Pen and Ink

Skeletons.

I've been experiencing an interesting Facebook phenom lately: ghosts from high school appearing and sending me friend requests.

They're not ghosts, exactly, because they are still among the living.  But generally, I haven't thought about them in years and years.

There are only two people from high school -- one from the class before me and one from the class after -- that I was close to back then. And they are both in my life today.  But my classmates, well...whatever!

I was pretty much invisible in high school.  Some acquaintances, but few friends.  I didn't have a bad experience in high school. Whatever it was though, is irrelevant to me now.

But nonetheless, I have accepted the handful of friend requests that I have received.

One of those people, K, started chatting me up.  When I told her that I was invisible in high school, she said that I was wrong, and that she remembered me.

I vaguely remembered her too.  But I had to pull out the yearbook to remember most of the other people she's talked about.

She's been proactive in sending me instant messages, and I'm enjoying getting to know her as an adult.

Over the past week our conversations have gotten deeper and more revealing. She's shared quite a lot about herself, both then and now. I, too, have revealed a bit of my story at her request.

And what she has told me!  Oh my!  Such stories!!

I'm not going to reveal the things she told me. But suffice it to say, I was totally clueless in high school!

I'm winqing at you.

I've long been a subscriber to gay magazines.

There's Out, which barely hangs on as mildly interesting.  Once upon a time I subscribed to Genre, but please, what a piece of trash now.

The Advocate has always been high on my list and with it's move to a monthly, it only gets better and better.

Anyone who follows media knows that printed publications are slowly dying. Newspapers will likely soon be extinct and magazine titles are folding. News magazines like the above-mentioned Advocate are going monthly (Newsweek is next in a couple of months, and frankly, I'm looking forward to the new format).

But amidst this sea of change comes a new print title:  Winq. (www.winq.com)

It's probably the very first global queer publication out there, with content truly spanning the world. Like many gay mags, it assumes that we all have a lot of money. But the content is diverse and well written. And from a design perspective, it's stunning.

I stumbled across it in Barnes & Noble today and decided to pick up a copy. At $7.95 its a little pricey, but it was worth the investment.

For those who care, pick up a copy and see what you think. 

The lady is a Dame.

Gene called a few weeks ago and asked if I wanted to go see Dame Edna.  It wasn't a show high on my list, but Bernardo was coming and I thought it would be fun for the three of us to do. Plus, I'm not usually one to turn down a social invitation like that.

So off we went last Thursday.

Oh. My. God.  How funny is she??!!!  At one point in the show she brought some audience members on stage for a faux talk show.  She did a whole bit about senior citizens and the trips they take and how their families can save a lot of money.

My stomach ached from laughing so hard and I desperately needed a tissue to wipe the tears on my face.

If Dame Edna brings her "First Last Tour" to your town or city, go. It's worth the price of admission.

Just don't arrive late or sit in the very back of the theater.

I think I'm home now (part two).

The idea of my actually being home, here in South Florida, has been on my mind for some months now. 

While I had an awakening last week about how my professional network has come together nicely in a relatively short period of time, I've come to recognize over the past six months or so that I've developed a great group of social connections.

Last August I threw myself a birthday party. It wasn't a special landmark year, but I just felt like I wanted to have friends over.

I decided it would be a "boys only" party. I made a list of people I wanted to have, people I truly wanted to socialize with. There were no "fillers" to make the party bigger. Chris and Drew surprised me by flying in for the weekend from Boston.

The party ended up being 16 people. 

I was kinda bemused me as I looked around.  This was just the gay boys in my life, not the women or their boyfriends/partners.  Sixteen people! 

The only time I had a party of similar size was for my ex's 40th birthday. I think we had about 19 people that night, including our respective parents and his brother and sister-in-law.   This party was just me and people I considered to be friends, at varying degrees of intimacy.

In December, I did a similar thing. I decided to have a holiday party. The guest list included everyone, including a few people from my office (we've worked together for awhile, so inviting them was a very natural thing to do.

This time there were 26 people from various parts of my social life, many of whom were meeting for the first time.

I was even more bemused with this party. 

(There was also a bit of surrealism for me, in that Madi and Bob were here. Madi and I worked together for seven years, 20 years ago. And now, here they are, living in Florida and coming to my holiday party.)

So just as my professional network is been established, so has my social network. Here, more so than Boston, it's a very diverse group on so many levels: ethnicity, gay/straight, and age).

I think I'm lovin' it!

I think I'm home now (part one).

It's been six years and three months since I left Boston for the sunshine and warmth of South Florida.

For the past nearly four years, since I ended my 17-year relationship, I've had one foot (or maybe just a big toe) out the door, on a plane, and back home to Boston.  Moving here was something that my ex and I wanted to do together.

He's gone, I've told myself, and the "family" is still back in Beantown.  On top of that, there's the professional network I had cultivated for years and then walked away from.

But I had a bit of an epiphany last week.  It started at the theater one night. I was helping out with the Miami International Film Festival, standing in the aisle to keep an eye out for sponsors, trustees and other VIPs, so that we could make sure they get good seats. 

A woman came rushing up to me.

"Glenn, how great to see you!"  It was Ellen, someone I met during my first year in Miami and while working at the museum on South Beach. 

"A couple of people keep talking about you and I've wanted to call you about this new project we're doing."  People were talking about me?  Me?

Later that week I had lunch with Craig, a casual friend I met at yoga about four years ago. He invited me to lunch to ask for some career advice.  During the conversation, he told me about people he was networking with.

"Alan said that I really needed to talk to you," he told me. Alan is a bank executive who I know peripherally.  That he thought of me in the context of my friend was quite interesting.

Miami is an interesting city. It's a place of possibility.  Because it is not centuries old like Boston, New York or any of the northern cities, it's not so ingrained, no so set in its ways. It's possible for someone to come here and make a difference. It's possible to come here with an idea and make it happen without all sorts of societal layers to dig through.

As I thought about these two encounters, it dawned on me: "I've arrived. I am someone in this town." 

I don't have a big ego and really don't like being in the spotlight. I want to be good at what I'm doing professionally, and given what I do for work, part of success is the network of people I have.

It seems I've built a network.  And as I compared it to the one I left behind in Boston, I realized that the Miami group is much bigger and diverse. And interestingly enough, the personal and professional overlap much more.

Seems like I've become a bit of a known quantity. And that feels rather good. Maybe I'm home, after all.

Pay it forward.

My friend Bernardo and I went up to the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach on Tuesday for the opening night of Legally Blonde. (Yes, I know, it's not high culture, but I just love that show -- very infectious!.)

I ordered the tickets just a couple of days before and didn't realize until it was too late that I got seats in the Loge (as in second balcony). Those who know me know that I don't do second balcony.  Or first balcony, unless they are box seats. Sure, call me a snob.

So when we got to the Will Call window, I asked the woman at the counter if by chance there had been any cancellations and could I possibly upgrade the tickets?  She checked and sure enough, there were two really good seats in center orchestra.

Just as she was about to make the transaction, a woman came running up to the counter.

"Don't buy those tickets!  Here, I have two that I can't use. Just take them!"

Row L, center orchestra.  B and I were dumfounded. And very grateful.

"We have to pay it forward," declared B.  He said that he had overheard a group of guys near the window talking about tickets. Seems that someone had forgotten to buy enough tickets.

So over we went and talked to them.  Sure enough, they needed two more tickets.

"They're not the best seats in the house," I told them, "but you're welcome to them."

They had the same dumbfounded look I did just minutes earlier.

The same thing happened to another friend just yesterday. He called from New York, where he is at for a theater weekend.

"I was sitting at the bar at the W in Times Square, just chatting away, when the guy sitting next to me offered me an orchestra ticket, Row G, for the Sunday matinee of Mama Mia."

Is there something in the air, I wonder?

Back in the saddle.

They say time heals everything. It's proved, once again, to be so very true in my life.

For weeks now, after the demise of my too-short relationship with Jose, even the thought of going out on a date made me tired. I couldn't stand the idea of the awkwardness of a first meeting, the small talk, the worrying about first impressions.  I wanted none of it.

I've had opportunities. My match.com account was paid in advance and still has time left on it; I've received nice emails but have paid little attention. A couple of other people I've met have expressed interest, but again, I just couldn't be bothered.

I have still been holding onto the idea of a "Glenn & Jose" scenario, reinforced by a friend of his who believes with every fiber of her being that the two of us are meant to be together. Maybe it's supposed to be that way; time will tell. But he hasn't even made the effort to send a "hi, how are you" email in weeks. My closest friends have been telling me that it's time to move on, and I've finally come to that realization myself.

What it was is unclear to me. Maybe it's the passage time. Maybe its been a rash of social engagements for which a boyfriend would have been really nice.

Whatever it is, I'm taking tentative steps forward.

(There's a great song, sung by Linda Eder in the show Jekyl & Hyde -- "Bring on the Men."  If you know it, sing along with me.)

You can send it to Sally.

A recent issue of the Chronicle of Philanthropy had a great essay by Bob Levey, a regular columnist for the paper and formerly of The Washington Post. 

In his piece "Small Sums Can Make a Powerful Gift," he tells of a little campaign he did last year. Walking home from a New Year's Day party a year ago, he found six pennies lying on the ground by a parking meter. I picked them up and realized that there might be more where those six pennies came from.

So he spent the next year picking up found change from street corners, on floors, sofa cushions -- anywhere.  His goal was to keep track of everything he found and give it away at the end of the year.

It became a quest and at the end of the year, he found $49.98.  And at the end of the year, he wrote a check.

This really gave me pause. I'm a reasonably philanthropic person (any good fundraiser is), but the same doesn't go for everyone.  People are struggling these days and while they may have intent, they don't have the means.

But couldn't everyone do what Bob did? We all pick up change, or walk right past it. What if everyone did the same thing Bob did?

Just imagine the power! What good could we all do?  What difference could we make?  Whether we give it to a school, to a hospital, to a homeless shelter, to an arts group -- it doesn't matter. You can even sent it to Sally (let's see who among my readers is old enough to know that reference.)

It's all good. Will anyone join me?

Multiple paths.

Every issue of New York Magazine has a feature akin to a centerfold.  It's called Intelligencer and is a two page spread, generally with a large photo of a person and a bit of a bio about the person.

The last issue featured a 25-year old marketing strategist. He apparently is intent on cataloguing scenesters around the world.  It's probably a sign of my age, but I don't quite know what that means and frankly, "scenesters" don't sound so appealing.

But that's all beside the point. The subject of the piece talks about all the things he's doing: working on a book, making videos, writing a blog, and working at a marketing firm.

"We don't want one path--we want to get involved in lots of creative projects," he says.

I rather envy that.

A professional acquaintance of mine -- David -- is a consultant. He has a base job out of New York that pays him some money, but he takes on a variety of projects around the country, all in a field that is creative in its own right. Two weeks ago he was producing an event in Boston. This week he's in Miami. Next week he's off to London and Paris for a bunch of meetings (and hopefully stealing away for some time with his wife).  I think it's all really interesting -- taking on projects that appeal to him intellectually, creatively and yes, financially.

But now he's considering taking a full time job. It will appeal to all those same things in him, but still, it's a full-time gig. 

I also know the person who is interested in hiring him. David is perfect for the job.  But I told his potential boss that if he really wants David, he's going to have to be very creative in his offer. I suggested that perhaps it's just a four-day work week, so that he has the freedom to do other things. Actually, it would be good for the organization hiring him, because part of David's value is that he knows so many people in his industry around the world.

From time to time I think about this kind of professional life. There are a lot of projects that I would love to be involved with -- not just in my profession. There are consulting gigs I relish doing with my friend Susan.  I'd love to do a professional blog.  I'd like to go raise money for a bunch of different causes. Take on a marketing project for some group that really needs the help.  All sorts of things.

I guess it's called being a consultant. But I know some of those and while it seems really cool to do a bunch of different things, it's hard work. You have to make sure you have a steady flow of business, so that means juggling the current work with business development to keep food on your plate a few months down the road.  And then there are the benefits, or lack thereof.  Health insurance is expensive when you're on your own.  And when I want to take off for a long weekend Panama (this May) or two weeks in Europe (this August/September)...well, those are days when I'm not generating revenue.

Maybe someone will give me a job with a decent salary and a three-day work week. Even a four-day work week, leaving me time for other projects.

Any offers?

Real science.

President Obama took a wonderful step forward yesterday in his rebuke of Bush's "ideology over science" policies of the past eight years.  Kudos to our new president.

His overturn of embryonic cell research is a good step, but his broader directive that science advisers are picked based on expertise, not political ideology, is right on the money.  In other words, right wing ideologues tied to conservative religious groups are out.  Thank God!

I don't think this is a swing of the pendulum from right to left.  I think it's swinging from right to "right."  Science, ideology and religion have no business being in the laboratory together. 

It was well reported that Bush & Co. distorted and/or suppressed scientific information.  Like so many other things they did, I don't think we'll know the true damage for quite some time.