What are my favorite things, everyone? Let's all say them together now:

1. Newsies
2. "Shut Up and Dance with Me"
3. The cute guys in Newsies
4. The cute guys in Newsies who can tap
5. The cute guys in Newsies who tap while the other cute guys in Newsies sing "Shut Up and Dance with Me"
6. Lists
7. The tapper in the brown shirt
8. The singer in the white shirt
9. Marriage proposals from any of the tappers and singers in Newsies
10. Making a list that stops at an even 10
11. Oops

#WeirdStuffICollectOnMyPhone

#WeirdStuffICollectOnMyPhone

#WeirdStuffICollectOnMyPhone

We never liked you, Dubya Bush

We never liked your monkey face,
Your Jeebus-lovin’ master race,
Your evil axis, your pet Dick,
Your obviously elfin prick,

Your fake Iraqi weapons trove,
Your puppetmaster Karl Rove,
The way you swing at words and miss,
Your inarticulatedness,

Your utter lack of common sense,
Your federal funds for abstinence,
Your intellectual bourgeoisie,
Your selfish foreign policy,

Your Halliburton gravy boat,
Your nine-eleven “The Pet Goat,”
The fact that you’re a fucking dunce,
That pretzel chips could fool you once,

The Constitution you destroyed,
Your deficit, your unemployed,
Your screw-the-poor economy,
Your hurricane goatfuckery,

Your loathing of the Fourth Estate,
Your love for Proposition Hate,
Your house of cards, your brain of cheese,
Your Nazi SCOTUS appointees,

Your solipsistic “stay the course,”
Your outright lack of true remorse
For leaving the United States
A country that the world now hates.

We never liked you, Dubya Bush.
And so we kick you in the tush
And get you gone and throw a rope
To Obama, our newfound hope.

How to turn 40: Step 6

I've finally reached that magical birthday where I honestly don't need any more stuff. But I do need the fiancé. More than air. And while our country's moral leaders struggle valiantly to convince the world that our love is something to be feared and loathed, I struggle to wonder if those moral leaders will ever know the happiness and stability we share in their own lives. Stupid fuckers.

So I sneaked out of work a little early tonight and met the fiancé at the Cook County Clerk's Office. Once we got the baby's breath arranged in our hair, we began our slow and hopeful march down the escalator to the subterranean Vital Records Division, where we had a brief but meaningful ceremony. We set the mood with the first two choruses of Standing In Line Behind The Couple With The Kid In The Bassinet. Then we had a reading of Please Print Your Names On The Form Exactly As They Appear On Your Driver's Licenses. After the obligatory Double-Checking Of The Driver's Licenses and the traditional Waiting While The Clerk Runs To The Printer, we declared our love symbolically through the charming local custom of Handing The Cashier Thirty Dollars.

And we were officially domestic partnered! Which is the best 40th birthday present I've ever gotten.

The county's standard ceremony package doesn't come with a photography service, so my newly minted domestic partner's brother—who was our witness—took this lovely portrait of us just outside the chapel with my cell phone camera, which I then slightly color-corrected in iPhoto so we'd look extra-tan on our special day:

And then we headed up a few blocks to meet my entire family at the architecturally fabulous Grand Lux Café for a celebratory dinner followed by molten chocolate cakes. Because no domestic partnership or wedding—or 40th birthday, for that matter—is valid without pastries that bleed when you cut them. And instead of a honeymoon-like cab ride back to our condo, we walked six blocks to the el so my niece and nephew could cap off their evening in all the joy and wonder that comes with riding a train.

I may have lost a fiancé today, but I gained a two-disc Sweeney Todd DVD. Oh, and a domestic partner. And as I type this, my domestic partner and his brother and my entire family–everyone I love the most in this world—are safe and cozy and asleep under our roof. And that, my friends, is how you have the Best 40th Birthday Ever.

Dear Senator Craig,

By one way or another—the fact that you’re a so-called “family values” crusader who got caught trolling for gay sex in a public toilet, your denials and desperate blamestorming that strain credulity and goad the nation into mocking you, or even the Dubya administration throwing you under the bus to pull focus from its Alberto Gonzales debacle—you’ve managed to plant yourself squarely at the top of the news with levels of emphasis and longevity that even I in my gleeful self-righteous Schadenfreude find to be excessive.

I’d never heard of you until last week, but the nation and I have come to know your type intimately over the last couple decades and especially over the last couple months: The purportedly Christian representative of the people who will say and do anything, no matter how untrue or unfair or unethical, to turn gay citizens into social and legal pariahs. The purportedly straight Christian moral leader who has such little respect for his wife and his family and his marriage vows that he will hire prostitutes and have sex in public toilets and risk destroying lives beyond his own. The purportedly honorable lawmaker who arrogantly thinks he’s above the laws of man and nature and common decency and therefore can get away with anything he wants.

And I’ve grown to hate you. Intensely.

It’s not just because you’ve campaigned so hard to barter away my rights as a gay man for hate votes. It’s not just because you march lockstep with a theopolitical party that has calibrated exactly how many lies about gay people it needs to feed a gullible electorate to stay in power. It’s not just because your actions ironically corroborate the ridiculous image you’ve tried to create in the public’s mind that gay people are shameless, compulsive sexual predators who will do anything—no matter how disgusting or offensive or inappropriate—in the pursuit of an orgasm.

But now, by keeping your wide-stance, waving-under-the-toilet-wall sexual perversions in the news—and vowing to actually fight the charges to which you’ve already pleaded guilty, which just guarantees more and more prominent coverage—you’re promoting your vulgar sexual lifestyle to my fiancé’s and my nieces and nephews.

They’re at the age where their parents are working hard to promote good citizenship habits, which include watching the news to stay informed about what’s important in the world. They’re at the age where they’re discovering that the dominant heterosexual paradigm isn’t the only paradigm—and that the gay paradigm that people like you have worked so tirelessly to teach kids is something shameful—is as close to them as someone in their family whom they love and admire. They’re at the age where their own sexuality—whatever it may be—is slowly starting to manifest itself and where they are absorbing every bit of information they find on the topic.

And now you are forcing their parents to explain what’s bad about touching someone’s foot in the bathroom, what a mugshot is and why you look so unhappy in yours, what it means when a grown man claims on national television that he is not gay. And they’re struggling to do it in neutral terms so as not to portray all gay people—especially these kids’ beloved uncles—as deceitful and desperate and selfish and utterly pathetic as you are.

In different circumstances, I’d feel sorry for you for feeling trapped as a gay man in the gay-hostile straight world you’ve tried to create for yourself. But you’ve helped build this gay hostility, one anti-gay vote and one anti-gay speech at a time. I’d feel sorry for your wife, but she willfully married into your so-called “family values” world and is as complicit in its fallout as you are.

So instead I just sit here hating you. And hoping that you end up being the purportedly straight Christian moral leader caught living a sexually compulsive secret gay life who finally turns the ship around. That after months of Ted Haggards and Jim Naugles and Bob Allens and David Vitters and now you, your gullible electorate will wake up and realize that gay people are not the enemy and selective Christianity is not the answer and your version of “family values” is nothing but a divisive platitude used for political grandstanding.

But I know better. There will be more of you bubbling to the surface like the foul pond scum you are. So-called "social conservative" Republicans will use your stories to further vilify gay people. Religious leaders will use your stories to further scare the public. Reactionary voters will use your stories to further justify their hatred.

And until you work to undo the damage you’ve done to the public’s understanding of gay people, you will suffer more than the rest of us. And for that, I will be glad.

Putting the gay in engagement

I know: Thanks to the tireless efforts of intellectual visionaries like George W. Bush and pillars of nuptial morality like Newt Gingrich, our engagement is legally little more than a delusional fantasy. If Bob Allen could empty his mouth long enough to speak on the subject, he’d parrot the usual litany of right-wing inanities against our little folly: gay marriage is some yet-to-be-defined “threat” to straight marriage, the gays don’t deserve the “special right” of marriage, if we let men marry men we’ll have to let women marry Ann Coulter their own dirty vaginas, etc. etc. etc. ad stupidium.

While I obviously find every argument against gay marriage to be a bigger load of crap than the entire Dubya kakistocracy, the fact remains that the boyfriend and I are currently stuck as second-class, no-real-options citizens on this front. And while I bet that gay marriage will be a complete, non-straight-marriage-threatening reality within a decade, any kind of wedding we stage in the next few years will have all the legal standing of a party with exceptionally delicious cake and a huge AMEX bill.

But that doesn’t change the fact of us: two men who through dumb luck and a mind-boggling string of coincidences managed to cross paths a year ago this week, discover in each other that elusive missing piece—that once-in-a-lifetime emotional symbiosis that the poets celebrate and the Delilah callers can only dream about—and realize that it’s a good thing we like each other because this relationship is bigger than the both of us and we’re in it for the long haul.

The fact is, we’ve been talking about our wedding since the day we met. I think we were introduced with words to the effect of you two should meet each other—you both love Sondheim. Within an hour we’d assembled a list of Sondheim songs we jokingly—jokingly!—said we should have sung at our wedding. Two months later, the night before he left for a month to train for his new job, he asked—with the most adorable quiver in his voice—if I’d be waiting for him when he got back. I took his hand and said, “You know how we’ve been joking about all those wedding songs for the last two months? I wasn’t joking.” Then I took a deep breath and resigned myself to being a lonely little wedding singer for the next four weeks. Thankfully, I soon lost my job and the developer of my new condo got murdered so I had a billion things to keep my mind occupied during our separation.

Early this summer, we started talking seriously about planning some kind of commitment ceremony. While the missing legal component will remain a violent slap on our faces, I really feel it’s important to declare our love for and commitment to each other in front of witnesses. And then have exceptionally delicious cake. And that will have to tide us over until we can drag our elected officials kicking and screaming into reality. Where we can beat them. Somehow we landed on a late fall 2008 target date for our wedding, probably because late fall offers the cheapest rates if we follow my ultra-cheesy, gayer-than-a-televangelist-on-his-knees little dream of getting married at … and I am almost embarrassed to admit this … Disney World. (One practical benefit: As established adults, we already have way more stuff than we want or even need. So we figure if people pay for a trip to Disney to celebrate with us, they won’t have any money left over to buy us linens and gravy boats and other things we’ll just end up tripping over until our next garage sale.) A proper Disney wedding is probably more expensive than either of us dares to imagine anyway, but I’m still holding on to my little dream until it’s ripped violently from my poorly manicured middle-class fingers.

A month ago, I decided that if we’re really going to have a wedding, we’ll need to have an engagement first. And since there are no gay-proposal cultural traditions I could follow, I had to hack my own way through the engagement jungle. I figured we’d probably want to pick matching wedding bands as a couple, so I decided to find relatively inexpensive engagement rings to use for the proposal. And I bought them from an old friend in Iowa when I was home helping my folks move during the Fourth of July weekend. I’ve never bought jewelry before, though, so I didn’t know that 1) even halfway-decent rings aren’t “relatively inexpensive” and 2) jewelry stores don’t habitually keep an inventory of every ring in every size, so our rings had to be ordered and shipped to me. Thank goodness for Sondheim, or I’d never know any of this stuff.

The rings—I ended up buying some pretty fabulous tungsten carbide steel ones—finally arrived early last week, and I’d planned on proposing this coming weekend, on the anniversary of our meeting. But once I saw the rings, I realized I did not have the patience to wait that long. So Thursday night I cooked us a lovely dinner including a pudding custard that I put in martini glasses with little raspberries acting as bubbles so we as non-weeknight-drinkers could toast each other after the proposal. It was a beautiful night, so I suggested we enjoy it on our semi-private rooftop deck by candlelight. But not so I could have a nice starlit setting for a wedding proposal or anything silly like that, of course. The boyfriend looked skeptical, but he gamely helped me schlep everything up to the roof in the dark … only to discover our neighbor was sitting up there with a cooler of beer, a pack of cigarettes and a cell phone with a full battery.

After a suitably awkward wait, we headed back downstairs, where the boyfriend sweetly apologized over the fact that my little romantic rooftop evening idea had been ruined. Which actually was the best possible thing he could have said to set the scene for a proper proposal. And then I suddenly realized: Holy shit! I’m REALLY going to do this. You might say I was excited and scared.

The boyfriend has a slightly irritating (in an adorable, one-of-the-many-reasons-I-love-him kind of way) habit of deflecting anything romantic I say with a joke or an insult or some sort of deprecation. So since the romantic thing I was about to say was pretty high on the importance continuum, before I creaked my ancient knees to the floor, I informed him gravely that if he laughed at what I was about to do, I’d punch him in the balls.

And then I was on one knee in front of him. And I was actually doing it. I was actually stumbling through the romantic little speech I had practiced in my head a couple hundred times, looking up at his beatific smile and knowing that this was exactly what I was supposed to be doing at this moment. And even though I messed up a good half of my speech and in my confusion I slipped the ring on his right hand, he of course said yes and my heart soared and somewhere in the ensuing celebration we managed to toast each other with pudding martinis and take a picture of our hands to post on the blog (because there are priorities) and talk and laugh and kiss and hold each other and fall asleep in each other’s arms with the kind of contentment that not even Sondheim himself could summon the poetry to describe.

And no matter how much gay-hostile sophistry the vast right-wing moronity dishes out to its voting base, the wheels are turning. We are in love, we are deserving of equality, we are fiancés and we are getting married. And we are doing it all with exceptionally delicious cake.

Something is stirring,
Shifting ground.
It’s just begun.
Edges are blurring
All around,
And yesterday is done.

Feel the flow,
Hear what’s happening:
We’re what’s happening.
Don’t you know?
We’re the movers and we’re the shapers.
We’re the names in tomorrow’s papers.
Up to us, man, to show ’em …

It’s our time, breathe it in:
Worlds to change and worlds to win.
Our turn coming through,
Me and you, man,
Me and you!

To sleep

When I first met her, she was one of a hundred new faces in the cast of a show. It was January 1991, and I had just graduated from college and moved back to my hometown to start The Rest Of My Life. The first order of business was getting cast in Follies, an annual song-and-dance extravaganza whose cast members quickly became my extended family, my professional network and my closest friends.

I’m sure I talked to her five or six times before her face and name—along with the many other faces and names in the cast and crew—started to solidify in my mind. She was about my parents’ age, and she’d actually been friends with them in a past life when they were newlyweds who traveled in the city’s theater circles with her.

And while she was measurably older than I was, she was quintessentially young at heart, often hanging out with us kids during breaks and after rehearsals and performances.

Blessed with a confidence and a commanding presence that belied her relatively short stature, she owned any role she played. Her voice had a rawness that lent a great deal of character to her solos and her funny bits of stage business. And she never let fear hold her back. In fact, I’ll never forget the self-satisfied evil she dredged up from some delightfully dark corner of her otherwise Midwest-wholesome, every-hair-in-place self to play Snow White’s witch in a Disney tribute. One look in her eyes told you she didn’t care if she came off as greedy or cruel—she would be the fairest in the land, and no pasty white virgin was about to stand in her way.

And when she played the irascible Miss Lynch in a summer production of Grease a few years later, I admired her for throwing herself so delightedly into the role—but I admired her more for yanking a wooden ruler out from between her boobs every night on stage with the kind of force that sent one terrifying word shivering up and down my spine: splinters

And then one January, soon after that year’s Follies rehearsals had started, she was gone. They’d found a mass in her abdomen the size of a cantaloupe. It was ovarian cancer, the bastard cancer that advances so stealthily that women don’t even know it’s eating them alive until it’s almost too late. She promptly underwent her surgery and stated her treatments, and I’ll be damned if she wasn’t back where she belonged—right there on stage next to us—when the show opened that March.

But she came back with a few accessories. Follies shows are always about glitz and splash; if the costumes and sets aren’t colorful enough, it’s nothing that can’t be fixed with a few more layers of satin and lamé. So when her cancer treatment dictated that she go through life for a while with shunts and tubes connected to a backpack full of I’m not sure exactly what, she just wrapped her backpack in coordinating fabric and stood proudly on the stage, singing her heart out and sharing the glow of the lights with her Follies family.

Two weeks later, as we were all striking the set, she came up to me in tears. I had told her on opening night how great it was to have her back with us—backpack and all—considering the alternatives. She told me it had taken the entire run of the show for the reality to really sink in: She had come this close to death. But she didn’t die, because she had more solos to sing, more bows to take and more friends to hug. And she thanked me for being a part of that journey with her.

Her cheerful defiance against an almost insurmountable barrage of relapses and complications inspired everyone around her for more than a decade. She was in the hospital again, we’d hear. But we all knew she would not go down without an epic fight. And we always knew her time wasn’t yet up. Besides, she never showed any signs of admitting defeat—at least not to us. She always threw her energies at living her life and enjoying her world and beating the enemy that kept encroaching on her fun.

And then.

I started hearing acknowledgements of defeat from our friends when I was home for Christmas this year. She’s had major surgery, and it looks like it’s just a matter of days, people would say. You should go visit her while you’re home, they’d tell me. Give her a final hug and say your goodbyes, they’d recommend.

So I did. I spent a couple hours visiting with her in the beautiful home she and her husband shared on a hilly, wooded development just outside of town. And for the first time since I’d known her, she looked little. The pain from the surgery kept her stooped when she walked, but she had no intention of being anything but the perfect hostess while I was there, meeting me at the door, offering me a drink and giving me hugs when I came and when I left.

We talked about everything that day. She was as frank with me about her cancer and her relatively bleak prospects as she was about her full intention to pursue every possible cure her doctors could suggest. We shared Follies memories. She gushed over my four-page Christmas letter. I told her all about my life in Chicago, the ups and downs of my job, the places I’ve traveled, the Chicago Gay Men’s Chorus, the miserable relationship I knew was about to end.

And before I left, after two more careful hugs and a belabored walk to the door, she handed me a memento: a potted clipping from a flowering cactus. A piece of something she’d cared for while others were caring for her. A living legacy.

The implication was clear: She’d finally accepted her fate. She was ready to go … but not ready to be forgotten. And she wasn’t going to go without a dramatic flourish, engineered to achieve lasting emotional impact.

But I refused to transplant the clipping from its cardboard pot into something permanent when I got home. Because I wasn’t ready to face the permanence her death would bring.

She lived three more months—long enough to see another March Follies. And when she finally died on Sunday morning, she left a huge shadow on a stage filled with witch’s capes and wooden rulers and dolled-up backpacks and a lifetime of flawless hair.

Your revels now are ended, Joanne. You’re now such stuff as dreams are made on, and your life—your presence, your fortitude and your undying grace in the face of adversity—is finally rounded with a sleep.

And you know what? You were the fairest of them all.

The answer: camel poop

The question: How do you entertain two kids on a four-day Chicago vacation?

One of the many highlights of Jake’s Uncle Binge Weekend was yesterday’s trip to the surprisingly awesome Lincoln Park Zoo. Aside from the cool fake habitats and the interesting animals we saw, the moment we walked in we were greeted by a camel who ran (well, as fast as camels can run) toward us as though to offer a friendly camel toe hello. But when he got to the shallow pool separating him from the wall we were standing behind, he waded in, turned his back on us and began pooping. And pooping. And pooping. And pooping. Then he took a small break. Then he started pooping again, until he was standing shin-deep in a bobbing-camel-doots-filled toilet of his own making.

Needless to say, the Magic Pooping Camel! was a big hit among the under-six demographic in our touring party. The over-thirty demographic was far more fascinated by the Magic Fucking Turtles. The boy turtle (who was not, as we were prepared to explain, trying to get a piggy-back ride on the girl turtle) was struggling valiantly to hold on as tight as his no-opposable-thumbed turtle hands would allow as the slippery-shelled girl turtle moved quite rapidly away from his amorous advances—and from his human-tongue-shaped turtle penis, which worked quite diligently to slide under the girl’s shell and find her little turtle cooter.

Let's all say it together: Little turtle cooter!

We also saw some Magic Fucking Wallabies, but they were so fuzzy-wuzzy cutey-wootey that even the boy wallaby’s frighteningly long and stringy penis couldn’t distract us from their adorability. Their big wallaby-fucking adorability.

The answer: vile puns

My nephew has discovered jokes and riddles, which he asks every grownup within earshot at every possible opportunity. Fortunately, he’s amassed an impressive arsenal of material, so he rarely bores us with repeats. He’s even made up a few of his own: What does a duck policeman say? Let’s quack this case!

Not one to be outdone by the comedic gifts of a mere six-year-old, I spent the whole weekend thinking up equally brilliant jokes, two of which became particularly oft-repeated hits: What does a table do in the morning? Comb its chair. and the not-quite-gay-friendly Where do spiders get married? At a webbing.

I’m expecting a call from Hollywood any day now. And I’m thinking a show like “Friends” could use some of this more sophisticated humor. (The episodes are getting kind of stale.)

The answer: cheap entertainment

Last year we spent great amounts of money taking the kids to kid-themed museums and restaurants, where they were often as unimpressed as we were. This year we made no particular plans and just followed our relatively cheap instincts, which took us to the top of the Ferris wheel at Navy Pier, the greasy booths at Ed Debevic’s (which smelled like a mildewy funeral home), the Grand Luxe Café (which ROCKS THE MOLTEN CHOCOLATE HOUSE), the aforementioned Lincoln Park Zoo, the top of the John Hancock Center (which features signs about “Big John” even though I've NEVER heard anyone call the building “Big John”—though I have heard the occasional "Top of the ’Cock"), the pool in my condo building, and—best of all—the dried-gum-covered seats of the train and the bus.

And on one bus ride the nephew declared he REALLY had to pee—and we were at least 30 minutes from home. One kindly old lady sitting next to us took such pity on him that she offered us her empty Snapple bottle so he could empty his bladder without interrupting his bus fun. AS IF, kindly old lady! No nephew of mine is going to pee in a bottle on a moving bus. We may have made bad judgment calls in the past (Tyco investments, leg warmers, forearm waxings, etc.), but we are NOT about to encourage our kids to behave like common bus bums. Especially using a bottle that once contained peach-flavored tea. Because peach-flavored tea is just gross.

The answer: chlorinated hair

My condo building has a pool. It’s a very nice pool. And though I’ve lived here almost five years, I’d been in the pool just once before this weekend. And now I’ve been five times. And it’s pretty sweet! There’s a nice shallow end for the kids to jump and splash and play in, and it’s long enough that those of us who haven’t been swimming since the early Clinton administration can whip out a few breast strokes (so to speak) and feel as though we’ve gotten a halfway decent (pant, pant) cardio experience.

I also discovered that a hearty game of Throw The Niece In The Air is a lot more fun when you’re standing in three feet of water—you somehow have more throwing power (it must have something to do with … um … hydrothermics … or something), and if you kind of miss her on the way down, she’s in no danger of bonking her head on the hard ground.

Plus: awesome shoulder workout!

The answer: lies, lies, lies

My sister and her husband have figured out the best way to make the “how much longer?” question go away: Just make up an answer, preferably something under five minutes. The kids never challenge your knowledge and they haven’t quite harnessed the concept of relative time—so whether they’re asking when the waiter will bring our dinner or how much longer until the bus comes, just tell them five minutes!

The answer: Mickey Mouse waffles

I have Mickey Mouse waffle iron that my sister gave me as a housewarming present back in 1993. Because I’m too lazy to clean up cooking messes so I tend to just not make them, I use it only for special occasions. Like uncle bingeing.

And, according to the niece and nephew, who conducted four days of research this weekend, I make the best Mickey Mouse waffles in the world.

I also live in the best "minium" in the world and make the best pink lemonade in the world (it's really raspberry-kiwi out of a can, but let's just keep that between you and me, OK?) and give the best hugs in the world and I’m the best uncle in the world.

Yes, they are prone to superlatives (though I plead guilty on all charges). And no, it never gets old. Even though they make the most sticky fingerprints in the world.

Cleanness envy

I just looked at a brand-spanking new condo, which came complete with a range of desirable features:
• pristine countertops
• unblemished woodwork
• gleaming bathroom fixtures
• air conditioning that doesn’t drown out the TV
• bathroom tile that doesn’t look like it was stained with the blood of the innocents

And now I find myself looking at my four-year-old condo with a marked level of disdain and resentment, because its amenities would have a hard time finding their way into a glowing multiples listing:
• smudgy walls
• mousy-blah countertops with stubborn stains
• slightly spotty carpets
• a selection of dusty fingerprints
• not enough room for 40 pair of shoes

And I have a bad case of cleanness envy.

It’s not helping that the new condo's cleanness is bigger than mine, with higher ceilings and more square footage.

But my cleanness, for all its shortcomings, does have better water pressure. And at 24 stories up, it definitely has a better view. But damn, the thing gets dusty—especially since it’s so old.

Two weeks ago at my friend Bill’s going-away party, I took one look at the host’s deck and felt immediately inadequate. His deck was HUGE and totally tricked out with nice chairs and a grill and even a tent canopy. Best of all, it was shaded by big tufts of mature trees and it provided beautiful views of the city. Then a few days later I was at a co-worker’s condo for a client barbecue—and HIS deck was not only as big as my whole condo, but it offered breathtaking views of the city. He definitely had the biggest deck by far, and it even had upholstered furniture and little tufts of grass growing in square pots to make it seem less overwhelming.

I have a deck, too, but it’s one my whole building uses. It’s nice and big—and very sturdy—but when so many people have been on it, you never know how clean it is. I hardly ever use it.

Besides, with big decks come big bills. And while I think my bills are pretty huge, I can’t even imagine how big the bills are that come saddled to those guys’ big decks. I’d think I’d have a hard time enjoying my big deck if I had huge bills weighing me down. Even if I had friends over to sit on my big deck on a sunny afternoon, the weight of those bills could really undermine my enjoyment.

Fortunately, a man cannot be defined solely by extent of his cleanness, the size of his deck or the weight of his bills. (I’d brag about how much escrow I have built up, but I’m handling my own escrow because I don’t trust where the banks would put it. Besides, I don’t want to sound vulgar.)

The red dress

She came from the poorest elementary school in the district. So many of her peers qualified for free lunches that the school served everyone free lunches to eliminate the stigma. The school even employed full-time staff members to act as surrogate parents, driving to kids’ houses when they didn’t show up for school, taking the kids to doctor or social worker appointments—doing everything they could to provide the support the kids might not be getting at home in the hopes of creating an environment where the kids wouldn’t be too distracted from their studies.

Hers were among the parents who didn’t offer a lot of support. None, actually. By the spring of her fourth-grade year, her teacher hadn’t even met them, despite repeated attempts to schedule parent-teacher conferences.

But despite overwhelming odds against her, the little girl actually stood out as an academic leader among her peers. In fact, that spring she was named the school’s outstanding student—an award bestowed on one child from each elementary school across the district based on a range of factors including intelligence, ability, motivation and leadership skills.

The award included an afternoon away from school for a formal recognition ceremony with the outstanding students from all the other schools in the district. The ceremony was designed to be a Big Deal, and it would be attended by dignitaries from the school district, the city government and even the local media.

Embarrassed that she didn’t own anything nice to wear to the ceremony, the girl walked a mile and a half to Goodwill one weekend afternoon and found a slightly frayed red dress. It cost almost all of the six dollars she had to her name, but she thought it would make her look pretty—elegant, even.

The day of the ceremony, she rose early to shower and wash her hair and try to find a way to make it especially nice. She worked for quite some time, brushing it and rolling it around her fingers to make it curly and bouncy like the women she saw on television. It ended up as flat as it always did, though—so she found an old scrunchie and wrapped a red scrap of material from her blanket around it to match her dress. Then she pulled her hair back into her usual ponytail, carefully packed her dress in her school bag and headed to school.

She kept her dress with her by her desk all morning. Before she was set to leave for the ceremony, she took it to the bathroom to get dressed. But it had never occurred to her to try it on—and she discovered to her horror that it was many, many sizes too small. After a good 20 minutes of struggling and sucking in her tummy and wishing it to fit, she had to admit defeat. She went to get some help, but not even her teacher—always able to work magic for her students who were conditioned to expect so little—could get the dress pinned together for her. So the girl had to wear her dirty old coat over her pretty six-dollar dress.

The girl’s parents weren’t interested in coming to the ceremony, so her teacher drove her there and waited in the audience to bring her back to school.

She accepted her award all alone that warm spring day—in a used dress that didn’t fit, hidden under a dirty coat that made her look completely out of place. She stood on the stage with all the other kids, who were combed and dressed and fussed over. There was a constant flashing of lights as the other parents took pictures. Her teacher counted eleven video cameras. But there was no one else there to smile up at her and congratulate her with a warm parental hug and share whatever pride she could muster over the event.

And while the other kids left with parents in one hand and award certificates in the other, headed to celebratory dinners at their favorite restaurants, the little girl climbed into her teacher’s car and sat quietly for the ride back to school.

And when her teacher—my little sister, who was in her first year of teaching—got home, she sobbed.

You’ll probably regret reading this post

because it’s about poop.

And why am I writing an entire post about poop?

1) Poop is funny. Say it with me: P-o-o-o-o-o-o-p. HA! Funny!
2) It’s Sweeps Week for the BOB Awards. And nothing is proven to boost ratings faster—whether we’re talking about Teletubbies or The Rush Limbaugh Drug-Addled Serial Divorcer With Bad Hair And Unpleasant Fans Radio Show—than poop. Plus it gives me the opportunity to say something most bloggers only dream of getting to say: Vote for me! It’s as easy as pooping!
3) Poop is funny even if you don’t actually say “poop.” Example! What can Brown do for you? HA!
4) Poop issues figure into the whole lipo process more than I’d anticipated.
5) Remember: P-o-o-o-o-o-o-p! HA! Funny!


WHEW! Amid all that funny pre-poop talk, I almost forgot to get to the whole point. And, actually, there are two points to this post. So here’s the (ahem) poop:


NUMBER ONE
The night before the lipo, I did a pre-emptive poop because I figured pooping after the surgery wouldn’t exactly be a box of kittens. (And I was right, but more on that later. If you can get that far.) And I tried again the morning of the lipo, but I didn’t have to go.

So I got to the hospital, got checked in, got into my gown and my extra-fancy stick-on underpants, got the IV thing stuck in the back of my hand—and as they were walking me to the operation room, I suddenly kinda felt like I had to go. But it was too late.

So I climbed on the table, got knocked unconscious, underwent The Change, and woke up all groggy and begirdled in the recovery room. And I mysteriously didn’t have to poop anymore.

Which was the least of my worries … until I got up to get dressed and I found a stain on the sheets where my butt had just been. And while the stain could very easily have been I-just-had-surgery blood, I to this day live in mortal fear that the damn spot was glowing, screaming, mocking proof that the anesthesia had turned me into a human soft-serve ice cream dispenser and I pooped on everything and everyone in the operating room the whole time I was being vacuumed.

(I can just hear it: “Nurse, hand me the scalpel … cotton swab … suction thingie … whoa, gross! Hand me the ice cream cone … STAT!”)

What makes it worse (if you can imagine this story getting worse) is the fact that I didn’t poop for a full two days after the surgery. Which just proves to me that I emptied the ol’ tank all over the doctor’s Ferragamos when all he thought he was in for were a few splashes of hip goo. I’m so embarrassed I could just shit.


NUMBER TWO (Ha! More poop humor!)
Pooping in a girdle is harder than I thought. The next time you’re parked on the throne, pay attention to what you naturally do with your body: You slouch forward (presumably to pull your curtains apart and aim your cannon at the hole in the bottom of the toilet).

Now imagine doing that in a corset. Right. It doesn’t work. You have to sit as straight and tall as (ahem) Gary Bauer. What’s more, you have to keep your feet directly under your torso (on either side of the bowl) so you don’t topple backward into the tank. Which means you have to take your pants completely off. Just to poop. (Remember: You pooped all over an entire medical team just a few days earlier. The indignities don’t end!)

And then consider this: If every muscle in your midsection is angrily recovering from a li-pokefest (lipo-kefest? is this attempt at portmanteau even funny?) … if every muscle in your midsection is further weakened by a corset that grips tighter than Paris Hilton with a school bus in her vagina … then you don’t have a lot of firepower for squeezing out your puppies, if you know what I mean.

And that’s when poop abortion starts looking like an ethical option—Vatican be damned! (Vatican be damned anyway, but that’s a topic for a different post about poop.)

WHEW. So that’s all I have to say on this topic for the day. (Lucky you.) Except for this: Vote for me! It’s as easy as pooping!

Many marathon musings(Alliteration runs rampant!)

I ran my very first race—a 5K, which is 3.1 miles—on May 14, 1994. The company I worked for at the time was the principal sponsor, so I got a free entry. And I had a bit of a crush on a co-worker who was running it, so I thought this might be a good way to impress him so much that he’d abandon his wife and his well-established heterosexual lifestyle to spend the rest of his life with a barely athletic non-runner who entertained pointless fantasies about converting the non-convertible.

Of course, I hadn’t run a lick to train for the thing, and that short little run all but killed me. Needless to say, the co-worker is still happily married (and—as far as I know—still clueless about that fleeting little crush I harbored). But things have definitely changed for me.

Never in my wildest dreams did I think my pathetic entry into the world of running would grow to a passion and a dedication that would eventually see me running an entire marathon ten years later.

When I ran the half marathon three weeks ago, I gave you a mile-by-mile account of the adventure. The full marathon is a different beast, though—one that plays with your mind and completely redefines the space-time continuum. I have very few specific memories of the race—at least that I could tie to specific mile markers. So instead of a chronology, I offer you a few random impressions and news items:

THINGS THAT MADE ME SMILE
• The people. The miles and miles of volunteers lined up—sometimes five deep—along the course to cheer, hand out water and fruit, hold up signs, and navigate the trains and buses to race ahead and see loved ones more than once as they ran. The people ROCKED.

• The way everyone yelled GO JAKE GO at me. Just like my T-shirt told them to do.

• Rounding the corner from Addison to Broadway in Boystown. This was arguably the BEST crowd in the whole race, and I felt like a friggin’ rock star who’d just won the Nobel Prize and found some really cool shoes on sale as I ran godlike through the cheers and smiles and high-fives. The buzz stayed with me at least five or six miles.

• All the throwaway clothes. Chicago Marathon runners use the iffy October weather as an opportunity to get rid of their old running gear. They layer themselves with the stuff to ward off the morning cold and then just throw it in the road as they get warm. It’s funny in a way, but it’s also irritating for those of us at the back of the pack who have to dance through miles of crumpled sweatshirts. The funniest part was when the siren went off to start the race and the air over the crowd was suddenly filled with flying fashion. (Wow. The alliteration police are gonna bust me over this post.)

• Running by a DJ playing “Y.M.C.A.” and watching an entire streetful of marathoners pump their arms joyously together in those four letters.

• Stupid, goofy signs that people held up along the course. The only one I can remember today said something like Custom-fitted running shoes: Priceless. Moisture-wicking running shirt: Priceless. Water stations every mile. Priceless. This stupid sign that your brother made: Worthless.

• All the runners who came up from behind me to offer congratulations and encouragement after seeing MY FIRST MARATHON on my back. One poor guy, seconds after telling me how well I was doing, tripped over his own feet and made a violent face-plant in the asphalt. I helped him up and offered whatever meager assistance I could, feeling overwhelmingly guilty that I was in some part responsible for his accident. He insisted he was fine, but he grabbed a Gatorade out of his pocket and held it to his hand as a cold compress before he disappeared in the crowd.

THINGS THAT GOT ME CHOKED UP
• Crossing the starting line. I’m serious. I had worked so hard and given up so much time and energy (and social life) and survived so much pain—and I was finally here. I was actually about to run a marathon.

• The people. The miles and miles of volunteers lined up—sometimes five deep—along the course to cheer, hand out water and fruit, hold up signs, and navigate the trains and buses to race ahead and see loved ones more than once as they ran. Their dedication and enthusiasm brought my heart to my throat more than once.

• Watching runners encourage each other—sometimes by even holding their hands or stopping to help people who’d dropped by the side of the road. The constant selflessness I witnessed was at times overwhelming.

• All the runners in T-shirts emblazoned with words and pictures in memory of or in honor of friends and loved ones. Or the bald woman I saw running in a shirt promoting breast cancer awareness. Jesus—it made my goal just to prove to myself I could do it seem petty.

• Seeing my mom and sister at mile 8 and then again at mile 16. They’d gotten up at 3 in the morning to drive all the way to Chicago, navigate the subway and cheer me on amid an endless sea of happy strangers. And I looked forward to seeing them more than anything as I ran.

• Crossing the finish line. I didn’t sob like I’d expected, but I definitely got choked up.

• Writing this list and reliving these memories again. I actually did it. I ran a marathon. I can’t believe it.

THINGS THAT KIND OF SUCKED
• My bad knee more or less blew out at mile 13. I’d been carrying my knee brace in my hand, so I simply strapped it on and kept going. It didn’t make everything better, but it helped.

• The miles after 21. Especially the ones running south along the highway toward U.S. Cellular Field. Every time we approached a bridge, my heart kind of fell when I didn’t see the runners crossing it and heading back north to the finish line. But eventually I reached that bridge. At least I think I did.

• The last mile. It was a marathon in itself. I had to keep reminding myself to pay attention through the pain and savor the experience—especially the experience of running the last eighth mile between bleachers filled with people screaming their encouragement and shared joy over my accomplishment. How often do you get to do that in your life?

TWO FINAL THOUGHTS
• I couldn't find a running partner and I didn't join a marathon training group, so from April to October, I trained for and completed a full marathon all by myself. I'm quite proud of that.

• If you have even a tiny bit of desire to tackle a marathon, go for it. With the proper training (and shoes) it’s actually not so impossible to accomplish. And the feeling you get when you cross the finish line is absolutely incomparable. I highly recommend it. And there’s a good chance you’ll see me on the marathon course, because I WANT TO DO IT AGAIN.

4:36:31!

Mile 16. Three miles into the bad pain.
The really bad pain didn't set in until mile 21.


Rule #1: Instruct the spectators how to cheer for you, and they won't let you down.


Rule #2: Promote yourself shamelessly and the other runners will encourage you in your hour(s) of need.


Post-race massage. I barely felt it through the pain.


One tired dog.


(sweat + evaporation) x 4 hours = salt
How cool is that? I made salt!

Running Verse

Six a.m.
Incessant buzzing.
Sweet sleep no more.
Yawn and stretch and try to come to life.
The inner soundtrack is already playing.

My longest training run
stretches out 20 miles ahead of me.
Part excitement. Part dread.
I'm up early to get it all done
before the late-morning heat
has a chance to melt my resolve.

New socks. New shoes.
I unlock my hamstrings
and gently ask my IT bands
to give me four hours
without any trouble.

I chug a Gatorade.
I choke down an energy bar.
Nothing like grit and chemicals
to start your day.

I fill my pockets with Power Gel.
Some ID. Just in case.
A twenty. Just in case.
SPF 45 on my nose and shoulders
and my goddamn love handles.
One last pee.
Perch my sunglasses on my head
for later.
And I'm out the door.

It's cooler than I'd anticipated.
A welcome surprise
that calms my apprehensions
and challenges me to win
the race against the thermometer.

My journey begins.

Mile 1.
There's new gravel along the path.
Sparkling white, even in the shade.
A blank canvas
upon which to tell the story
of my epic achievements today.
Assuming I make it.

I find my groove,
I settle into my zone
and start enjoying the run.
Daybreak. If you'd only believe
and let it shine, shine shine ...
I really wish I could control my inner playlist.

Mile 3.
The early hours
are for runners.
I encounter endless parades
of training groups
plodding silently along the path.
Bootcamps in an army of hope.

Mile 5.
Stop to pee.
The running association and the shoe store
have tables of free Gatorade along the path.
I gulp. I thank.
I keep going.

Mile 7.
The beach by Navy Pier
is set up for a swimming event.
Or perhaps a triathlon.
I don't stop to ask which.

Mile 9.
I've never run this far south.
Uncharted territory for me.
A straight stretch of path
between the lake and the Drive
shaded by beautiful,
abundant,
blessed
trees.

It occurs to me
these gently swaying trees
might make a good closing line
to a poem about running
that I could post on my blog.
Nah.

Half a mile later
I'm at the hill
behind the ice cream stand
by Shedd Aquarium
where my niece and nephew
and their cousins
rolled and giggled in the grass
just a few weeks earlier
while the adults sat by and talked,
reveling in the beauty of the day.
I smile and keep going.

Mile 10.
My turnaround.
It hasn't even gotten hot enough
to take my shirt off.
I'm gonna make it.

Mile 12.
Another free Gatorade station.
Another friendly hello from a volunteer.
Another reason to love Chicago.

Mile 14.
I don't know how Pheidippides—
dispatched to Athens in 490 B.C.
with news of the victory at Marathon—
made his run through the desert
without custom-fitted shoes,
Gatorade and BodyGlide.
But I'm thankful I didn't have to run
history's first marathon in his place.
Everything today is thoroughly modern!
(Finally! A show tune!)

Mile 16.
I take the optional path
through the park on the other side of the Drive.
Just another diversion
in the race to keep my mind
one step ahead
of the pains in my lower regions.

Mile 18.
The non-runners are up.
Regular people enjoing the lakefront trail.
Walking, biking, blading.
With no idea
what I'm about to accomplish.

Mile 20.
I round the bend along the gravel path
and gasp.
The lake stretches calm and peaceful to the horizon.
A rough stone wall separates us.
Serenity.

Eighth-mile home stretch.
Too sore to sprint,
too excited to let the moment go uncelebrated.
I gallop home
with all the grace
of a drunken camel.
Daybreak ...
I've musically come full-circle.

I cross my finish line.
Triumphant. Alone.
I did it.

In the breeze
the trees applaud quietly.

My date with Julie Andrews

So I was at a party last night in a swanky highrise in Lincoln Park. I didn’t really know the hosts, and when I got there I realized I barely knew any of the guests. The Old Jake would panic in a situation like this, but the New Jake embraced it, forcing himself to make small talk with a whole bunch of new people.

I eventually found myself sitting with some of my newfound friends on an overstuffed morel-colored chenille sofa in a comfy library-like room—when suddenly a woman sat down next to me and said hello with a very familiar-sounding British accent. I turned to say hello back and found myself sitting face-to-face with Julie Andrews. As in Julie Freakin’ Andrews. As in Oh My God I’m Sitting On An Overstuffed Morel-Colored Chenille Sofa With Julie Freakin’ Andrews!

Not wanting to come off as one of the drooling, fawning fans she no doubt finds so ubiquitous and so annoying, I made casual small talk with her, slyly managing to work into the conversation the fact that I’d been a professional singer/dancer/actor as well. (I really wanted to talk about how hot Christpher Plummer was in "The Sound of Music" and maybe see if I could get her to confess to having a nose job after seeing how lumpy her nose looked when they sang "Something Good" in silhouetted profile out by that charming little gazebo. But I was a model of restraint.) She seemed suitably impressed by everything I had to say, and she kept making small talk back. And it became increasingly obvious that she liked me. Julie. Andrews. Liked. Me. And the whole time we sat there getting to know each other, my brain kept racing to one thing: I can’t wait to get home and write about this in my blog!

You read that right, dear readers: I was more excited about telling you that I was New Best Friends With Julie Andrews than I was about telling my family or my physically present friends that she and I had spent an evening having a lovely conversation on an overstuffed morel-colored chenille sofa.

Our friendly reverie was suddenly interrupted by a piercing alarm—and my first thought was that not only were we New Best Friends, but I was about to become The Hero Who Saved Julie Andrews From A Chicago Highrise Fire.

But nobody seemed to hear the alarm but me. And actually, instead of freaking out and running around screaming, everyone at the party started fading to a misty gray.

And suddenly, wave after wave of reality started washing over me:

1) I had not, in fact, been chatting with Julie Andrews on an overstuffed morel-colored chenille sofa at a party in a swanky highrise in Lincoln Park.

2) I don’t, in fact, have any friends who live in swanky Lincoln Park highrises who invite me to parties and who run in the same social circles as Julie Andrews. (This wave of reality hurt the most.)

3) I am 47 kinds of gay for dreaming that I’d become New Best Friends with Julie Andrews—and another 23 kinds of gay for being so freakin’ excited about it.

4) I had just had my first dream about blogging.

5) I really hate the sound of my alarm.