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I Heart Heart Part 2

Several years ago I met Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart. Sort of. I won a website contest to sit in on a taping for an XM radio concert to promote their latest CD release. You had to be a fan club member and live in NY to enter and I was both. I'm a Heartmonger. I'm slightly embarrassed by this. I have letters from the band entitled, "Dear Heartmonger," and a laminated Heartmonger card with my name on it to prove it. Most Heartmongers fit into two categories -- former or future circus carnies and semi-sexually or formally sexually confused gay men. I like to think neither describes me.

I arrived at the XM Studio taping on 57th street early enough to sneak into the studio where the band was preparing to perform. No joke and no Osama-induced security for Heart -- I just walked into the building, hopped in the elevator and went to the floor I needed to go to. The elevator opened and I could hear the band rehearsing. One of the band's handlers is a woman named Motley Sue. I know this because this is the name she posts under on the band's website. I suppose it's because she once toured with Motley Crew, or that she just like the play on words. She's not motley, but this is just further reason to carefully consider a nickname -- what is cute at 30, ain't gonna be so cute when you're 60 and your tits are tucked into your belt. I'd hate for that to be her fate. Motley Sue hit on me until she realized I'm one of the carnies/sexually confused/formerly sexually confused gay men in-waiting and then quickly escorted me back to the elevator. By this time, more Heartmongers found their way to the rehearsal space and Sue was quick to round us up and send us back down to the ground floor.

On the elevator ride down I make eye contact with no one. I notice one woman appeared to have a miniature version of a neck -- her head was on the precipice of toppling off her shoulders and she had unusually short arms for a normal sized person. She's not yet a dwarf, but she is definitely a carny. There are two other men. One is a 40 something currently sexually confused man with a Zanax grin. He's clutching a tattered Dog & Butterfly album from 1978 and wearing a Ann Wilson Solo Tour t-shirt, the one with Ann and a giant peacock feather covering half her face. He loves her and I imagine his inner dialogue sounds something like this;

Him: "Hi Ann, remember in 1978 when you wore a Japanese inspired-purple chenille top coat and matching flared pants?"

Imaginary Ann: "Yes! That was my favorite outfit on the 1978 50-city Dog & Butterfly tour. But enough about me, what was your experience with that outfit. I really what to know."

Him: "Well when I was in the 11th grade and wore it to junior prom but was laughed at -- first by my father and then by my school."

Imaginary Ann: "Oh. That's awful! I bet you looked fabulous in it. Do you need a hug? That's all anybody really needs. Sit by me, maybe you could join me for dinner?"

The only other Heartmonger man looks like an Oak Ridge Boy. I bet he traps and kills animals for their pelts. And then there's me looking down and hoping that either man doesn't talk to me and that flipper girl doesn't try to shake my hand because she reminds me of the girl with the nubs for fingers that I used to shake hands with during the peace-be-with your portion of catholic mass. My sister and I used to fight over who would sit closer to her. I often lost.

Luckily they all ignore me. When the elevator opens, Ann Wilson, resplendent in over-sized Jackie O glasses and a sheer black tunic top and flared black Lane Bryant pants, is waiting to go up to the taping. She doesn't seem in the greatest of spirits. There's a menopausal glow about her -- I swear she's hiding a battery operated fan in her purse. Everyone whispers,"It's Ann." I wet myself, the same amount I would If I coughed too long and hard -- just a little. She looks at us with a crooked smile and waits for us to file out.

We wait an hour and are let back into the studio. The band plays old and new songs. For and hour I sit an arms length from Nancy and two arms lenghts from Ann. I hear her hit the high notes in Straight On and watch her shirt ride up as she extends her torso. I look at her soft porcelain belly the same way I used to sneak peeks at Playgirl, it's wrong but I can't help it. I feel weird. In an age where I'm used to seeing Britney Spears' virginia slims, I'm uncomfortable seeing Ann Wilson's belly. It doesn't seem right. It's private. She becomes more human than ever.

When the taping ends we are allowed to approach Nancy, but not Ann, who sits in her chair until the carnies file out. She looks like she's at the tail-end of a hot flash. There's a ruddiness to her face that reminds me of my menopausal mom when she would walk through the house cursing at inanimate objects and opening all the windows during a Nor'easter. Nancy was gracious and sweet and beautiful with pink and orange streaks in her hair. Flipper girl got to Nancy first and got a hug from her. I stood there and mouthed, "Thank you for the years of music. It meant a lot." But no sound came out. Ann saw me mouth something. I wondered if she thought I was praying. Maybe she was impressed by my zen like spirituality. Or maybe she thought I was having a psychotic break and readying to stab her sister.

Ann gets very protective of Nance. I've seen them in concert at least 10 times. At least 7 of those times I've watched very drunk, very fat men leap on stage and bee-line for Nancy. But they have to get through Ann first, who I swear once head-butted a crazed fan without missing a note to Barracuda. I decide that Ann thinks I'm crazy and turn on my heels and exit the studio before she calls security. I pass Nancy, who's trying to hide her pack of cigarettes from the exiting fans. She's human too. But she should know better. I'd hate to hear her beautiful harmonies fray from smoke damage. I step into the elevator with the Oak Ridge Boy and flipper girl. We're all smiling and we say nothing, not even goodbye when the elevator opens. I linger a bit and write air graffiti -- "Ann Wilson was here '04 " and leave satisfied knowing I almost met my musical idol.

Crumpled Origami Swans

Its 1999 and I’m in Union Square with three gay friends. A car full of college boys yell "faggots" as they whiz by. Faggots. I think of a friend who once told me that when he came out to his mother her response was, "I would have loved you just the same if you had Down’s Syndrome." So now we’re retarded. I think of another friend whose mother asked in seriousness if he would now start wearing a dress. And women. Retarded women. A third friend told me how his mother’s main concern was that he would live a "sad, lonely life." Lonely, retarded women. I think of the irony in the word "gay" – it so seldom means the happiness it implies. And "positive" -- possibly the most frightening word in the gay lexicon. Gay and positive – two riddles, unsolved.
Now, in 2007, when I hear the word "faggot" I feel so much. There’s so much beauty in life, in being gay, in just living. But when I hear "faggot" it’s like somebody has unfolded a fragile and intricate origami swan and discarded it in the incinerator. To hear "faggot" is an undoing of sorts. It’s a constant battle between the unravel and the rebuilding – that is if you’re strong enough. It’s not weakness if you’re not. Who wouldn’t succumb? It’s the degrees in which we can succumb that’s frightening. When I hear the word "faggot" I think of mothers, dresses, nurses in HIV clinics, Down’s Syndrome, disease, isolation and how all the stupid boys in cars yelling "faggots" can do little to hurt us now.
In 1999 when that car of boys rode by my friends and I did the thing that made sense. Without consulting one another we extended our arms and raised our middle fingers, "Fuck You." We riotously laughed at the absurdity of it all – we’ve come far. These are the boys who taunted us in school, some of the same types we’re trying to be, trying to sleep with – the same types we’re trying to exist with and as. It’s complicated. But somehow it feels like a victory, like recovery.

Homophobia Inward

I’m in class and we’re talking cultural competency. An Orthodox Jewish woman raises her hand and states that although her religion sees homosexuality as an abomination, she’s confident she could work with gay people despite her belief. An abomination? I’m an abomination? Prior to this I thought she had a bad fashion sense, with the long dresses and hats, but now I think she’s a fool, ignorant, stupid. The class sits in silence. Why is religious intolerance tolerated even when it so righteously mocks our profession’s code of ethics? Jesus Christ we’re afraid of offending God. Fuck God. At least her version of him. I take the train home and think some more. I still think she’s a fool. Then doubt creeps in. I’ve heard these comments before -- in school hallways, from construction workers, from a car load of frat boys, from school kids selling candy in Union Square, from the TV news, from religious leaders, from my family, politicians and now students in Social Work school. It makes me shake with anger and rage. By the time I reach the door of my apartment I think to myself, "Maybe she’s right." ‘Maybe she’s right?" I’m succumbing again – surrendering to my own doubts and the ridicule of others. I catch myself. This is internalized homophobia. When will it stop?

My Body The AIDS Factory

It’s 1985, I’m 12 and convinced I’m manufacturing AIDS in my own body. It has been twelve years since the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality as a mental illness from its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. But it will be years, maybe decades, before I believe there’s nothing wrong with me. With AIDS, I wonder if I’ll ever have a sense of being "okay." That summer I simulated sexual intercourse with Phillip Doherty, a sinewy neighbor and classmate whom I admired for the way his electrical cord veins wrapped around his muscled limbs as much as for his willingness to escape to his family’s basement to experiment with our burgeoning adolescent sexuality. I was sure that our recent sexual activity yielded disastrous results – the long dormant virus was activated by our crude simulations and desires. It had come to claims its hosts. Betrayed by a faulty immune system and overloaded by my deviant ways, I’m sure my body is turning against me. Just like the withering men with AIDS on TV and in the papers, I’ve engaged in "homosexual acts." I’m "promiscuous" -- as quick a path to death as any imaginable. I begin a full fledged war against myself between -- "I’m good, I’m okay, I think" and what the world was telling me, "No you’re a faggot and you’re going to die." I couldn't bear it. I didn't want any of those labels; although I wasn't so sure I had a choice. Being gay and AIDS was becoming inextricably linked, as was sex and death, and there was no one to help make these distinctions and separations. I traversed the landscape of stigma and shame that would become a second home. It wasn't enough that I spent much of my time denying my burgeoning sexual interests in boys, I was also negotiating pathology and death. Sick people get sick – it made sense. I spent much of the next few years worried that I, along with my neighbor, was responsible for creating a disease that would ultimately kill us. In 1985, when the world watched Rock Hudson whither away, I figured I was next.

Worried Well

My first boyfriend is diagnosed with HIV in early 2000. I sit with him as he cries and shakes his head in disbelief. He thinks about killing himself all the time. But he doesn’t. I flashback to a friend at a party the previous week -- he had a biohazard tattoo etched into his skin after his diagnosis. A warning. I get scared for my boyfriend. For myself. The next day, I make an appointment with a local HIV testing center where I’ll be tended to by trained professionals. A week later a nurse swabs my arm with alcohol and tells me I have good veins. I puff with pride. "My husband doesn’t like gay people, but I don’t mind them," she says as the syringe fills to near overflow. With each draw of blood, I deflate a little more. Moments before, I had told her I was gay. "You’re talking about me, bitch" I wanted to say, but I don’t. Instead, I smile weakly and wonder if I’ll return for my test result the next week.
A month later, I sit in another doctor’s office, this time on 14th street, waiting for another test result. Although I’ve done nothing to compromise my negative status, I’m thinking about HIV all the time and I’m scared. My boyfriend and I have been doing everything with condoms. Oral sex, grinding, and definately no penetration. I broke out in a rash after we fooled around and thought I had AIDS. I know this is not how to get infected, but my mind plays tricks. An irrationality takes over. It’s like someone’s sending me an envelope of anthrax everyday. Some mental health care workers would call me "the worried well". I beg to differ. When sex and death are so intimately entwined, "the worried well" seems like an insult on the grandest of scale. I’m worried for a reason and I’m not well – since I was a boy I’ve seen my gay brothers diagnosed and die. I’m worried sick -- I don’t want to die. As I wait, I see an older man who wears the years of survival in the wasting grooves of his face. The miracle drugs are working, with the minor inconveniences of reconfiguring the skin on his face. Dark hollows for the gallows. It’s heartbreaking. I think "That could be me." The man nods, as if to welcome me -- a sad introduction into a club I’m hoping I’ll never be a member of.

I Heart Heart Part 1

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I've been listening to Ann Wilson's first ever solo cd. It makes me a little excited in the pants. I love Ann Wilson. Ann Wilson of Heart, with the 23 top 40 hits, over 30 million records sold and a voice that melts kryptonite. I love Ann Wilson because she looks like every woman in my family, especially my mom and my Aunt Karen. I love Nancy Wilson too, but like Gene Simmons of Kiss once said of the two sisters, "Nancy is easy, but Ann, she's the Queen of flesh." The Queen of Flesh. There's a compliment there, I'm sure of it.
Nancy, the thinner of the two, has also spoken about Ann in the press. "She's the white Aretha." Which again, I guess is a compliment? Considering that Aretha no longer sings like she used to and looks like she's smuggling two black dwarfs in her bra and an entire supermarket aisle of Christmas hams in her panties, I'm having a difficult time searching for the compliment in that particular accolade.
My dad also loved Heart. His compliments of Ann Wilson were far less obtuse. It was predicated on three things 1) Ann Wilson's voice, 2) Ann Wilson's face, 3) Ann Wilson's tits. He first became aware of the band in the summer of 1985, when the Wilson sisters mounted a comeback and had a number one album called Heart. My family was on a drive to Lake George, NY when he heard What About Love playing on the radio, (Hitting #10, the song was the band's first top ten single since "Tell It Like It Is hit #8 in 1981.) My father was instantly smitten.
"Who the hell is that singing? Now she's got some voice."
"Better than Barbra Streisand?" That's me.
"Nobody sings better than Streisand, but she's close."
I was momentarily crushed but thanked God he qualified it. According to my Dad, Ann Wilson was almost as good a singer as thee Barbra Streisand. Who he predicted would be an instant star after attending an Off-Broadway show she was performing in the late 1960's. Had my father not been hell bent on prefecting Irish/Italian rage, me might have become a talent scout instead of a civil servant.
"I saw Streisand take to the stage (translation your mother dragged me to...) and that's when I knew that girl was gonna be a star. Hit every branch of the ugly tree, but what a set of pipes."
Barbra Streisand was the bar and most singers fell way below it. That Ann Wilson and her rock and roll howl of a voice came close is saying something.
My mom, on the other hand, would have nothing to do with Ann Wilson. The deeper I became enamoured with Heart the less tolerant my mother became of me and Ann. Posters went up, the scrap books got laminated and I became a fan club member, eagerly awaiting my monthly copy of "Heartbeat", the official newsletter edited by Ann's good friend Allan Muller who succumbed to AIDS in the 90's. I'd blare Crazy on You (#35 in 1975) from my stereo and my mother would say, "You really think she has a good voice? She's no Karen Carpenter."
"Karen Carpenter is anorexic and dead," I'd say annoyed, as I flipped Heart's Greatest Hits Live lp to crank up Led Zepplin's Rock and Roll, which I knew gave her an angina attack.
Although it took me years to realize it, my mother's disdain for Heart had little to do with the band -- one time I caught her singing along to Alone and she looked as blissed out as I'd ever seen her (#1 for three weeks in 1987, written by Tom Kelly and Billy Steinberg, who also wrote Like A Virgin and True Colors). My mother's disdain for the band was cleverly masked resentment for my father, who gave her many reasons to dislike him and very few ways to show it. Outward resentment of Ann Wilson was her only retaliation. He'd turn them up, she's turn them off and plunk in a Barry Manilow collection. As she got older, she became better at displaying her hostility, read: she scrubbed the toilet with his toothbrush when he told her he was leaving (#1, 2000-2004 when the divorce was finalized). But that was in the new century, In 1985 all my mom had in her arsenal were off handed passive aggressive comments about my favorite band and a sore index finger from ejecting the tape from the car stereo.

Before I Knew What Gay Was I Learned This Lesson

It’s 1979 and Paul Quinn and I are jumping on his bed in our underwear. We’re both excited and we both tentatively touch each other -- our first attempts at exploring a body other than our own. We’re lost in childhood desire, curiosity and innocence. All this stops when Mrs. Quinn throws open the door. "What are you two doing?" she yells. The look on her face is of a deep disgust – a repulsion usually reserved for the murders or pedophiles I see on TV. Paul gets spanked "I’ll give you something to take your pants off for", I hear her say as and I slip past her and out the door for home. I wish she hit me too; the sting of those rapid fire smacks would surely be less painful than the looks of disdain that burned a permanent scar in my head and heart. I don’t know what I did wrong. Whatever it is, I know it’s disgusting. I feel hate. I feel dirty. I’m powerless to do anything about it. What we were doing felt so good, why was it bad? Although I don’t know it then, this is my introduction to the paradox of being gay.
Not soon after my incident with Paul, I get caught again, this time with a girl named Beth Ann. My mother finds me. Here’s when I learn the price of the currency on childhood sexuality. While childhood sexual curiosity may be perplexing and frightening for parents, it’s less frightening when it’s a sanctioned sexual orientation. My mother’s concern is far different from the look of disgust on Mrs. Quinn’s face. I feel my mother’s sense of relief; MY SON IS NORMAL, he's interested in girls. I share in her relief. What I did with Paul is too shameful to name, what I was doing with Beth Ann is normal. My mother sternly warns to, "Never do that again." And while I never do, I never forget her momentary relief that I wasn't messing with boys. She knew what I'd done with Paul -- Mrs. Quinn made sure of that. And I knew she disapproved. No disapproval or expression of disgust or disdain, and certainly not my mother's relief or even my own could sway me from what I knew -- that I preferred boys. I was acutely aware that I liked boys more than girls. They’re smaller versions of my father, and my father looms large in my world. They are a desire, a mystery, a cone I want explained. This attraction and longing confuses me. And although it confuses me, there's a burgeoning liberal in me that simply don’t understand the fuss. I remember thinking "so what if I like boys" but also wincing, as if I was anticipating a smack. Verbalizing that I was gay, the casual "so what", laissez faire shoulder shrug of it all, won't come for years, if ever. Even still, at age six, I can’t understand why liking girls over boys is an expression preferred over the other. Loving boys feels so natural. Later, I find my mother’s Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care open to the chapter on children and homosexuality. My mother has been studying my mystery too. The Doctor assures worried parents that a child’s flirtation with homosexuality is just a passing phase. I wait through my teens for that phase to pass, remembering my childhood example of normal as well as its polar opposite. When this phase never passes, melancholia sets in. Loving the sameness of boys was a taboo that loving differentness of girls wasn’t.

Brendan's Diagnosis

It’s Easter 2000 and Meryl Streep is dying of cancer. William Hurt, her estranged husband, is giving an Oscar worthy speech about the virtues of their love. My boyfriend and I are in bed and we’re crying. Meryl withers and twists into the sheets of her hospital bed, her body a gnarled memory where there once was flesh.
My boyfriend whispers, "That’s not going to be me."
I whisper back, "It won’t, I know it."
But I can’t be sure. The virus is alive in his blood, exciting every nerve and casting a net of doom across his body, see-sawing between the threat of sickness and the hope of health.
"I’m a statistic, I never wanted to be a statistic," I remember him saying 2 months earlier, when his blood still tingled with the news of infection.
I didn’t know how to respond and so I mumbled, "Try to stay positive."
And he said, "That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to avoid."
In sickness and in health. These are the words I told myself when he was diagnosed, although there’d been no ceremonies or vows shared between us. I wasn’t going to flee, although the temptation almost always pulled at my feet and taunted me to safety.
Around the same time, my father did flee. He left my mother, their 32 year marriage and our family. My sister and I felt it coming, but that anticipation did not prepare us for the anger and absence that’s taken permanent residence in our souls. We saw the signs, even though my mother hadn’t. She’d grown blinded by the resentments that build between people who forget to infuse the architecture of their relationship with human hearts. All that stood now was an empty wooden structure where a marriage was once founded. I wasn’t going to let this happen to me and Brendan.
In sickness and in health, I said it again and again until I achieved dream like trances in my waking hours. When I slept the trances where full-fledged epics – symbols of my life and where I’d wound up. I’d dream that I was hovering above our bed, my troubled sleep in sharp contrast to the dreamless nights he’d begun to have. He stopped dreaming when he was diagnosed, a black sleep that offered no fantasy of hope or healing, but also of no doom.
My dreams where vivid. I was always flying - but with one caveat – my feet and hands were bound by twine or fabric and always threatened to unravel. If they did, I’d plummet to the earth. Despite this threat, I’d tempt the gods and soar higher, moving silently from our bed to the places I’d been in my life – my boyhood home, my ementary school, Lake George, New Hampshire, Maine, The Village, 8th Avenue, the cars I’ve fooled around in, other men’s beds, my own empty bed before I’d met Brendan. I’d fly past Mrs. Dubini, the neighborhood grump, who once took my bike and gave me the finger. I flew past Donna Pertrillo who threatened to beat me up in the second grade and whom I avoided by running through neighbors backyards and hiding in bushes because I didn't want to be exposed as a sissy when she finally caught up to me. I passed my elementary school where I was the designated faggot. Brendan has that story too. But where my story stopped with words, his stopped with rocks. I fly past him too, a skinny young boy being stoned by the class bullies who taunted him because he wore yellow pants to school –- sticks and stones break more than bones.
I hover over a hotel room in the Bahamas and see Brendan's mother, a retired nurse, telling me, "My son's a good boy so don't you cheat on him. You know what's out there." I wanted to respond, "It's already in here. And he's still a good boy." Brendan's one fear, other than dying, was his mother finding out his HIV status and retracting the love he'd worked so hard to obtain.
"You'd think I would have known better, my mother being a nurse," He'd say over and over again when he was first diagnosed.
In the beginning, "Yes," was my only response.
I hover over the clinic in Yonkers I’d sat in the week after Brendan’s diagnosis. The clinic was once the building where I attended Sunday School. I was a challace bearer. It comforted me being there - the ghost of a previous life saddling up to my current one. I see the nurse taking my blood and telling me, "My husband doesn’t like gay people, but I have no problem with them."
Them.
I wanted to say, "Hey, I’m one of "them" remember, bitch?" Instead, I said nothing.
Meryl Streep is still dying on TV. I wish I could press rewind and watch her regain health, watch her marriage unifiy instead of divide, see the bud of the flower before it blossomed. But that is just a fantasy.
In the beginning of my relationship with Brendan, I always wished for the rewind. I wished for restored health and unbroken unions and of flying with no boundaries -- no bindings to rub me raw. I wished for no fear of infection when touching can lead to so much more. Through sickness and health, and divorce, and the little deaths that reside in the darkest corners of the soul, I wished for it all to stop because we were so fucking scared. Every once in a while there was hope. You can't live on hope alone though, but I banked on that to sustain us. Sometimes just living felt like a losing hand and other days it was a jackpot of small victories and tiny explosions.
I reach for the remote and press pause – knowing that I can’t go back, but wishing for it to stop, if even for a moment. I lean over and place a kiss on B’s forehead, an offering of hope and health to the gods or angels, or whoever is watching over us.

Faggot

You're nine and the boys in elementary school begin to call you faggot. You know the word has a pejorative meaning that complements the sense of differentness you've felt since you were three or four. In response to these taunts, you say nothing. You feel threatened, like something unknowing and evil will happen to if you challenge their accusations. If you go to a teacher or a friend you worry that you’ll be admitting something about yourself that they will hate you for too. You decide you’ll be whatever the boys say you are, as long as they leave you alone. You go numb and lose yourself in world where there’s fairness and retribution – they’ll get theirs. When you get home, you stand in front of your bedroom mirror, open your mouth and pretend to scream -- arms flailing in desperate flight, as a look of horror contorts your face. You try to purge the sting and assault of the school day but no amount of silent screaming will fill that deepening void. You think of screaming for real, but what will you alert your parents to? A faggot of a son? Who will help you? Who can you tell? You are desperate. Years later when you study art, Edvard Munch’s "The Scream" becomes a favorite painting -- a silent scream framed on the wall. Finally, someone understood.

Very Odd Things, 2.

1) Currently, I have a very good dermatologist. However, prior to finding him, I had one who asked to "see my shaft" during a skin check. I looked behind me, thinking perhaps he was talking about the elevator I failed to noticed when I first stepped into his office. There wasn't one. He definitely meant my penis. Then he asked me to turn around and pryed my butt cheeks open like he was peeling apart an orange and concluded his examination. "Did the dermatologist ever ask to see your shaft?" I said to my coworker who referred me to this doctor. When he replied "no" I then realized I would never return to that doctor again.

2) I was not exactly a model student in religious instruction classes and gave every teacher a pretty hard time, "Maybe it wasn't an Arc, but a raft with a few chickens. How did this priest get AIDS? I'm reading Greek and Roman mythology and don't see many difference between this and the Bible." Were favorite questions. It also pissed off my instructors to no end, which is why I suspect Father Dwyer, who looked like if David Letterman, Randy Travis and Frankenstein had a baby, called me one Sunday night to ask "Would you like to come and work in the rectory?" He said rectory slowly, drawing out the R-E-C-T part until my brain filled it in with rectum. "No I would not like to work in the rectory," although who knew it would be a place I don't mind visiting now and again as an adult. This refusal is why I had to write and read an essay about why George Michael's I Want Your Sex was damaging to the moral of Christians everywhere at my Confirmation retreat when I was in the 8th Grade.

Very Odd Things That I hadn't Previously Thought Very Odd, But Now That I Am Making a List, Realize How Very Odd They Are.

1) My high school gym teacher encouraged the boys to wear shorts for grades of "A". She stabbed her husband in the hand in a local bar the year after I graduated H.S.

2) Mom made me give her foot massages until I was 12.

3) My Uncle Puggy had a urine collection on his window sill. He did not like to use public restrooms and would cut holes in all his pants pockets, insert a jar, pee, cap it and save it on his window sill for posterity.

4) I have a former uncle who claimed to have penis radar, "Women send vibes to my crotch and I can tell they want me."

5) When I was 19 I was a maid for a 75 year-old man who paid me $25 dollars an hour to move Undergear and International Male Magazine from one end of his living room to the other. When he answered the door for the first time wearing only a button down shirt and underwear I said nothing. When he grabbed my ass as he hugged me goodbye I thought "I don't want to give up the money" And agreed to go back several more times. He was beaten by a mugger and died from the injuries when I was in my late 20's.

6) My dead Aunt Ann was a friend of Jennifer Lopez's mother who broke and entered Mama Lopez's house upon their first meeting.

7) My italian great grandmother died when she discovered that what she thought was her 10th pregnancy was actually a very large tumor.

8) My mom's friend, Diane Suatner calls her husband "fuck face" and keeps his favorite watch hidden in the glove compartment of my mother's car.

9) My father married a woman with the same first, middle, and confirmation name as my mother. Of course she took our last name and sometimes gets my mom's social security info.

10) Her son, Lou, hit on my sister at my Dad's and her wedding. "I'd like to get to know you in different circumstances," so said Lou.

Crystal Meth Sunday Morning

One Sunday morning I found a vial of drugs in front of my apartment door. Right there in the hallway. I knew it was illicit by the way it stared back at me. Torn and crumbled pornography pages would beckon me the same way when I was in junior high school. I just knew within those folds of paper might be a penis or a vagina, or even better, both. I developed a sixth sense for all things illicit. I knew this vial at my door signaled me the same way. Whatever it was, my spidey sense tingled. I shouldn't have this. I did though. The dog inspected it first. I grabbed it from his mouth. Last thing I needed was shih tzu on meth, or crack, or whatever it was. I've heard those stories. In the 90's I had a friend who had a cat who acidently did coke and boucned off the walls for several days before landing face down in its tender vitles. Even more recently I heard a story from friends on Fire Island who had a sharemate who's chiunaa had become addicted to cocaine after licking the residue of the table and floors from his owenr's use. This is serious shit. I've listened to it daily for years. My social work job sees to it that I hear stories of the worst of the addictions. Crystal Meth stories are never pretty and I was pretty sure that crystal meth was staring up at me from this tiny vial on the ground.
I wasn't even sure if I truly had a drug in my possession. Maybe it was crack cocaine. Maybe it was Meth. How do you know? I grew envious of the common drug dealer who I'd bet my left testicle could tell from a across a football field if I was holding was crystal meth, crack or organic carmelized sea salt from Whole Foods.
But me? Crystal Meth? Crack cocaine? Flintstone chew-ables? How would I know? I've never touched the stuff, never wanted to. The extent of my drug taking has been one toke of pot in 2000 at a New Year's Eve celebration. I say toke like I'm a 60 year old stoner. I "smoked" with a a local news anchor and promptly passed out in his guest bedroom. The next day I watched as he downed a bag of Doritos for breakfast, fascinated with the way the orange crop dusting of powder over took his finger tips and corners of his mouth. The only other time I smoked pot was in 2006 when a friend tipped my head back like a PEZ dispenser and blew smoke into my mouth because I was too timid to actually hold the little smoldering joint in my own hands. This is not A Million Little Pieces.
But I did have an illegal substance in my house and I loved it. I felt dirty and excited, like I'd just found condoms and porn in the back of my Dad's underwear drawer. I was the good kid doing something unexpected and wrong. This was better than tapping on blind peoples windows at The Jewish Home for the Blind and yelling "look!" How would those blind jewish people ever know if it really was Jesus if he came to town? I was doing a test. Because I suspected at least some of them had partial vision.
I uncapped the vial and smelled the acrid little rocks. The odor permeated the room for hours after and it disgusted and intrigued me in equal measure. The smell reminded of the way addicts smell -- a little meth, a little bad breath, a little few days too long with the same clothes on.
I called and told a bunch of friends. Several suggested I drop the vial down the garbage chute and be done with it. They were afraid I'd get arrested because I had an illegal substance in my possession. One even sited the Patriot Act. As far as I'd known I wasn't under surveillance or part of a drug ring. Part of me enjoyed making my friends a little nervous. Another part of me enjoyed listening to their own paranoia unfold. These are the same friends who don't step on a crack or reveal a few days too soon their pregnancy news. Other friends revealed their own meth snorting experiences, which did not surprise me in the least, as I've also known them to fuck random Jamaican men on the beach and fashion bongs out of Barbie doll heads.
Since I've been looking for a hobby, I figured I'd try to smoke some. And holy shit that was a rush. I'd never felt anything like it. It was like a perpetual orgasm. But the smell -- Pine Sol, baby farts, and armpits of the homeless -- is what kept me from smoking the entire vial.
Kidding. I didn't smoke the drugs. I did begin my own exhaustive Internet DEA-like search of meth making sites, looking for images that would verify that I had meth and not crack. Crack is so passe. And then I got bored. Which is something I imagine the addict in the throws of binge doesn't do. I placed it on my kitchen table and went about my business. By the end of the day, I'd forgotten about it. The meth had become part of the table. The red topped vial fit in snuggly next to my Easter chocolates and over ripe bananas. It just was.
I always wonder how that could be. When does the drug, with it's taboo and shame, just co-exist with the toilet paper and the coke cans and the Brita water filers? I'm not sure if there's an easy answer. Part of the problem seems to be that after a while, it just does fit in. One day it's there and one day you're not.
This morning I took the vial out with the recyclables. Then I took the dog for a walk and battled her leg lock. When I came back inside, I looked for another vial. I wondered where it came from and who it was intended for. My middle easterner neighbors with their four children and one bedroom? Or the gay couple next door who I thanked for holding the door minutes ago? Neither fit the profile of the drug addict. I may fit it the most. And for a moment on Sunday, if an stranger walked in and looked on the kitchen table, it would be true.

Wee Dog

"Excuse me, is that your sneaker? Please tell me that furry thing is your sneaker." This is asked by a drunken Irishmen on Poop Alley, a street in Sunnyside, Queens so named because this is where the entire neighborhood goes to relieve there dogs. And sometimes themselves. No it's not my sneaker. It's my shih tzu, Samson, 6 months and 2 weeks old and resting comfortably on the same sidewalk as Drunky McAlcoholic, Jr.

"That's a wee dog."

He really said "wee". Vomit McPowers: The Sneaker Who Dogged Me.

Samson looks at him and looks away. He can smell the wiff of an insult the same way I can smell the multiple pints of ale that stain Drunky McFuckerson's polo.

"He is wee. But he thinks he's a Saint Bernhard," I say.

This gets a laugh from Drunky McShitstains but he quickly turns serious.

"Please tell me you've got a girlfriend or a wife."

"Nope, neither. It's just me and a cute small dog."

I see the letters that spell G-A-Y sky written by a small imaginary plane launched from the hangar in his head. GAY hangs and evaporates for a few moments and dissolves into a wry expression. He wants to fuck with me and is going to. At this point in my life I can count being called a faggot in so many different ways, I welcome what might be a new creative way to insult the homosexuals of the world via me. I doubt it will be as funny as what my gay friends sling at each other ("You're so loose, it's like throwing a Twinkie down a hallway" still gets my biggest laugh) and considering Drunky McBeatshiswife current state, I'm betting on something less than stellar.

"Well..uh...."

Here he goes. I see the sputter before the take off. This plane is going into a tailspin before it even leaves the ground. He looks up. He looks down. Slowly. I'm pretty sure the street spins for him. He looks at me. There's not that much to make fun of. Although if he stepped closer, I do have nice naturally arched eyebrows that looked plucked, but aren't'. He seems disappointed. I'm not going to tell him about all my moles and freckles that if connected could create Perseus's Belt, The Big and Little Dipper and part of the solar system, at least up till Uranus. And then he's back on my sneakers.

"Just don't wear those sneakers and good lord those socks."

I'm wearing black Pro-keds and socks with two solid blue and green strips around the tops. Which I'd find cute and fuckable if the long haired beautiful 22 year old Colombian college student in my building who keeps trying to seduce me through my dog were wearing them. Maybe Drinky McStumblenuts wants to fuck me. So he attacks my sneakers. Maybe he has a foot fetish. Making fun of my shoes is hardly the insult I was anticipating. Then he mumbles something about the worlds number one tennis player Roger Federer. Who I'm pretty sure is not gay but who does wear black sneakers on the courts at the U.S. Open. He also wears all black and takes to the courts (at least in Queens the night I saw him) to the Imperial March from the Star Wars movies.
I'm perplexed and so is Stinky McDrunkoughy who looks to me as if he's just taser gunned himself in the testicles -- numbed and Life Goes On retarded. He's run out of steam and insults, even as poor as they are.

Barfy McVomitorium waves and stumbles off, obviously disappointed by his inability to effectively make fun of me and Samson. Samson watches as he walks away. He has not moved from his spot on the sidewalk. He then gets up to where Stanky McBreatherson was sanding, circles for a moment and takes a dump. Satisifed and guilty that I let the dump sit there a little longer tha usual, I clean up, slip on my dog sneaker and head home.

Everyone's A Porn Star

I like the porno. Not the blonde-haired tanned Falcon porn, but the amateur pimple on the butt kind that makes me hot and cringe at the same time. Guys who look real and not always perfectly gym toned and 8th Avenue ready -- that's what amateur porn used to look like to me -- real and vulnerable and ballsy. So what if you've got belly fat and don't suck it in on your Internet sex pic. So do I. Sometimes when I'm naked, seated and look down at my stomach I'm reminded of a very pale shar pei. Today, though, it's difficult to distinguish everyday guys from porno rent boys. Everyday guy now has the worked out body of an Olympic gymnast, sans the tumbling ability, and every guy seems to want to show it off on the web or on reality TV -- a blight on culture if there ever was one. My favorite chat room/profile site is one where some guys pose tastefully while other are in full porn poses --- legs akimbo, ass in the air, come-hither looks enticing you to read their profiles that tell you they are aggressive muscle bottoms who don't like fats or fems and only like straight acting guys (by the way, whatever you call it; straight-acting, dl, banjee, it's still the complex and confusing chestnut "in the closet" ). These boys also cop to loving Britney, Janet and dancing, dancing, dancing! But alas, the wanna keep it real by making sure they are as straight acting as possible. However, eyebrows waxed into a permanently perplexed expression of surprise are dead giveaways that you are indeed not straight, unless you are a Guido, and in that case you are just retarded. I peruse these websites because I'm a letch and because I like to see what other guys are packing and what lengths they'll go to show me and also because I'm horny and stressed and need some new material to fuel a masturbatory fantasy. Lately however, I've been distressed by the bodies. The bodies of these men and boys are beautiful - perfectly and unnaturally so. It's as if they've traded the pusuit of life for the pursuit of a perfection. What looks so perfect, what looks so grand, comes from lots of hard work at the gym, lots of eating the right thing (chalk tasting protein bars), and maybe steroids, lots of unrelenting attention to making the body right to compensate for a perceived wrong -- the gay self. I always see the scared gay boy on the playground whenever I look at these over-confident photos of smiling eyes and winking assholes. And sometimes I see myself. I feel inadequate. I feel low. I feel angry. Where do I fall into this? I spend time in the gym and have for years and have a body that is appreciated. Guys like my legs and arms and chest and tell me this. Still, when I'm at the gym I have an unrelenting voice that tells me I could be better. That I could be leaner, that I don't work hard enough and that's why I feel so inadequate. And then there's a healthier part that steps in. It tells me that I look good. It tells me that this attention to ones' body and the measurement of it against another guy is a fruitless, futile, unnecessarily competitive struggle. Then I jump on big muscle.com and feel bereft. What am I doing wrong? I must be undisciplined. I must be weak. These guys look great. And so do all these famous people who stare at me on the supermarket checkout line. Antonio Sabato Jr. looks great. So does Ricky Martin. And Madonna. Then I realize, they are all narcissistic dicks. And the porno boys that I drool over on the Internet, amateur and professional (is professional really the right term for a guy who grunts and comes the same way I do, except I don't do it in front of a camera and I don't wax my taint) may be dicks too. Not on purpose, but for buying into this body ideal, the same way I do.

My Face Is Sliding Off My Head

"My Face is sliding off my head." I say this outloud as I examine myself in the mirror, checking and reconfirming that I’m not getting any younger. My slackening jaw line is in no way cute and unfortunately a inevitable fact of gravity. While the onslaught of time is cruel and unkind – who likes to see their face slide off their head? I am struck by the notion that no matter how I age into my mid-life, I’m still a high school student working diligently at life the same way I struggled in Mr Putorti’s 10th grade trigonometry class – I tried the formulas, tapped on my calculator and put it all down on paper but always with one eye on the clock. I was there but never really there, present but never engaged. I never really tried. And so, I’m still approaching life as I always have, except now with the knowledge that time is ticking – tick, tock, tick, tock, take a chance you stupid ho.
Now, adult life is like high school with fatter, more wrinkled kids. And I sometimes wonder if I’m present but not engaged. I want don’t want to be here, you see. I want to be there -- LA, Cabo, The French Riviera, Sundance – cavorting with Tara Reid or Tommy Lee and his penis or Beyonce and hers. I want to play like a child and run around half naked and have paparazzi photograph me nude as I stretch on my private balcony after having sex with entire cast of The O.C, even Peter Gallagher and his eyebrows. I want a scandal to rock my world and a lawsuit to follow after these photos find their way to a website and a Details article about the penis size of male celebrities. Instead, I dress in Express Men’s button down shirts and smart flat front pants where I keep my penis modestly hidden away. I’d like a weiner scandal or a paternity lawsuit that confuses my family back home and all my gay friends who’ve never known me to sleep with women.
I’ll do anything to keep perpetually 18 - 25, the MTV demographic I’ve so mourned the loss of as I’ve slipped deeper into my 30's. I want to suspend in a moment of youthful exuberance and leap into the pages of InTouch or US Weekly, Hollywood’s year books. I want a permanent tan that’s applied like cooking spray. I want to talk about my fast metabolism and that’s why I’m so skinny and not because I puke or eat a steady diet of air, cigarettes and Red Bull. I want to wear wildly inappropriate, large reflecting pool sunglasses and date someone with the same first name as myself, whose last name ends in "adopolous". I want to stay young, fit, sexy and, most importantly, smokin’ hot. I want to get pregnant so I can loose the weight "fast" after working out seven hours a day, because that’s what most mothers get to do. Of course, as a man, the pregnancy stuff is tough – but I still want to work out seven hours a day – It would mean that that was my job. And that my job wouldn’t be my job. Which mean I’d be rich or have a sugar daddy or mommy. If it keeps me young and beautiful and barely skimming reality, sign me up. I could look at myself all day and stay stuck and enjoy it.
I want it all, not this mundane existence where I age, go to work, have messy relationships where I can’t say I love you; fuck the wrong people; fuck over the right ones; try to be kind to my family even though I want to light them on fire; try to make a difference. I want a tabloid existence, where I’m only seen at parties or on holiday. I don’t want the uncomfortable ick and mess of real life, where things don’t wrap up so tidy after my publicist does a spin cycle. I want denial of all the inevitable truths about life and age and death. I want to be the "it boy" posing for the celebrity mags. I want to win the senior poll. I want best looking, most likely to succeed, best abs, I want it all. And I want my frame of reference to eternally be grades 10 - 12.
That’s why I love 50 year-old gay men in Abercrombie and Fitch. It’s desperate. It’s an over-identification with the cute boys in the billboard. It’s false. There are hot 50 year old for sure, but even that hot 50 year-old in Abercrombie is a desperate attempt to stay relevant long past the MTV demographic has expired. I’ll let you know what I do when I get there. If you see me with a Von Dutch cap turned sideways, sign me up for lethal injection or at the least a mild shock therapy. Hopefully by that time, I’ll be happy with here, and not care about there. Here’s to hoping.
My face continues to slide, and it will. Aging doesn’t stop. All you can hope for is a few expressions of disbelief when someone younger finds out you’re the age you’re at. "Oh god, I thought you were 27!" "Me", I’d reply, mock surprised. "No. I’m not. Now, seven years, ago, maybe, but no, I’m 34." As I’m saying this I think of the at home peel I have sitting in my medicine cabinet. The bowls of blueberries and other age defying fruits that I readily ingest. The way I hang from my ankles like a bat when I sleep at night. How I grow disappointed in myself that I can’t sleep like Cleopatra in a tomb and instead toss and turn and lie on my face, adding to my wrinkle potential. And then I think something slightly deeper than the shallow waters I’m wading in. That this focus on the external, the lines in my face that will be deep enough to hold coins (have you seen my dad?), is all subterfuge -- a form of resistance that keeps me worrying about the inevitable and uncontrollable and from not achieving the tangible. It’s bullshit and it’s got to stop. Here’s to being here and not there. It begins today.

From The Desk of My Dad

Barbara Ann Marie Lorio. It wasn’t intentional that I married a woman who has the same first, middle and confirmation name as my first wife. Not at all. I guess when you think about it, it wasn’t intentional that I’m named after my father and my son is named after me. I like to think of these things as serendipitious coincides that I had a spefiic influence and control over. And when your two wives have the same name, there's a certain emotional getting over of the first one I didn't have to do. When I was a boy I had several cats with the same name. One would die, and get a new one and give it the same name. Replacment pussy.
Some people might argue that we, my father and I, wanted little spitting images of ourselves. But when it was abundantly clear that my little spitting image was more interested in Sonny and Cher for the Bob Mackie gowns and lively banter and witty repartee and not Cher’s ass, I pretty much gave up on molding him in my likeness and turned to my daughter, immediately shoving a ball and mitt into her eager little hands. Goddam it, I was going to a baseball game that my son was going to play at even if that son was my daughter. And shit, she’s my best friend. Even if she hasn’t talked to me since I got married to Barbara 2: Electric Boogaloo.
I like to tell myself that it’s not because of me that the family has fallen apart since the divorce, because it’s absolutely not. I never once expected my daughter to rifle through the desktop on the computer we shared when we all lived at her mother’s house. I never expected her to find that email from Barbara 2: Electric Boogaloo about that blow job – which by the way was euphemistic and a metaphor for something and not actually what any of you might think it is. Sometimes when somebody writes at three o’clock in the morning in an IM that they want to tickle your balls with a feather and blow you retarded, they don’t necessary mean it. And Barbara 2 is not a bar cow cuntrag that my daughter has often called her, but quite a lovely thrice married woman who vaguely resembles George Washington, when her hair goes gray and Captain Caveman when she colors it, who may or may not know her siblings because and these are her words not mine – "My father fucked all of the immigrant factory works he employed." Except the guys. Her father didn’t fuck guys.
That’s left to my son. Who, did I mentioned took the buns out of his foot long Princess Leah and gave her a fabulous cut and color right before the one dinner party I had with some of the guys from the firehouse, back in the 1978? I use fag speak like "fabulous" because I support my son’s gayness. Well lets just say we never had another one of those parties and let’s also just say that no one bought the lie that my wife tried to float that my son was my daughter who was just a little bit butch. She was mortified by the kids early predilection for all things fag. Imagine me still being married to wife one, with her feet planted firmly in the soil of delusion – which blossomed wild and ravenously the longer we stayed married and the more my son cranked his Madonna collection and spent hours in front of that TV switching from Designing Women and The Golden Girls. Funny shows, but even I felt like sucking a dick after an hour or two. The kid was drawing large silhouetted pants suits for Delta Burke. And my wife ignored this. Ignored it!
That was the problem with our marriage, I was the realistic one and my kid’s mother, she was the one out there. I mean really out there. I, on the other had was able to recognize, through my dry heaves, that the men calling my house asking for my son were probably one of the many smooth Asian, puerto rican or black men (because they just couldn't white, could they?) he was having group sex with and probably getting infected with all kids of sexually transmitted diseases. But I also realized, that it was more than likely a passing phase and once the right woman came along, he’d rejoin the ranks of heterosexuality and make his father proud. And maybe he’d finally get over my asking him to begin going by his middle name, for some, you know, autonomy. I mean look at the freak David Bowie’s kid. He named him Zowie Bowie. And now he goes by Randolph. Randolph Bowie. Or Matlida. With a half a fag father like David Bowie, a boy can be given a girls name and it’s okay. Fruits. So Tom the 3rd shouldn’t feel bad by going by another name. The time’s run out on the family name. The pride in it is gone. I tell this to Barbara 2 and she feels there doesn’t need to be two living Tom Lorios. It’s just weird. She agrees.

"My Dog is Racist"

I've begun taking my dog Samson for walks and it's been a fantastic way to meet other dogs and dog owners. I met a gay couple and their Yorkie who spoke of their dog and them selves in the first, second and third person. Their dog was precious in a way that made me want sqeeze it to see if it pooped cotton candy. It didn't. I met a straight girl who warned me to keep away from her Lilo & Stich looking pooch because, "He's a biter," she said as she made a clawed grab at my face. Woof.
"One night he bit my nose and I gushed blood all over my pillow. I needed stiches. It was very bad of him, wasn't? Wasn't it?"
She said this to the dog and he stared intently at her, as if he imagined her head a pork chop enticing him to take a nibble. He was a rescue dog but it seemed she'd benefit from a rescue as well. I've also met several pugs -- there's one name Louie whose owner didn't get my sarcasm when I responded that I gave my dog Quaaludes when she commented how calm he was.
Generally my dog walking excursions have been lovely. It's a pretty simple formula: Walk cute dog, meet many people. Recently, though, these excursions have taken a much darker tone. I met the town drunk, a "professional dog walker" who's rumored to tie each dog to various doors in his apartment while he goes and gets hammered at PJ O'Shitteries. He gave me some dog training advice that sounded vaguely like, "Dfawgs, dfawgs...slippers and rotten kotex assumption." Which I took as a warning. I met an older Filipino gent who, after mooning over my dog, grabbed my shoulder and said, "You work out, you need massage, I do massage in my apartment, free." He love me long time. I also met a dog owner who told me in a hushed tone that her dog was a racist. Really? A racist dog?
"My dog doesn't like black dogs." I knew where this was going.
"Oh." That's me, increduosly.
"Or...." looks around and whispers,"...black people."
This was an older German woman, with a thick German accent --just the right age to remember first hand a certain kind of intolerance popular circa WWII.
"I couldn't get him groomed because the groomer was black."
"Really?" Me again. I don't believe this. But I don't challenge it either. I'm too concerned with being polite than challenging her. I could have just said, "Well my dog doesn't like racists," and walked away.
Instead I imagined this woman five years earlier in a KKK hood placing a smaller hood over her puppy. I imagined her dog in his little matching hood dancing around a cross and practicing his new trick --woofing "white power." I go to the surreal when I should be angry. It's not working anymore.
We parted ways and I realized how profoundly stupid her statement was. Did she actually believe her dog was racist from his own free will? Dogs absorb so much -- I see it with my 4 month old puppy every day. When I'm sad, he's sad. When I'm elated, he is too. When I create a profile called DONKYHUNGXLG to stalk my ex on a website he's not even on, my dog is ashamed for and with me. And so I imagined my older German friend transmitting her own fear of black people straight to her young puppy, a telegraph of specific stranger anxiety that lasted until this day.
So far my puppy isn't afraid of any specific type of person. But I'm not sure I am either. Although I did almost cry a little the first time I saw a middle eastern woman in a full birka. She was driving down the road coming toward me in a black SUV. All I saw were her eyes. She looked liked a slightly crazed female Darth Vader and I almost crashed my car into a busload of children. Okay, women in birkas on an imaginary jihad scare me.
As for my dog, I am certain he fears two things -- the trash compactor and a cardboard cat in my hallway that he either thinks is real or recalls the bang it made when I accidentally kicked it over when I first brought him into the house when he was 12 weeks old. He'd never seen a cat before and so I've theorized that it's tied to his fear response of loud unfamiliar noises.
The next time this issue of racist dogs comes up, and I'm sure it will -- it's happened twice already -- I'll turn it around a bit. I'll ask flat out about how the owner feels about; black people, Mexicans, gays, meter maids or who ever is being maligned. Because I can't contain the stupidity anymore. And can't collude with it either. My silence gives permission and surely there's some crime in that as well. Remember, it's not the dog who's afraid, it's the owner, unless of course, the offending person raped or mugged the dog. If the said person is a dog rapist, then the dogs fear is understandable. Although, if your dog is getting raped by anybody other than you, there's a bigger problem at hand here.

Gay Dog, Gay Owner?

I was walking my puppy, Samson, last night when I intersected another dog walker and her cute Silky Terrier (it’s bigger than a Yorkie and way silkier). We talked for a minute or two and she told me how cute my dog was, which got no protest from me because he is friggin' adorable and smarter than most people you went to college with and your dad. I reached down to her dog, Elizabeth, she moved toward me, sniffed my hand and went about her business. Her owner was shocked.
"Usually Elizabeth is terrified of men. She's just terrified."
"Oh, well maybe she can feel my good vibe."
I remembered my childhood pet squirrels, Chip and Dale. They would sit on the window sill of our breakfast nook and look in on me. I'd take a bag of peanuts to the backyard and hand feed them until I exhausted my supply. I wasn't the only one in my family who had a way with the rodent. My great-grandfather, Clarence Bell, a mailman in Somersworth, NH, used to have a family of chipmunks that lived in the rocks in his basement that he hand fed from their infancy. I swear, there's pictures.
I used to pretend I could nonverbally communicate with my squirrels just by making eye contact. I also used to think I could will a tennis ball into a net or beyond the baseline, especially when Chris Everett-Lloyd was locked in a battle with Martina Navratilova. I also used to get Chris Evert-Lloyd confused with Christine McVie of Fleetwood Mac. But that's another post.
"I just can't believe that Elizabeth likes you, she really is afraid of men."
Pause.
Me blinking. Her thinking.
Pause.
"Are you gay?" she said jokingly, with a you must be tone.
"Yes." I tried to say it immediately, to prove, I was comfortable with this easy and obvious acknowledgment. Tip: I'm not. Also another post.
And then her nonverbal eye communication -- "Well that explains it."
"You couldn't tell with my dog?"
I have a four month old Shih-Tzu, who's cuter than any kid you'll pop out, except Amanda Clayman's, especially if she's reading this. Then it was over and we went about our business. I was a gay gay non-man because her dog liked me.
A day later, I'm mad. Because what happened is an example of the way some straight women (even some fag hags) view gay men. We’re seen as less than "men". I hate to break it to you ladies, you your dog does not have gaydar. It's a dog. They just respond well to kind people. That's it.
I admit, when I first got Samson, I joked that my dog only liked gay men and straight women. But he’d only met gay men and straight women. Then Samson met my sister's boyfriend. Not gay. And his breeder, Mark, wasn’t gay either. I have realized that my dog is more reserved around straight men I meet on the street. But that's in response to a straight man's reserve toward him. I read many straight men's response to my dog. I get it. When a dog looks like an Ewok, Gizmo and the Olsen Twins it's hard not to froth like a strawberry smoothie with cotton candy frosting. Samson is that cute. More secure straight men can admit it and then punch themselves in the balls to compensate for their lapse. "We tough." Other less secure straight may tense up and get a look like they might want to kill a busload of retarded children with a crossbow. Secretly they want to melt, too. Instead they act macho, realizing a crack in their facade could compromise their status as unadulterated pussy fucking men.
So I ‘m a little mad. This women intended no harm, I truly believe that. But what it speaks to is how wrong we get it. The sensitive male gets pegged the homo. The homo male has to feel bad for liking the small, cute dog. The straight male can't like the cute dog for fear that he'll be labeled the homo. As my straight dad says, "It's pure bullshit." It speaks to our internalized homophobia and what "gay" and "straight" means to us – especially the older we get.
There are several pre-teen boys on my floor. They've yet to be touched by the severe straight acting expectations that will get placed on them as the mature. Right now, they love my dog, think he’s cute and knock on my door to pet and hold him. It's sweet. I've never given thought to who may be gay or straight, I don't even think of myself as a sexual orientation when we're all sitting on the floor outside my apartment joking around and playing with the dog. I just enjoy the moment, free of societal expectations and implications. It brings me back to a time where I would enjoy feeding the squirrels and just being -- there was no anxiety, no fear, just freedom. This weekend, my dad comes from Florida to meet the dog. My guess is the dog's going to love him. If Samson does love him, I wonder if that will mean my dad's gay?