These rods of gold sway but do not break in the wind. Goldenrod is no stranger to the wilds of fall, and it won’t be felled so easily. The scientific name for the plant – Solidago – stems from a Latin word that means ‘to make whole’ – this is due to the medicinal properties the plant was once believed to have. I don’t think it’s used widely for anything curative today.

In these parts it is a pretty signifier of fall, celebrated for its stationary pollen, blamed for the unnoticed ragweed, and bothered by almost none of our nonsense.

Yesterday morning marked the first day of fall and this blog was occupied with that shift and a new look for the autumn season. That meant the weekly blog recap has been moved to this morning, so if you didn’t get a chance to catch up on Monday per the typical schedule, here is your chance. It’s a recap filled with a few recaps – the past circling in on itself – and there are lots of linky labyrinths for those looking to dive down different rabbit holes, so have at it – we’re all mad bunnies here.

You may call it blasphemous, I consider it innocuous.

A summer weekend in Boston with the bestie.

Mindfulness over matter.

Sweet Autumn harbinger.

Sage won’t save the world now.

Beautiful Albany.

Bee obnoxious.

Summer roads gone.

This naughty papyrus just started to make motions of growth now, the very week that summer is over.

Dazzlers of the Day included Richarlison, Lauv, Jack Grealish and Virgil van Dijk.

A Farewell to a Wicked World opened the final section of The Divine Diva Tour, in which our fairy’s tale came to its inevitable ending. It will live in its glamorous infamy here, where a diva has been laid to rest in divinity.

The Island Summer of 2025 felt like a bust, but it had its moments too, the way every summer does.

A quiet entry to fall, this is La Cumparsita.

Let this be the Autumn of Oud.

An early autumn song.

These are troubling times. Whispers of abductions are no longer the stuff of fantasy, disappearances and likely snuffings are now commonplace, and the darkness hinted at in years prior has come to full, devastating fruition as some of us foretold. It feels like Voldemorte has ascended, Hitler is in power, and Satan has achieved the long-sought revenge of a fallen angel, turning our world into a little bit of Hell.
It’s hard to make sense of how dark some of our souls were ~ and apparently are ~ and I struggle with recognizing the basic humanity we once foolishly assumed was present in all of our brethren. For those who are surprised by how awful can be, it must feel like an affront and an attack; for those of us who are used to be treated as second-class citizens ~ the marginalized, the different, the ‘other’ ~ it is simple confirmation. Some of us are unsurprised by any of this; we have already crafted ways and means of survival, as well as avenues of beauty and enchantment to carry us through the darkest moments. 

And so we open this fall season of the blog, christening it the Autumn of Oud ~ as much for its mystery and beauty as for its metaphorical correlations. Oud is a precious raw ingredient in the most decadent fragrances ~ rich, incense-like, and pungent, with a woody warmth centered around a musky heart.
The creation of oud occurs in the heartwood of the agarwood tree when it is threatened with a particular fungus. It is a resin that is produced as a defense against an attack that might endanger its existence. As this only happens in the few trees that are afflicted with this fungus, oud is rare in its natural state, and widely variable. It is said to be valued sometimes at a higher rate than gold due to its rarity, and perfumes using natural oud are prohibitively expensive. For that reason, many of the ouds we encounter are synthetic, cheaper versions that approximate the richness of the real thing. (I don’t mind that, and I’m not such a fragrance snob that I’m bothered by a synthetic oud. If it smells nice, why not embrace it? And if a human-made oud is more sustainable, so much the better.)

The idea of oud as a defense mechanism only adds to its allure. Something beautiful and rich is produced when erecting its fortress, in the same way that something rare and powerful happens when we come together against a threat to our basic existence. It feels like a fungus is invading our country right now, and I want to have the hope that we will collectively be able to produce our own protective device, as exquisite and glorious as oud.

The Autumn of Oud aims to capture a sense of mystery, as well as the escapist beauty that comes with such a rich and sometimes polarizing scent. There are infinite varieties of oud ~ my cologne cabinet alone has merely scratched the surface, and hardly any of them carry the weight and magnificence of the real authentic thing (true, natural oud is far too expensive to find its way into my poor hands) and all of that plays a part in these times as well: the search for authenticity in a world of malignant misinformation. Our country reclines on a bed of lies, and our people seem content to indulge in the laziness. Perhaps we have all been carried away by the sweet promise of the impossible. 

For our own purposes here, and what you might see in fall blog entries, the essence of oud meanders through like curls of smoke unfurling around the corners of an uncertain future. It gives danger, it gives risk, it gives decadence, it gives defiance. Ideally it gives a seductive and beautiful invitation to portals that take us to other lands, other worlds, other places where candles and incense light the darkest night, smoldering in the burning season. 

Fall is a still a mystery to me in many ways ~ mostly in the haunting memories this season holds. Right when I think I have it solved, new layers reveal themselves, and old haunts switch the meanings I once held as true. Fall was when I fell, and I always feel a little lost and a little haunted when the nights turn colder. Let us see what this season brings… if you dare.

Twenty years ago, our poolside was newly planted with a perennial bed (you can see a couple of purple irises in the background of the pic below), its wooden fence also relatively new, and my abs somewhat still intact. It seems a good place to end this summer’s posts, as we have just celebrated the 2005 project release of The Divine Diva Tour: A Fairy’s Tale. It also puts me in a nostalgic frame of mind, so let’s revisit some other summers now behind us…

• The Summer of 2015: We begin this look back a full decade ago, when summer felt like a dream swaying in the breeze…

• The Summer of 2016: Wherein Speedos and Olympians began a lovely summer tradition.

• The Summer of 2017: My summer vacation from blogging meant this was the only documentation of what went down.

• The Summer of 2018: It feels so long ago – all the kids were younger, all the adults as well, and summer maintained her mystique.

• The Summer of 2019: In some ways this was the last summer of carefree innocence, the summer before a pandemic hit and the world changed, the summer that needed and deserved its four parts.

• The Summer of 2020: It was the worst of times, and it was the worster of times.

• The Summer of 2021: It was supposedly the summer that wasn’t, so I’m not sure how we squeaked out a second part to the proceedings.

• The Summer of 2022: It was so bodaciously happy it needed this Part Two.

• The Summer of 2023: One of our saddest summers as we said goodbye to Dad.

• The Summer of 2024: Our Coquette summer was a pink and lace melancholic smash.

• The Summer of 2025: An Island summer found us relatively isolated, so perhaps the theme was a success after all.

Our Summer Island 2025 never quite achieved the expectations that I had in my mind, and there was really no way it could, as much as I tried to tamp them down. It was the summer that I turned fifty, the summer that I celebrated twenty-five years with Andy, and the summer that was filled with other various anniversaries and dramas (the most major of which I had little to do with). After twenty years, The Divine Diva Tour: A Fairy’s Tale finally got posted for all the world to ignore, and formed the bulk of our weekend posts.

Originally, I’d thought that the twins and family would be over visiting the pool and treating our home like a summer island oasis, but after the initial Island Party, they didn’t respond or have time to visit, so Andy and I hosted friends and enjoyed the outside by ourselves. They were also dealing with other issues, but that’s a darker story more fitted for fall and further rumination before I decide to tell it.

Happily, there were other summer diversions to be had, and an opportunity for shifting how family occupies my mind and existence, as well as how our good friends become our family over the years. It’s a common occurrence for many LGBT+ people, this way we forge our own family units out of necessity, and it’s both heartbreaking and beautiful how it has to happen. This summer we celebrate the friends who got us through it, the sunny days that went on and on after a slow beginning, and the little island we created, even if it wasn’t how we originally envisioned it.

JUNE 2025: The month it always begins – summer laid out in its entirety before us – all promise and hope and happiness – and all impossible to live up to after a winter of wishing and envisioning.

Our summer island theme was chosen by Emi deep in the bowels of winter, so we began in a tropical vibe.

Keeping cool was a natural start to this June.

Leaning into the way of life that believes everything little thing is gonna be all right.

A Pedro Pascal appreciation post.

Summer be starting something.

Magic is the moonlight.

Everybody move, everbody groove!

Speedo ruminations.

Try some, eat this – the summer boat dip.

JULY 2025: Whispers of retirement carried on the summer wind, for if I were to break down my state career into a seasonal timeframe, I am just about entering the winter of that journey.

A Brian Sims appreciation post.

Pink ponies, pink tacos and putts – our 2025 BroSox Adventure was a dizzying doozy helmed by the usual hilarious antics of my dear friend Skip. This one marked our tenth anniversary of these adventures – another milestone in this summer of milestones .

Making a tidal trip to Provincetown in mind only.

A Tom Daley appreciation post.

Son of a Virgo.

Guess who’s coming to dinner?

A 30th friendship reunion is a glorious way to spend a summer weekend.

The Summer Island Playlist, more or less.

Jaxon turned three!

Twenty-five years ago I met the man I would marry. In many ways, it feels like only yesterday… but that quarter-century of life is massive and meaningful.

Island lighthouse.

When friends become family.

Pacific Chill by Louis Vuitton was the main summer frag, courtesy of Andy.

AUGUST 2025: The month and year in which I turned fifty fucking years old. {Pause for a moment of silence.}

While it’s been two years since Dad departed this world, I still feel him around us.

A weekend of Virgos healing and grooving.

Speedo off Sunday.

A shirtless male celebrity round-up.

Greenhouse eroticism.

Jim Verraros got Explicit.

The great, and likely-unintended, gay anthem.

Summer melancholy.

In the shade of a cemetery.

A tiny tribute to the Ilagan twins.

The showgirl must go on.

Bad Bunny got naked on a water-ski.

Gratuitous Tom Holland views.

Got bush?

On the eve of a half-century of life.

A letter on the occasion of a 50th birthday.

Fifty and out of fucks!

The birthday suit post.

Chris Evans in a jockstrap was the summer content everyone needed.

This favorite gift.

I finally get Cher.

SEPTEMBER 2025: We never give September the summer glory it’s due. The majority of this month is still summer, but we forget that when school begins and Labor Day ends. This one began in mindful territory.

This is my interpretation.

A Boston birthday gets immortalized in blog form, as we looked back on a fun and fancy weekend wherein we spent a night at Raffles.

The author of this blog at 50.

The willpower to exist outside the realm of opulence.

Sliding out of summer.

What would have been Dad’s 95th birthday.

Learning a little from my nephew.

A summer weekend in Boston with the bestie.

In the end it was the summer of 2005 that stole the spotlight, thanks to the online premiere of The Divine Diva Tour: A Fairy’s Tale. With all of this looking back, I’m looking forward mostly to a new fall. Farewell, summer of 2025.