

Now where's the friggin' cake?

It seems like only 10 Years ago...

This coming weekend is the 10th anniversary of my planned death. No, I'm not kidding. I was horrifically drunk at the time. I'd been horrifically drunk for over 2 years (well, longer actually, but 2 seems like a good number.) I'd left my ex in November of '94 and moved into my "Apartment of Gloom" on East 78th Street.

I spent the next couple of years a) not working and b) pissing away every dime I'd banked during my lucrative Wall Street years ('83-'94).

By the summer of '97 I was drunk pretty much 24/7/365. The money was rapidly running out and I knew that it was only a matter of weeks before I had to shuck off this mortal coil.

(I'm sorry if this makes anyone out there feel squeamish, but it's the way it was.)

Now, in my insanity I hadn't actually "done" anything to prepare to do myself in. I hadn't bought any weapons or drugs to do the deed with. I vaguely recall having some notion of using "household goods" of some sort or another to do it. I remember a box cutter which I thought would do the trick (don't try this at home, kids), only it turns out you need a tub full of hot water in order to "bleed out". A bucket of warm vomit won't work.

Anyway, I didn't even get that far. The Labor Day weekend arrived and I was drifting in and out of consciousness when suddenly I became dimly aware that "something" was happening. That "something" was the announcement that Princess Diana had been in a horrific auto accident in Paris.

Well, that perked me right up. I remember blearily trying to focus on the screen (I had a 48" Sony XBR rear-projection tv in those days) and thinking (well, sort of), "OH, THISH IS SUCH A TRAGEDITY", so, naturally, I forgot all about dying (me, at any rate) and started thinking about what a wasted young life had been extinguished in Paris that weekend.

And I watched, every time I wasn't passed out, for the next week.

What had been missing from my life for months and even years at that point had been... TA-DAH! drama. Now I had plenty of drama. It wasn't my drama, but I made it my drama.

Anyway, I was pretty insane in those days (as you can tell), but I'm not nearly so now.

10 years ago Princess Di's life, which wasn't supposed to have ended, did. 10 years ago my life, which was supposed to have ended, didn't.

I'm glad God doesn't ask my opinions about anything. I'd be giving her all kinds of crazy-assed advice if She did.

A Family I Chose.

Every Saturday night, when I'm home, I drive about 45 miles to a 12-Step meeting (gay) near Doylestown, PA. I was first taken to this meeting years ago by a friend in recovery who, himself, no longer goes.

As often happens with these things, it took me awhile to start to feel comfortable there, but then I started to get to know the people, and now I've come to love and care about most of them.

Last Saturday night one of the old-timers there, Mr. X, celebrated 40 years of continuous sobriety. His partner, Mr. Y, threw him a big bash and all the other members of this particular meeting brought food for the event. I had a brought a sponsee with me who is struggling to stay sober. I thought doing a little "service" would help him to forget his own problems, just for a while at any rate. I wasn't wrong. He's a landscape architect by trade but like most of us he has "the gay gene" when it comes to table arrangements and room decoration. I turned him loose on the place and he had a field day. We got there around 6:00 p.m. and things started to really percolate around 7:00 p.m.

By 7:00 there were probably 50-60 people at the dozen or so large round tables set up in the vestibule of the local Unitarian Church we had kidnapped for the evening (truth be told, we have our regular meeting downstairs on "non-event" nights). By 7:30 the crowd had swelled to well over a hundred and so we started to file into the church proper for the main event of the evening. A 12-Step Meeting with our Anniversary Boy as the only speaker.

I was honored to have been asked to read one of our "Opening Statements of Purpose" which generally precede a good 12-Step Meeting and as I looked out over the crowd I was suddenly overwhelmed by feelings of gratitude and humility. Gratitude for my sobriety and for the overwhelming extent of my non-biological family, humility to think that only 9 and a half years ago I was a falling down drunk without a friend in the world (well, damn few, God love 'em).

Mr. X was wonderful. He has a long and illustrious association with recovery, within the gay community, in and around the Philadelphia area. Hell, he had gotten sober before I even came out! He was going to meetings in Philly when I was just starting to venture into the gay scene there in the early 70's.

After the meeting had ended and we were cleaning up the debris of the "eatin' portion of the meeting, a gentleman who looked slightly familiar came up to me and asked me if I remembered him. Luckily, I did. I had met him years before at a gay meeting in Rehoboth, DE. His partner of many years had recently died and although he knew Mr. X and Mr. Y he didn't know too many other people at this shindig, so he was delighted to see a familiar, friendly face.

Like a lot of people in recovery I started out life with a less than ideal family but in recovery I have found wealth beyond measure by gathering around me a family of like-minded people whom I can genuinely love and trust.

I guess you could call them

A Family I Chose.

With a Thong in My Heart!!!

Jake over at NoFo got me thinking about songs that invoke a certain place, city or state, or state of mind with his recent post about going home to Iowa.

Iowa, of course, was immortalized by Meredith Willson in his musical, "The Music Man" in which he lovingly described his fellow Iowans thusly:

"Oh, there's nothing halfway about the Iowa way to treat you,
if we treat you, which we may not do at all.
We can be cold as the falling thermometer in December
if you ask about our weather in July.
And we're so by-gone stubborn
we can stand touching noses for a week at a time
and never see eye-to-eye...
but what the heck, you're welcome, join us at the picnic
you can have your fill of all the food you bring yourself.."

Oklahoma, of course, is in a category by itself. Rodgers & Hammerstein saw to that.

But both of those are musical theater.

Nobody ever wrote a musical about Virginia, or Maryland or (God forbid) Delaware. Not even New Jersey.

This is not to say that New Jersey doesn't have it's fair share of songs about it, and places in it.

"Wildwood Nights" Ah, my mispent youth.
"Palisades Park" Freddie "boom-boom" Cannon

and many others. But my absolute favorite, without exception, is this one. It's by The Boss. And Route 9 is real. It runs right through the Boss's hometown of Freehold. I've been on it and under it beaucoups plenty of times, usually on my way "down the shore" to Asbury Park, home of The Stone Pony where the "E" Street Band got it's start.

Here's the touching, tender, first verse, that so moved the hearts of thousands of New Jersey teenagers ever since it's release in the mid-70's:

"In the day we sweat it out in the streets of a runaway American dream
At night we ride through mansions of glory in suicide machines
Sprung from cages out on highway 9,
Chrome wheeled, fuel injected and steppin' out over the line
Baby this town rips the bones from your back
It's a death trap, it's a suicide rap
We gotta get out while we're young
'Cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run..."

Hits ya' right here, don't it?

Are there any songs about your hometown or state that you just love?

Mourning Becomes Electra

I hate Eugene O'Neill, but the title is an apt one today because so many people seem to be in mourning.

First things first. My colleague in the blogosphere, Jake at NoFo, is mourning a member of his extended family today in a lovingly written memorial piece that you should definitely check out. Jake's writing tone and style are so beautiful that I could swear he went to parochial school and probably even knows what a gerund is and, more importantly, where to place it when diagramming a sentence. So go read it and fall in love with his writing like as I did.

Next, my 12-Step "home group" is mourning the passing of a sweet old gentleman named Griff, who past away in his sleep last Monday evening. Griff was a stalwart member of our big book meeting on Tuesday morning and will be missed by all the regular irregulars, myself included.

Finally, apparently we should all be mourning the loss of someone near and dear to hearts of many an Englishman and the subject of one of Wm. Shakespeare's greatest plays, Richard Plantagenet (Richard III, King of England) who died this day in 1485 (age 32) at the Battle of Bosworth Field (the last English King to die in battle), thus ending the War of the Roses and marking the ascent of Henry Tudor, 2nd Earl of Richmond and scion of the Red Rose House of Tudor to the English (for it wasn't yet British) throne as Henry VII. (There's your entire sixth grade history class in one paragraph.)

You can't make this stuff up. There's a whole society devoted to the memory of the original Tricky Dick which you can check out here. Ignore those dead princes in the Tower. Richard was framed! And every year for as long as I can remember, on August 22nd, that society places an "In Memorium" piece on the obituary page of the New York Times. I have to admit, I get a real kick out of reading it every year.

But unlike those folks, when I realized I needed a hobby I took up blogging instead of worshipping a long-dead king.

I wonder who is crazier?

Lousy Weather

First of all I want to thank my friend Alan (visit his blog which I've bookmarked as "The Thin Red Line" down and over to the right) for bucking me up when I was feeling down yesterday. He's been a good friend for years, even when the best I could manage was to be a drunken asshole in return. So thank you, Alan, for everything!

I won't whine (too much) about our lousy weather since the Caribbean has been getting the brunt of Hurricane Dean. But it is windy, wet and cold. We're getting the kind of rain that comes down sideways so that umbrellas, no matter how big they are, are useless from the waist down.

I wanted to pull a quote today from an op-ed piece by Frank Rich that appeared in this past Sunday's NYTimes. It has to do with Karl Rove's resignation and his so-called legacy. It's a long piece, but what's really germaine, I think, is this part:

"Last weekend's Iowa straw poll was a more somber but equally anachronistic spectacle. Again, it's a young conservative commentator, Ryan Sager,
writing in the New York Sun, who put it best:

'The face of the Republican Party in Iowa is the face of a losing party, full
of hatred toward immigrants, lust for government subsidies, and the demand that
any Republican seeking the office of the presidency acknowledge that he's little
more than Jesus Christ's running mate.'

That face, at once contemptuous and greedy and self-righteous, is Karl Rove's face. Unless someone in his party rolls out a revolutionary new product, it is indelible enough to serve as the Republican brand for a generation."

And that's from a conservative backer (albeit a young one). I think that both parties are well on their way to being completely out of touch with an increasingly younger electorate.

Gotta remember to send a couple of bucks to the Kuchinich campaign. Nobody else seems to have my best interests at heart.

Stay dry everyone!

Scare Tactics

I haven't given much thought to being diabetic. I mean, I haven't obsessed over it. I sort of just let it go, aside from doing whatever the doctors and my diabetes coach, Nurse Harriet, told me to do. Mostly that involved diet, exercise and medicines. I watched my A1C steadily drop ever since I was first diagnosed with diabetes, a year and a half ago.

I was vaguely aware that there are "dire consequences" to being diabetic. Heck, it ran on my mother's side of the family and I had a great aunt who wound up having a leg or two hacked off. But that was in the early 70's, I told myself, no need to worry about that sort of thing now. Besides, I thought, I have great medical care, something no one in my family ever had.

So I just did the right things and let the chips fall where they may.

Until I picked up today's New York Times. For reasons I don't understand the NYTimes has decided to do "in-depth studies" of the six major killer diseases in the US these days and they started the series, today, with diabetes.

Oh, lucky me.

I found out about "burnout" whereby a diabetes patient just gets sick and tired of all the crap they have to do in order to stay healthy as the months and years go by. I can see myself burning out on puncturing my fingers in oh, say, five or ten years. I can see getting tired of a diet of leaves and gravel. I can see being (well, I already am) burned out on trying to shed pounds. They took me off the drugs that are supposed to be the worst offenders for putting weight on diabetics and I spend a couple of hours a week on a treadmill. Still, I can't lose an ounce.

Then, to make matters worse, now that I've finished Harry Potter I've started reading "Michael Tolliver Lives" which is Armistead Maupin's new book about the denizens of 28 Barbary Lane, 30 years later. We don't get 40 pages into the book before the protagonist, Michael aka "Mouse", manages to acquire a trophy boytoy husband. So did Armistead.

I was lying in bed reading this last night and getting more and more depressed. So I bookmarked it, tossed it down, turned out the light and went to sleep.

There are times, such as these, when I wonder (even though I know I shouldn't) just what kind of divine plan I'm supposed to be fulfilling.

Or maybe it's just the crappy weather.

You're Approved!

If you're like me you've received over, oh, about eleventy-bajillion solicitations for new credit cards over the last couple of years.... all of them signed by some faceless drone at Chase Credit Cards (Wilmington, Delaware) named:

Carter Franke (pronounced "Frankie" as in "Goes to Hollywood.")

Well, first of all I want to assure you that Carter Franke is not just a faceless drone. She (and it is a "she") does exist. I know this because I have a niece in the credit racket down there, who used to work at Chase and, in a roundabout way, worked for Carter Franke.

The problem was that Chase's marketing department got so pumped up on the equivalent of marketing steroids that they didn't do a very good job of keeping track of whom they sent what to. It got so bad that there was a time when I was getting 3-4 of these things a WEEK in the mail. Last year, for Christmas, I sent my niece and nephew-in-law a card saying that they'd been "pre-approved" to spend an entire Christmas afternoon with Uncle Ron and I signed it, "Carter Franke." Needless to say, that greeting card made the rounds at Chase Credit Cards, Inc.

Their invitations to spend more all looked exactly the same. Oh, the masthead would change, depending on which outside company had gotten into bed with Chase in exchange for a piece of the action. Those included everything from AARP to AAA. But after the logo, the rest of the letters were identical.

It was absurd.

How did I get so popular? Beats me. Chase was one of the companies I owed a boatload of money to at one point. But I have a theory. When I got sober my credit was wrecked. I owed money to everybody. I thought it was insurmountable. However, after a couple of years, paying everybody a couple of bucks a month, that "mountain of debt" I thought I had, turned out to be about $16,000.00. Well, it's gone and has been for 4 or 5 years now. I also didn't run up any new debt while I was paying off the old debt. I lived on cash, checks and my debit card. Eventually, magically, my debt disappeared AND my credit score went from about 450 to 823.

You can guess the rest.

So when Chase went data mining at the credit reporting agencies, they come across my score and practically chewed their own paws off trying to get at me and my sterling credit reputation. It's the reason I was so rapidly approved for mortgage money earlier this summer. They took one look at my score (it was now down to 803 because I'd made the mistake of buying a car 2 years ago) and they wanted to write me checks, practically on the spot.

Prepare for what seems is a non sequitur but it isn't.

Now, with Hurricane Dean beating the crap out of Jamaica and taking aim at the Caymans, but with still thousands of miles to go before it hits the American mainland, President Bush has PRE-APPROVED disaster recovery aid and money for Texas.

Shocked? I know I am. Not.

Meanwhile, poor New Orleans still can't the kind of real money it needs from the Feds in order to fix itself up after Katrina.

Carter Franke has retired. She's been replaced by some other faceless drone who's name I've yet to memorize. But I'm sure I'll be seeing it plenty of times in the coming months and years.

Meanwhile though, I wonder if Carter would be interested in post-approving New Orleans for a couple of bucks?

It's a Beautiful Day (in Dogpatch, USA)

It is done. Evil has been vanquished and good has triumphed, at a tremendous cost, of course. I'm talking about "Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows". Real life should only end as neatly. Unfortunately, it doesn't.

His Imperial Drunken Fratboyness still occupies the throne. There is some good news, though. The departure of Machiavelli (Rove) will open the floodgates of Republican defections from the White House over the next few months. Even Tony Snow is now talking openly about his "endgame" as Press Secretary so he can hit the speaker circuit and make some real bucks.

Meanwhile, though, the ship of state sails straight down the shitter and there doesn't seem to be anything anyone can do about it.

Everyone pretty much agrees that the much vaunted and anticipated report by General Patraeus will be nothing but a bunch of phony-baloney bullshit straight out of bullshit central.

But enough of that.

I don't know what the weather is like in the rest of the country today but it is absolutely spectacular here in the mid-Atlantic. It's mild, dry, sunny with nary a cloud in the sky. Cool winds are blowing in from the Northwest, a welcome relief at this time of year... and nothing but bad news in February when "Alberta Clippers" sink us into deep-freezes for days on end rather than just cooling our bedrooms and emotions.

I took care of my daily chores early, spoke with a couple of other people in recovery, saw a movie ("Death at a Funeral", okay, nothing to write about though) and am about to sit on the front porch and read the paper (the New York Times, of course).

Tonight I'll pick up a sponsee of mine and we'll head on out to a gay meeting in Pennsylvania. I'll do my best to stuff his head full of recovery for the 40 minutes it takes to drive to and from the meeting. He can't escape while we're on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, just north of Philly.

It's already been a wonderful day... with every promise of getting better by the minute.

I hope you have a wonderful day, too!

No. Not Yet.

Look, I promise I'll finish it tonight. I did read an entire chapter last night. Honest to Godric Gryffindor!

Here's what I think is happening. I go to bed and read a chapter. Then I fall asleep. Sometime, in the middle of the night, Jo Rowling (that enchantress), sneaks into my bedroom and whisks my copy of HP&TDH away to a secret bindery, not far away. There they carefully break the binding on my book, install another sheath of papers representing another 3-4 chapters, rebind it and she sneaks it back under my bed, just seconds before the alarm goes off.

It's obviously a plot to make me look like I'm a slow reader, which I'm not. What were we talking about?

Oh, yes, they convicted Padilla of something, probably of thinking or saying evil things about Vice President Darth Voldemort or President Fake Southern Drunken Fratboy Who's Really a Spoiled-Rotten Ivy-League New England Preppie and Guard Deserting Drunken Fratboy -- and don't laugh, we're all next!

And I have one question. A half a trillion dollars, over 3,000 American military casualties and 4 years of war in two foreign nations have gotten us exactly what?

WHERE IS OSAMA MR. PRESIDENT?

Here's what I think. Every night we get close to ending the war. Then Fratboy falls asleep, and that bitch, the Veep, sneaks into his room and adds another six months of war to his presidency.

I can totally relate. I'll never finish the book. And you can

BET YOUR BOTTOM DOLLAR THAT GEORGE W. BUSH WILL NEVER FINISH THE WAR IN IRAQ.

Note to the NSA data miners. This concludes our broadcast for today. We hope you have enjoyed our program and will join us again tomorrow. Have a pleasant evening everyone.

Baby Steps and The Big Picture

Which Harry Potter Character Are You?
	You are Fred and George. You're a joker at heart, but when push comes to shove, you know what's important.
Find Your Character @ BrainFall.com

I polished off some more of HP&TDH last night... and I'm still not finished. Most of the chapter I read involved Harry peering into something called the "Pensieve" and seeing a lifetime of someone's recollections in there (I won't tell you who but let's put it this way... somebody else died last night).

So a lot more was revealed and much of it clarifies a lot of other stuff and it's the kind of stuff that makes kids feel like shit when they find out there ain't no Sanity Clause or Ether Bunny.

And then I fell asleep.

So I'm kinda hoping to finish it off tonight (yeah, yeah, you've heard all this before).

It won't be giving away much to say that Harry is finding out "stuff" and that stuff is all part of seeing "The Big Picture." He's lost his innocence and is beginning to see life in shades of gray. Few, indeed, were those who were pure as snow or as black as night in his make-believe world. Sometimes things had to happen for the greater good, and it was a tough call, sometimes, to decide who lived and who died in the process.

The progression in the books was logical. They've gone from naivete to cynicism.

It happens to all of us. It happened to me (and far later in life than the Merry Band of Hogwartians experienced it).

This year, for example, I've had to face some hard realities about my so-called friends in public office. In order to get elected candidates on both sides of the aisle feel as though they have to kiss fundamental ass, left and right. It's tough being a centrist in a divided nation.

It's tougher being a dove in a nation of chicken-hawks, most of whom never had a gun pointing back at them when they were out hunting, or had a "Bear" (Tupelov) circling overhead while serving on an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean during the heighth of the Cold War.

We are not a nation "at" war. We are a nation which needs war. We need it to feed and justify the existence of our humongous defense establishment. The Super Secret Spy programs exist solely for the purpose of justifying their own existence. Hence "data mining" or looking at billions of phone calls and e-mails (and probably blogs like this one) looking for any hint of subversive tendencies (they'll find plenty here).

There's no long-term strategic need for us to be in the Middle East. Nobody there is crying out for America (or western Europe) to save them from themselves. I've known this ever since I saw "Lawrence of Arabia" at the age of 14 and had it all explained for me in the last 15 minutes of that movie wherein Prince Faisal sells out the rest of the Middle East to the English in exchange for Saudi Arabia. When it got too hot for the Brits to handle after WWII, they dumped it on us.

We could've gotten off of oil a long time ago except for one thing. American Corporate Greed which is, was and always will be the driving factor in ALL American policy, foreign and domestic.

And if you think otherwise, then it's time for you to quit taking baby steps and to start looking at The Big Picture.

Oh No I di'nt.

No, I didn't finish HP and the DH last night. But I did read the entire chapter entitled "The Battle for Hogwarts." It's a ripping good yarn. Somebody else died. I'll read another chapter tonight.

I got an e-mail today from my newly favorite New Jersey Assemblywoman with an attached list of grievances against Academy Bus Lines. She asked me if I had anything I'd like to add. She must be kidding. She also advised me of the next "town hall" meeting that she's scheduled in order to have a public bitch-fest against the Poor Little Besieged Bus Company (cue the violins). I plan to attend, of course. Especially after she pointed out that over the last six years bus fares have risen 50%. I knew it was a lot, but not that much. Correspondingly, service has gotten at least twice as shitty in the same period of time.

And it seems that people on the other side of the state (towards the shore, along the Garden State Parkway route) have the same problems with Academy that those of us over on the NJ Turnpike route have.

At this point I'm urging a public boycott of Academy Bus lines.

Hump-Day. I could use a good hump right about now. Or at least a good long ... nap. At my age sleep is just as good as sex (to the best of my recollection).

I ran into an old drinking buddy of mine over at Joe.My.God yesterday. We reconnected, swapped some e-mails, and we're gonna do lunch some day next week. It'll be good to see World Famous Author Rob again.

TTFN & AMF

Bush's Brain - Potter's Finale

Rove is quitting. His legacy consists primarily of a demoralized Republican Party, the Democrats in charge of Congress, a war-weary nation with no end in sight and a drunken Frat-Boy at the helm of the ship of state.

Way to go, Karl-Baby! A grateful nation tips it's hat (and middle-fingers) to you!

Remember about a year ago a tv commercial for Disney family vacations that featured a wholesome American family (mom, dad, two kids) trying to settle down into bed for the night but the kids can't sleep because they're going on a Disney Vacation and, to quote the boy, "WE'RE TOO EXCITED!!!"

Well, I woke up around 3:30 this morning, unable to sleep because (dammit) I'm too excited.

I've been taking my time with the last Harry Potter novel. I didn't want to rush through it. I wanted to savor it.

And I did, a chapter a day. But by bedtime last night I was staring at the last 275 pages and things were starting to really heat up (after stagnating for some time while Harry, Hermione and Ron wandered aimlessly in the forest).

No spoilers here, but things have started to get very interesting and my innate nosiness is starting to win out over my self-control.

Ergo sum, my eyes flew open at 3:30 a.m. Ostensibly I had to relieve myself, but I know better than that. I can almost always sleep the whole night through without the need to get up and take a mid-sleep whizz. Even my urologist is in awe of my prostate.

So I read for an hour or so and knocked off another 100 pages.

It's a little after 1:00 p.m. eastern now and I'm practically dozing off at my desk. Yet all I can think of is "can I finish it tonight?"

I can hardly wait to find out if Lord VoldeRove gets magically whacked in the end!

Hair Burning 101

My hairstylist (in NY) had a co-worker call me on Friday to cancel my Saturday appointment. I was scheduled to come into the city to get the haircut and then to hang out with friends, but when Skipper (yeah, I know, I've ridiculed somebody for being called "Scooter" yet still get my haircut by a 50-something who calls himself "Skipper") cancelled I blew off the trip into the city.

Instead I found the most overpriced unisex salon in Princeton and called them for an appointment. It turns out that the place is a shrine to Paul Mitchell hair products and they actually have "grades" of stylists. A Level I stylist ($35.00) is probably fresh out of beauty school and wouldn't know product if she/he fell over it. They have levels up to and including V. I got a lovely Level IV stylist (and why do I suddenly feel like I'm getting my hair styled by a friggin' Scientologist?)

She was nice enough. I explained, patiently, about how I have "difficult" hair which is why I've been getting it cut by the same guy for 20 years. I told her about the "side-part." She listened politely, then showed me a bunch of pictures in some big book full of chiseled, starved, golden youths with fabulous hair-dos.

She then proceeded to chop the crap out of my baby-fine/silver/gray hair and now I look like the way Jimmy Fallon will probably look in another 25 years. It's all spikey and short, with cowlicks sticking out all over the place. I'm to go back in two weeks for a free "tune-up", whatever the hell that is.

Anyway, Mz. Level IV's services cost me $50.00 for the cut (plus $10.00 for a tip) plus parking in Princeton on Saturday (another $6.00). So, all in all, I might as well have gone into Manhattan to get it done there.

But to be honest, I like it. I like it being different.

I could always count on my old stylist to do exactly the same thing he'd been doing for 20 years, risk free, over and over again. My head had become "Groundhog Day."

Now it looks like it belongs in the 21st century.

Oh, and I didn't buy any Paul Mitchell Product.

I buy all my hairstyling needs at Target. I highly recommend "Got2BGlued." That shit is like epoxy. If you still have hair, go buy some!

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p.s. I forgot to mention that I took myself to see "The Ten" after my haircut. It was mildy amusing (i.e. slightly sacrilegious), but fell far short of of the side-splitting "Dogma" (the mere viewing of which automatically condemns one for all eternity -- rent it tonight!!!)

Dems On Logo

I tried to watch the so-called debate last night. Fact is, though, that I thought it was just the same old gobbledy-gook and namby-pamby pandering that I've been hearing for years.

Kucinich and Gravel are really on our side, but they're also both pretty unelectable. Still, I'm seriously thinking about throwing a few bucks towards the Kucinich campaign.

Edwards just looked and sounded smarmy to me.

Richards is really unlikeable.

Obama is "ok" but, as another blogger wrote, he's "not riveting." At least not on LGBT issues. Still, he is a hopemonger (his word), and I'm a pushover for them.

The real revelation, though (and why do I continue to be surprised by this) was Hillary's "spin" on her views. She was asked why she was "against gay marriage" and without losing a beat she responded with "I'd prefer to think of it as being pro civil union."

Well, duh.

If I were a Clinton I could believe whatever I want, with no harm nor foul towards others.

One of the questioners, Melissa Etheridge (who came out during the first Clinton administration's Inaugural Ball), took Hillary to task by recalling that "we were full of hope" and then (in her words) "we got kicked under the bus."

Don't ever forget that the Clinton's did, indeed, kick us under the bus. They were nothing if not pragmatic sell-outs.

And as far as I'm concerned the LGBT community no longer has the luxury of backing "pragmatic sellouts" for President. For too long the parties have taken our money, courted our votes and finally, when elected, ignored our simplest needs. Fuck politics and fuck politicians.

Finally, I'd like to point out that Chris Dodd (Connecticut) and Joe Biden (Delaware) were no-shows for the event. I'm not surprised that Biden wasn't there. He voted in favor of DOMA. Once upon a time I believed in Biden. That was in 1972, when he was the youngest elected Senator in history (he turned 30, the minimum age, between the election in November and the swearing in in January). It's been downhill with him ever since.

None of the candidates suggested what I've been suggesting for some time. To get government out of the "marriage" business altogether. You don't find government in the marriage business in Europe. Everybody in Europe who gets married in a church has to traipse downtown after the fact to "seal the deal" by filling out government paperwork, confirming the contract between the parties involved.

And that's what we should have here. Let the churches have all the weddings they want. It won't mean a damn thing until the bride and groom head to city hall to sign the contract.

And everybody will be on an equal footing then.

And church can keep it's "holy sacrament."

I'd like one of the candidates to propose that.

Ooops, I pissed off the Bus Company!

So I sent that e-mail yesterday and, lo and behold, I got a fast response from one of my state legislators who, it turns out, hates Academy Bus lines as much as I now do.

The other one was from the Terminal Manager of Academy Bus. He was clearly not a happy camper and immediately set out to slap my hand because I transposed two numbers when I referred to the bus with the fucked-up airconditioning.

THAT'LL TEACH ME.

He also denied that they don't have an overnight maintenance shift and cordially invited me to "drive by the facility" sometime at night to view the lit up yard... from afar. He went on to explain that "due to ongoing construction, it wouldn't be safe to invite you IN."

He denied that they send out buses with broken air-conditioning, which is just a bald-faced lie. And, finally, he said, more or less, that his drivers were the finest drivers on earth and needed no adjustment to their attitudes or their abilities.

Yeah. Right. Yada-yada-yada.

Like I care about his problems.

So I've been busy cooking up a "form" for evaluating bus service, on a ride by ride basis, which I intend to print up and hand out to everyone at my bus station for the next several weeks. It tracks things like the arrival and departure times vs. the actually scheduled times, the status of the coach interior, the comfort of the seats, whether or ot the a/c was working, the courteousness/professionalism of the driver and a special column to note any "mitigating circumstances" regarding the commute. That would be for things like unavoidable delays on the highway due to accidents or weather. Look, I want to be fair about this.

I got this idea from my days of living in New York City. When I moved to New York in 1978 the subways were a shiteous mess. Graffiti blocked all the windows on the cars, the platforms were filthy, trains arrived late, if at all, and the whole place reeked of human excrement and exuded danger at every turn.

Then somebody, God bless 'em, started to organize and the next thing anybody knew there was something call "The Straphangers Association" and all of a sudden there were people, with clipboards and stop-watches and schedules and forms, standing on every subway platform, making copious notes about arrivals and departures and announcements and MTA employees.

And in no time at all the subways were suddenly clean, and new, and beautiful and safe and you could finally understand the announcements blaring from the loudspeakers (well, sometimes).

All the politicians in New York City couldn't do a friggin' thing about the lousy subways... but a handful of citizens could.

I believe in citizen action. I believe in citizen OVERSIGHT.

Now I want the mofos who run the bus companies where I live to be accountable. Something they are not now. Or not much. Mostly there's a lot of standing around and fingerpointing and denying everything.

They're like 4 year olds alone in a room with a broken lamp. "IT FELL" they say.

Oh, and that state legislator I mentioned, above. She wants me to join her rabble-rousing campaign to put a knife to the bus companies collective throats.

I emailed her back, "SIGN ME UP, ASSEMBLYWOMAN!"

Lunch with the English

I just had lunch with two old friends from London, Steven and John. I reminded them that we met on my first visit to London... in 1981.

They repeatedly expressed a desire for me to come and stay with them in London. I was extremely touched by their kindness. They even bought lunch.

It's funny how we think our friends never age. I could've sworn they look the same today as on the day I met them, many years ago.

They're in New York for just a few days, visiting a lot of our old friends... friends whom I don't keep in very good touch with, I'm afraid. They leave for home tomorrow. Their itinerary wore me out just listening to it. They started out in Cleveland, drove up through Michigan, across to the Upper Peninsula, down through Wisconsin and then to Chicago. On the east coast they've been to D.C., Connecticut and New York.

This is something I love and admire about English gay couples "of a certain age." They are absolutely devoted to each other and wouldn't know what to do with themselves without each other. John and Steve are like that. As were the other English couples I met throughout the years. John & Ken, Nick and Robin and my dearest friend in England, Tom, and his late partner, Beauchamp. Beachie, as they nicknamed him, passed away in 1983 and Tom never repartnered aside from.. well, "cozy relationships with younger men" throughout the years.

The English are nesters.

I wish I'd been one.

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Commuter Update:

Lousy weather wreaks havoc with morning commute in New York. Nudes and leather at 11:00!

I wrote the following e-mail to the general manager of the bus company I am forced to use every day, and copied my state senator and two assemblypeople:

=====================================================================

Dear Mr. XXXXXXXX,

I had the misfortune to be stuck in Academy bus number 8013 on Monday night for the evening commute from PABT in New York to the South Brunswick Park and Ride at Exit 8-A. It was 95 degrees inside the bus according to the red gauge on the dashboard. It was also 95 degrees outside the bus according to the radio.

Please try riding in one of your own buses on a 95 degree day, with no air conditioning, for an hour sometime. Trust me, you won't like it.

Then, this morning, your terminal sent 8013 back out for the 1st Madison Avenue run of the day (Dep: Twin Rivers at 5:40 a.m., Dep: South Brunswick 6:10 a.m.) It barely made it to the Park and Ride before the driver had no choice but to call it in for lack of air conditioning and your terminal had no choice but to send a service mechanic with another bus. He arrived 20 minutes after our scheduled departure time. We arrived at 59th & Madison at 8:15, nearly an later than usual due to the late departure, the usual buildup of weekday traffic on the Turnpike at that later time and the inclement weather.

By all accounts bus number 8013 is poorly maintained. Apparently no one ever actually works on repairing the air conditioning system, they merely recharge it, send it back out and hope for the best.

It's also known that your terminal no longer has a night shift for maintenance. How can you expect to maintain buses when they're on the road all day? You can't. Apparently it’s Academy’s policy to allow the buses to break down before taking action.

Then there’s the matter of the driver. After several mis-starts you've been sending us a very pleasant and polite man to replace our driver of many years, Rxxxxx Jxxxxx who recently retired. The replacement is, no doubt, an excellent charter driver.

But as you know, a good charter driver does necessarily make a good city driver.

Our new driver really needs to "toughen up" in order to deal with the aggressive and pushy taxi and bus drivers of Manhattan. Unfortunately, your man tends to "roll over and play dead" in city traffic, rather than tackling it the way Mr. Jxxxxx used to tackle it.

Your driver's curb-hugging timidity adds significantly to the time needed for the city portion of the morning commute.

It’s unreasonable to expect Mr. Jxxxx to come out of retirement for our benefit, but in exchange for the 4,140 post-tax dollars I give your Company every year in exchange for a lift to and from work, I do expect for you to 1) send us buses which have functioning air conditioning, b) send them on time and c) toughen up your drivers a little for city traffic.

Thank you for listening.

Very truly yours,

The Suckiness of Commuting in New Jersey

It is not a state secret that commuting in New Jersey sucks AND, more to the point, that the people in government who should be in charge of oversight of the whole fiasco have a laissez-faire attitude towards commuting and commuters that amounts to little more than:

"Hey. It's a fucking commute. Whaddya expect? A pleasure trip?"

Well, no, I don't expect a "pleasure trip." But I do expect the fucking bus to show up when it's scheduled to show up. And when it's 95 degrees out, I expect the temperature INSIDE the bus to be somewhat less than the ambient temperature OUTSIDE the bus. In other words, the bus should be in good operating condition, including the climate control system.

But most of all, I expect the drivers of the buses to not turn into a bunch of quivering, whimpering pussies the minute their bus leaves the general safety and spaciousness of the New Jersey Turnpike to navigate the crowded, dangerous, aggressive, mean streets of New York City.

Regrettably, my expectations are, apparently, way too high for the two bus companies which service my area of central New Jersey. I refer to:

Suburban Transit / Coach USA
750 Somerset Street
New Brunswick, New Jersey 08901
1-800-222-0492

and

Academy Express, LLC
2042 Route 541
Westampton, New Jersey 08060
1-609-265-2400

I've "done the math" on the buses which leave my park and ride. At worst each bus that leaves the park and ride in the morning will GROSS $100,000.00 per year. It'll garner another $100,000.00 for the return trip in the evening. Keep in mind this is a lousy 50 mile trip, each way. Then, of course, there's the fact that the buses don't just sit somewhere all day. In between commute periods they are CHARTERED OUT for children's day camps, to take Seniors down to Atlantic City for several hours of gambling fun, etc.

Add another $100,000.00 gross revenue for that.

So you would think that at $300,000.00 per year, per bus, they could at least keep the buses from breaking down on the turnpike and the air conditioning going during the dog-days of August.

But they don't.

And the state, and our representatives, don't seem overly eager to do anything about it, either. I'd love to follow the donation trail, if I could.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that the bus companies are SUBSIDIZED by the state for running these routes. To the point where I'm pretty sure the state buys the buses for the companies in return for a modest lease fee (a buck a year?).

Welcome to New Jersey! Where crookedness runs from top to bottom and back again!

Hope & Change

I was at a 12-Step meeting Saturday night when the leader decided to have a topic (well, two topics actually) of Hope and Change.

I didn't have any hope when I first came into the program. I just wanted to be dead. Undeniably and reliably dead. I thought God hated me which is why he kept me alive. It was just another slap in the face from the Almighty. So I thought. It turned out to be more like a good, swift, kick in the ass.. which is what I really needed (and wanted).

I got hope by the end of my 2nd meeting. I'll tell you how it happened. My first 12-Step meeting was on Tuesday morning, March 10th, 1998. It was at 7:00 a.m. This "Early-Bird" meeting actually meets six days a week (not on Sundays) at 7:00 a.m. At the end of that first meeting (for which I was about 15 minutes... and 29 years, late) I'd gotten a taste of the understanding that there were others "like me" in the world.

But it wasn't until my 2nd meeting, on Wednesday morning, that I got that glimmer of hope. For, you see, when I walked into that meeting (and I was on time for it), I saw a lot of the same faces that I had seen the day before.

In other words, they had managed to stay sober for 24 hours without looking any the worse for it (unlike me). And that gave me hope.

As time passed, though, and I began to realize that the only way I was going to "stay stopped" from drinking would be by changing... everything... about me.

There's a joke in our area to the effect that "alcoholics are like babies diapers... they should be changed often... and for the same reasons."

As I slowly changed everything about me, the drama slowly disappeared from my life. I became serene, largely unflappable and mostly content in the knowledge that things are exactly the way they're supposed to be, that God is running the show and not Ron-Almighty, and that my "job" in life from now on is simply to do the best I can to a) stay sober, b) practice these principles in all my affairs and c) to try to help the still sick and suffering alcoholic inside, and outside, of the rooms.

Which all sounds lovely and altruistic except that every now and then a) I want some cash and prizes and b) I still feel "less than."

Which is why I need hugs.

Half Truths Availed Us Nothing

As I've previously blathered blogged, I've been doing this glucose monitoring test all week with the last reading being this morning at 2:15 a.m.

And boy, are my fingertips tired! (BA-DAH-BING!)

I mentioned, also, that the readings have all been quite within specs and reason. Yeah, well, I should elaborate on that.

You see, as a recovering alcoholic and, therefore a bald-faced, lying, conniving, dope-fiending, truth-twister, I may have gone out of my way all week to be on my VERY BEST BEHAVIOR, eating-wise, so that the readings would be well within specs when the time came to take them.

What I'm hoping is that the doctor, who knows I'm a recovering drunk, will take that into account when he looks at the numbers after I fax them to his office on Monday.

See, I've come a long way from the bad old days when, during my annual physicals when my doctor would ask if I drank and, cause I always answered yes to that, when he next asked me, "how much?" my stock response was the same stock response that every lying drunk gives...

"Oh.... a couple" (of quarts)

All doctors who treat active alcoholics (or even people whom they suspect are alcoholics) should automatically add in a "drunk factor" of at least 35-50% more than whatever the drunk/druggie as copped to.

Last week I avoided anything even faintly resembling a starch. No potatoes, no rice, no bread, mostly salads, soups, some fruit and some really lousy frozen TV dinners from Healthy Choice (sorry Healthy Choice, it's not your fault you don't make Hungry Man Dinners).

So when my doctor looks at the weeks numbers and sees that they "average" 100mg, he should probably see that as being more like 130-150mg, instead (which still ain't bad for an average that's fasting, pre and post meal, 1 hour prior to eating, bedtime and mid-sleep cycle.

Sigh. It's hard doing the right thing.

After all, I am an alcoholic.

And only human.
p.s. Go see "The Bourne Ultimatum." It's great and I'm in love with Matt Damon again.

Viet Nam Iraq

Has anybody besides me noticed that the Administration has now entered what I laughingly refer to as its “death throes” by rounding up and putting into office disposable diapers true patriots such as SecDef Gates who are willing to fall on their own swords in order to cover up for the lying pieces of shit enlighten us regarding President Bush’s policies and the theories of his Death-Eater Neocon acolytes. Theories which, by the way, have been discredited since, it turns out, most Middle Easterners were not sitting around in their hovels hoping and praying that the USofA would show up en masse and forcibly shove Democracy up their peace-loving asses.

Let’s face it, Middle Easterners are never happier than when they live in a totalitarian dictatorship OR are left in peace to murder each other in fits of brotherly distrust and hatred. Usually religion based.

Thank God we don’t live in a nation where people bash each other over their religious beliefs, unlike those Heathens over there.

A Little Prick

I was visiting Mike Rogers's website yesterday and found out that the New Life Church in Colorado, Ted Haggard's former "boy farm," had appointed itself a new pastor. That's him, Brady Boyd, over there.

Looks straight as an arrow, doesn't he?

If, like me, you thought that all BAC/Fundie churches are run by a bunch of fat, bald, ugly old men, why not drop by the New Life's website and check out their Personnel Roster.

As my buddy Steve Schalchlin might say, "They're the gayest gays in Gayville!" I don't care if they are married with children, I can smell some of their "eau de queer" wafting through the internet. And my gaydar is not the best.

But they're not the little pricks I was thinking about in the title of today's blog.

My Endocrinologist, Dr. Mengele, recently ordered me to do a marathon glucose monitoring test. I have to check my blood sugar 8 times a day (including one reading in the dead of night) for 4 days running.

By the end of the test on Friday I will have burned through a month's supply of lancets and test strips. These are not cheap and most medical plans give you a ration of shit for "overusing" your usual 90-day allotment of them. So I had Dr. Mengele phone in a prescription for a short-term supply (50 of each) to my local Rite-Aid (formerly Eckerds).

This morning started day 3 of the test and based on what little I know about this disease I have, my readings look as though they're well within specs. Of the 18 readings so far, I've had a top-reading of 126 at 2:30 a.m. on Wednesday and a low of 91 at 11:00 a.m. on Tuesday.

My fingers are so friggin' sore I'll probably never play the piano again. Worse, it looks like I'm the stupidest junkie in the world, shooting up in my finger tips where everybody can see the puncture holes.

I'm grateful as hell that I have health insurance and doctors, but sometimes I sure wish they'd get a new hobby.

The little pricks.

A Walk in the Park

That's my favorite place in Central Park. It's call the Bethesda Fountain. You've probably seen it in movies or on television before. It was featured prominently in the HBO production of "Angels in America."

It lies at the northern end of the most beautiful section of the park. Just behind the photographer (who is standing at the top of the grand staircase), lies the "Grande Allee" of trees which is the most "Parisienne" part of the park.

I never ceased to be amazed that the park was designed AND built at a time when the only tools they had to do the vast amount of digging that had to be done were dynamite and shovels.

The park was started in 1858 and took 20 years to complete. It was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Lowe.

When I first moved to New York, in the sexually charged 70's, there was a section of the Park which was ... well, let's just say that The Rambles after dark weren't exactly "Family Fare" and leave it at that.

But as time passed, it became clear to me that the Park served a lot of purposes other than just a place to have wild sex after-hours. There were free concerts (Simon & Garfunkel, the Philharmonic), theater (NY Shakespeare Festival) and lots of dogs, frisbies, Broadway league softball and general lollygagging around, out in the sun, or under the trees, on sultry summer afternoons.

I didn't spend nearly enough time in Central Park, as much as I liked it.

There are few things I actually miss about living in New York. But a walk in the park is definitely one of them.