Doctors

I took a mental health day yesterday in order to look after my physical health.

I had my annual physical, preceeded by my semi-annual clambake with my cardiologist.

That's me over there, 4th from the left, just behind the cardiologist.

Only kidding.

The net-net of all that was a) it's time to schedule a cardio-stress-test, which will be the 1st one since my quad-bypass 3 years ago and b) my internist decided to up one med (allopurinol for my gout) and drop another one (lyrica for my neuropathy).

All in all it was a good day.

The best part was going to see "The Simpsons Movie" in the afternoon. I'd tried to go on Sunday but because the weather was so rotten everybody in Mercer County had the same idea so that when I got to the lobby I looked at the lines and blurted out "THIS IS SO NOT WORTH IT!" to which some woman replied, "WHAT'S NOT WORTH IT?" not realizing that I was merely making a rhetorical statement.

The movie was pretty good but I have to agree with most of the critics who said it was, basically, just a long version of the show. But it was definitely worth it to hear Marge scream out, "Will somebody just throw the goddamned bomb?"

Sometimes laughter is the best medicine.

Xanadu

If you're old like me you remember a movie called "Xanadu" which killed off Olivia Newton-John's career and probably helped cause Gene Kelly's death.

Somebody got the bright idea that it would make a swell Broadway musical and, when I saw the ad for it in the papers a couple of months back... so did I. I copped some tickets in April and dragged my college roommates, and their assorted boyfriends, to see it yesterday afternoon.

IT WAS FABULOUS!

The show has a great pedigree. Music by ELO (Electric Light Orchestra) with new material by Jeff Lynne and John Farrar thrown in to flesh it out and, more importantly, a book by everyone's current favorite gay playwright (excuse me Tony Kushner, Christopher Durang and Harvey Fierstein), Douglas Carter Beane who wrote the devastatingly funny show-biz Roman a Clef, "The Little Dog Laughed" which was produced on Broadway last year.

The plot is too silly for words. An "artist" (a circa 1980, Venice Beach Bimboy) named Sonny wants to open up an "arts palace/roller disco" in Santa Monica in an old theater which was built at the beginning of WWII and never opened, owned by a money-grubbing old real estate mogul who once aspired to play the clarinet.

One of the Seven Muses, Clio, decides to inspire Sonny and drags her 6 other sisters (2 of whom are played by men) into the plot.

She takes human form and spends the remaining 90 minutes of the intermissionless show inspiring Sonny to follow his dream, reminding the cranky old real estate tycoon that he ONCE had a dream (which he abandoned for profits... thus losing Clio who had been HIS girlfriend in a previous incarnation), falling in love with Sonny and he with her, actually drawing something thus violating every rule in the Demigod's Handbook and pissing off her father, Zeus, in the process.

It all builds to a big climax and extremely toe-tapping/sing-along finale of the Big Song itself... "XANADU." Highly satisfactory!

Oh, yeah, and she becomes human, loses her powers and immortality, and she and Sonny live happily ever after.

Yeah, right. Look, it's a MUSICAL. Okay?

The show has found it's audience, ladies of a certain age and bazillions of queers. The matinee we attended was a sell-out. The humor is hip, contemporary (for a dated show) and brings back lots of memories of a time and place (the early 80's) when everyone wore big hair and leg warmers.

I loved it.

Go see it!

TGI Friggs Day

Friday was named after some Germanic goddess of beauty ("Frigg" or "Friya"). Personally, I prefer the Russian or Portuguese way of referring to it (the "fifth day" in Russian, "sixth" in Portuguese. Apparently that depends on when (and if) you observe the Sabbath.

What's special about this Friday is:

a) there were no traffic catastrophes on the NJTurnpike on the inbound commute this morning (however, the day is young).

b) The Simpons Movie opened at midnight last night.

I won't be able to see it until Sunday (Sontag), though. Tomorrow I'm dragging my sorry ass out of bed to travel into Manhattan (which I'm really getting tired of doing) to see...

"Xanadu" the musical.

Based on one of the worst movies I ever saw, one which nearly ruined (well, it probably DID ruin) Olivia Newton-John's career when it bombed at the B.O. back in 1981. It also had the distinction of being Gene Kelly's last film.

However, according to everyone, it has become the hottest gay ticket on B'way this season, and many of my gay friends are PEA-GREEN with Envy!

Then, tomorrow night, I'm in Philly to attend a fundraiser for the upcoming Philadelphia Roundup in October.

Actually the event in Philly promises to be even gayer than the audience for Xanadu. It's a drag show entitled "Caftanistan". Since I'll be at the Roundup I thought it might be nice to attend one of the fundraisers for it.

So, tomorrow morning I drag myself out of bed, do my chores, take a train to Manhattan, see "Xanadu" (fortunately it's short - 90 minutes), catch a train BACK to Princeton, do some more chores then drive to Philly in time to catch the show at the Shakespeare Festival.

So maybe I'll see "The Simpsons Movie" on Sunday.

Or maybe I'll just spend the entire day in bed.... finishing the Harry Potter novel.

I am seriously behind in my entertainment.

Pissing Off the Commuter Gods!

The commuter Gods are obviously pissed off that I took two weeks vacation. Since I've returned there have been numerous delays of every sort just about every day this week.

Last night my bus broke down on the Turnpike and it was over an hour before a replacement came out to rescue us. I got home at 8:30. Just in time for bed. At least there were only 45 of us who were thoroughly inconvenienced.

Unlike yesterday morning and this morning.

Yesterday there was an "incident" involving a burned-out (well, it was burned out by the time we got there) old wreck in the southbound lanes which everyone in the northbound lanes had to slow down and look at, thus adding 20 minutes to the commute. 20 minutes times 75,000 people equals 1,500,000 minutes, or 25,000 people-hours in lost productivity.

This morning was even worse. I knew it was going to be bad when the bubble-headed bleach-blonde traffic report lady on WCBS-TV (in "HD!") at 5:00 a.m. blathered on about "a bad accident in the southbound lanes near Exit 14, so you might want to take Routes 1 and 9 around the airport (Newark/Liberty) instead."

She wasn't lying. It was bad. There was an overturned and gutted tractor-trailer, a demolished divider between the bus and auto lanes AND the burned out wreck of an expensive looking sports car. Apparently there was death, and possibly several, involved. There were multiple state police cruisers all over the southbound side.

Again, it was important for everyone in the northbound lanes to slow down and gawk. Another 25,000 person-hours down the crapper. Probably more because the southbound traffic, mostly tractor trailers, were backup up northbound on the western spur all the way to the George Washington Bridge. It was going to be a very bad day for an awful lot of people.

I have written e-mails to the Turnpike Authority after previous incidents like this, suggesting strongly that they install "anti-rubbernecking" barriers the full length of the Turnpike but apparently the State Police don't like the idea because it would hinder the ability of patrol troopers to monitor conditions both northbound AND southbound while driving along in the opposite lanes.

But it seems to me that there comes a time, and that time has long since past, when the needs of tens of thousands of commuters outstrip the needs of the police to "check out" what's going on in the other lanes.

Maybe it's just time to hire more troopers and to buy them more cruisers.

I'm sure it'd be a helluva lot cheaper than the 10's of millions of dollars which go up in smoke from the exhaust pipes of thousands of vehicles stuck in traffic on the New Jersey Turnpike every year; burning up oil which the youth of America is currently, and pointlessly, dying trying to protect.

I wish the New Jersey Turnpike Authority would tell me again why it's so goddamned important for the State Police to be able to look over the barriers, "just in case"?

Anonymity

Last February, at a huge get together of mostly family and many friends in honor of my sister and brother-in-law's anniversary, my sister inadvertently blurted out (via a Karaoke system) how proud she was of me, her brother, "the recovering alcoholic."

It's moments like that that make life worth living and sisters worth killing. But I forgave her. After all, heheheheheh, she was drunk at the time.

She's beaten herself up merciless since then over that little gaffe.

The subject came up again last week, when I was spending part of the week with my sister down at the Delaware shore. I am not anonymous about being a recovering alcoholic. I am, though, anonymous about my associations and associates. And that's for a very good reason.

Let's take, for example, someone like Lindsay Lohan. Clearly this young woman needs help, as evidenced by yet another arrest for drunk driving the other night. And she needs something a little more "hard-core" in the way of recovery than the "feel-good, easier, softer" way that they obviously taught her at Promises in Malibooboo.

Can you imagine what it would have been like if, for example, she'd been elected the national Celebrity Spokesperson for Recovery from Drug and Alcohol Addiction by any of the fine 12-Step Programs out there? Said program would've been ridiculed and scorned as a massive failure based SOLELY on the unfortunate circumstances of one individual.

Which is why ALL 12-Step Programs, in their Traditions, hold fast to the rule of Public Anonymity "at the level of Press, Radio and Film" (and tv, although they don't usually mention it). This is as much to protect the progams as it is to protect the people IN the programs.

"Anonymity is the spiritual foundation" of all 12-Step Programs, so the literature says, "ever reminding us to place principles before personalities."

There isn't a friend or relative left in my life who doesn't know I'm a recovering drunk. But I rarely, if ever, mention exactly WHERE I go to get sober.

That's the way it is, and that's the way it should be.

Nose to the Grindstone

Does anyone even remember what a "grindstone" is? Or why one would want to put one's nose to it? I doubt it. I think it was used to grind flour and corn and was probably attached to a watermill. But that still leaves the nose part. What gives with that? Did all mill owners have their noses ground off as a matter of course? It sure sounds like it.

Anywho, I'm back at work and fucking off (it's lunchtime).

For the past two weeks my life was idyllic and the weather was perfect. Children laughed and never cried, dogs frolicked and never barked. Food was delicious, naps were lengthy and nary a harsh word escaped anyone's lips.

And then I arrived back at work.

It's amazing how quickly my Irish skin sheds a tan. Usually one or two showers is enough to restore my alabaster skin to the color one finds on the underside of a bottom feeding scumsucker, such as a fluke or a ray. It's also amazing how quickly my serenity and peace of mind can be sucked right out of me by bottom feeding, scumsucking, lawyers.

Let's see, you already know about "Sicko" and Tammy Faye (God rest her soul!). I know I promised to give you all the lascivious details of my adventures in Provincetown and Rehoboth but, to be honest, there's not much to tell. I got cruised by some twink at a tea dance in P'town, and that was it.

I have been letting my hair grow and I've been gassing it back in a modest imitation of Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko in "Wall Street." A lot of folks admire it. A lot of folks just stare at it. I don't care, though, because I've reached the age of eccentricity.

I'm a little rusty at this, two weeks of no internet access, no e-mail and no blogging have left my writing skills even worse off than they usually are.

Therefore, in a vain attempt to put closure to this (because I'm being harkened by a lawyer to do something mindless and meaningless), let me just say that it's time for me to get back to work (HEY! Maybe that's what "nose to the grindstone" means!!!)

Sicko

I saw Michael Moore's movie, "Sicko", today. Yes, there are obviously "staged" segments. But I didn't care. I loved it. And although it's ostensibly "about" the sorry state of medical care in the good old USofA, somewhere in mid-film Moore makes the statement that government has a vested interest in keeping the population "living in fear, debt and hopeless." I've sort of paraphrased that, but it's close enough.

It hit me like a ton of bricks. I've never been much of a conspiracy-theory type, adhering to the opinion that our government is so disorganized that it could never get it's act together to actually cook up and keep quiet a vast conspiracy of any sort.

Until I found out about the medical lobby. And who, precisely, is on their payrolls. Did you know that the 2nd biggest senatorial recipient of political donations from the medical profession over the last couple of years was....

Hillary Rodham Clinton?

No shit. Yeah, I was shocked, too. I forget the exact amount, but it was pushing a million. #1 was Rick Santorum, an anti-gay neocon from Pennsylvania who got thrown out of office in the last election.

I was also surprised to learn that the whole idea of HMOs can be laid at the doorstep of Henry Kaiser, of Kaiser-Permanente fame.

Worse, the film plays an audio tape from 1971 of Nixon discussing the whole idea of HMOs with John Ehrlichman, and mentioning Kaiser by name. Nixon really loved the "profit through withholding of service" idea. An idea, of course, which is the basis of our current health care schemes.

We are then given a guided tour through the medical paradises in Canada, the UK, France and, finally, the island paradise of Cuba.

I take it all with a giant grain of salt. Mr. Moore, after all, is nothing if not a sensationalist (he IS trying to put butts into theater seats, after all), but I'd always rather err on the side of compassion, when push comes to shove.

Which, by the way, is what separates liberals from conservatives. Conservatives would always rather err on the side of profits, a point Moore makes by showing up a couple of Congressional shills who, after they shoved through the recent Medicare Prescription Drug plan (put together by the drug industry, of course) and before the ink was hardly dry on the President's signature, resigned from Congress to take lucrative, 7-figure jobs with the pharmaceutical lobby.

All in all, it was a highly inflammatory, highly educational and highly entertaining 2 hours.

Go see it and then join me on the picket line!

Oh, and if you want some backup on the "facts" in Mr. Moore's movie, visit his website here.

He has thoughtfully provided links to all of his sources. Too bad politicians never do that. But then, they're all pussies and liars.

A Good Christian Woman is Dying

I was gonna write some upbeat crapola about the fagulous time I had on Cape Cod and down in Gayhoboth... until I saw a brief snippet of Tammy Faye (Bakker) Mesner from her recent (last night?) appearance on Larry King Live.

She looks like hell. She should. She's been there and back. She's eaten up with cancer and it's literally only a matter of time (and not much of it at that, based on her looks). That picture, by the way, is not a recent one. I think it would be indecent to post a photo of her as she looks now. Tammy's personal defects include, I'm afraid, vanity. And I know she always wants to look her best.

I never thought I'd live to see the day when I'd say something like this, but I think this woman is a sterling example of what it means to actually lead a Good Christian Life. She has nothing but kindness and love and compassion and forgiveness in her soul, despite all the crap that got sent her way via a succession of scheming, conniving, backstabbing men, some of whom she married and some of whom she didn't (oh, Pat Robertson comes to mind, with all of his manipulations to take over the PTL empire when it - and she - fell on hard times).

Tammy Faye accepts - and did even before it was fashionable - LGBT people exactly the way we are AND lets us know that in her humble opinion God loves us just the way we are and there's no need to be fussin' over it.

I think the key to her success was and remains a stubborn insistence on maintaining a childlike innocence in the face of some pretty harsh realities combined with a childlike faith in the loving goodness of a Higher Power whom she chooses to call God.

Ordinarily I have nothing but contempt for and suspicion of televangelists and their ilk. But I will make one exception, for Tammy Faye.

I think I actually love this woman.

I pray that goodness and mercy will follow her all the days of her life.

_____________________________________________________

HOT FLASH! Check out this video by Max Blumenthal over at the Huffington Post blogsite. He nails chickenhawk Republican college dimwits to the barn doors, left and right.

Tomorrow: Fagulous Times

Schools' Out Forever

Alice Cooper hit the nail right on the head.

Tomorrow morning, at 8:30 (ish) a.m., I'll be hitting the road for Cape Cod. I have to stop in EnWhyCee to pick up my college roommate and oldest, OLDEST, dearest friend. Then we get to make the six hour trek out to the easternmost point in Massachusetts for a week of sun and fun!

I'm really looking forward to it.

Our hosts, the Baltimoreans (Baltimorons?) are heading up there today to make sure the house is aired out and that everything is in it's place, prior to the arrival of the Royal Principessas.

Last year we had a blast. The high point was the half day we spent aboard the Portuguese Princess on a whale-watching trip out into the ocean off Provincetown. We could've sworn that the whales had been trained. They came right up to the side of the ship and put on quite a show for us for the better part of an hour. They were magnificent beasts and clearly enjoyed showing off for the mammals on the boat.

I'm not sure we'll be able to top that this year, but we really go more for each other's company than for the "sightseeing", even though we do manage to get some of that done, too.

We're only going for a week this year, which is probably about the right amount of time for a vacation to Cape Cod. Don't get me wrong, I do like the place, but I have other places to visit and people to see this year.

A week from tomorrow I'll return my friend to New York and head on down to Jersey for the night. Next Sunday morning I'll get up and drive another 3 hours SOUTH to the Delaware shore to spend a few days with my sister and her family. They have a beach house in a very nice location, between the resort towns of Dewey Beach and Rehoboth.

After 3 days of that I'll head BACK to New Jersey for yet another night and then, finally, head out to the very easternmost point of the North Fork of Long Island to spend a few days in the weekend home of friends of mine from New York.

Ergo sum, this my final post for awhile. I may or may not squeeze one in a week from tomorrow or possibly on the following Wednesday, but there are no guarantees.

And feel free to shoot me if I ever complain about being unloved again.

Adios, Amigos & Amigas!

The Morning After

Yesterday I posted a picture of myself in bootcamp.

Today I'm posting an "avatar" of myself which I created on the Simpson's Movie website. It's not too bad a representation, actually. I got the silver hair, but I'm missing glasses.

Oh, and I wouldn't be caught dead in a "Duff Beer" t-shirt, either.

The weather was pretty crappy here in the east yesterday, so I didn't partake of any outdoor activities. Mostly I spent the day packing (and re-packing) the Element for our upcoming vacation on Cape Cod.

After dusk, as various east coast cities started ramping up for their 4th of July celebrations I started channel surfing to see which city would win my heart and mind this year. I have to admit I've always been partial to Boston's annual celebration, with the Pops playing on the Esplanade next to the Charles River. I really like it because it traditionally concludes with a rafter-rattling rendition of the "1812 Overture" by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, complete with live cannon fire and kick-ass fireworks over the river.

Macy's always puts on a big, expensive show in New York, but the whole thing is too friggin' "stagey" for my taste. The 4th of July should ALWAYS smack of small-town amateurism, and not be as corporately slick as the New York show always is.

Philly gave it a shot, but it went to the opposite extreme and their parade looked like it was thrown together by a bunch of drunken Mummers (are there any other kind?) on Tuesday night.

But the show that really made me want to barf was Washington's. As some other blogger/wag said, ever so much more pithily than I, does anything say "Happy July 4th more than Tony Danza in tap shoes?"

Well, it looked amateurish alright. And he was probably sober. Lord knows he probably needed the work (last time I heard about him he was playing Billy Flynn in Chicago on B'way).

But he was a trouper and didn't seem to be overly embarrassed to be hosting the festivities from the Mall behind the Capitol building.

Then I flipped back to the station carrying the concert from Boston, just in time for the big "Quaker Puffed Wheat" finale.

Ahhhh. This is the way the 4th should be celebrated. In bed with a tub of Ben & Jerry's Chunky-Monkey ice cream while watching a bunch of slightly inebriated Bostonians huzzah our Nation's Birth on tv to the tune of some 19th Century Russkie composer's musical tribute to the monumental failure of Napoleon Bonaparte to capture Moscow.

Now THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT!

Star-Spangled Sobriety!

This is a photo of me in boot camp. Those were the days of 3-masted schooners and whaling dinghies and leaving Bedford, Mass on year-long cruises...

Oh, alright, it was 1968 and pre-dentistry. I was 20 and skinny as a rail (well, I was 6'5" and weighed about 175 pounds). I've gained a few pounds and gotten the teeth fixed since then.

Notice the "farmer's tan" on the face. They've removed my spectacl... er, eyeglasses, which had served to shield my eyes from the harsh San Diego sun from July to September through grueling days of hour upon hour of physical drill on the "grinder" at the Recruit Training Center. The rest of my face is burnt to a crisp. I had a matching tan on the backs of my hands. The rest of me looked like the underside of a freshly caught fluke.

I was not a gung-ho American. Had I been I would've been finishing up Army bootcamp and eagerly anticipating being shipped out to 'Nam, where I could've killed gooks and eaten dead, burnt, babies.

When the draft notice arrived in the mail, just after the 1st of the year in 1968, I upheld a fine old family tradition of cowardice and followed in my daddy and granddaddy's footsteps and enlisted in the Navy instead.

Like I said, I was not a "gung-ho" American and, in fact, harbored deep anti-war feelings regarding the fiasco in Viet Nam. In my few, short years in the service I came across many men and women who felt as I did. They loved their country and hated the war. It was there, then, that I realized that:

I could support the troops without supporting the policies of the government or the President.

I saw lifers (career people) happily join me and other 1-termers in anti-war demonstrations in Washington, DC many, many times. I also saw them being torn apart coming to terms with the implications of that sentence I stated above. That it WAS possible to love one's country, to support it's military, and YET have zero respect and support for the civilian government and it's insane policies.

I had no such problem then. I still don't. I never once disobeyed a direct order from a superior officer, nor did I ever shy away from constitutionally protected expression of my beliefs.

Today more than ever it is evident that the current Administration mocks the law, spits on the Constitution and has nothing but contempt for the electorate.

Now is the time for true patriots to speak out loudly and clearly in defiance of the Executive Branch and to do everything we can to light a fire under the Legislative to bring the gang of thugs running the White House to heel and to justice.

Let us not be afraid to yell "TREASON" when we see it.

Happy July 4th, everyone!

War-Dodging Coward Pardons Whoever the Fuck He Likes!

Tells America to go fuck itself! "I AM the Constitution!"

Presidente Cabezamierda has gone and done it again. This time he has stepped into the judicial process at the point where an old buddy (Scooter, and what the fuck kind of name is that for an adult?) was going to be sent up the river and made sure that that didn't happen; an action just short of saying that Scooter didn't actually do anything wrong, because Drunken Yalie FratBoy is saving that hat trick until his final week in office when he'll pardon everybody he ever knew, including everybody who either works for or runs Halliburton and Kellogg Brown & Root, for everything they ever did.

Including his daddy.

And all because of "a finding." A finding being one of those clever little legal tricks that enables the executive branch to do whatever the fuck it wants in order to screw whomever they don't like. Findings go back a long way, but they really got going during President Reagan's administration (remember "Iran-Contra"? that all started with "a finding.")

Does every administration indulge in cronyism? Of course. Does every administration indulge in politics? They wouldn't be in control if they didn't.

Does every administration allow one of it's members to commit treason and then try to pawn it off on the public as "politics as usual?"

Uh, well, no.

I realize that I now foam at the mouth about the 2nd Bush's 2nd administration, probably in much the same way that they foamed at the mouth over Bill Clinton's 2 terms in office.

However, nobody died when Monica polished Bill's Presidential Knob.

I'm not even sure Shrub HAS a knob.

But he sure does have fucking balls.

Crazy Bitch

Being a member of a 12-Step Program gives me ample opportunity to confront all my serious issues, one of which is my aversion to and fear of crazy bitches.

I was raised by crazy Irish bitches who drank, and fought, a lot.

My earliest memories are not happy ones. They more often than not involve hiding under covers and living in morbid fear of being killed by people who were supposed to love me.

All that fear took a tremendous toll on me and left me untrusting and unloving of people. I struggle daily to overcome my fear of others and of my own feelings.

Every once in awhile, in a 12-Step meeting, I will hear some woman telling the other side of my story, from the drinking woman's point of view. Yesterday was an example.

I will not tell you who or where, but I will tell you what happened. A woman with some "time" in the program (several years), who is divorced with two pre-teen male children who live with her did a five minute rant on her ex-husband and her two sons. And as she was going on (and off) about these men (adult and children) who were making her life MISERABLE, that they mocked her, that they "didn't do things" her way, that THEY (they, they, they) were ruining her life.... all I could think of was my own, late, alcoholic mother, and how from my earliest childhood all she ever did was blame my father, her FIRST ex husband (of several), for all of her woes in life and then would, more or less, tell me how I was only making matters worse by constantly reminding her of him.

As though the mere fact of my existence was some sort of divine punishment on her.

So I grew up not only fearing for my life, but also feeling guilt and remorse for being responsible for all the misery in the lives of the crazy bitches around me.

When that meeting ended yesterday, I fled. My sponsor tried to talk to me, but I didn't want to talk. I couldn't talk to anyone. I felt fear and nausea and full of murderous rage. I jumped into the Element and skidded off into the afternoon sun.

I wanted to kill that woman, whom I scarcely know. I wanted to hide under the covers again. I knew she was doing to her children what my mother had done to me. Venemously poisoning their minds against their father, and taking her vindictivness towards him out on them, for the heinous crime of being his offspring.

And once again, I was five years old and powerless over alcohol. Somebody else's alcohol, but alcohol nevertheless. God I hate this disease.

What the Hell is Going On Here?

It must be a full moon. Yesterday was a zoo around here (old 12-Step program saying, "Just because the monkey is off my back doesn't mean that the circus has left town!").

For several days there have been pile-ups or broken down vehicles or gawd knows what else causing hours long delays on the inbound and outbound commute. This morning it was "an event" that left a residue of about 12,000 pounds of shredded, pink, R-13, fiberglas insulation blowing around the turnpike like some kind of a Queer Version of the tumbleweed in the opening credits of "Gunsmoke." (see: 1950's, old queens)

We never did see what had caused it. Perhaps a Home Depot delivery truck had inexplicably exploded during the morning rush. Whatever. We were an hour late getting into midtown.

Then there are the whackos at work. One associate I work for, Mr. Candidate for Rehab, went ballistic on me yesterday because I didn't skip lunch and work on his document, instead. Apparently that permanently negatively impacted his social life. If he's depending on me for a viable social life, he's in deep shit. I didn't bother to tell him that I no longer "do" guilt-trips. But if I ever do tell him it'll be preceeded by "Look, Sparky, if you think I don't care about you, you're right!"

Still, my Sponsor wants me to make nice with others, so I spent all day yesterday trying to placate him. Which is why I never got around to posting something (which I usually do during my lunch hour, which I generally spend at my desk.)

I'm just glad it's Friday. I can handle crazy as along as it's of my own making, which it usually is on weekends. Maybe I'll see "Sicko" this weekend. Or "Ratatouille." Or even the Fantastic Four sequel. Something. Anything.

I need a vacation. And a week from tomorrow I'm leaving on one. I don't know how I'm going to handle being away for 2 weeks, without a laptop from which to blog and surf the web. I guess I'd better start shopping for internet cafes on Cape Cod and down in Rehoboth NOW.

I'll just die if I can't read all my favorite blogs every day. I might have to read a book or something.

God forbid.

Counting Days

A friend of mine in my 12-Step program is back to counting days again. What that means is he lost his "time" in sobriety by using drugs and booze and is, once again, counting his sobriety in terms of days instead of months or years.

He "went out." That's what we call it. Big time. My friend is a musician. He'd been contracted by a big foreign musical organization to play with them for awhile. He managed to get overseas a few weeks back, and to even get in a few days of rehearsals. But then... something snapped. He was alone in a hotel in a strange city... totally disconnected from the fellowship of his 12-Step program. He'd been weaning himself from the program (his support group and home group) for over a year. He didn't bother looking up local meetings of his program in the city where he was staying. He'd compartmentalized his life to the point where no one knew where he was, exactly. Not even his wife here in the states.

When he disappeared after four days she must've been panic-stricken. I can only imagine what it would be like to have someone you love fall off the face of the earth in a foreign city, without a clue as to their whereabouts or well-being.

He holed up in that hotel for an additional 4 days. He even hid from the hotel management by hiding under the bed, at one point. He managed to elude detection for another 24 hours that way. He was using booze and crack the whole time.

He hasn't been entirely clear on what prompted him to stop. But apparently he managed to blow through several thousand dollars in a week and then poured himself, still detoxing, onto a plane for an 8 hour flight back to New York.

It's a wonder he didn't die on the plane. Seriously.

I've never seen anybody as shook up about being that close to death in all my years in recovery. As he was sharing his story with me the tears of fear and gratitude kept falling from his eyes. I think that maybe he's finally lost enough.

Because that's what it takes to get serious about getting sober. You have to lose enough in order to be totally ready.

And you have to swallow all of your pride to announce at your home group that you are, once again, counting days.

I'm grateful that my friend is alive. I'm grateful that he came back. I'm grateful that I am here, in order to find out what happens to people who aren't.

Flirting with Straight Men

I love hanging around, and flirting with, straight guys. I've always liked it. There are lots of theories why.

Theory One. Avoidance

My first lover was straight and married. I was 19, he was 39. There was no love involved, it was pure, hot, man-on-man sex. My first crush (after the first boyfriend.... don't ask) was on a straight guy. He was another sailor. My second crush was also on another sailor. When I finally got out of the Navy and got myself a gay boyfriend I didn't lose any time in finding a bajillion reasons why he was unsatisfactory. When I got honest, though, there was only one reason I dumped him. Because he cramped my drinking style.

But nothing says "Keep Away" like dating some straight man who's gonna run home to momma after a night of hot, sweaty, deniable, sex.

Theory Two. Self-loathing.

I was never entitled to any happiness. Growing up in the sort of dysfunctional family I had, I wouldn't have known a "happy relationship" if it'd come up and bit me on the ass.

As far as I knew, sex went hand in hand with unhappiness. It was just another way of self-medicating (until I discovered booze). I was not worthy of being loved. I'd heard that message often enough as a child from people who would be horrified to know that that was the message that they sent me. And long after those people died I continued to act as judge, jury and executioner of my own, continued misery. It was a dirty job, but somebody had to hate me.

Theory Three. Fear of Success/Failure/Happiness.

Groucho Marx once said that he would "never belong to a club that would have" him as a member. I related to that. I was such a mess. I'm not such a mess now, although I'm still tip-toeing through the mine field of my past, trying to find some serenity and love and peace in my present and future. It's gotten lots better. So have I. Now I believe that I am loveable, and that I am just as deserving as the next person to live happily, and paired if I so choose, as the next person.

But even in sobriety I find myself still retreating to the safe haven of flirting exclusively with straight men and leaving skid marks while escaping any possible romantic involvement with gay men. What if I find some guy who loves me? What am I supposed to do with that? I'm sure I'll fuck it up and make the poor SOB miserable. Better to avoid love altogether and stick to nice, safe, distant, emotionally unavailable straight men.

But there's just one teensy little problem with flirting with straight guys.

These days most guys ain't so straight. As a matter of fact, even in the old days guys weren't so straight either. I can think, offhand, of at least 4 guys I knew in college who would've happily bedded down with me for at least one tumble in the hay, if not more. 4 guys who were, for all intents and purposes, straight as arrows. In one case, he and I both had permission from his girlfriend (which was kind of weird). She told us both, flat-out, before she disappeared for the summer, leaving the two of us alone in the house, that if he was ever going to "fool around that way" she would've preferred that it would be with me. She literally gave us permission.

And FYI, no we didn't. I knew I'd never be able to look her in the eyes again if we'd had. But we came close that summer. I think that today all three of us are relieved that nothing happened that beautiful summer 30 years ago. I'm not sure what their grown children would've thought of it. Or their grandchildren, for that matter.

Look, I'm pretty sure I don't want to entice straight men into a lurid life of homosexuality. But God help me, it's a helluva lot of fun trying!

Pride

Yesterday was Pride Sunday in a lot of places. I saw a lot of people running around in Mardi Gras drag, some of whom I suspect were utterly clueless as to what it was, precisely, that they were supposed to be celebrating, other than just being gay (and God knows, if you're young and beautiful, that is ABSOLUTELY ENOUGH).

My colleague in bloggorhea, Jake over at NoFo, has a wonderful piece today about what it is that we LGBT's have to be proud about. It's a good list and a good piece. You should read it. Jake's a fabulous writer.

I've enumerated here before why I no longer make the long march down Fifth anymore, so I'm not going to go over that again.

But it might be worthwhile to recall just how things actually were after midnight, on the early morning of June 28th, 1969, the night of the 1st Stonewall Riot. And to recall the events which led up to it.

This Wikipedia entry is a very good primer on the history of GLF (Gay Liberation Front). Check it out and take a few minutes to remember how things were in those days.

I wasn't present that Saturday morning of the riot. My first visit to a gay bar still lay a year or so in my future. But I was having my first legal drink that night. I was in the Navy and a newly minted Petty Officer Third Class.

But in part because of what happened that night, within the next 3 years I would come out of the Navy and out of the closet to friends and family alike. By the fall of 1972 I would be the newly elected President of the Gay Community of the University of Delaware and would spend the next few years marching in a lot of protest marches... not just in New York, but in Columbus (Ohio), Washington (DC), Philadelphia and sundried other places. I would also meet my first boyfriend, a beautiful blond named Rick whose heart I would quickly break, at a Saturday night dance at the GLF Firehouse at 99 Wooster Street down in SoHo. We met in October of 1972.

I still carry a torch for him.

Later on I felt hurt when a number of lesbians, our sisters in liberation, started to recuse themselves from participating in the the largely male dominated GLF groups in various cities and universities. But I understood it. I went out of my way during those years to fully identify my innate heterosexism, patriarchal thinking and racial bias. If I wanted liberation for myself, then I had to be willing to grant it, unconditionally, to others.

Could I have done more? Oh God, yes. I hardly scratched the surface of what I could and should have done. It always seemed that everyone else was doing so much more.

But I did a lot. And I'm pretty proud of that.

So even though I don't march down Fifth Avenue anymore, this year's marchers, whether they know it or not, are following in my footsteps and the footsteps of thousands of other older gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered people who made that same trek downtown, numerous times, 30+ years ago.

And that's a very good thing. Something, in fact, to be proud of.

Getting On

It's my penultimate birthday before the big "Six-Oh."

I am officially decades older than I ever thought I would be. I have severely mixed feelings about having achieved (?) this venerable age. Mostly my feelings revolve around small arms and household poisons and wondering where I can obtain both.

Sometime in my late teens, probably around the age of 17 or so, I was so unhappy with life that I remember being awakened from a violent dream one night in which I was being shot to death at the age of 30, I'd be "done in." My "killer" in the dream was a jealous lover. I thought it was very glamorous and dramatic to be killed in one's prime by a jealous boyfriend.

Keep in mind that at the ripe old age of 17 I'd never had a boyfriend and, because it was 1965, I wasn't even sure what a boyfriend was... but I knew that a) I wanted one and b) I wanted to die at his hands while I was still young and beautiful (stifle yourselves).

Flash forward to the age of 41. Two weeks after that unremarkable birthday I had a massive coronary on the evening of one of the hottest days ever recorded in New York.

I lived (obviously), but only barely. For at least another decade and a half I was sure that God hated me so He kept me alive. For that decade and a half I smoked like a chimney and drank like a fish. I wanted to be more right than God. I was jealous that I wasn't God. I hated God because I wasn't Him. I hated God because I was still alive.

Then I got sober 90 days before my 50th birthday. I never told a soul, not even my 12-Step sponsor, that it was my birthday. I believe I was in court having my license suspended for six months that day. It was a great way to spend my 50th birthday! I was paying my debt to society, starting to clean up the wreckage of the past, and moving out of my drunken life into my new, sober one.

I have continued, for the last decade, to keep this date quiet from all of my new friends and acquaintences. Fortunately for me, most of my old friends, and what little remains of my family, have nearly completely forgotten my birthday.

Look, I have this theory that there's an age beyond which you should just get over the fact that people forget your birthday.

That age is 7.

Dr. Digit

I've been waiting weeks for my annual date with Dr. Digit aka my urologist. I saw him tonight, after I was finally released from jury duty for another couple of years.

He looked at the latest x-rays of my kidney stones and told me how they haven't changed much in the last year.

He then crammed a well-lubed finger someplace where I've only let several (thousand) other men place well-lubed things, but it's been a long time and, oh God, I'm so lonely...

But I digress. He announced that I have the prostate of a 20 year old. No, he didn't tell me to give it back because I was getting it all wrinkled.

But he dropped the PSA bomb on me today. A PSA test is a preliminary blood test for prostate cancer. Apparently, he saw the results of one I had last year, before my annual visit then.

He may have mentioned something about a slightly elevated PSA at the time, but it was a busy year, what with diabetes and everything, so I probably let it slip my mind that he wanted a follow-up reading in January. I didn't do it.

I did have some blood work done last weekend, in anticipation of my upcoming annual physical, at the end of July. I'm sure my internist ordered up a PSA test as part of that battery. It's pretty standard for men over 50 during their yearly physical.

It would be very easy to become alarmed about this. If I were in a relationship with somebody, it would probably scare the hell out of me.

And that reminded me of my ex. His internist told him, in 1992, that he had an elevated PSA. One test led to another and in no time, he was having his prostate removed. I'm sure it scared the shit out of him. He kept things to himself. For weeks he thought he was HIV positive, and kept it to himself. All of a sudden we were using condoms, after 15 years of a so-called monogamous relationship. I thought it was odd, but then, he was pretty odd. It was only two months later that he found out that those unusual corpuscles in his urine weren't because of HIV. He found out that it was merely prostate cancer, instead. I stayed with him all through that, including a recovery that included having to learn how to inject himself with chemicals in order to achieve an erection again.

Today I have a new compassion for people who live in fear. I know what it means to live in fear. I lived there for decades. Only in recovery have I learned how to put fear in it's proper place. 90% of my groundless fears are just that... groundless.

So, I could turn to the dark side of my self-centered, fear-based mind right now, and project a worst-case scenario of being riddled with bone cancer by Christmas and dead within a year (unlikely), or I can just sit tight, go about my life and wait for the results of the blood work.

Meanwhile, I'll focus on the good things in my life. Like friends. And family. Hell, even doctors (I have some really good ones!).

And no matter what happens I will have complete faith that it's part of some plan by someone or something greater than myself... and that it's nothing I need to drink over.

Voir Drear

I just spent a mind (and butt) numbing day (from 7:45 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.) trapped in a courtroom in Superior Court in and for the County of Mercer in the State of New Jersey.

They were trying to find 14 people who would be available for the next couple of weeks to hear some case about some guy who got nabbed with a ton of drug paraphenalia and crack/cocaine in Princeton, of all places for God's Sake (is nothing sacred?)

They blew through over 60 prospective jurors before they hit the jackpot. I was 1 of 15 remaining jurors in the pool. The pool kept dwindling because people either a) knew somebody whose sister once dated a guy whose mother was shacking up with some skeevy bastard who ran a crank lab down in the Pine Barrens or b) their stepbrother's fiance is a cousin to somebody who is a corrections officer in North Dakota or c) they're leaving on a month long vacation to Norway tomorrow night.

Had I actually been called to the bench to begin the process of voir dire ("speak the truth") my ace in the hole for weasling out of it was that I'm in recovery. Defense attorneys are notorious for NOT wanting people in recovery on the trial jury for their drug-dealer clients. They suspect, and rightly so, that we'll hang their asses.

As excruciating as this process is, for everybody, it is our best hope for obtaining at least a fairly impartial jury for our trials. I mean, I'd want a jury composed of people like me, wouldn't you?

Anyway, the good news is that I am now relieved of jury duty for at least a couple of years (except for Grand Jury).

I intend to treat myself by taking tomorrow off.

Except for my appointment with my Urologist at 5:45 p.m. tomorrow night.

Hmmmm, come to think of it, maybe jury duty wasn't such a bad thing after all.