Category Archives: General

At the tail end of Mother’s Day, when the cold wind has died down, and our socially distant visit to Mom and Dad in Amsterdam has concluded, I open up FaceBook and stumble upon one of my brother’s friends starting a live piano session. Being fortunate enough to have a considerable number of talented friends in my feed, another live session is nothing new or exceptional, but I remembered Karl as being one of the craziest friends my brother ever had – and that is saying something. Maybe it was Amsterdam on my mind, maybe it was the sudden calm of night, or maybe it was the music – most likely it was all of that, and so I stayed on his page, listening as he played his Sunday evening beer jam. It had a bit of the blues in it, a bit of grace, some God and some devil, and such tender gorgeousness that at one point I had to stop and sit down, on the verge of weeping for something so heartbreakingly beautiful.

When we were kids he lived a few blocks away from us, on Summit Avenue I think, and it was just him and his sister and their Mom. At least, that’s how I remember it. As he was one of my brother’s friends, I didn’t invest that much. Hell, I didn’t invest that much in my own friends. And there was also something in him that scared the crap out of me. Like I said, he was legitimately one of the craziest of my brother’s classmates, known for doing absurdly dangerous things at which most of us cringed in both awe and admiration. Wild in a way that we would never understand, as if he had seen things too traumatic to leave him anything other than changed in the way that trauma changes you. And it was something neither my brother nor I could access. We were lucky for that. My brother took it all in casually without breaking stride. I was more fascinated and intrigued, drawn in by whatever brush he had with darkness. I sensed even then a kindred spirit in anyone who had been hurt.

In the dusty, musty, rusty bin of his garage, my brother and I would sometimes find ourselves hanging out while Karl would test the waters of whether he could come out and play. Broken bits of a bike he had torn up in daredevil antics littered the dirty floor. Dim and devoid of color, the memory is a rare sepia-toned one. So much of my childhood is recalled in vivid color, or at least the super-saturated Kodachrome photographs that make up my memories. This one comes back drained of its Technicolor vibrance, as if still covered in a coating of dust, untouched and unexplored.

I remember his mother, never without a cigarette, her bright blonde curly hair messily tied up and always half spilling out of some bun. She wore torn denim shorts and a halter-top in the summer, always at exotic odds with most of the mothers I knew. There was something dangerous about her too, or maybe that’s just my overly-sensitive kid coming out in unexpected ways. In a similar aspect, that’s why Karl scared me, more for his unpredictability and utter disregard for safety in his daredevil ways. I am loathe to admit that we may have pushed him to greater stunts, to jump off higher cliffs, to thrash and wreck what little was left of his old bike. Kids did that – we pushed each other to do the things we were most scared of, just to see, just to watch, just to survive. It didn’t matter if the other person got hurt. Kids are awful sometimes. We didn’t know. We didn’t care. We didn’t think much through. And when we found someone willing to risk it all we didn’t value them so much as a friend as much as a show to be seen, especially on hot summer days that droned on and always carried an air of boredom in a town like Amsterdam.

We played hide and seek together sometimes, and if we were on the same team I felt both emboldened and terrified. Alone, he could frighten you with mischievous eyes glinting with feral ferocity, but as long as he was on your team you could count on him to fight to the end. You didn’t want to know what he went through, you just wanted to make sure he was on your side. There was little enough a kid could control. Choosing which team to be on was all we had some days. And so I was always glad when Karl was on my team. It was the only way to attempt to control the uncontrollable. Another thing I didn’t think of: what might happen if the person on your own team decided to self-destruct and bring the entire team down with him? What if someone in your own home decided to burn it all to the ground without a modicum of self-preservation? I was lucky. I never had to find out. We didn’t stay long at Karl’s, at least I didn’t. Brief brushes with such drama were intoxicating, but only in small, measured doses. We’d be back on our bikes and pedaling somewhere else before soaking in too much. I think we knew, or were warned, not to enter the house proper. My brother never seemed quite as spooked by it as I did, though I never let on. I peppered him with questions to no avail. He either didn’t know or couldn’t be bothered to remember. Even though he was younger, I always wanted to be more like him. To not care, to not be bothered by things like that. Or to take it in and move instantly on, leaving it behind, letting it go. Instead, I stayed haunted. By a dusty garage and a broken bike. By a lost baseball and shards of glass. By a confused half-smile and a curl of smoke. By all that was unsaid and unexplained.

Are there kids who band together to keep themselves safe? I am sure there are. We were lucky – we were never in such mortal danger. And maybe that’s why we never had to get close to anyone, to truly rely on someone to be there to save our lives – because our lives were never endangered. No more than any average kid’s life is endangered, though I suppose all of us were in some way. Somehow we each managed to survive our childhoods – Karl, my brother, and me – and all three of us did it such vastly different ways. These days Karl makes beautiful music. My brother makes beautiful furniture. And I’m just trying to make some sort of beautiful peace with the past.

What a wild, wonderful and whimsical week we’ve had. As I write this, a snow squall is bearing down upon the area, and I’ve just wrapped a plastic tarp around the poor fig tree that’s already outside behind the house. The peonies have kept their heads bowed after a night of snow, and this evening looks to dip into the frost zone as well. There once was a time when the frost-free date was May 6, but that sort of stability has gone away. Nothing is stable anymore. Mother Nature refuses to play according to human-imposed deadlines and rules, and she will not be ignored. We would do best to listen and pay some respect – especially as the rewards may be quite beautiful. Beauty and love informed the highlights of this past week, so let’s go back and quickly revisit them.

Proof of beauty was in the cherries that started popping.

The wisdom of a webmaster, and a friend. 

Dressed up by leaves of coriander.

‘American Life’ and ‘Bedtime Stories’ by Madonna, and maybe some justice.

There can be beauty in resilience. 

Hunks of the Day included Rufus Gifford, Lachlan Glen, Callum Kerr and Mark Mester.

Shirley Horn sang to us of violets for her furs, a song straddling spring and winter, not unlike the weather of the week. 

Pissing the night away, literally, not in the British manner. 

The night before the big event.

Our 10th wedding anniversary was celebrated in subdued style, befitting 2020, and we’ll put a pin in a proper Boston celebration when it’s a bit safer to go. We reconstructed our wedding day pose in the same shirts we wore a decade ago (see main photo and the original below), and the day was equally sunny and beautiful beneath the cherry tree in our own backyard. It was also a good time for looking back at ten years of anniversaries. 

Speaking of cherry trees, this one is currently putting on a fine show.

Another sad part of 2020 was the cancellation of our annual Broadway weekend for Mother’s Day, but we celebrated by looking back at all our previous excursions with this post and this post. 

The final installment of the ‘Awakening to Awareness’ mini-series concluded in full bloom, setting the stage for the rest of spring and a whole new summer. 

My friend and webmaster Skip has been admired by many for his way with words, as well as his way with wisdom. I didn’t need to be reminded of it because it’s one of the things I value about his friendship, but it’s always nice to see something like this recent FaceBook post he wrote because then I know others are getting to witness his genius. He manages to cut through the current political situation with a sports parable that is powerful and insightful. It speaks for itself, and it speaks volumes:

Say what you will about hating the Yankees, and boy do I hate the Yankees. But I can’t say that I’m not sad about what happened to Mo Rivera. He’s a class act and I respect him as a player. I hope it’s not the end for him. The greatest closer the game has ever seen deserves a better exit than that…

This post from 8 years ago got me thinking. I have been a Red Sox fan for as long as I can remember. But I have never shied away from giving proper respect where it’s due. As was the case with Mo. He deserved respect because of the way that they played the game. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t ‘rooting’ for him. But I admired him nonetheless and wished him the best and the respect that they earned. I can reconcile this and still dislike the Yankees and all that they stand for. At the same time I can say, as a Red Sox fan, that Jonathan Papolbon was a gigantic douchebag and wasn’t worth respect from a Red Sox or Yankee fan alike. Sure he had a couple of wins but that didn’t change the fact that he carried himself like a tool and disrespected the game and the fans.

So why can’t people be like this politically? Let’s be honest here … Most of you are just rooting for “your team.” That’s the god’s honest truth. You can oppose someone and be civil to someone who has earned respect. And you can also realize that you can still love your team and realize that a player on it hasn’t done anything to earn your respect and supporting them because they are on your “team” makes you blind to the fact that they don’t give a shit about you regardless of whether or not you are a fan. ~ Skip Montross

[Insert May the Fourth Be With You stupidity here.]

This week marks our 10th anniversary, and Andy and I will have to find a way to celebrate differently this year given that we won’t be making it back to Boston just yet. Love has faced greater hardships – we will simply do a proper Boston celebration later. As for recapping the past few days, get ready for the roller coaster. The last week knocked me down and helped me back up in hair-pin turn fashion. It began in rainy mode and stayed there more often than not, before ending in a gloriously sunny weekend that completely restored my spirit. We’ll get into that happy ending this week, so come back for sunnier entries. In the meantime, we shouldn’t forget the rainy days, because there will always be more of those too. On with the recap, and then the new week.

Escape to a Floating World, at a time when escapism is survival.

This is how I Zoom.

The easiest, quickest, and most dangerous recipe for shortbread ever.

I’m wearing black underwear (bats eyes). 

Our Awakening to Awareness series nears its last entry. 

A new song by Rufus Wainwright is always a happy thing. 

A grapefruit spritzer: simplicity and refreshment incarnate.

The post I wrote when everything finally hit me.

It’s ok to be an ass.

And it’s ok to show your ass, especially when it’s World Naked Gardening Day.

Ladies and gentlemen, step right up! Revisiting The Circus Project from 2008. 

An assortment of shirtless male celebrities. 

A parting ass shot, for good measure.

Hunks of the Day included Irving Peña, Tommy Dorfman, Evan James Betts, Dennis Rodman, James Rees, and Tarek El Moussa.

… and every morning it goes away. 

I’ve had to remind myself of that this past week, when rainy days matched difficult circumstances, as work and Andy’s health issues came to a head and kicked my emotional ass. I did my best, and I faltered a few times. The state of the world is bearing down on us all. It can be, and has been, a bit overwhelming. For the most part, I thought I was doing all right – and I still think I am – but this has been a tough few days. The rain didn’t help matters, even if it did help the garden. And so I take the good with the bad, remembering that it’s all right to fall down now and then, as long as we can pick ourselves up again. It’s a cliche, and normally I’d cringe at using such a phrase, but when you’ve never felt that way before it means a little bit more. 

In the past, every little failure was a life-stalling disaster. Every flow or foible along the way was reason to dip into a stultifying state of immobility. Aloofness, shyness, sadness ~ name the ‘ness unless it started with happy and I’d embrace the chance to revel in the awfulness of it all. Each setback was compounded with a resulting mind-trap, and while the world generally, and genuinely, did not care what missteps I made, I took each and every mistake to heart, and I took everything personally. It took forty years to realize the grave error of such small ways. Hence this post. 

It’s ok to trip up and stumble. No one is perfect. The new trick, for me, is learning to embrace these setbacks as opportunities to learn and challenge myself, to grow and become better, because I very much believe it will lead to happiness. We shall see…

WHEN KIDS ARE DIFFERENT, YOU JUST KNOW. YOU CAN TELL ~ ADULTS CAN TELL. AND THE QUIET KIDS WERE NEVER, WELL, YOU KNOW, THEY JUST DON’T FIT IN. AND IF YOU DON’T FIT IN AT THE BEGINNING, YOU NEVER REALLY FIT IN, EVER, DO YOU?

“The attraction of the virtuoso for the public is very like that of the circus for the crowd. There is always the hope that something dangerous may happen.” ~ Claude Debussy

‘Under the Big Top’ gained a whole new meaning for me with the advent of ‘The Circus Project‘ in 2008. Fascinated by the abstract notion of a circus, and how it had historically been an occasional refuge for so-called freaks and the dwellers on society’s fringe, I wanted to explore the idea of being different in a world that treated difference with both wonder and disgust. That icky element of human nature that revels in finding things grotesque and monstrous while being unable to look away or diminish its fascination with them.

Apart and belonging, two sides of a dangerous coin, a trick coin really, as if the world was only ever made up of two choices. Very few things are truly binary. There is too much room for shade and nuance and varying gradations of just about everything. The circus exists in this in-between area of gray, though it disguises its flaws with garish color and death-defying acts to draw attention away from its problematic underside.

We seek the solace of a smile and think we’ll find it in a car with clowns. We seek the reprieve of a laugh in a prancing pony. We seek and we seek and we seek, and all the while what we seek proves ever more hidden and elusive, as though the very act of reaching for it perpetually moves it further away. Is there a string attached somewhere that pulls as we push? Some trick mechanism that results in an equal and opposite reaction, making the very act of our quest a nihilistic end unto itself? The Circus Project posits such challenges while making no motion to resolve them.

THERE’S ONLY TWO TYPES OF PEOPLE IN THE WORLD:
THE ONES THAT ENTERTAIN, AND THE ONES THAT OBSERVE.

~ BRITNEY SPEARS, ‘CIRCUS’

“I unconsciously decided that, even if it wasn’t an ideal world, it should be so and painted only the ideal aspects of it – pictures in which there are no drunken slatterns or self-centered mothers . . . only foxy grandpas who played baseball with kids and boys who fished from logs and got up circuses in the back yard.” ~ Norman Rockwell

“Damn everything but the circus! …damn everything that is grim, dull, motionless, unrisking, inward turning, damn everything that won’t get into the circle, that won’t enjoy. That won’t throw its heart into the tension, surprise, fear and delight of the circus, the round world, the full existence.” – e. e. cummings

“I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves or figments of their imagination, indeed, everything and anything except me.” ~ Ralph Ellison

{See ‘The Circus Project’ in its entirety here. Also see the first Project of the Past: StoneLight.}

Part of combatting a pesky strain of perfectionism I’ve been unable to completely shake for the past forty-four years is in gleefully accepting my own flaws, failings, mistakes and ridiculousness. I’m much better at that now. And I’m better at being wrong, apologizing, and moving on. That said, there is nothing wrong with this happy outfit. It’s not here for any reason other than I found it in a folder I was excavating, and since Andy and I are discussing a new pool liner, it felt right to put it up here. Has absolutely nothing to do with battling perfectionism. Which makes it absolutely imperfect! 

It was hidden beneath a pile of clothes on the bed in the guest room. Under scarves and a robe and the last few ties I wore to work, it poked its colorful head up above a black belt. Gaudy and slightly garish in a colorful geometric pattern, it was a wonder that it could go unnoticed for so long. I guess I’d forgotten about it when the world fell apart however many weeks ago. A new Trina Turk toiletry bag, it had been purchased in the preliminary excitement of planning a trip to New York City that encompassed a weekend at the Plaza Hotel, a couple of shows on and off Broadway, and, most preciously and importantly, time with some good friends. I uncovered it on a recent rainy morning and was hit with a wave of unexpected emotion.

It looked so sad and forlorn, if an object can appear to have emotions. Still packed with contents selected for a fancy weekend, it sat with its mouth zipped close, unwilling to even whisper of its secrets, unable to utter the least objection at being entirely underutilized. I paused, suddenly feeling too exhausted to stand, but the bed was too messy to sit upon, so I stood there, on the verge of tears and not quite knowing why.

Maybe I was in a state of shock.

Maybe some part of me knew I wouldn’t be able to handle the reality of what the current state of the world meant, or the dark possibility of what it might mean for our future.

Maybe I was genuinely ok with it and the meditation I was doing was keeping me calm.

Maybe it was a little of all of those things.

But when I saw that silly new toiletry bag, something wrenched in my stomach. It was like the sad half of a doughnut that I found on a plate on my grandmother’s kitchen table after she went to the hospital. I had to get some of her things from the empty apartment when I found the little doughnut: an act of life, so mundane and yet so poignant, frozen in mid-motion.

I stopped still, like I did back then, arrested by the sorry sight of this embodiment of dashed hopes and dreams, of a stalled and stunted moment of our lives, instantly ended and canceled and all those words that only ever lead to regret and sorrow.

Picking up the little bag, I unzipped it. There it was ~ my frivolous life put on hold, or perhaps snuffed out forever, at least in the ways and manners to which we have become so happily accustomed. A small bar of rose-scented soap from the Beekman Boys, to bring a bit of decadence to the hotel shower. A full-size tube of face wash, because there was only enough left for a few more uses ~ I was going to leave it at the hotel for a lighter trip back. A small vial of allergy pills ~ the first of the season, and always exciting to begin again because it meant better weather was on the way. A tiny glass sample bottle of Tom Ford’s ‘Oud Fleur’ in case I wanted to add that on a wrist. (My main fragrance was going to be ‘Straight to Heaven’ by Kilian.) All those plans came rushing back and a wave of sorrow washed over me.

It’s stunning how our brains work to protect us, but eventually those protection devices are removed for us to deal with things directly. It felt like it was time to mourn.

That night, Andy picks up a dinner from Yono’s ~ they are doing a one-night take-out special of Indonesian comfort food ~ bakmi goreng. When at last he arrives home, I dive into it, and as delicious as it is, I pause in my enjoyment and think of Yono’s family doing all they know how to do ~ helping and bringing joy to people through food and merriment ~ it’s what they have done for years ~ and I’m struck with grief that we are not sitting in one of their restaurants, surrounded by other people laughing and celebrating and eating good food. I realize how much of the human experience we are losing every day.

I want to rage at the world. At the leader of our country who allowed it to get this far. At the stupid people still spreading it through their own selfishness and stupidity. At the people who say too much. At the people who say too little. At the need to blame. At my image in the mirror. At the sparkling coat I never got to wear walking down a staircase of the Plaza Hotel. At my pettiness. At my vanity. At my validity. I want to yell and scream and tear the walls down. I want to weep and cry and wail, thrashing around on the floor, ripping tears from my eyes like a child in the throes of a tantrum.

Mostly, though, I want to mourn, because I know it’s time. This may very well be the new normal for the foreseeable future, and to be ok with that, to embrace it and find new ways of joy, I know I have to go through the sadness and the sorrow and the anger. I have to acknowledge all of those difficult emotions, and the unknowable outcome of what may or may not happen next. We are not good with uncertainty, but that is our reality now. And so, I make motions to grieve.

I mourn that I don’t make plans in the future anymore, like I used to do, in the way that once brought me such profound happiness and excitement and silly exuberance.

I mourn that I can’t see a movie with Skip. I mourn that I can’t spend a weekend in Boston with Kira or in the Cape with JoAnn.

I mourn that I can’t talk to Marline and Sherri and Lorie every morning in the office.

I mourn that Andy and I can’t celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary in Boston.

I mourn the time we have lost with loved ones ~ family and friends and all the big and little events of which we are being robbed.

And so I watch. Seeking out images of comfort. I see Melissa Etheridge and her daughter singing and smiling. I see Dominick Purnomo and his family feeding our city. I see Rufus Wainwright playing the piano in his robe for us. I see the musicians at The Front Porch broadcasting their concerts for FaceBook. I see people Zooming and connecting in whatever way they can. I see my friends teaching their children. I see my Mom taking my Dad for walks and patiently explaining that OTB is closed for a while. I see Andy making me a cup of coffee in the middle of the day when I would normally be at work. I see the people I love finding their way through all of these unknown and untread paths, and I think it might be ok.

We were meant to connect. We were meant to be together. That may be the greatest lesson in all of this, at least for me. Just when I was starting to figure that out, this virus came along and stopped the world, separating and dividing us. At the very moment I was ready to hug and be hugged, we were suddenly told that could be what killed us. It is a frighteningly primal thing, this need to connect and be a part of humanity. I didn’t realize or understand that until it was taken away.

I wish I’d seen it sooner.

More than that, I wish I’ll get to see it again.

Feathered finery is really the only way to Zoom right. 

I had an initiation into the uncomfortable realm of video-conferencing this week with two (technically three) Zoom sessions with friends. On the advice of my therapist, I’ve been saying yes to things I normally would avoid. (And a video-conference is very much something I would normally avoid.) Phone calls too, so I’ve been asking friends to call me out of the blue, and actually answering, which has proven helpful. It’s also a form of social connection that coincides with the online course on happiness I’m taking, further proof that I’m on the right track the universe has been designing for me of late. 

Baby steps and an O-light. 

It’s all happening here. 

Traveling back in time to the tale of the talented trickster, I turn the brittle pages of an ancient photo album, harkening back to the days when we once used physical photo albums. It was a time before photos could be taken on a phone, before they could even be taken digitally. The medium was film, the process was called development, and the whole experience was one that instilled patience and perseverance. It required mistakes and an endless cycle of trial and error, with just enough success to tantalize and keep us working for more.

All of my projects prior to 2004 were created in this old-fashioned way, some even glued and bound within a three-ring binder because that was all my limited resources and technological limits could produce. Yet rather than feel like I missed out on anything, those processes taught me more than the ease of whipping out a phone that gets perfectly-focused shots without a moment’s care could ever teach. It was the same sort of learning that cracking the Dewey Decimal system taught me in the library. We didn’t have information at the click of a mouse. We had to search. And then we had to research. And then we had to search again. It was an adventure, and yes, it took a lot of work. My patience and ability to slowly work through a problem was honed and improved. It wasn’t instantaneous, it wasn’t without effort, and it absolutely made me a better person.

That said, lugging around twenty rolls of film, a heavy, bulky camera, and waiting two weeks for photos to be developed wasn’t the ideal way of getting images. It took me a while, but eventually I came around to the digital camera. And then I gave in to the phones. Today, I find myself taking advantage of the technology, and very appreciative that I didn’t always have it. We tend to value things more when we remember what it was like before they got so easy.

As for these antiquated shots from ‘The Talented Trickster Tour: Reflections of a Floating World’, they remind me a time and space where lessons were learned – lessons that carry through to this day. In some ways, the idea of the floating world is more resonant than ever – an idea that the world is dark and destructive, and we might as well enjoy what beauty and pleasure we can find because everything is temporal and fleeting in nature. In the past, I would sometimes avoid the blooms of the cherry tree because I knew they would not last, and the regret that inevitably came with their demise would be more than the heart could handle. These days I seek out that fleeting beauty, sit with it in appreciation while I can, then move on, grateful for the experience, grateful for the smile it produced, happy with the memory. You cannot buy or keep the transitory beauty of the cherry bloom – you can only hold it in your heart.

On a rainy Sunday night, as the Sondheim 90th Birthday Celebration is getting off to a rocky, and late, start, I write this weekly recap before we begin again tomorrow. It looks to be a week of rain, a week of isolation, a week of hanging in there as best as we can. My mind is in a wonky place – perhaps the new normal is finally getting to me. I’m in the midst of writing a bit more about that for a post that will go up later this week – think ‘hot mess’ without any semblance of the hot. For now, let’s go back over what has already happened, because the past is the only thing of which we can be sure. 

I probably should have tried to stop the week when these fucking pancakes happened. 

A moment of indulgence and calm courtesy of Spring Blossom by the Beekman Boys. 

Remembering a time in Boston, long ago. 

The jonquil parade is not quite over. 

Recalibrating a meditation approach.

Franco Noriega gives the world this gratuitous beefcake post. 

Getting naked to get happy.

Whispering lily.

I’ve gone six months without alcohol. Good timing or stupid timing? See here.

The MAGA Challenge: whattya got to lose?

A crop-top and some skimpy briefs. 

Project of the Past: this was StoneLight from 2007.

Our peaceful Sunday night comfort post: awakening to awareness.

Hunks of the Day included Kip Moore, Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman, Benjamin Godfre, Ryan Cleary, Nick Zano, Peter Locker and Jeff Goldblum. 

“My peak? Would I even have one? I hardly had had anything you could call a life. A few ripples. Some rises and falls. But that’s it. Almost nothing. Nothing born of nothing. I’d loved and been loved, but I had nothing to show. It was a singularly plain, featureless landscape. I felt like I was in a video game. A surrogate Pacman, crunching blindly through a labyrinth of dotted lines. The only certainty was my death.” ~ Haruki Murakami

All 80’s thunder and glory, the pixelated video-game dreams of my youth battled with my longing for the natural world, and while it was the latter that would win out in the end (nature always did and always will), I had my moments of sitting spellbound before a television and masterfully manipulating Player One or Player Two depending on how my brother or his friends allowed it to be. 

These photos were bonus shots from the ‘Weird Science’ underwear homage taken a few weeks ago. Also, they were taken right before we all started putting on the Quarantine 19 – so much more vicious than the Freshman 15 because, DUH, we are so much older than Freshmen and it’s so much harder to stay in shape. I’m not walking up five flights to get to my dorm room in the top turret of Usen Castle anymore. (And thank God because those quarters sucked.)

The party continues in the back, and if/when I get back into the fitness regime, I’m bringing the crop top back this summer, especially since it looks like we may not be having guests anytime soon. (I don’t see myself cropping it up when actual people are in my presence.) 

A nod to Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Clyde. I thought there was a Sue but maybe I made that up?

Donald Trump, in his own words, posited the idea of injecting disinfectants into the body to help combat the coronavirus. He did this quite earnestly in a live press conference that was shown to the world (I was watching it as it unfolded). A short while later, Dr. Birx (the woman who seems to be hiding more than her neck in that endless supply of scarves) defended Trump by saying he likes to talk things out first. Unfortunately, she didn’t get the talking points that Trump had tried floating at around the same time, saying that he was only being sarcastic. Oops.

Anyway, the new MAGA challenge seems to be disinfecting the body with poisons found in most households. And since Trump is such a fan of sarcasm, I challenge everyone who still supports him to the MAGA Challenge! Find your prettiest bottle of Clorox or Pine Sol or Ammonia and set up your cocktail. (Ratio of cleaning product to mixer is entirely up to taste.) Bottoms up! And don’t forget to post your video to Twitter and tag @realdonaldtrump to win this challenge!

PS – Remember to toast to sarcasm. Trump loves it. 

Its message was, quite simply, summer. 

It whispered with its potent perfume. 

It shouted from its chartreuse throat. 

It seduced with its promise.

And in the midst of this claustrophobic darkness, I needed such a promise. If you do too, and you find a balm in beauty and flowers, seek out similar posts in the archives. The lazy isolationist side of me is winning today, so finding the links will be up to you. 

The great and all-powerful RuPaul once proclaimed, “We’re all born naked and the rest is drag.’

When we are children, we don’t think anything of nudity, and society generally doesn’t bat an eye at a naked child either. When I was a kid I used to proverbially swing my dick around all the time as far as running around naked went. My parents, usually so clinical and scientific in their words and analyses could somehow only bring themselves to call a penis a ‘thing’, so for a couple of years my brother and I referred to our dicks as our ‘things’. Probably a good idea, as we no doubt would have run around screaming ‘penis’ at the top of our lungs. (Not gonna say it didn’t eventually happen anyway.)

As a child, I remember being without pants a lot. I don’t know if I specifically enjoyed being naked as much as I simply enjoyed being free and unfettered by the bonds of clothing. It sometimes felt like such a Herculean task to simply get dressed with all the socks and belts and tucked-in-shirts. Too much bother when all I wanted to do was run around the yard in my underwear. So I often did.

I still don’t know when exactly the shame crept into being naked. It happened prior to the onset of adolescence, because I remember knowing that showing off your body was not something we were supposed to do, and it was around that time that I suddenly became very shy. It wasn’t just about the naked body either – it was a shyness I can now see as the initial onset of the social anxiety that would haunt me for my entire life. Intertwined was the shame and guilt of the Garden of Eden and a bunch of other religious dogma that fucked me up in ways I’m still trying to fix.

Over the years, I’ve come to realize that my getting naked here on this blog is a way of reclaiming that childlike innocence, when I felt absolutely no shame whatsoever about the human body. It’s not easy getting rid of that kind of shame, particularly when society heaps on its antiquated enforcement of such tenets. America is hypocritically prudent when it comes to nudity, and when there’s any aspect of sexuality imbued in the mix it proves doubly resistant.

Fuck all that. We’re all naked under our clothes. Our bodies are the maps of where we’ve been – physically and mentally – they are marked with scars and flaws unique and special to each and every individual. No two are alike, but our basic make-up is remarkably similar. Underneath it all, it’s very hard to tell who is who. We should celebrate our bodies, and our differences. Every wrinkle and gray hair, every ounce of weight, every hidden muscle, every line that could tell innumerable tales of happy laughter, sorrowful tears, or righteous anger.  These bodies are our shells, and no matter how gaily or extravagantly we dress them up, in the end they will return to the earth, becoming part of the universe in some form. We will fold back into this universal womb, no longer skin, flesh and bone, but only the eternally-fading remnants of such stuff. In some ways, life is but one long series of degradations of our physical form. How much of my newborn self still remains? I can’t say I remember much of my soul in those days. We change so much.

Here, then, is a marker of where I am right now.

You can go back several years on this site to see where I was back when.

And when I’m gone, and my body is nothing but ash or dirt, maybe these photos will survive, existing in the technological cloud we’ve created, living on as proof that I was here, that this body once existed, that it once laughed and wept and breathed, that it once ran and played and danced, that it was an element of matter that, to a few select and magnificent people, actually mattered.