Category Archives: General

If you’ve made it through a Dry January, why not keep going? 

Does anyone’s body really feel worse without alcohol?

#TinyThreads

One of the greatest thrills of life is discovering a word you never knew, especially when it so aptly describes something that you have always loved. In this case, it’s the word ‘apricity’ – which means the warmth of the sun in winter. Tell me that’s not an exquisite word, with an exquisite meaning. It contains a gorgeous bit of tension in its juxtaposing elements, eliciting a silver thread of hope from the barren doldrums of the slumbering season. 

When posed with the question of why I have written posts for this website for over twenty years, my first, and perhaps over-simplified response is that I love to write. Inherent in that is a love for words – how they’re used, how they might be transformed and rearranged into something new and spectacular, how they might be both masks and revelations in the exact same time and place. On some level, writing is the ultimate act of manipulation – using phrases and sentences and structure to convey whatever you want to convey, and in that sense it’s a concrete version of what we do as humans. Mastering manipulation may not sound like a noble quest in being human, and maybe it’s not – that doesn’t make it any less true. 

Rather than dive into that icky contemplation on humanity, let’s instead focus on apricity, something auto-correct is repeatedly insisting on switching to ‘apricot’ – a lovely word in its own right, but not the one I want to celebrate today. Apricity – the warmth of the sun in winter – must be a phenomenon that most skiers who have ever gotten sunburn around their ski goggles know and understand quite well. As a well-proven non-skier, my understanding is limited to the instinctual way my head will sometimes turn to face the sun on those colder days. Merrily squinting and smiling into its brightness, I close my eyes and let it fall on my cheeks and forehead, imagining through the icy chill and wind that it’s summer somewhere, knowing that it will come again if we’re all still here in a few months.

Apricity… like a sliver of hope in the darkest heart.

Recently I read that the daylight grows longer at its quickest pace during this time of the year. When the workday is done, that’s usually the time and space where I make my meditation. It’s the moment when the sky just starts turning dark, and in the living room the sun determines how the remaining light looks – the sun, the sky, the clouds, the atmosphere – they all conspire to bring about something gray and dull and somber, or something filled with rich hues and deep color. 

I don’t usually think of winter in such colorful ways. In my mind, I’ve relegated it to the stuff of dreams, and most of my dreams are in black and white. Yes, my dreams are drained of color – a rather unfair predicament for someone so enamored of bold splashes of fuchsia, gorgeous gushes of chartreuse in early spring, or the fiery red of this candle. 

Even on the gray days, the light outside the window will often turn blue when seen in pictures. In person, it’s never quite as striking. Another instance of disappointment, of something that feels unfair, when really it’s just another lesson of winter, another way to shift one’s views. Finding beauty in more subtle nuances is a way to finding happiness, but it takes practice and focus and a willingness to live in the quiet, without the relentless distractions and bells and whistles of cel phones and lap tops and surround sound and screens that get bigger and bigger. I’m running on now like my sentences, running through winter and keeping a steady pace to get through, to keep going. 

“The day and time itself: late afternoon in early February, was there a moment of the year better suited for despair?” –  Alice McDermott

If there is, I haven’t found it yet.

A linky look back at when I was 21 years old continues from this wildly meandering post, and let’s see if I can’t making this one even more labyrinthine. There’s no song to accompany the entry, so you’ll have to hum or whistle or sing one of your own conjuring. Nostalgia comes with its own soundtrack, specific and different for everyone – set yours up on Spotify, and then come back and teach me how to do it. 

Once upon a time, I thought I might have the most-well-documented life of any of my friends, but considering the ease and ubiquitous manner in which we document ourselves these days, all I have are some written memories and boxes of photographic memories in concrete material form – unstored on any flash drive or lap-top. Judging from the photos I’ve been digging up, that may be for the best – and woe to the kids today growing up in a state of constant documentation. My generation was lucky to have done most of our growing up in the relative privacy of a pre-internet, pre-cel-phone world. I find myself valuing and appreciating that more as the days go by. 

Of course, there was still much evidence of my sartorial mistakes, as evidenced in so many photographs, like the one above. Sheer shirts and sequin berets and vests – this was when ‘Chicago’ had made such a splash in its revival on Broadway, and I was all about this combo. No clue why I chose this particular astrological hat, but I have no clue why I chose most things I chose in 1996. Yes, mistakes were made, and some of them rather dire, but this wasn’t one of them. As ridiculous as many of my outfits were, I stand by them for what they were at the moment, and I never wore anything I didn’t love on that respective day. You have to embrace your past selves to truly love your present one. Absolutely no regrets…

Back then, I never fully appreciated or inhabited the moment. Entirely hellbent on the next thing, and what was coming up in the future, rarely did I live in the present time at hand. I know I just said absolutely no regrets, but maybe I do have a few, and that would be one of them. It wasn’t that I didn’t know how lovely and charmed that time in life was – having been raised by the world to indulge in our childhood days, I regularly paused to take stock and think, ‘Hey, I should be enjoying this as it’s the best time of my life’ but that always felt forced. My childhood came with its own traumas and tribulations, and for a socially anxious gay kid coming to terms with who he was, childhood isn’t always the rosy time it’s supposed to be, especially at a point when being gay wasn’t even talked about. When you don’t see yourself, or the possibility of your life, anywhere around you, and when it’s not mentioned or discussed even in the abstract, you do begin to wonder if you belong. That works itself out in diabolical ways. By the time I was 21 years old, I was only starting to see and understand this – and since it was only the start, I had no idea what I was doing. 

Oddly enough, there is occasionally more wisdom in stumbling through certain sections of your life completely unaware of the bigger picture, pointing to an inadvertent and unintentional realization of living in the moment. When you pause in considering the greater arc and trajectory of your life, you are focusing on the day, the hour, the minute at hand – and isn’t that the essence of mindfulness? It makes for a much happier existence, and perhaps that’s the secret to eternal youth. 

I remember the early spring day when the above photo was taken. On a visit to Suzie in Ithaca, I basked in the sunlight of the day after that long winter. (Winters in Ithaca are no fun joke.) Looking up, I felt the sun on my face in a way that was better than any sort of apricity as it was already spring, and winter was behind us. You can see the earliest chartreuse buds on the tree branches behind me, and I can recall the feeling of spring just beginning to unfurl. It was the feeling of being 21, of being on the verge of everything. 

{Bonus shot: this is me in Ithaca again, hamming it up in the kitchen (which I never used in its traditional capacity, and not only because I never technically lived there). It was just another day on the Royal Rainbow Tour, and I was probably just tooling around town dropping Chris off to class or meeting Suzie for dinner. All in a day… all in a life.}

Dua Lipa just killed it in her opening number for the recent Grammy Awards, which puts me in mind of the title track from ‘Future Nostalgia’. Indulging in such nostalgia has been a recent habit, given last year’s 20th anniversary of this website, as well as the current trend of posting pics of yourself as a 21-year-old, which is especially fitting for this 21st year of ALANILAGAN.com. For the next two blog posts, I’m putting up a few ridiculous photos from when I was 21 (there are oh-so-many more that could fuel the next twenty years of this blog, so perhaps that’s the way we’ll move forward her, by looking back…)

When I was 21, I had absolutely no clue about so many things, mostly myself, and that’s what the 20’s are for – figuring out who you might be, trying on different guises until you feel comfortable, discovering what your soul wants, and perhaps more importantly, what it doesn’t want. 

You want a timeless song, I wanna change the game
Like modern architecture, John Lautner coming your way
I know you like this beat ’cause Jeff’s been doin’ the damn thing
You wanna turn it up loud
Future Nostalgia is the name (future nostalgia)

For the featured photo, which finds me sipping a melon martini (eww!) at the San Francisco Westin with my pal Chris, I’m taken back to the summer of 1997, and that heady time of the Royal Rainbow World Tour. My past is filled with as many delusions as it was actual events, and I’m only starting to sort out what was real, what mattered, and what was ephemeral fluff. It feels like I’m on the verge of some genuine reconciliation of the previous three decades. There are whispers of what a ‘tour’ would look like today. A glimpse of the future in a post celebrating the past…

I know you’re dying trying to figure me out
My name’s on the tip of your tongue, keep running your mouth
You want the recipe, but can’t handle my sound
My sound, my sound (future nostalgia)

The photo below, which would obviously be titled ‘Authorized Entry Only’, is eerily emblematic of my sexual stance at the time, which was largely frigid and stand-offish. Growing up fully enveloped by the specter of AIDS, and the way sex could so easily and literally lead to death, had worked its destructive way into my head, and despite the sexual way I often presented myself, in reality I kept largely chaste in the bedroom at that young age.

And maybe that saved my life. It certainly left me free for other fun, which included joking around on this offshoot of some highway near Rochester, NY, where I was visiting with Ann. How could I not pose beneath this sign when wearing such a pair of pants? And how could I not laugh with a friend like Ann beside me? So much is made of the memories that affect us in some sad or bad way – not enough is made of our happy moments. 

Can’t be a rolling stone if you live in a glass house
You keep on talking that talk, one day, you’re gonna blast out
You can’t be bitter if I’m out here showing my face
You want what now looks like, let me give you a taste

Looking back at that 21st year of my life, I’m somewhat startled by how alone I felt, even when surrounded by people. I’ve always been keenly aware of the difference between feeling alone and feeling lonely. For me, it’s mostly been about the former rather than the latter. Solitude didn’t scare or bother me – to this day, I seek it out for its calm and silence and stillness. Back then, though, I thought I needed someone else. And maybe I say I love being alone now because I’m lucky enough to have someone like Andy in my life, along with a group of friends that has never let me down. It’s easy to say you like being alone when you don’t have to be. There is a privilege inherent in that. 

When I was 21 years old, I often felt alone, in the sense that I felt different, never quite belonging to whatever situation I was in, never quite a part of whatever place I inhabited. This last photo, taken on the first day of my last year of ‘school’ was an homage to the tradition of my Mom’s first day of school photos, where she would pose my brother and me for a picture on that most dreaded of days. In this one, I was already living off-campus in Boston, brushing my teeth and preparing to board the commuter rail to Brandeis University for my last semester. 

Fall semester always tricked me with the way it began in the heat of summer, and on this day, for that final year, I wore a sleeveless shirt with a pair of jeans; even back then the import of the last-first-day, which would typically call for a fanfare outfit, I crumbled by the self-induced pressure and went in the opposite direction, going super-casual for the un-air-conditioned classrooms in which I would soon be sweating. It’s strange the way I can so vividly remember walking through the campus that day in 1996, especially considering I can’t remember where I walked just thirty minutes ago. A lot would happen that fall, and a lot would happen that year… 

You can’t get with this if you ain’t built for this
You can’t get with this if you ain’t built for this
I can’t build you up if you ain’t tough enough
I can’t teach a man how to wear his pants (Ha ha!)

Today’s social media world is all about posting negative comments, getting upset and offended by every single thing that happens in a day, investing in celebrities who don’t even know or care you exist, and arguing with strangers from a standpoint of entitlement and privilege. It’s about making disparaging and nasty comments on someone else’s post, even if it’s clear they like the person or issue it’s about. It’s about so much awfulness and making up for what the rest of us can only assume is a miserable life over which you have no control, that I find myself engaging less and less than I once did. 

That doesn’t mean my presence, in service of this very website, has lessened. If anything, I probably post more because it’s so easy to do so at the push of a phone screen. But I do not linger, and I do not dwell, and while the occasional ad for a robe or a jacket will sometimes call to me for further clicking, for the most part I’m moving away from social media as a means of existence. 

To go even further, and to drive home the point of this post, I will not tolerate or allow negative comments or disparaging remarks on any of my social media accounts. I’m looking at you FaceBook and Twitter, and I’m not explaining or justifying my methods of determining what’s negative. If you have to ask, then I already know we won’t get along on a social media plane, and it’s better that we disengage with a clean and simple block. I just don’t have the space for that level of idiocy, or for anyone who pretends not to understand. No ill will at all, and you are always welcome to visit me here to see what’s up.

As they say in the retail biz, forewarned is fair-warned, so let the delete-and-block era begin! May peace soon follow… 

Here we are, already digging into the month of February like it’s some easy-down-the-throat dessert or dick, both with a creamy surprise at the end if it’s al done right, so let’s just hurry up and get on with it. Here’s your Monday recap, blatant innuendo and all…

We began with some blunt pee talk, because, as adults, if we can’t talk about going wee-wee, what can we talk about?

Taylor Swift continued to polarize, not unlike a certain favored diva featured extensively here. 

When soap gets in your ears, and you power the meaning of the ‘Q’ in Q-tip.

This blog turned 21, but I’m into mocktails now so save your toast for breakfast. Virgins up and easy!

Pistachios and a squirrel. 

The first winter without my father.

Snow comfort.

What the actual duck?

A gratuitous deep dive for anyone missing summer days in the pool.

Fuzzy flowers.

Drink/link this magic tea, you’ll like it.

Dominic Albano: underwear entrepreneur.

A quest for the best in blandness.

Dazzlers of the Day included Jordan Stolz, George Eads, Shilese Jones, Jeannine M. Trimboli, Brock Purdy, Trevor Lawrence, and Usher.

With all this talk of tea lately, I just have one question: when the fuck does this shit kick in? It’s a cup of herbal tea called ‘Mood Happy‘, which contains St. John’s wort (which never worked for me back in the day), Shatavari root (never heard of it), Turmeric root (hello curry-not-in-a-hurry), Moringa leaves, Chamomile flowers, Ginkgo Biloba leaves (watch out for the dirty ginkgo trees if deciding to plant one), Lavender flowers (who doesn’t adore lavender?), Fennel seeds (and not even an Italian sauce in sight), Ginger root (love love love me some ginger), Black Peppercorns (I would have gone with pink because I like pink) and Cardamom Seeds (which brings to mind this glorious recipe). 

Maybe the tea is working – in going through the list of ingredients I do feel a little bit happier. Being mindful of the memories elicited has made for some magic. 

Counter-programming for the winter doldrums is simple: bring the heat, lose the shirt, and go deep. Add a Speedo for extra incentive to work off that holiday padding (I’ve got enough extra to fill the stay-puffed marshmallow man’s costume). Who doesn’t love an 80’s reference? And who you gonna call? These pool pics of the past will have to suffice until such time that I adopt a less sedentary lifestyle.  

The smorgasbord of my mind, rapid-firing across frayed synapses, is like the world’s messiest charcuterie board right now: there is some good shit there, but you have to wade through a bunch of garbage like rosemary sprigs and a jar of weird mustard that’s way beyond its expiration date. (And don’t even get me started on pitted olives.)

That strange charcuterie digression aside, (what is with all the charcuterie references on this blog?) let’s delve into some aforementioned counter-programming since the groundhog has predicted an early spring, and I always err on the side of the rodent when it comes to accurate meteorological predictions. Again, I digress, when all you want is to get to the Tom Daley and Michael Phelps Speedo posts. Hang on… I feel it… It’s coming… 

Summer days by the pool have always been magical, in their majestic laziness, and the way they slink so sensually through the hours. That sun works myriad spells as it crosses the sky, when really we should be thanking the earth for just sitting there and rotating (advice that’s been given to me on more occasions than need to be recalled). 

Summer discovers where the boys are then quickly works to catch us all up in its heady siren call. We listen, we hear, we fall into its gorgeous trance, lured willingly along for the heated ride. Sometimes summer is a soundtrack. Sometimes summer is a Speedo. Sometimes summer is a knife. Sometimes, summer simply breaks our hearts. 

Inevitably, and often with some reluctant relief, every summer must give way to fall, which comes with its own enchantments and glories. 

Some days are still haunted, while others are filled with healing. 

Some days are quiet and contemplative, made of mindfulness and merrily mired in meditation. 

We work our way through all the days, winding our way to another summer again. May it not keep us waiting for too long. 

Flummoxed by the way the world is seemingly headed, I’m left scratching my head and pulling my gray hair out of my head for the utter loss of making any sense of things. That’s a vague, albeit it grandiose, opening statement, and I’m even at a loss for specifics of what made me say it. Well, that’s not entirely true – I have ideas and specifics, but they’re mostly about politics and I will not sully this space with such talk right now. Staying away from the news and the political state of this country is my best recourse for retaining whatever shredded remnants of sanity I may still have at my disposal. 

Rather, the point of this post, and its title, is to illuminate how silly things are when you take a moment to put everything into perspective. When in the midst of a worldwide pandemic, perspective tends to shift in major and unexpected ways. Do not get weary or worn down, and if you do, remember to be fucking fabulous. It’s ok to not be ok, and to let people know you’re not ok, even if there is no solution or resolution. They may try to help, and try to be gracious about that if/when it happens. We are all doing the best we can. 

And so, whenever I feel like the world is gaslighting me, and I find myself getting bitter and angry about it, I turn that old standby phrase ‘What the actual fuck?’ around and switch out the ‘fuck’ for ‘duck’, and instantly I remember how fucking stupid and silly all of this really is. Perspective. Imperfection. Pantagruel. Rabelais. 

Always remember, when all else fails and you long to be something better than you are today, I know a place where you can get away… 

On the morning after a snowstorm, the world is blanketed in a state of quiet unknown at almost any other time of the year. Sometimes there is wind – brutal and cutting – but when there’s not, the day can dawn in almost complete silence. On a morning like that, I will pause before beginning the routine, and look out at the world transformed by snow. There are certain scenes of beauty that can only be matched by the power of stillness and silence. 

When you are homebound by snow, when the world keeps you quiet and subdued, there is the space to embrace whatever healing still needs to happen. Winter, for all its seeming cruelty, will offer many of these moments. In the past, I would sulk and mourn such days, as if I had something more important to do, somewhere better to be. Maybe that’s a passing fancy of youth. Maybe it was more pointedly a fault of my own. 

This winter, after a few winters of practice, I have learned to slow down, to appreciate the way winter rolls, the way it makes for a hospitable environment for growth in the most unlikely of ways. Many people think of winter as the season of slumber, while forgetting that sleep is the often the best way to recover and recuperate from injury and ailment. Healing comes from such sleep, and from slowing down and facing what hurts. 

Facing it, sitting with it, holding it, and, when it’s ready to depart, letting it go. 

Blog years are like dog years, and the life of a personal blog is, on average, remarkably short. That this site has lasted for 21 years is less a miracle and more a testament to my dogged and persistent drive to put down events, no matter how mundane or simple, into words in an effort to understand them and work through them. For the most part, once I write about something I’m able to let it go in some small way, having acknowledged and honored whatever it might be. 

Last year we celebrated the 20th anniversary of ALANILAGAN.com with a series of nostalgic look-backs at what the previous two decades had brought. It was a rare exercise of momentarily living in the past to see how much had changed, how much had stayed the same, and how much no longer even mattered. My favorite writer at the Times Union wrote this fabulous piece about the blog for Pride Month (and I had my typical over-analytical reaction in an entirely-unnecessary navel-gazing that went on for two wretched blog posts). 

As we enter the 21st year of sharing all the nonsense here, I won’t get too long-winded as these other posts capture all the looking-back I want to do right now:

• Spilling the tea for over twenty years

• Sipped or spilled, the tea here is always hot

• Tea tease

• Putting the kettle on

• Prepping for a two-decade salute

• This was 20

• Twenty years of naked titillation

• Diary of a half-life

• A cup of tea with Oscar

• Hot tea amid a snowy night

• A Double Decade of Revelations

• The eyes of nostalgia

• Still click-baiting in my underwear

This year, my website is officially drinking age – and perhaps there is some irony in that since I no longer drink. (My generation is still a little fuzzy on the real meaning of irony, thank you Alanis Morrissette.) It is but one of the many changes that have occurred in the life of this blog. More are on the way, and 2024 looks to be a quietly transformative year. Those are often the most powerful ones – and the ones that change everything, always for the better. 

As for what is to come as we celebrate the 21st birthday of this place, I am planning to keep things relatively quiet for the first part of the year, winding through winter in stillness and silence whenever possible, taking things gently. Sometimes looking back can wear a guy out. Time for more tea…

I’m currently in the camp of Swifties – lovers of Taylor Swift – thanks to her last three albums, which I found exquisite, particularly ‘folklore‘ and ‘evermore‘. That said, even I was starting to get a little annoyed at her when every Chiefs game seemed to be an opportunity to showcase her fantics and support for Travis Kelce. At first, it was fun to see the camera spot her, as it was the only person in the game that I knew, then it became wearying. In the same way that the camera would find her dancing awkwardly at some awards show, I inwardly cringed a bit. 

Why? For the dancing part, it was just the sheer awkwardness of it, something my own previously-perfectionist tendencies would have been mortified to witness. Totally unfair, and unjustified, especially when her way of existing in the world – embracing her awkwardness despite the haters – is the more peaceable and healthy way of living. 

For the football part of it, I had no real reason for hating on her, and as soon as I thought about that, it no longer bothered me. In fact, I wondered at my own bitterness for finding fault with someone so clearly enamored and finding joy in celebrating her new boyfriend. Haven’t we all been there? I’ll never begrudge someone who wants to celebrate love. (Well, within tasteful reason, which is what Taylor and Travis Kelce have thus far exhibited.) Haters are gonna hate, and there’s no point in trying to argue with them. 

It does bring me to the point of this post, which came up on social media as the debate about Taylor and Travis raged, and it boiled it all down to something I didn’t even think about as I was working it out in my head:

The good news: it’s late January, and we are almost finished with the first full month of winter, meaning we’re over a third of the way through the messy season. The bad news: there’s two-thirds of it yet to come. Thus far it’s been relatively calm in this mid-upstate-New-York area, and I’m grateful for the gentle way we are navigating these months. On with the weekly recap… (fronted by Brock Grady)…

We tried to bring the heat with these pretty, shirtless gentlemen. 

Beer abandonment issues.

Gay art, then and now.

Send in the Boston clowns.

Pages of hope & inspiration.

Baggy jeans to see us through the winter padding.

Mystery tracks in the snow.

Once in a while, Barbra Streisand truly speaks to me. 

Some daze.

Let us have flowers.

This summer is gonna be LOUD.

The wink of a winter sky.

When you feel like a failure, put on the Fucking Fabulous.

The Selfish showdown between Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears.

Dazzlers of the Day included Robbie Manson, Colman Domingo, Brock Grady, R. K. Russell, and Jack Plotnick.