His cloak is cologne and each night he wears it differently. He saves his signature and namesake for only the most special occasions. If you’ve ever been in his presence and he smells particularly pungent – when is scent trail is pervasive, long, and insistent – it means he must like you very much. An extra-salient perfume performance is an indication that he wants to impress you. And if you’ve ever gone home smelling slightly of him, if you catch him on your coat or jacket the next morning, count yourself lucky indeed.

For the proximity… and the power… you had and you hold.

Mr. Oud exerts his influence indirectly – in a sense, a feeling or an emotion. He elicits a visceral response – a primal fight-or-flight reaction – and all the rumors and stories of his polarizing nature do seem grounded in truth. Your guard goes up, because where there’s smoke… and pretty perfume… there is usually fire… and danger.

One gets the feeling that Mr. Oud wouldn’t have it any other way, that this ephemeral bit of hubris is as much in his make-up as it is a product of our collective making-up. If he holds sway or any semblance of power, it’s in what we have granted to him, perhaps through his own machinations.

Mr. Oud remains a master of manipulation., in equal parts tragedy and condemnation.

A pen to embody the sentiment of a Monday morning, and our first weekly blog recap of the month of November for 2025. How we got here when it feels like it was just May is beyond me, and best left unanalyzed, like much of time, moving much too quickly. On with the recap, such as it is, and was…

A noirish Boston trail of Oud.

Candy got me by the neck.

Boston’s shifting light at this time of the year.

Eagles eyes in the sky, I don’t think I can go twice as high.

A visual riddle.

Apathy is always awful.

Boom boom in the zoom zoom room.

Alien superstars: an other-worldly pairing.

Nightshade or gooseberries – a deadly sort of choose-your-own-adventure.

Hallowed, hollow echoes.

Hocus pocus focus – a bonus Halloween post.

November arrived in golden splendor.

An inspired present.

Rainy night writ.

Dazzlers of the Day included Jordan Roth, Adam Brody, Derek Hough, and Kevin Jonas.

Rain.
Hard, sustained and heavy rain – impossible to ignore with all the accompanying wind.
Rain for which I’d unknowingly been waiting, and wanting.

Rain to still the day.
Rain to still the heart.
Rain to still the sands of time.

In an alternate time and universe, a boy religiously watches ‘Days of Our Lives’ while he stays home from school for another day. He’s not as physically ill as he pretends to be, but mentally the idea of going back to school is insurmountable, so a fortuitously-timed case of the sniffles, and a helpful body semi-ironically weakened by allergies, aid in his survival.

Like the prismatic destruction of light through a hanging chandelier crystal, distilled into smaller slivers of pretty colors, memory serves to dissect and illuminate, rendering new truths to old stories. The past isn’t always set in stone, or trapped in the snowy reception of an old television set from your youth – sometimes the past is malleable, and it moves from winter to summer…

Raspberry-shaped and raspberry-flavored hard candies dissolve amid sips of Crystal Light iced tea. Summer inside stays cool as the days of our lives tick slowly by. In the fall the boy welcomes sickness again, opening arms and heart for it to take him further away.

Did rainy days then make him feel more lonely or more frightened? How far apart were they really?
On one rainy morning on the way to school he looks up at the sky and lets the water conveniently and convincingly mingle with his burgeoning tears – that’s how much he thinks he misses home, but really he is just afraid.

Some part of him knows how unbearable the world will be.

Missy is one of my oldest friends – probably one of my first after Suzie, as it was at Suzie’s house when I initially met her – either at one of Suzie’s birthday parties or some holiday when she happened to stop by. Since then, we’ve remained close – even dating for about a year at the end of high school, fittingly marking the end of our youth. The ensuing years have found us intertwined in each other’s lives, seeing us through the difficulties of loss and change, and all the things that happen along the way to our half-century mark in this world.

It is always a return to warmth and safety and comfort to visit her, so when she and her boys invited me for a fall weekend, I rejoiced at the escape – a cozy couple of days ensconced in Connecticut would prove enjoyable for all of us, including their dog Queenie, who greeted me silently, like an old friend, without barking or concern.

We would stay close to home for the weekend, only leaving for a couple of strolls around the yard. Missy kept the fireplace stoked and glowing for a cozy centerpiece, and we picked up where we left off this past summer, as old friends do.

She had also planned out a weekend menu of delicious meals, which we had in the dining room by candlelight – when you have a fancy robe of rust-colored ruffles, you need a proper table setting to set it off. (The highlight being a Saturday night dinner of braised short-robs and fennel risotto, which I’ll be making on my own because it was so amazing.)

Wildlife rustled through the leaves – squirrels mostly, whose noise was always more awesome than the creatures behind it – and this trio of deer, nibbling on the maple leaves they could reach.

They looked inside while we looked out – the ultimate juxtaposition of a sense of safety and warmth indoors with a quickly-cooling afternoon that soon darkened into evening. Clear and cool, it invited a fall fire that Missy assembled, and soon enough I was afforded my first taste of s’mores in decades. We roasted/toasted marshmallows, made our sweet dessert sandwiches, and listened to the playlist that Cameron and I had worked on earlier that day.

The next morning we convened in the living room for a cup of tea and one last talk, while plans for future get-togethers were made, including a winter weekend in Boston to see ‘Some Like It Hot’ while Julian tours Boston schools. Time flies by, children grow up, and friendship remains true, seeing us through it all.

All you sick, twisted fucks celebrating this pagan day of sin and darkness, precisely when the veil between the physical world and the spiritual world is at its thinnest, would do well to remember that this day, this holiday, is amateur hour for those of us who turn out an extraordinary wardrobe nightly. That run-on sentence is my way of not-so-pleasantly reminding everyone who gives the slightest shit (all three of you who read this blog, and whom I should probably treat a lot better) that Halloween is traditionally my day off. 

Wear a cape and top hat to Hannaford on a random Tuesday in August then come see about me. Putting on a costume for Halloween – where is the challenge or surprise in that? 

Be better.
Do better. 
Dress better.

Happy Halloween to all who celebrate! As for the rest of us, it’s almost over – and the real holidays are about to begin. I hear Mariah squealing already…