Said "Californy is the place you oughta be....."

so they loaded up the truck
and they moved to Beverly
... Hills, that is.
... swimming pools
... movie stars

and now

GAY MARRIAGE!

(unless you've been living under a rock, you've heard that today the California Supreme Court struck down the referendum which defined marriage as being only between a man and a woman)

Jane Hathaway would've been thrilled. At long last she could've popped the question to the object of her affection... Ellie Mae.

And I could've popped the question to the object of mine... Jethro Bodine.

Actually, I could've popped the question years ago to several likely candidates in Los Angeles. But no, not me. I had to pick the most emotionally unavailable human poseur it was ever my misfortune to encounter in an internet chat room. To be honest it wasn't all his fault. I threw my heart at him, while it was still freshly broken from a 15 year relationship that went "kaput" one day. And I fell all over him when he showed a fair amount of interest in me.

But the moment I found out he was a science fiction writer warning bells should've gone off in my head. Writers, even semi-famous ones, are always looking for a handout and a sugar-daddy to take care of mundane matters such as, oh, cash.

We were doomed from the outset. I had a couple of bucks, but we ran through that real fast.

Of course, I'd always been doomed from the outset with all my love interests over the years. Either they were way too sane for me (crush #1 and lover #1) or way too psychotic (crush #2 and lover's #2 and #3) and whatever you'd care to call the writer. Words like "sociopathic" come to mind.

It was always something, but to be honest, lover #1 was hot, considerate, loving, gentle and the blondest blonde (to the point of golden white ... everywhere) I'd ever met. And it was a romantic meeting. Our eyes, literally, met across a crowded dance floor. Well, after three months of that normality I was going nuts (... nuttier than usual). I dropped him like a hot potato. He even showed up, three months later, begging me to reconsider. And once again I foolishly threw the baby out with the bathwater.

What a stupid, self-centered nit I was.

My point, if I have one, is that it's all well and good for everyone to get the "right" to be married to persons of the same sex, but we need to face the fact that gays are just as likely to have their marriages explode in their faces as straight people are.

And I know from whence I speak. Would having had a full-blown marriage made any difference to me in those relationships many years ago? I doubt it. I'm not optimistic regarding my own chances for wedded, same-sex, bliss.

That sort of thing only happens in fairy tales, when the Princess knows a good thing when she sees it.

Unlike me.

Bitch-Fest Monday

Every morning, at 6:00 a.m., an oddly shaped truck takes off from the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel. There is a driver and a lone SOB in the back, whose job it is is to poke thousands of plastic pipes, neatly stacked in the truck, into holes cut into the pavement on the left lane of the outbound side, all the way up the helix and out I-495, to the entrance of the NJ Turnpike.

When it completes its mission those little stanchions delineate the special HOV bus lane, which will only remain in service until 10:00 a.m., the official end of the "morning rush." After that the truck reverses course and collects all the little pipes until, once again, it hits the entrance to the tunnel, where it will wait on the tarmac until called into service the next business day.

Only there was no special bus lane today. It seems that it rained over the weekend. Hard. And the water filled up the holes in the highway. Then, last night, the water in the holes froze.

Three guesses what they couldn't stick into the holes this morning. Right. The plastic pipes. Thus causing many tens of thousands of people to be late for work today. My bus driver opted for the scenic route, via 1&9, to Hoboken, through the Holland Tunnel and up the West Side Highway (past a lot of long forgotten gay bars I went to when I first moved to New York in the 12th Century) then up 10th Avenue to the Deuce. Er, sorry, 42nd Street (it was called "the deuce" by the low-lifes who hung out there before Guiliani went and Disneyfied the place).

This comes right in the midst of New Jersey Governor Corzine's big marketing campaign to get people to go along with his plan to double turnpike fares in the next year. And every two years thereafter until 2020.

Yeah. Right. Sign me up, Jon.