Category Archives: General

Writing this in the throes of the Sunday scaries has me desperate for a small plate of cinnamon toast, heavily slathered with a thick layer of butter. Comfort food of coziness, to see us into another week of winter, full moon and all. On with the weekly recap…

Last week began with the saddest day of the year (according to some). 

We slowed the roll with a cup of hot tea.

Shame on all of you for keeping me in the dark.

Twin flame blue.

Does anybody do personal e-mail anymore?

We celebrated this anniversary of… celebration. 

It was all about time… and cuff links. 

Summer speedo look back… way back.

A sweet winter suite.

Coq soup.

A prism of a different corner because we are multitudes.

An unexpected visit from my father.

My beginnings as a flower child.

An old beauty returns, while we’re on the subject of flowers.

Dazzlers of the Day included Nikki Glaser and Andrew Garfield.

Close readers of this blog (hugs to all three of you) may have noticed that posts have begun to tend toward the nostalgic, evoking the past, as I forewarned as we started the year. As this year will mark my 50th here on earth, I’ve allowed the indulgences for the next twelve months, as I navigate the midsection of my life, God-willing, and the start of my final act (assuming we’re each allotted two). 

Coincidentally, the long-overdue clean-up of our guest room (which at this point is more of a storage room) revealed a stack of old photographs, including this Christmas shot of me excitedly holding a bag of… wait for it… potting soil. Happily, I never considered my passion for gardening an odd thing, even as a young child. Back then, my intuition understood somehow that ‘Comparison is the thief of joy’, and so I simply minded my own business, gleefully asking Santa for houseplant paraphernalia the way other boys wished for plastic toys of war and fighting.

Looking back at the child I was, it does strike me as strange, or at least slightly off the beaten path. It set me apart from other children, and I was lucky enough to know that feeling early on – to know it, accept it, embrace it, and allow it to empower me. When you have the self-fortitude and security to stand apart from the pack, you’re probably stronger than most of the people who are too afraid to leave the pack. Remember: life is a mystery. Everyone must stand alone. The earlier you learn how to do that, the better. 

Right before Andy was about to fill his favorite coffee cup for a morning cup of coffee, I borrowed it for this picture, and filled it with oolong tea. At such times he will occasionally refer to me as a menace, even if my usurping of his favored cup was entirely unintentional as far as disrupting his routine. Such is cohabitation, even after twenty-four years. 

A cup of tea is a favored ritual for reminding one to be mindful. The process of making tea is simple enough – and the basic steps involved are an easy lesson in how to focus on the singular steps of a task one by one. That has translated into a step-by-step correlation on how to get through the average day. One step at a time, one little goal to accomplish, then on to the next. The idea of an entire day can be daunting for some people, but the idea of a minute or two is manageable for most of us. A day is nothing but a collection of minutes – you just need to get through them one by one. Or, as a wise man once remarked, “Life is much more successfully looked at from a single window.” That made more sense in my head than when I actually typed it out, but it stands true separately, perhaps not in direct relation.

Now I’ve dipped into the folly of overthinking when my mind should be on the tea at hand. 

According to hearsay and annual reports from this very blog (trust neither) January 6 is the saddest day of the year. That makes sense to me – the Christmas and New Year’s season are finished – Little Christmas is done – and most of us are back to school and work at the point where winter has only just begun. The long haul begins in daunting, depressing and disheartening fashion. A spell of post-holiday blues is to be expected, though this year, perhaps because the holidays weren’t a time of celebratory shenanigans, I’m feeling less blue than usual. In fact, ever since 2025 dawned, I’ve felt a calm and sense of hopefulness that I’m attributing to the (deliberated chosen) lack of news on television as well as a renewed focus on daily meditation. Along with a new book and intent on being more mindful, this year has started off in calm and tranquil waters. May this be a reminder that so much of life is how we perceive it, and how we choose to respond to that perception. In other words, we have more control over what happens to us than we think. 

To that end, in an effort to combat what is typically perceived as such a dreadful day, I will be focusing on finding moments of peace and prettiness, and taking any sort of dismal news that comes my way as a minor bump, easy to navigate around or roll right over. Rolling with the punches and traveling with the tide is so much easier than constantly battling against it. It doesn’t negate the opportunity to address things later on, and sometimes simply sleeping on a prickly issue blunts the sharpest points of said pricks. For today, I’m setting down the battle-ax and refusing to issue any battle-cries. 

Let us find comfort in the day, and in each other. 

Patti LaBelle’s Over-the-Rainbow Mac and cheese, along with a hefty side-helping of collard greens, provide the main sustenance I’ve had for the past two weeks. Don’t judge – it was the holidays; we are back to salads and intermittent fasting now. Here’s a weekly blog recap that you will hopefully find as comforting as this plate of goodies:

What do you think of holidays that fall on a Wednesday?

2025 began in contemplative and quiet fashion, the very best way to begin.

Things that start in silence leave room to build.

A song for New Year’s Day.

Calming song, soothing morning. 

A gratuitous Tom Holland post.

Taking stock of the wind in our fails.

Forget the rubbing and shredding, try this easiest fondue I’ve ever made.

It finally happened: glitter on my dick.

Returning to non-innocence: a few almost-naked male celebrities.

Riding on the icy air, a rose defies winter.

For the future, a year of look-backs.

During such dim days, a deeper winter read.

Neither delicate nor demure, a flower is ferocious.

What say you to low-carb cabbage pizza?

Wilting or withering or fading like a flower.

The year that was 2024 came to a close with this first part of the year in review.

And when there’s a part one, there should always be a part two. 

Being an over-thinking, over-analytical and over-the-top Virgo is one of life’s not-so-little fuck-overs, but I’m doing my best with the cards I’ve been dealt and the cards I’ve been choosing. Winter has arrived, and like so many other winters before it this is a time of rumination and contemplation. My daily meditations have resumed and my mind is in a more settled place because of them. Additionally, I’ve re-introduced elements of well-being into the daily routine, which has calmed my riotous heart as well. 

Along those lines, a book by Joseph Nguyen – ‘Don’t Believe Everything You Think’ – is tailor-written for someone like me, who tends to overthink and dwell much too long in my thought process rather than simply living. It’s already unraveling some knots that I’ve had for decades, knots I assumed I’d have to live with for life. When you finally untangle a delicate necklace it’s such a relief and joy you wonder why you didn’t tackle it in the first place, slowly and carefully and deliberately. 

I’ve just started the book, and I invite anyone who overanalyzes to join in the journey. More quotes like to come… 

After decades of dealing in and terrorizing people with glitter, I finally found a single sparkling piece of it on a singular part of me. Of course I mean my dick, and part of me is surprised that it’s taken this long for that to happen. (Glitter tends to favor eyelids and upper lips.) Immediately I texted a few chosen friends about it, and when Suzie asked why it was there I simply wrote back, “It’s the holidays.” 

The real question should have been why I noticed it, but since that was never asked it will be left up to your imagination. 

It first sounded last night, the first night of the calendar year. I was writing another blog post, sitting on the bed in the attic when I listened to it whip over the roof and around the window, seeking to gain some sort of entrance. 

The wind. 

Hearing it barrel by made me wonder how horrific a tornado or hurricane must sound in person. The rumbling and occasional whistling it made here must be a breeze in comparison. 

Such power and might continued early this morning, when I watched and heard the wind blow through the backyard, shaking trees and grasses and testing their pliability. In this life, you learn to either bend or break – proof that it’s better to be flexible than obstinate. My convictions may be stalwart but my stubbornness is more malleable these days. Give me time to cool down and collect myself and I’m likely to come around to a new way of seeing things. 

Have I always done this? For the most part yes, but it used to take a bit more time, and a lot more arguing, and while more often than not I ended up convincing people of my way, what an effort it was, and oh what headaches resulted. Today I’m more likely to let people make their own choices and decisions and deal with the fallout, even if I’m 100% certain there is a better way of doing things. Maybe that’s another failure on my part, but our failures make us better provide we learn something from them. I’ve learned to let people make their own mistakes.

FAFO is real.

While Tom Holland has already been crowned a Dazzler of the Day here, this is a post celebrating his current Men’s Health cover shoot, and his inspiring story of going sober. He recently released a line of non-alcoholic beer – Nero – committing to his lifestyle and welcoming the focus on not drinking. More of us can relate than one might think. Read more of it here.

Based on the figure he’s cutting, not drinking certainly agrees with him.

Beginning a new calendar year in mindfulness and silence is my preferred method of ringing in the next twelve months. Coupled with some industrious (for me) efforts and rituals, the day starts in quiet form. While Andy sleeps, I steam the outfit I’m wearing for a family dinner, prepare the roasted squash we’re bringing as a side dish, make myself a cup of oolong tea, and settle down at the dining room table to write this blog post. Trying to keep my mind focused wholly on the simple tasks at hand, I push away any nagging overthinking or mental analysis and attempt to inhabit the moment completely. For many people, silence and quiet is an immediate invitation for thoughts to run wild through the mind – for me, it invites the opportunity to focus on my breathing, or the simple act of making a cup of tea or cutting up vegetables. 

I pause and look at the outside world – slightly hazy, a fine mist and maybe even rain in the air, droplets of water on bare tree branches, like little silver buds of a spring that will, no matter what befalls us, come again. Cradling the cup of tea in my hands, I embrace its warmth while surveying the gray winter scene of our backyard. The fountain grass bows with crooked countenance, stalks of the cup plant splay as if they’d been trampled by some giant, and a fluffy squirrel perches on the corner post of our weathered fence. Which way will it decide to go? Which way will the year take us?

The cup of tea grows cool, no matter how piping hot it was when I began writing this. Tea tempers itself, something I’ve learned to do, on occasion, over the years. Tastes have mellowed and sharpened, in the contradictory terms that life decrees at its most infuriating. Holding such extremes when they seem at such odds is a Zen trick we can only ever approximate mastering. The action verbs that started the sentences when I started this blog post are now coming at the end, a shift worth noting and honoring. Let’s begin.

Sparse.

Stark.

Striking.

The vast expanse of winter.

The landscape of a new calendar year.

Beauty. Benevolence. Brutality.

Grasshead gone to fluffy seed – a horticultural feather boa – because that’s what winter does. It strips everything bare, leaving the only vestiges of glamour in the drying and waving stalks of desiccated grass. Winter holds its own, wrapping brittle arms like gnarled grapevine around the heart. It hurts and it helps, like a hug at the right moment, or the wrong moment. 

I don’t quite know how to begin this year. 

This year that I turn 50 years old. 

This year that Andy and I have been together for 25 years.

This year that we’ve been married for 15 years.

This year of milestones and markers…

Let us be wholly present for all of it. 

Let us be mindful of every moment. 

Let us… be.

We continue on the high summer note on which we left off from the first half of the year, which found us deep in coquette country and on the verge of a banner summer Olympics. Like most years, the months slowly but sometimes wildly shifted. Fasten your seatbelts, you know the rest…

July 2024: Back when we still held the wonder of hope.

The patriotic Speedo upon reflection.

Keep this guide handy so you don’t fuck up.

Shirtless summer shenanigans. (And one to blow on.)

Pink and wet.

My give-a-fucks went on vacation.

Summer night welcome.

A coquette visit with two dear friends.

Never the boy of summer.

Jaxon Layne turns two.

Our 24th anniversary.

A chosen coquette family.

The Paris Summer Olympics began with a bulge-tastic bang.

Making it purr and keeping it kinky.

A Silver Mountain summer scent.

The final coquette summer playlist.

The room where my father died.

August 2024: Dad’s anniversary.

A place of peace and rest.

Coquette loveliness.

Shirtless poses.

A fragrance fit for a father.

Summer Olympics 2024: a tale of two penises.

Zac Efron pumping sans shirt.

Our BroSox Adventure took place in August, a bit later, but every bit as fun and enjoyable as all of our excursions. 

Retiring Tom Daley’s Speedo.

Madonna seriously.

A coquette cradle song for therapy.

What are we supposed to do with coquette feathers?

A birthday on the cusp.

Feeling all of 49.

Birthdaying in Boston.

September 2024: Summer lingered happily by the pool.

The battle of pink and green was on. 

A hanging rope of pearls.

A father’s birthday in absentia.

Last gasp of a flailing coquette, striking a pose and losing hold of all glamour.

Andy saves summer with one plate of fried green tomatoes.

A summer day in Vermont with Suzie, on which we find some of the best ice cream we’ve ever had.

Nakedly harvesting super moon energy.

Closing out a perfectly lovely coquette summer.

Fall arrives with this fade-to-black theme.

Desperation.

Getting tired of this earth.

Black-brimmed avenger.

A witchy trio.

Fragile masculinity.

Remembering my first kiss with a man.

Words of an American psycho.

Smoking a fall clove.

At the turn to darkness.

A sex scene from the verge of twinkdom.

A Boston weekend in the fall with Kira.

Childhood church trauma.

Andy has the best balls.

October 2024: Thirty years ago I kept an unfortunate journal.

Getting busy.

Monster dick evil.

Ferocious, weak, pretentious freak.

A silver lining of social anxiety.

A treacherous tale of three.

The rough and tough meditation.

A new black parade.

Fall bacchanal, caftan style.

The Fade-to-Black fall playlist.

A sorcerer by a sorceress. 

Dangerously feminine.

Andy’s birthday.

Kamala, not so obviously, even if it’s obvious, and too late, now. 

Autumn in Ogunquit, as magical as ever. 

Super graphic ultra modern girl like me. 

Five years of sober living.

A bedtime story that’s lasted for thirty years.

Marble and mud.

A charming Saturday in New York with my person.

A family detour.

Let’s have another mid-life crisis because why not?

When a witch turns their back…

Who’s afraid of little old me?

A witch’s playlist.

Sound the siren.

November 2024: In which a villain re-emerges for survival.

Ben Cohen’s take-it-all-off calendar.

A November surprise with a project from 2004.

Swimming in November.

Mourning has broken.

A husband’s helpful shadow.

Ten years ago on this very blog.

I kept my promise, and I’m keeping my distance. 

Sexual activity my ass.

You must meet Irate Irene.

A magical flower from my magical man.

A cardinal visits.

Shades of nudity set to music.

Just what we need – another social media app.

Still Wicked after all these years.

No more news and no one’s unhappy about it. 

When tea-bagging goes bad.

Friendsgiving 2024 and a dinner with Kira.

Ulta ultra unhelpful.

December 2024: A holiday fragrance that is, like its wearer, a lot.

Everything is fucking fine.

Holiday card 2024: Shitter’s full!

The full ‘shades of gray’ project from twenty years ago is posted online for the first time.

Absence makes the heart grow.

Andy is my greatest comfort.

A cozy Christmas scene.

Waltzing through Christmas.

Racial profiling at the Newbury Hotel?

We can’t all be one of the witches.

Winter solstice.

Holiday Stroll 2024.

Boston Children’s Holiday Hour (entirely misnomered). 

Christmas coda with Chris.

A Christmas message for the lonely. 

The twins had their very first adult dinner party, thrown by me and Andy as it should be. 

A holiday recap.

See you in 2025, whether we like it or not…

Closing the chapter on what was 2024 brings an uneasy sense of relief and trepidatious pleasure. Every time I look forward to a new anything, it comes with challenges and setbacks, and entering a new year, particularly one as potentially big as 2025, leaves me excited and scared. Before that, let’s send 2024 off with a fond farewell…

January 2024: A lot of New Years. 

A fragrance to start a new year properly, courtesy of Le Labo.

Madonna, still ‘Crazy’ after all these years.

21 years of half-naked navel-gazing.

A month for meditation.

My grandmother’s waltz.

Madonna’s greatest comeback: The Celebration Tour. 

Hygge happening.

Jeremy Allen White in his underwear.

Boston afterglow.

A birthday post for Mom.

Be fucking fabulous.

February 2024: A first winter without Dad.

Snow comfort.

New social media rules.

Shawn Mendes shirtless.

Future nostalgia: Part one and Part two.

Looking for mercy.

Apricity.

Valentine nostalgia.

A pop of underwear color.

Harry Styles in and out of his underwear.

The Middle Ages in Connecticut. 

Tom Daley in a crocheted Speedo.

A return to Cape Cod in the middle of winter, when the sunsets carry a different sort of beauty. 

My brother’s band.

Andy is still a trooper.

March 2024: Tricks of Father Time.

Looking up at Albany.

A Boston tease.

Kira and I in Boston – the old team back in business. 

Preparing for guests.

Jaxon and Uncle Andy.

A modern-day Joan-of-Arc.

After 35 years, everyone must still stand alone.

A gorgeous fragrance: Patchouli Ardent.

The bold and sexy style of Luke Evans.

The week the power went out in an ice storm.

The twins turned fourteen.

He sits on my lap now.

The porcelain trappings of youth.

April 2024: An indulgence.

Crying at Trader Joe’s. 

Naked like a perhaps hand.

The heart of a jonquil.

Finding fabulousness. 

A purple reign weekend with friends old and dear, tried and true. 

Get busy living…

Jaxon’s happy face.

May 2024: Anniversary month.

Spring in Connecticut. 

A visit to my Mecca.

An unremarkably remarkable anniversary spent with Andy in Boston. (It was so good it needed three parts.)

A pool of pink petals.

Coming into the Carnal Flower at last.

‘The Great Gatsby’ on Broadway.

A bittersweet return to Broadway with Mom turned out to be more sweet than bitter. 

Messy and moody.

A godson grows.

Social media apathy.

It’s too bad most journalists didn’t listen to or heed this dire warning.

Time to tea dance.

The moon tried to hide but I found her.

June 2024: Our coquette summer was christened.

A coquette summer playlist.

A coquette night to remember.

Our seaside retreat to the Beautiful Place By the Sea was as lovely as it always is. Ogunquit still works its magnificent magic. 

Forget-me-nots.

Playground love.

A setting for the coquette day, and a setting for the coquette night. 

Orville Peck got naked for Paper.

Pride Month – now more than ever.

Lace and leather and coquette dreams.

A presence on the night wind.

A first Father’s Day without a father.

Preamble: the Ass.

I absolutely loved my first colonoscopy! Well, I loved a few key parts of it, and overall I didn’t see what all the fuss was about. Maybe I’m just accustomed to putting my ass through the ringer. 

The stars are blind and the coquette mystique is in effect.

The kind of blue not found in the flag.

A mass of neuroses belies a coquette summer.

Boston begins summer in beauty and rains just a little on our parade.

We don’t have to take our clothes off to have a good time.

June ended with a second coquette summer playlist, setting the scene for the rest of the year to follow…