Posts

Posted on

James, Barb, Annetta & the Linebacker

During my time caring for my parents in Alabama, I met my friends James and Barb and Annetta for dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant in Homewood. As they sat down, I blurted out “I just had a fling with a closeted former NFL linebacker. His thigh was the size of me…”

Barb looked at me disbelievingly, “You had sex with a stranger?”

“Well… his kids were at school and we…”

“Wait… Kids? At school? He’s married?”

“Well, separated, but…”

“And he’s closeted?”

“I assume so. So when I arrived he led me quickly to his basement where…”

“His basement?? You went to a complete stranger’s house and let him take you into his basement? He could have been an axe murderer…”

I hadn’t even thought of that. I started to get a little frustrated. I hadn’t had any sort of intimate relations in how long? and was eager to share my adventure with my friends. My linebacker was a very sweet man, so seemingly eager to connect. He lived only a few miles from my childhood home and told me of orgies that he’d arranged when he was a kid in middle and high school (middle school??) with the other boys in the neighborhood. I listened dumbfounded, remembering my fairly chaste adolescence and almost constant unfulfilled desire. And orgies were happening down the road? That I actually could have gone to?? I was mesmerized by this alternate vision of childhood.

Barb is a teacher, in a business college, and Annetta as well, instructional design and group dynamics stuff. They co-teach a class that integrates principles from Harry Potter and Hogwarts. They balance each other beautifully, Barb the gentle lecturer with lingering midwesternisms and Annetta from Salt Lake City but with what sounds like a Brooklyn maybe? accent, and an endearingly aggressive disposition, Marissa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny with a huskier voice. James was my gay buddy in high school and is one of my closest friends still. James was very out by the time I met him, my first role model. Nobody messed with him, he was like Liberace or John Waters, fabulous and fearless and entertaining and smart. At the Miss Poinsettia contest in 10th grade, I wore a sexy strapless gown but forgot the words to my song when I stepped onto the stage, Leon Redbone’s “I Want to Be Seduced.” James appeared on stage blowing bubbles and giggling, just brilliant. James, Barb and Annetta are this dynamic trio of wit, intelligence and delight and I savor every moment with them.

The food arrived and my linebacker’s thigh faded from the conversation, the brief pleasure we experienced eclipsed by the comfort of beloved friends and great food.

Posted on

Angels in Alabama

Many different helpers and social workers and hospice people and nurses and bathers helped me and my siblings care for my parents in their final years in Alabama, but two were there the entire time, two angels of mercy and comfort: Vanessa and Constance.

Vanessa was the elder of the two, her years of experience and compassion evident in her sweet smile and easy self-assurance. Constance was my age, which I couldn’t believe, I thought she was in her 20s, with her pink scrubs, multiple piercings, gold teeth, towering hairpieces and sassy attitude.

Dad adored them, these two beautiful women fussing over him 4 hours a day. Once, while the bandages on his foot abscess were being changed, he looked lovingly at mom, seated nearby, and said “I. Looove you. I’ve always. Loved. You.” She didn’t hear him, but the sincerity and affection on his face moved me to tears. Mom was his only love, his companion for nearly 70 years.

A challenge for any long-term health care worker is integrating him-or-herself into the surrounding family dynamic. Constance and Vanessa knew what they were doing, and they were very good at it and didn’t need any direction or instruction. Yet, every few weeks they had to deal with a sibling shift change, each of us with our own ideas about our parents’ care. They would graciously listen to each of us, “Yes, Miss Carol,” “Yes, Mister Chris,” and then go about doing things their own way. Constance clashed a bit with mom, who resented having people take charge of the house and dad’s care. I had to pull mom aside one day and scold her. “For 4 hours a day we get a break, from people we trust completely, is it really important how Constance folds the clothes?” Once while trying to decide on a movie, mom blurted out “I hate Barbara Eden,” her contempt for even magical helpers like genies in bottles perplexingly evident. We all eventually learned to sit back and let them do their jobs, giving us instruction rather than the other way around.

It took me about 20 minutes to change my dad the first time, huffing and puffing, not able to get things lined up, my poor dad rolling this way and that. “You’re. Working. Very. Hard,” my dad observed. “Well, you changed a lot of diapers, with 7 kids, I’m happy to repay the favor,” I said, drenched in sweat. He replied, haltingly, “I. Never. Changed. Your. Diaper.”

Under Constance’s tutelage, I was able to change his diaper and the sheets in 3 minutes.

On one of my visits, around election time, I dealt with Alabama’s byzantine absentee voter ballot restrictions, wanting my parents’ votes to be counted. Doug Jones was running for the Senate seat left open by departing Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, who vacated the office to become US Attorney General under President Trump. Jones ran against a far-right fundamentalist homophobe white nationalist, Roy Moore. Doug Jones had prosecuted two KKK terrorists who in 1963 bombed the 16th Street Baptist church in Birmingham, killing 4 little girls. Jones won the election, with a scant 50% of the vote. Moore, who had been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with teenagers (he preyed on girls at the Gadsden Mall back when my brother Mark and I spent weekends pacing the mall with our junior high buddies!) received 48% of the vote. Vanessa and Constance were also eager to get their votes in, and indeed, the turnout of women of color was one of the decisive factors in Jones’ victory. In Constance’s neighborhood, physical roadblocks were erected and detours created, making it difficult to get to the correct polling place, which had also at the last minute been changed without advanced notification.

Doug Jones was eventually unseated, 3 years after taking office, by football hero Tommy Tuberville, who went on to join Republican nationalists in trying to overturn President Biden’s lawful election. Tuberville was elected by a 20% margin, the football player chosen over the civil rights hero .

Vanessa and Constance are my heroes, not only for the love and support that they gave my parents and my family, but for trying to make change where change doesn’t come with any degree of swiftness.

Posted on

Stumbling from the Ashes

I haven’t felt like writing for a while now.  Life just keeps getting in the way, creating a kind of inertia that has propelled me forward with no real need for comment.  From 2016-19 I traveled back and forth to Alabama, taking turns with my siblings caring for our parents.  Dad died in 2018, after a few years of slowly fading away.  I fed him, changed his diaper, occasionally made him smile.  Suddenly he was gone, with no grand moment of connection or revelation, just not there anymore.  We cleaned out the house after his death, sold it, and moved mom to San Francisco, to spend her last 9 months with me.  (More about mom in an upcoming post.)

I started dating Hughshka around this time.  It didn’t work out.  He eventually split for the EU and a significantly younger heartthrob.  He left so many burning bridges behind, I was in awe of his incendiary commitment and steadfast determination to obliterate any emotional baggage.  We were woefully mismatched, the only thing uniting us our mutual desire for companionship.  I fell into a deep depression after mom’s death, and stumbled into a seemingly bottomless sadness after the Hughshka split.  I went to my friend David’s in Inverness for the weekend, sobbing, saying that I needed a companion, that I wasn’t meant to be alone, that I would always feel like half of something without someone else by my side.

Driving back home to San Francisco, my emotional exchange with David played back in my head.  I called my friend Jon with a revelation–I didn’t want to be that person.  Dependant on someone else for my happiness?  Someone else to make me feel complete?  I did not want to be that person.  But, frankly, I didn’t know how, or didn’t think I knew how, as so much of my energy over the 17 years since leaving Bob has been directed at this one goal.  I was devastated by my mom’s death, almost a year to the day after my dad’s, a few years after the death of my sister.  I had friends and family, but after the loss of a third of my inner family the depth of my loneliness was overwhelming.  I was finally alone, motherless, fatherless, the family home sold, tetherless.

And now, almost two years later, a sense of contentment has settled over me.  All of the previously perceived missteps since leaving Bob (Dean, Chris, Nemr, Stavros, etc…) I see now as really wonderful experiences, my former lovers now my closest confidantes and buddies.  The intimacy that we share as friends is easy in a way that was so much more convoluted, weighted and difficult as boyfriends.  Perhaps my blog readers never thought they’d ever hear these words stumble from my lips, but I’m actually quite happy being alone.

So in the coming days I’ll update you with some stories of my adventures over the past few years, and try to keep you updated on my current escapades.  Thanks for sticking around, gentle readers.

Posted on

The Dating Game: Hughshka

Hugh is his name. Hughshka, I call him. A ginger bear, my first. Well, actually my first-and-a-half if we count my unconsummated hometown crush. We were born on the same day. We both drive Priuses, both raised in the south, both tea drinkers, both seekers of profound and meaningful connections, both Newshour viewers, both lost sisters to cancer, and so eerily similar in so many other ways that it feels like dating a red-haired bigger hairier slightly younger maybe a little balder version of myself. I’m so completely mesmerized by his electric orange pubic hair. It’s like looking at a color negative, psychedelic radiance where there should be shadow…

But of course my attraction to him isn’t just about being so perfectly suited for each other and not because as my new muse he presents such a lushly verdant landscape for this photographer’s visual exploration… It’s because, well, first of all, he’s stunningly attractive, but no, that’s not the first thing. Yes, he’s gorgeous, but his genuine desire for a deep connection is both thrilling and a relief. Like, finally, someone I find fetching who values the same things. And the ways that we are not similar are also appealing… like his interest in Star Wars and Marvel Comics. We saw Captain Marvel with his delightfully geeky Marvel friends. Hughshka has provided his film buddies with lanyards, and at each film they see together, he presents them with new commemorative pins related to the film. I was so touched by the playful sweetness of the gesture. A complete neophyte, I was in awe of his friends’ mastery of all the technical aspects and interconnected narrative strands in the Marvel Universe, as well as their rigorous critical analysis. At dinner one of the group asked dismissively, “I mean, who HASN’T seen Deadpool?” I tried not to make eye contact, nervously thinking “That was a Marvel thing?” vaguely remembering skipping over the New York Times review. I want a lover who will lead me into unexplored territory. So the Marvel-verse it is.

Posted on

A Slice of Heaven in Nea Koroni

The highlight of my recent trip to Greece was the week I spent in Nea Koroni, a tiny seaside village in Messenia on the southwesternmost finger of the Peloponnesos, with Panos and his mother, Kristina.  Κυρία Kristina cooked for us every day, everything fried or doused in oil pressed from their own olives.  I and Panos pruned the lemon trees and worked in the garden, fed the chickens, did some sight-seeing, but most of our time was spent digesting Kristinaki’s scrumpdeliicious cuisine.  Each plate was enough to feed a small Greek village.  On my final day there, she made me BOTH moussaka and pastitsio. It was a week in heaven.

We spent one day at the stunningly beautiful Voidokilia beach.  Above the beach is Nestor’s Cave and above this are the ruins of a 13th c. Frankish castle.  The beach, named after and in the crescent shape of a cow’s stomach, is where Homer’s Telemachus was welcomed by King Nestor when searching for his father, Odysseus.  According to myth, Nestor’s Cave is where Hermes hid the cattle stolen from Apollo.

A short drive away are two palaces: the Palace of Nestor, a well-preserved Mycenaean palace from about 1300 BC; and the Fairytale Castle of Agrilis.  The latter was recently built by a Greek American who returned to his ancestral land and built this folly on the beach, as well as a miniature Eiffel Tower nearby.

Panos and his mom yell at each other across the courtyard, affectionately.  And also across the street to the neighbors.  All day there’s the sound of this cheerful banter.  They call each other “my child” in Greek.  Κυρία Kristina is one of the most delightful, friendly and happy people I’ve ever met.  She laughs at and is amused by everything, even the mosquitos that get zapped by her tennis racquet-shaped electric bug zapper.  She fed me giant plates of lovingly prepared meals, always followed by abundant seconds, and at every meal copious amounts of tsipouro and chilled rosé, poured from plastic liter bottles. She read my future from the Greek coffee grounds in my cup, detailing a circuitous path to love, fortune and adventure.  Everyone should have a Greek mother–I’ve finally found mine!

Posted on

On to Syros

Because of the Seamen’s Union strike, Daniel and I were left with only one day to explore the island of Syros, so we weren’t able to wander much further than the main port and the adjacent medieval hilltop town of Ano Syros.  Ermoupoli is an elegant city, the capital of the Cyclades, formerly Greece’s main port, named after Hermes, the messenger of the gods (and the protector of travelers).  We stayed in the Vaporia, a seaside neighborhood of neo-classical captains’ mansions, marble balconies, and winding paths.  The mansions are painted in delicate shades of pink and yellow, yet the churches and interior public spaces burst with vibrant colors and patterns.

The town hall is a neoclassical building designed by Ernst Ziller, who designed many such elegant royal and municipal buildings in late 19th/early 20th century Greece.  There is a remarkably uninteresting archeological museum located in the backside of the town hall.  A sculptural fragment from Astypalaia, in the Dodecanese, of some rather large testicles was the only object to catch my eye. Just across the square from the town hall is one of the most delightful restaurants in town, the Avant Garden.  The setting is spectacular, a lovely courtyard garden open to the sky.  The staff is friendly and welcoming, and very enthusiastic about the food, which is inventive and flavorful, classic Greek dishes reimagined as modern plates highlighting local ingredients.

At the Church of the Dormition of the Virgin, barely visible beyond the very reflective protective glass, I stumbled on an early El Greco, painted before he was El Greco.  He was in his early 20s when he painted it.  His signature, clearly painted on the bottom of the painting, reads Domenicos Theotocopoulos, maker, which even I could read, yet was only noticed in 1983.  Everybody looks at the pictures.

Daniel and I hiked up to Ano (upper, very very upper) Syros, a medieval hilltop town adjacent to Ermoupoli with winding narrow streets and breathtaking views.  Ano Syros is inhabited by Catholic Greeks, who settled here after the 4th Crusade.  All of the churches here and around the island are delightful and lavishly decorated colorful light-filled spaces.

Back to Athens for Daniel’s last night, and then on to Nea Koroni… stay tuned!

Posted on

A Return to Athens: Graffiti in Psyri, Bronzes in Piraeus

I spent the last few weeks of April in Greece, visiting old friends in Athens, exploring the island of Syros with my friend Daniel, and a week with the adorable Panos and his mom in their village in Messenia.

Daniel and I stayed in Psyri, in a fairly fabulous AirBnB overlooking the Acropolis.  Psyri, just north of the Monastiraki metro station, was settled in the 19th century by immigrants from Naxos.  The notorious inhabitants of the area became known as the kontsavakides – pimps and criminals with drooping mustaches, pointy boots, and weapons concealed in their wide sashes.  In the 20th century, Psiri became a working class neighborhood with leather workshops and tiny factories, which in the 1990s paved the way to the scene today: trendy nightclubs, bars, galleries, cafes and restaurants, and fabulous graffiti.  Lord Byron penned his “Maid of Athens” poem here:

Oh maid of Athens, ere I part
Give oh give me back my heart

Unable to get to Syros because of the Seaman’s Union strike, we had an extra day in Athens, so took the metro to the port of Piraeus and trekked over to the archaeological museum there. Hardly any visitors and a whopping four life-sized archaic and classical bronzes. This museum gets few visitors, and their collection is dynamite. There’s an ancient amphitheater out back, as well as fascinating funerary sculpture.

On to Syros…

Posted on

First Heartbreak, 1977

My first break up letter, from my girlfriend Kim, written in 1977, when I was 11. She was 2 years older than me, my first French kiss. She handed me the note and as I walked home after reading it, my little heart broken, I ripped it up and let the pieces fall behind me. I didn’t notice that Kim had followed me and picked them up, which she presented to me years later.

She was a tomboy, I was a sissy.  Once the other boys in the neighborhood tied Kim up to a tree and dangled daddy long-leg spiders in front of her.  I don’t think I could have survived such an ordeal, my knees trembled at the thought, but Kim just laughed, defiantly undaunted.  I was in awe.  In the mid-90s she and her girlfriend and I drove back to our old hometown and revisited the sites of our pre-teen romance.  We speculated that our attraction to each other as children could have been the foundations for our later same-sex desires, each of us exhibiting characteristics that we associated with the opposite sex.

We actually got in a real fight once, after the breakup.  At school, between classes, she would try to trip me on the stairs as we passed each other, headed in opposite directions.  Remember, she was 2 years older, a big scary tomboy.  After school one day in the driveway of a mutual friend, she kicked my skateboard and I just couldn’t take it anymore and slugged her, right in the face.  (You have to imagine the punch coming from someone who struck out in kickball, to get an accurate picture of my assault.)  It’s the only time I’ve ever struck anyone.  I ran home sobbing.

 A few years later, after my family had moved to a different town, Kim and I had a date.  I was maybe 14 then, and she at 16 had been having a serious relationship with some guy.  We double-dated with some friends of hers who had a car, and went somewhere and parked the car and made out, Lionel Ritchie on the car stereo.  It was obvious to me that she had learned some things from this guy, for she was very quickly batting us around all the bases.  No home run, but I couldn’t wait to tell my friends.

…break up. I… to get… took me… to get up… before… you …I been going with you… too long. I… you a little bit, not enough… on this relationship. I’m sorry, Kim. And then, in a little heart, Kim doesn’t love Chris anymore.

Posted on

Study for a Series: Love

A solo show of my recent low-resolution photographs opens today, at Mercury 20 Gallery in Oakland, my fifth solo show there. The work is inspired by Edvard Munch’s 1893 exhibition, Study for a Series: Love. Munch exhibited six paintings that explored “the struggle between man and woman called love.” This was the genesis of a larger cycle, The Frieze of Life, a Poem about Life, Love and Death that explored the stages of life, the hopelessness of love, anxiety, infidelity, jealousy and death.

Munch’s expressive and intensely personal treatment of psychological turmoil over a century ago finds in our era an equivalent in the selfie and Facebook, where intimate moments are documented, made public, discussed and analyzed. The six photos in my series are culled from my recent online dating experiences, but printed in such low resolution as to render details and content almost unrecognizable. The closer one gets to these photos, the less one knows. I’ve included images from classic Hollywood. Even though they are stripped of detail, they still convey meaning–familiar archetypes of beauty and desirability. My intent is to draw attention to and frustrate our voyeuristic impulses. We’re invited to ponder not only what we’re looking at, but how and why.

Posted on

Total & Partial Eclipses

I flew to Orlando a few weeks ago, to visit my beau-in-waiting, my Jersey-accented, deep voiced, furry-forearmed, bushy-tailed Kelley. It was our second and — as it turned out — final date, deciding afterwards that a prolonged long-distance courtship wasn’t appealing to either of us. He had flown to San Francisco several months prior and we had a wonderful visit, exploring the Sonoma Coast, watching and complaining about the new corporate purveyors of gay marketability at the SF Pride parade, celebrating our own little summer of love in Golden Gate Park…

From Orlando we drove up to South Carolina for the total solar eclipse, with an overnight stop in Augusta, Georgia. Augusta was founded in 1735 by James Oglethorpe, two years after founding Savanna, and settled by Noble Jones. Oglethorpe named the town in honor of Augusta, Princess of Wales, the mother of British monarch King George III. Augusta has a lovely tree-lined downtown with many interesting buildings from the early 19th- to mid-20th centuries. In the center of town is a delightful statue of local singer and Godfather of Soul, Mr. Dynamite, Mr. Please Please himself, James Brown, designed to encourage interaction and selfies.

The drive through South Carolina took us through dense green forests, cotton fields and many quaint southern towns. Our travel mate selected a cotton field in the middle of the line of totality, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. It was a stunningly perfect spot from which to view the eclipse, the sky open with only a smattering of clouds on the horizon.

Just prior to totality, the cicadas started chirping, the light of the sun dimmed, the dog ran under the car, the clouds turned pink, and an instant twilight settled on us. The moon’s blackness created a sort of hole in the sky, encircled by the sun’s fuzzy corona. I researched a lot of myths associated with eclipses and couldn’t find anything that matched my experience of it. At that moment of totality, the darkness of the moon created the illusion of an orifice, a black hole surrounded by flaming fur, the mysteries of the universe opening for us all to penetrate.