Pen and Ink

You stink.

They make you laugh. They make you scream. Sometimes they make you want to murder. They are Florida.

I'm talking about old people. Or "senior citizens" to be polite.

Sunday night I was in Boca Raton, attending John's concert at Florida Atlantic University. Boca is ground zero for cranky old people. I'm not talking sweet little old ladies. I'm talking nasty old women with money. They're the worst.

As the 90 minute concert was nearing its end, people started to leave.  The early-bird specials were long over, so I can only guess that these were people who had to be the first out of the parking lot.

I sat next to Lisa, one of John's friends from church. Near the end of the show, the couple in front of us got up to leave. When they were in the aisle right next to me, I nearly lost it.

The wife smacked her husband on the shoulder and said, in a stage whisper, "You stink! You stink! Why didn't you go to the bathroom?"

Oh. My. God. Have you ever laughed hysterically without uttering a sound? That's what Lisa and I did for a good couple of minutes. It was so damned funny. Thankfully, our noses didn't have to participate in the experience.

When the show was done and the cast was taking its final bows, Lisa and I just looked at each other and went nuts. All that pent-up laughter exploded.

Joining John backstage a few minutes later, I related to him the story. He has a whole collection of "Boca Old People Stories." He died and made me tell everyone else in the cast.

Ya just gotta love Boca.

Melancholy baby.

Forgive my tardiness in writing, but I've been crazy busy. I had intended to write yesterday, but I was feeling a bit blue after a conversation with my ex. Actually, melancholy is the appropriate word. John, in his ever playful way, even sang "Melancholy Baby" to me over the phone.

Thursday night was a real treat. I got to see the amazing Savion Glover in a live performance. It was the first time I had experienced him live and I have to tell you, he's just incredible. Part of what made the show so interesting is that he danced to all classical music. There were eight musicians on stage the entire time, with four others who did special appearances. Fantastic! What an experience.

Friday evening John and I saw A Lion in Winter at the Caldwell Theater. There was a movie version with Katherine Hepburn some years ago, but I had never seen it or even heard of it, so the play was a treat. Very enjoyable. As I see more regional theater, I'm getting to see actors and actresses play various roles. The actress who played Eleanor in Lion was also in a recent production of Steel Magnolias. She was totally miscast in the latter so I wasn't able to really see how good she is. As Eleanor, the was a hit.

Saturday night, our weekend of culture continued. Thanks to my friend Susan, who is in the process of moving, we were back at the Carnival Center for a New World Symphony concert with Michael Tilson Thomas conducting and Yo Yo Ma performing. It was an evening of Shostakovitch. Very enjoyable.

I also had a treat on Saturday when my best friend Cary and I had "girls day out." Cary's been going through some "stuff," so I treated us to massages at one of the local gay guest houses. (These massages were completely legit, so get your minds out of the gutters. You know who you are.). Then we were off to lunch at Storks. Such an afternoon!

The weekend ended with John's performance in an Al Jolson/Fannie Brice/Eddie Cantor review. I had seen the show in Sarasota a couple of weeks ago, but this time a base player and drummer joined the piano and the production quality was infinitely better.

I love these cultural weekends, but man, it leaves me exhausted. I need a weekend to recuperate from my weekend.

Majestic mountains.

Yesterday morning I woke up much earlier than usual. I guess it was around 5 a.m. Unable to get back to sleep, I got up, showered and dressed, and headed out to work. I left my house around 6:15, which is definitely early for me.

I took my usual route, heading east on Commercial Boulevard. (For those unfamiliar with Fort Lauderdale, Commercial is one of a number of major east-west thoroughfares through the city. Heading east dumps you into the Atlantic. I live just about four miles from the ocean). It was that time of the pre-dawn morning where there's just the faintest bit of light coming up.

Yesterday there was a very large cloud formation over the ocean. The clouds were a dark mass, very storm-like but only because of the light. The early morning sky was just a shade lighter. The whole thing had a strange effect.

I felt like I was driving in a valley, heading toward the mountains. Like someone had replaced the ocean with a mountain range. Because Fort Lauderdale is flat, I had the feeling I was in Arizona or New Mexico. During a trip to that part of the country a few years ago, I seem to remember driving on a flat road with the mountains rising ahead of me.

It was disconcerting. Where am I again? 

I left the road to pull into Dunkin' Donuts. By the time I left (after enjoying my bagel and the Times), the skies had lightened and the clouds looked like...well...clouds over the ocean.

It was one of the flukes of light that seemed to transport me to the mountains. I wish I had my camera with me to capture it.

The boy in the parking lot.

My stalker/secret admirer made a return appearance today.

As I pulled into a parking space at work this morning, I noticed a person getting out of the vehicle  next to me. Not really paying any attention, I went about gathering my cell phone, the Blackberry, my messenger bag, etc. Getting out, I saw someone standing behind my car and the one next to me, in the middle between the two.

It was stalker boy.

"Hi, I'm C."

"Nice to meet you C. I'm Glenn."

"I've been wanting to meet you. I saw you a few times a couple of weeks ago. I think you're really attractive and since you have the equal sign on your car [HRC logo sticker], I figured you were 'friendly.'

I chuckled.  "Yes, I'm friendly."

"You are really cute. Do you have a boyfriend?" he asked.

"Yes, I'm seeing someone. How about you?"

He told me that he has a boyfriend but that they have an "understanding."

"I'd really like to see you."

I told him that I was really flattered, but that my boyfriend and I don't have the same kind of understanding.

Then I asked him, "Just out of curiosity, why me? You're young and cute and could probably have any guy you want? Why me?"

"I like older men," he replied. "And I think you're really goodlooking."

Well, I'm flattered. And to be fair, I should correct something I wrote in my original post about him. At the time I wrote that he was "sorta cute" (or something like that). Well, I take that back. He's not "sorta" cute.  Just cute.

I learned a little more about him as we walked to our respective buildings. He just graduated college, which puts him about 22 or 23. He's an artist, working with photography. Seems like a nice guy. Forward, but not in an obnoxious or lascivious way.

So I told John about it and he said, "But we do have an understanding. The understanding is that I'll kick your ass if you sleep with him." Then he reminded me that we're now in competition to find the youngest guy we can to come on to us. He has his own pseudo-stalker: a 24-year old theater gypsy,  currently touring in a production of Joseph, who wants John to run away with him.  So now I have John beat by a year or two.

That said, I guess we're now at the end of the blog trilogy about "the boy."

Rainy days and Sundays.

My car tells me that it's 53 degrees outside. It's gray and rainy and cold. Winter in Florida.

While those who came down to our normally sunny climes for their long President's Day weekend are no doubt pretty pissed, I'm rather liking it.

The heat's on in the house, an exceedingly rare occurance. I'm here in comfy jeans and a cobalt blue fleece pullover that I rarely get to wear anymore. I just got home from John's place and frankly, I don't want to go out anywhere.

It's a perfect day for lounging. I've got a comfy sectional sofa with a hand-made throw, knitted by Mike's late great aunt Mae, a spitfire of a woman who shared my appreciation for a good vodka drink and who lived well into her eighties.

Picture it: me, the sofa, the throw and the TV remote. On my DVR right now I've got two movies (Jeffrey and Steam), four episodes of Studio 60, an unwatched episode of Law & Order: SVU, a new miniseries that started on BBC TV last night, and countless reruns of Star Trek Voyager. Add to that tonight's new offerings of Grease: You're the One I Want and Brothers and Sisters, and a few new DVDs that I recently picked up (Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont and Tales of the City.)

With all of that and plenty of food in the cupboard (not to mention the fixins for a good vodka drink later on), why go out?

True colors.

Former Miami Heat star Tim Hardaway outed himself on Valentine's Day.

On the annual Hallmark Holiday of Love, Hardaway came out as a homophobe.

"Well, you know I hate gay people, so let it be known. I don't like gay people and I don't like to be around gay people. I am homophobic," said Hardaway, who is currently the head coach of the Continental Basketball Association's Miami Majesty. (What the hell is the Continental Basketball Association, anyway.)

Ho hum. Another ignorant sports star. I didn't get too upset reading his comments. It was the line that followed in the story I read in Express, our local gay newspaper, that really disturbed me.

"Hardaway has since apologized for his remarks."

I think that's even more infuriating than his ignorant position on gay people. He apologized?  Why, because some publicist or agent told him so? 

It's kind of like Isaiah Washington, the homophobic star of Grey's Anatomy, who apologized for his anti-gay remarks toward co-star T.R. Knight, and who recently went through counseling to help him understand his anger. Why? To keep his job with ABC. Plain and simple.

Are these guys really repentent? Do they really regret their words? Not likely.

It's their hollow words of apology that are really insulting.

Leave it to Bud.

I was catching up on some of the blogs that I most enjoy. I found this on Tom's site and thought I'd post it here. I love dogs and I love clever commercials. Enjoy.

Craving spaghetti.

I was in the grocery store the other day picking up some things for a dinner party I had the other night. Considering meals for the rest of the week (I was ambitious in my thinking that I would actually cook for myself), I remembered that I had not made my own spaghetti sauce in a long time.

This was something I made fairly regularly years and years ago before I met my ex. But he was a great cook and made "gravy" from scratch, so I was pretty much banned from making my own inferior sauce.

But I've got a hunkering. Then tonight I was talking to John on the phone and he mentioned something about really wanting spaghetti and meatballs.

I'll take it as a sign of things to come this weekend.

Missing Swahili.

For the first time in the four years that I've lived in South Florida, I am working in the downtown core of Miami. This allows me to try using mass transit. We have the TriRail, which is a commuter train that covers three counties. And that links to Metrorail, which is a "upway" (opposite of subway, since it's elevated) that traverses the eastern part of Miami-Dade County.

I didn't need my car for any meetings today, so I decided to attempt the train. It was more stressful than sitting in bumper-to-bumper.

Making my way to the Fort Lauderdale train stop, I came to an intersection. There was a "Park and Ride" sign pointing left and a "TriRail Station" sign pointing right. As there were no cars in the park and ride lot, I figured there was parking by the station. Maybe, I supposed, the park and ride was for something else.  So I turned right.

Sure enough, there were parking spaces by the station. And plenty of signs saying "Do Not Enter." The only thing one could do was get right back on the highway.

I headed south because I knew there was a stop at Hollywood Boulevard, just a few miles away. What I didn't remember was that there was a station before that. Unfortunately, it was too late for me to get off the highway. So on I went to Hollywood Boulevard.

The station is right next to the highway, so I could very quickly see that there really was no parking lot, and what spaces they had were all occupied.  Shit. I made my way down side streets to the previous station. There I found plenty of parking.

Once I figured out what kind of ticket to buy from the automated machine, I surveyed my surroundings. Two tracks, with the one on the right presumably for the south-bound trains. Seemed to make sense. So I climb the long flight of stairs that takes me up and over the tracks to get to the other side. A train pulls into the station on what I assumed was the north-bound side.

Guess again. Doesn't work that way. Both north and south-bound trains pull into both tracks, with seemingly no rhyme or reason. By the time I turned around to go back downstairs the train was gone.

Damn! I looked at my clock and thought, that's weird, the train is early. It's not supposed to be here until 7:59 and it's only 7:53. Then it hit me. Oh great, the trains are running late.  So I sat around for a half-hour. Thankfully, this is Florida, so it wasn't cold.

Once the train arrived and I boarded, it was really quite pleasant. Not too crowded. I didn't have to sit next to anyone. And I could read the paper and answer emails in quiet.

But I was stressed out. I found myself longing for the comfort of Swahili.

Right about now you're asking yourself, "What the fuck is he talking about?"

As I've written previously, I love urban mass transit systems. And the one that I am most intimate with is the one in Boston. I've been riding it since the mid-1980s and know it like the back of my hand. There's a comfort level associated with it. It represents home, in a way.

One of the consistant things about the T, as Boston's subway is known, is some of the advertising. I'm thinking in particular of posters for the Boston Language Institute Their ads are always the same. The headline says, "Guaranteed Swahili." Forever these posters have been there. They're almost iconic at this point.

So I was thinking about "Guaranteed Swihili" and the comfort of the Boston subways this morning as I was fretting about the newness of my surroundings and my unfamiliarity of the system here in Florida.

Where is Swahili when you need it?

Gay succession.

Today's guest blogger is Martin, who sends this interesting piece of scholarly research.

* * * * *

In the Gay Sunshine Journal 35 (1978) and reprinted in Allen Ginsberg's interview in the book Gay Sunshine Interviews, one finds the following:

1. Walt Whitman (1819-1892) slept with Edward Carpenter.

2. Edward Carpenter (1844-1929) slept with Gavin Arthur (aka Chester Alan Arthur, III, grandson of the president).

3. Gavin Arthur (1901-1972) slept with Dean Moriarity (aka Neal Cassady).

4. Neal Cassady (1926-1968) slept with Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997).

4. Neal Cassady also slept with Jack Kerouac (1922-1969).

According to Gore Vidal's momoirs, Palimpsest:

5. Jack Kerouac slept with Gore Vidal.

In the same memoirs, Vidal boasts about sleeping with two of the three men in the ballet "Fancy Free," to which Leonard Bernstein replies that he slept with all of them, but Harold's ass was the "eight wonder of the world."

6. Gore Vidal slept with Harold Lang.

7. Harold Lang (1920-1985) slept with Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990).

In his biography A Young Man from the Provinces, Alan Helms speaks of his experience in New York City in the late 1950s and 1960s.

8. Leonard Bernstein slept with Alan Helms (whom he called a sorte-able).

9. Alan Helms slept with Anthony Perkins (1932-1992)

9. Alan Helms slept with Steven Sondheim.

10. Anthony Perkins slept with Tab Hunter (as referented in Hunter's autobiography).

10. Anthony Perkins slept with Rudolf Nureyev (1938-1993).