All There Is

Is that all there is, then?

You pick tiny fragments of lint out of the fabric of the world. They rile up nobody but you and the whole world (at least as big as the world gets) knows about it all.

For you, it is all nothing more than another movie you refuse to watch, another gerund used incorrectly.

It is all so small, isn’t it? The rest of the world flies by you on the hunt for the big game and you? It’s all just a baby pool with the lights burned out.

Look at you, using metaphors to obfuscate. Slap another coat of Vaseline on the camera lens.

You wonder, do they hear the words never voiced in their heads like a buzzing fly? Do you hide too much? Would they? Is there something more to say?

If you split your heart open on a rock, who would see the carnage and run away?

The End of Salad Days for Free Pens

Business travel can be a real hassle sometimes. You get to your hotel late. Then your room key doesn’t work. Then you have a lonely, jet-lagged dinner. Then you toss and turn on a strange bed. However, these conventions become a real nightmare when they start skimping on the free pens.

I’ve been going to the same conference for many years and boy, has it changed. In the good old days, they would have an ocean of free pens. All lined up on the lecture hall tables you would see the Disneyland Hotel pens, one for each attendee. I used to take one pen everytime I sat down in a new spot so by the end of the day, I’d have enough ink for the next year.

This year? Barely a free pen to be found. The long white tables are hauntingly stark for a lack of writing implements. I did find a few sad pens at a table in the back and coveted them, so that was a victory.

It was a far cry from the salad days of the mid-‘00s, with enough pens to copy the whole oeuvre of Dame Barbara Cartland. We held paradise in our hands and didn’t even know it.

I wish I knew why this conference felt it could cut back on pens. Maybe California is having an ink shortage as well as a water shortage. Maybe it’s just another way America is becoming a no-frills country, where all the perks are disappearing for people like us as the rich just get greedier.

I’ve been to so many of these conventions and taken so many free pens that I don’t think I’ve had to buy pens since before 9/11. They’re all over my house, scattered in drawers and backpacks, each bearing the name of some hotel: Marriott Marquis, Gaylord Palms, Palazzo. Once in awhile, I’ll find an old Disneyland Hotel pen — back when they were circus peanut yellow and classroom wall green — and feel a momentary pang of memory.

Sometimes it’s nice to reminisce.

With a face like that, he can kill you anytime

It’s the plushness of his lips that strikes you first. They’re like velvet pillows and you know that sounds cliché but it’s accurate and evocative so you’re going with that.

Then the eyes. They’re so pale you can’t tell if they’re blue or green. What you are sure of is the ice, the luminosity. His eyes are cold and gorgeous like one of those Alaskan huskies.

The camera loves this man — even the camera at the local jail.

With eyes that hypnotic, you almost miss the tattoo just beneath them. A single tear marks the face of one too gorgeous ever to be sad. Vaguely, you recall that a tear under the left eye signifies something gang-related. Like this beautiful creature killed someone or he permanently cries a tear for a loved one who died while he was in prison.

You search out information on this man. The pulchritude of his mugshot is so blinding that it nearly obscures the article beneath. A prison term in the past. Gun charges in the present. Whispers of gang ties. For all you know, he could have killed someone.

None of it matters. With a face like that, he can kill you anytime.

The mugshots of this man’s codefendants linger around the edges but none of them are beautiful enough to matter or to fight for. No, what matters is that one with such eyes and lips should not have to hide his light in a prison cell. So you donate to his Kickstarter bail fund.

In a daydream, you see yourself in court defending this man. You tell the judge and jury how unfair it would be for those Alaskan husky eyes to have to stare at prison cinderblock; how wrong it would be for those velvet pillow lips to have to swallow prison food.

“Your honor,” you would say, “the only thing this man is guilty of is being too sexy.” Then the courtroom would erupt in applause and catcalls and everyone would fan themselves with lust. The judge would bang the gavel and dismiss the case.

And then the freed man would take you home and murder your body with his.

You know it’s wrong. But giiiiirl those eyes those lips. You know it’s wrong.

#1

Casey Kasem’s death reminds me of those days years ago when I would listen to American Top 40 to hear the countdown of the most popular songs in the country. This was on Sundays and I can remember listening in my bedroom off and on all afternoon or bringing my Walkman with me to my grandparents’ house when we were over there so I could hear what was #1.

I have a specific memory of the countdown from the summer of 1989. At the time, Madonna’s “Express Yourself” was climbing and seemed destined for #1. Before a commercial break, Kasem teased the new #1 song of the week as “a song by a woman with one name that starts with M.” Fifteen-year-old me got excited that my favorite artist might collect another #1 hit. But no, it was Martika at #1 with “Toy Soldiers” (Madonna stalled at #2). I still don’t think I’m over it.

There were a lot of shows like American Top 40 back in the ‘80s. There was a TV show on Saturdays that played the top 10 videos and would sometimes tell you what was in the top 10 in the UK and I would get a little glimpse of these British songs that would sometimes be hits later in the United States and sometimes remain obscure.

This was, of course, when you really had to hunt down your data instead of finding everything online. I sometimes bought Billboard and saw the entire Hot 100, the Top 200 albums and all kind of curious niche charts like the dance chart. But Billboard wasn’t cheap and I would have to go all the way to Waldenbooks at the Granite Run Mall to find it because the magazine wasn’t for sale at convenience stores.

Mostly I would rely on the Inquirer, which on Sundays would publish a list of the top 10. I cut out the lists and saved them in these plastic sleeves. I had very little social life. On the weeks when the paper didn’t run a list, I would get the rundown from America’s Top 40 and make my own list. I wonder if I still have all those top 10 lists buried somewhere in the house.

There were books of condensed chart information, too, and I had all of them. Now I have these three huge hardback books, with every Billboard Hot 100 chart from the ‘80s, ‘90s and ‘00s respectively so I can look up the peak position of every song since Jan. 5, 1980.

Somewhere along the way, I started losing interest in getting the chart info week to week. I didn’t check Billboard every week unless there was a song I was particularly interested in. I looked for the bigger picture, which is why I still treasure those hardback chart books. I could easily go to Wikipedia to find the peak position of “The Safety Dance” but it’s more fun to see the full chart and what was going on around the song in the fall of 1983.

I’m out of touch in that I have nearly memorized what songs were #1 on which dates but more and more, I couldn’t tell you how the song goes. I’d say I’m just getting old but this detachment started when I was in my 20s so I can’t explain it.

With all the attention I paid to chart positions, you’d think I’d be better at math. My hobby did provide one useless addition to my talents. Give me a date in the ‘80s and I can tell you what day of the week it fell on. That’s because Billboard charts are always dated on Saturdays so I just pick the closest chart date to the date you give me and count up or down from that Saturday until I reach your date.

I memorized these dates by osmosis without meaning to. That’s how I remembered above that the first Saturday of the ‘80s was Jan. 5. I can really only do this with the ‘80s and part of the ‘90s. You can’t ask me what day of the week Aug. 17, 1445 was. I’m not a savant.

So add that to my lengthy list of marketable skills.

What kind of animal do you think I am?

The gay male community is a zoo. You can be a bear, an otter, a pup, a cub. There are subtypes also, like a polar bear or panda bear. This can all be confusing but since I have always felt a deep need to shove myself into the most specific subculture possible, I’m trying to determine which animal I most closely resemble. I turned to some website (“some website” — a term that automatically confers authority) and did some soul searching to figure out in which section of the gay zoo I belong.

The bear seems to be the most commonly referenced subculture. This is your larger, hairier, more masculine gay man. I’m not sure I entirely fit in here. The biggest difference between typical bears and me is that they have facial hair and while I can grow a beard quickly, I will never do so. Being clean-shaven would certainly set me apart in a room of bears.

As for masculinity, I can’t take an objective look at myself so I don’t know how masculine I am. I guess it’s a mix: I like watching sports and I like watching Madonna videos. I get the impression most bears could pass as straight but overall, I don’t think I can.

There are some subtypes of bears:

Muscle bears: Body size is a function of muscle and not body fat (I tend to take the shape of my container)

Polar bears: Older bear with gray/white hair on face and most of body (I am turning into this)

Sugar bears: Effeminate bears that are shunned by masculine bears (I have never felt shunned)

Overall, I don’t think I’m a bear, although I share some characteristics with the ursine.

This brings us to the otter. According to some website, an otter “would be considered a thin gay male …” Let me stop you right there and say I am not an otter.

Moving on to the next cage at the gay zoo, a cub is a younger (or younger-looking) guy who is huskier and heavier. Beards are not required. I fit the “husky” part of that but not the “younger.” Maybe I was once a cub but it seems time has passed me by and a hard hibernation is ahead.

Now a wolf is muscular, lean gay man who is sexually aggressive. This is not my tribe. We have already nixed the lean and muscular part and I am nixing the sexually aggressive part as well. Since my husband and I have been together over a decade, it’s been some time since I’ve felt the need to be on the prowl like some kind of lupine creature of the night. Even when I was single, I was not aggressive and hampered by a lack of self-confidence.

Puppies are cute! In the gay scene, a pup is a guy in his late teens or early 20s who doesn’t have a lot of experience in the scene and is naïve, energetic and cute (hint: like a puppy). That ship sailed long ago. I don’t even think I was a pup when I was a pup, if you know what I mean.

Just to illustrate the rainbow Venn diagram for you, as the website says, “Pups are similar to cubs except pups are not involved in the bear community and likely do not even know this community exists within the larger gay spectrum.” Now you know.

Onto the next section of the zoo. While I am a Taurus, I don’t think I am a bull. The article I read describes the bulls as muscular bodybuilders, weighing 215 to 300 pounds. I have no muscle tone and while I might get into this weight range if I eat a few more Ding-Dongs and Ho-Hos, it wouldn’t quite be in the flattering way they mean.

Sigh. I don’t even think I’m an optimistic red velvet walrus, like Max on Happy Endings.

So where do I fit in? Maybe we need a genetic hybrid just for me. Maybe they can breed a bear that is hairy everywhere but its face, or we can combine an otter with a cub and throw in a little duck DNA just to mix it up a little. Maybe someday science will advance to the point where it can tell me who I really am.

I got published

I should mention that some of my writing has been published. Two of my poems, “The Pool” and “Sarah Was Wrong,” are in the spring edition of Philadelphia Poets.

I have been sporadically submitting poetry to magazines over the years and I’m happy that some of my work has been accepted. You get enough rejection emails to wallpaper your home so it’s satisfying once in awhile when someone says yes. Awhile back, I attended a writing conference where I met the editor of Philadelphia Poets, which I believe has been around since the early ‘80s. I am very grateful to the editor for considering me and for her encouragement.

Last month I also read one of the poems at an event in Philadelphia along with some of the other writers in the issue. I was nervous to go (because you know how well I do in a room full of strangers) but was glad I did. I was also glad a few months ago that I went to a poetry reading in Wilmington to share some of my work. Those readings were a reminder that sometimes we do need to hear poetry aloud. I had scoffed at that for a long time, preferring just to read it in print, but I felt like I could communicate some of my own work better in person.

I should do more of this sort of thing because writing can be a lonely experience and it’s good to get out and be with writers and take some inspiration. I should also submit more of my work to publications. I’d like to do more short stories but I seem to have hit a dry spell of ideas in the last few years. I’ve been writing for almost 25 years and I’ve written thousands of poems, some I thought were really good and some that were embarrassing. It’s not a romantic notion but writers have to produce an enormous quantity of crap to get to something decent; something that might resonate with a reader.

I’m proud that I may have produced a little something that resonates with somebody. This may not look like much, but it’s mine, and it’s a start.

I had the most absent-minded dream

I dreamed my parents and I were taking our parakeet to the vet. We were a little lost in trying to find the place. Finally I looked at the map and realized that the vet’s office was in Delaware while we were in Pennsylvania. D’oh!

It looked like we were going to miss the appointment. I then realized that you don’t bring your parakeet to the veterinarian; the veterinarian comes to the parakeet. How absent-minded of us. What pet owner doesn’t know that a vet will always make house calls for a bird? It’s been a tradition in our society for thousands of years.

In the end, it all worked out. It turned out that the parakeet was kind of indicating where it wasn’t feeling well by flapping its wings around its head to show the head was the problem. So at least the vet didn’t have to guess what the problem was.

Oh, and the parakeet was the size of a human and looked a little like a person. Which is kind of horrifying if you think about it.

Maybe I should watch what I eat before bedtime.

You WILL Cry

I’m such a curmudgeon that a bunch of movie reviews and ads telling me that YOU WILL CRY are enough to ensure that if I ever saw The Fault in Our Stars, I would not squeeze out a single tear.

Don’t manipulate me because then I won’t feel the emotion that you’re expecting me to feel. I’ll see it coming a mile away and I will rebel. Judging from what I know about the movie, hell yes am I being manipulated. This is about two cancer teens in love. The girl is carrying an oxygen tank as they tour Amsterdam. Something about one of the kids having a living wake so everyone can eulogize the living person.

Stop it. Just stop.

It’s not necessarily the movie but really more the endless reviewers telling how much they cried buckets of tears and telling me how much I will cry that are putting me off. I’m not scoffing at the subject matter but honestly, I’m not always in the mood to see people dying of cancer on screen. This is the same reason I will never see that Cameron Diaz movie My Sister’s Keeper about having a second child to donate organs to the ill older child. Ain’t no way. I saw a bald child in the ads and ran in the other direction.

As I peruse the Internet, there seems to be some kind of critical mass when I just get sick of hearing about something and told what to feel. When Adele’s “Someone Like You” came out I had read a bunch of stuff about how everyone cries torrents when they hear it. There was even a scientific investigation into exactly what about the music makes people cry. It was all written in this obnoxious “Why We All Cry” tone, which I can’t stand, where one person anoints himself America’s spokesperson, like “Why We Love (Celebrity’s Name).”

The only emotion I ever felt during “Someone Like You” was vague annoyance. It would come on the radio when I woke up and at 6 a.m., the crack in Adele’s voice on the lines “Don’t forget me/ I beg” was painful to listen to. Not tearfully painful; annoyingly painful. Adele is quite talented but in this song and album, she really laid it on with a trowel. Plus the lyrics in this song are alarming: Adele shows up at her ex’s house to remind him that “this isn’t over” and I can see the ensuing police report and that kills any notion of tears for me.

But hey, I’m not some robot who stares quizzically at the crying humans. I can be moved when I’m not being manipulated and when I don’t see it coming. I’m not going to ugly cry except when someone dies but I will get choked up at stuff.

What moves me in art? When Kate Winslet says that loaded little word “OK” at the end of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, saying volumes about why we will endure pain to attain love; Claire Fisher: 1983-2085; when Rocky loses the fight and starts calling for Adrian and the music swells; when Madonna confronts her father in the “Oh Father” video, with the shadow of her childhood self on the wall; the striking beauty in the poem “somewhere I have never traveled gladly beyond” by ee cummings; when Robin discovers on How I Met Your Mother that she can’t have kids and Ted narrates that “She was never alone”; the death at the end of The Road, which Cormac McCarthy writes like a candle being snuffed out; Prince’s wails of emotion in “The Beautiful Ones” and “Purple Rain”; the release at the end of It’s a Wonderful Life after the terrifying darkness of George Bailey’s breakdown; and of course anytime Sarah McLaughlin gets near an abused animal.

Expect Lengthy Delays

Closing I-495 indefinitely is a disaster for people traveling the I-95 corridor, particularly people in Delaware. I feel bad for people like my husband who have no option but to take the interstates to work and now have to sit in traffic that is even more crippling than it was before. I feel bad for everyone whose drive just got a lot worse and I know people have it worse than me. I’m not directly affected by the closure (at least as far as my route to work) but I have to say this closure just adds to the total madness that is commuting.

My commute is an hour each way and is really starting to get to me even further in recent months. The distance is one thing but the constant road construction does not help. I resent all the time I have to spend in a car. I’m far beyond “not letting it get to me.” I can’t chuckle and shake my head and say “Whaddya gonna do” because spending so much time in a car for so many years is continuing to chip away at my quality of life. I’m so sick of driving that I barely want to leave the house on the weekend. I’ll tough it out and continue to do it, because I have no choice, but that doesn’t mean I don’t need to vent about it once in awhile.

The closure might not have been so bad for people if every other road were already not under construction and every time you consider using an alternate route, you realize that the alternate route also has its own detour. As I said, I’m not taking 95 or 495 to work but the endless detours start pretty much outside my front door.

Route 100 has been under some type of mystery construction for some time. Crews have been digging for — I don’t know: gold? — on and off and the fun part is you don’t know when construction will be happening so you could chance taking the road and get stuck. Kirkwood Highway/Lincoln and Union Streets have been down to one lane for six months, which backs up traffic into Wilmington and Elsmere. In Greenville, Route 52 is under constant work and the latest was repaving last week with the sign that made my blood pressure spike: “Expect lengthy delays.” Route 52 is the Cadillac of roads. It’s been under construction on and off for years and it’s just a plain old two-lane road; no bridges or anything to maintain. I really think it’s because the rich residents insist on having a road that is immaculate enough to eat off. Closer to work, 202 has also been under construction for years. I hope they finish widening it to three lanes sometime before I retire so I can have a better commute. Even a little back road near work is under construction so I can’t avoid it.

The worst has to be Route 141, which has been under some form of construction in the eight years that we’ve lived in the area. The lanes have been cattle chutes for years now and yet I never see anyone actually doing anything at any time of day or night. It’s really frustrating when you can’t see any visible improvements on the road and it’s just “work.” Just a mystery. If a road project takes longer than the Allied invasion of Normandy, you’re doing it wrong.

At least nobody fell into the Christina River off a collapsing 495, but I’m sure none of the people in horrifying gridlock on 95 are sitting in their cars celebrating that. Intellectually, I know it’s true when people say we need to invest more in our infrastructure but at the same time, what the hell have we been doing the past five years as every road in America has been lined with orange cones? When will it be over?

I am certainly not an expert at road construction but I am wondering if there is non-essential work happening when efforts could be better spent on shoring up shaky bridges. Do we really need roads repaved so often? I know it’s better for my car to drive on a smoother road but I care much more about my mental state than my car and if avoiding lane closures would help that state, then just leave the road bumpy for awhile. A lot of work on roads is invisible and I would appreciate that work more if someone would explain exactly when happened while I was sitting in traffic for six hours and how it benefited drivers. You get tired of hearing, “Everyone’s going to have to be patient” when you’ve already been patient for years.  

As I said, many people have worse commutes than me and I feel for the people affected by the 495 situation, which there is literally and figuratively no way around. I just needed to vent a little steam about driving, the activity I hate the most in the world.

Apropos of Nothing

Living footnote Joe the Plumber has returned to tell the parents of the recent shooting victims that “your dead kids don’t trump my constitutional rights.” It takes a special brand of asshole to say that to grieving parents. He didn’t even try to write a sane commentary or frame Second Amendment rights as the greater good of the public; it was his rights. Please, Joe, tell us more about how the massacre of other people affects you. There is a right and wrong way to argue for the ability to bear arms and if you essentially tell a grieving parent “Sorry your kids died, but …” you might want to check to see if your heart and/or tact still exist because adding that unspoken “but” indicates that neither does.

I was never comfortable with using “disrespect” as a verb. It seems like more of a noun (my dictionary lists it only as a noun or adverb). When I hear people use disrespect as a verb, I will always think of some hotheaded trash screaming on a reality show about how someone disrespected them and these people usually seem like they are getting the precise level of respect they deserve.

Weather.com is getting pretty dark lately — and I’m not talking about storm clouds. I keep seeing these awful links on the site to teens who died in horrible accidents and things like that. I don’t think they’re weather related so why are they on there?

I was reading a book on new wave and discovered that Spandau Ballet is named for what the Nazis called Jewish prisoners as their dying bodies were twisting around while hanging in the Spandau prison. That’s horrifying! I had never heard that before. Until people complained, the band didn’t know about the Nazi thing but just liked the name of the Spandau region. Now I’ll never listen to the gentle tones of “True” without feeling a little queasy.

Awhile back some town was ready to drain an entire reservoir because someone peed in it. This would have been a horrible waste of water. I know, I know, it was contaminated. But spread over a massive amount of water, it would have dispersed so much that it wouldn’t matter. Yes, I’d still drink out of it. It’s not like everyone would turn on their tap and get a steaming glass of piss.

The Cruelest Way to End the National Spelling Bee

On a stage in a high school auditorium, two 14-year-olds compete in the National Spelling Bee. They are the crème de la crème, the only two left standing.

National Spelling Bee Board Member 1: Your word is “stichomythia.”

Jimmy: Stichomythia. S-T-I-C-H-O-M-Y-T-H-I-A. Stichomythia.

Board Member 1: Correct. Sally, your word is “feuilleton.”

Sally: Feuilleton. F-E-U-I-L-L-E-T-O-N. Feuilleton.

Board Member 2: Excellent. Now, since we have two contestants left, here is the final word: “they’re.” Jimmy?

Jimmy: But … there’s more than one … can you use it in a sentence?

Board Member 1: No.

Jimmy: OK … there. T-H-E-R-E. There.

A jarring buzzer sounds.

Board Member 2: Sorry. That was incorrect. You are eliminated.

Jimmy’s face crumbles and he runs off stage, choking back tears.

Board Member 1: Sally? Your turn.

Sally: Um … their. T-H-E-I-R. Their?

A jarring buzzer sounds.

Board Member 3: I’m afraid not. We were actually looking for “they’re.” T-H-E-Y-apostrophe-R-E. 

Sally trudges off stage, looking shell-shocked.

Board Member 3: Now, since we have eliminated both contestants, I declare that there is no winner of the 2014 National Spelling Bee. In accordance with the bylaws, the $75,000 in scholarship money will be distributed among the board members.

Board Member 1 (speaking slowly, in patronizing voice): Remember, children, keep your homonyms straight. Do you know … what a homonym is?

The audience begins to riot. The board members flee for their lives.