Nobody thought it would be one of the kids

Nobody probably thought the Boat Crew would last this long, actually.

When four young couples from the same Cedar Rapids Lutheran church rented a houseboat and sailed up and down the Mississippi River for a long weekend in the summer of 1971, nobody probably even thought it was more than a one-time vacation.

But the couples invited more couples and did it again the next summer, and the next. Over time, a few couples came and went, but the tradition lived on summer after summer. Eventually a core group of seven couples emerged, and the Boat Crew was established … and a vital extended family was born.

Unofficially (or officially, depending on your personal opinion) the group’s name was the Mississippi River Marching and Drinking Society. But “Boat Crew” was easier to say. And less complicated to explain to the couples’ children, who were all about the age of the Boat Crew tradition itself.

As lives and careers evolved, many of the couples moved away … but everyone came back summer after summer for what had become an annual gathering of Boat Crew family with bonds as strong as any biological family.

And that family bond extended beyond the relationship between the seven couples; their children often spent the Boat Crew weekends together in one couple’s house, under the probably exhausted watch of two or three weekend-long babysitters.

Naturally, the kids developed a family bond as strong as their parents’. They were unofficial siblings in an extended family network, and they felt confident in the parental love they received from every member of the Boat Crew.

As the summers passed, the Boat Crew bond continued to grow and strengthen, especially over a developing collection of in-jokes, funny stories and traditions that became almost sacred. The most prominent tradition was Joy. It started when one couple brought a large white flag emblazoned with the word Joy in bright colors and displayed it on the ship’s mast. The flag appeared every summer, and eventually it inspired the regular exchanging of Joy-festooned knickknacks, shirts, Christmas ornaments (all collectively over the years described as "Joy shit") and even one summer little bottles of Joy dishwashing soap.

Music – an integral part of the Lutheran church where they all met – was just as important to the Boat Crew. The group contained many talented singers, and as they gathered under the stars with a guitar and a couple bottles of wine each summer, they sang hymns and folk songs and show tunes and whatever else they could think of. Their unofficial anthem was “Beautiful Savior,” which they sang together – in full, glorious harmony – on every gathering.

As the kids grew over the next four decades, the Boat Crew also started convening off-season for confirmations and graduations and weddings and grandchildren and the occasional family tragedy … and the inevitable deaths of the Boat Crew couples’ elderly parents.

And through it all, the Boat Crew became a bit of a statistical anomaly: seven couples who lived into their 50s and 60s and 70s and now 80s … and stayed friends … and stayed married … and stayed alive.

As they started to retire from their jobs and prioritize grandparent obligations over Boat Crew gatherings, the group wasn’t always able to find a summer weekend that all seven couples could attend. And the “boat” part of Boat Crew became a bit of an anachronism; the summer reunions were happening now in Bed and Breakfasts overlooking the Mississippi instead of boats on the Mississippi.

And as they started to navigate the medical infirmities and physical indignities that come with age, the Boat Crew members started to contemplate their own mortality. Never ones to face life with fear or even reverence, they were realistic that eventually they were going to start dying … and they were not above having betting pools over who would go first.

But it never occurred to anyone that the first to die might not be one of the adults.

Robbie (who as an adult called himself Robert but I’d known him since we were toddlers and I could never think of him as anyone but Robbie) was 42, pretty much right in the middle of the range of ages of the Boat Crew kids. He started getting sick seven years ago last summer, but he didn’t think it was much to worry about: just some lower back pain, fatigue and abdominal discomfort. But then the guy behind the Chicago neighborhood deli counter where he went every day told him he looked yellow. And he became painfully constipated. And on a trip home to see his parents in Iowa, he decided to see a doctor.

And that’s where he found out.

Colon cancer.

Stage 4.

Colon cancer patients at stage 4 have an 8-15% chance of being alive five years after diagnosis. And Robbie, forever the optimist, dove right into surgery and chemotherapy while his parents took care of him in their home.

But it quickly became obvious that he was losing the battle. And as he eventually slipped into a coma, his parents – buoyed by the love and calls and texts and emails of Boat Crew members across the country – kept a vigil by his bed.

And six weeks after his diagnosis – six weeks after driving himself and his two cats seven hours from Chicago to his parents’ house, five weeks after walking into the doctor’s office with what he thought were just stomach pains, three weeks after cheering on friends in the Chicago Marathon via Facebook – Robbie drew his last breath, sending waves of shock and devastation throughout his extended Boat Crew family.

Robbie’s father had died of cancer 40 years earlier, before the Boat Crew had been officially established. His widowed mother and the man who eventually became her next husband had been regular Boat Crew members from nearly the beginning.

While she was still single, though, she and Robbie had taken vacations with our family a number of times, often to Adventureland amusement park in Des Moines, Iowa, and once on a Bicentennial road trip to Philadelphia to see the Liberty Bell and to Washington, D.C., to see pretty much everything else associated with America’s birth.

Robbie and I went to different high schools and colleges, but we eventually both found our ways to Chicago. We kept seeing each other at Boat Crew gatherings, but we’d slowly drifted apart … as had many of the Boat Crew kids as we scattered about the country and built our own families.

Robbie’s parents and mine, of course, had stayed fast Boat Crew friends. And when Robbie was facing the first weeks of his cancer treatments, my parents made a trip to Des Moines to stay with them.

Robbie died seven years ago today. Even though I knew it was inevitable, I was more choked up than I’d expected to be when I got the call. We hadn’t seen each other in probably eight years. And I knew that he was no longer suffering through an excruciating illness. But his death – especially as a Boat Crew kid and not an adult – was a shock to all of us … and an indescribable devastation to his parents. And though nobody in the extended Boat Crew family has died since Robbie did, we are all tacitly preparing ourselves for the next passing.

But for the first time in many years, the entire Boat Crew – along with a handful of Boat Crew kids – dropped everything in their lives and appeared at the funeral. Forever part of the family, we walked in with Robbie’s parents and biological family members and were seated right behind them. And when the congregation sang “Beautiful Savior,” the Boat Crew’s beautiful harmonies rose above the music as if to lift Robbie to whatever awaited him in the afterlife and remind him of the loving extended family he’d been a part of on earth.

His parents asked me to be one of his pall bearers, which I accepted as an honor. Escorting a lifelong friend to his grave is overwhelming – especially when we’re both so young – but I felt giving him a solemn, respectful final journey was the best gift I could give him. He was family, after all.

It IS be nice

We’re in the car where it highways jamming to the CD where it harmonies on our way to see the show where it Hamiltons!

Road-tripping with the fam to watch my niece kick ass (kick adjectives?) in speech contest in Monticello

Or Manchester. Or Mt. Vernon. Or Manly. Iowa cities have a lot of New England M names. I get mixed up.

Fireworks and bunting and other accoutrements of patriotism

Wow. A long weekend of uncling can really cut into your blogging time. As can a hectic first couple days back at work.

But here's our July 4 weekend in a nutshell:

Running: I ran the Fifth Season 8K in cold, spitty rain on Saturday. I didn't set another personal best, but I finished at an 8:41 pace, which is at the fast end of my acceptable race-time continuum. My little nephew was all excited to run with me, but when he found out the race had moved and was no longer running past his house where he could bask in the glow of a 30-foot front-yard cheering section, he decided to sit this race out. Which meant less running in cold, spitty rain for me, so I'm not complaining.

Uncling: I'm past the point of letting the kids win at Sorry and Apples to Apples and all the other games they like to play with us. So now they're kicking my butt on their own. Rotten kids.

Celebrating: I took my entire family to dinner on Friday to celebrate my folks' 45th anniversary and my sister and her husband's 15th anniversary. We went to one of those food-as-theater Japanese restaurants where they make a big show of cooking everything fresh right in front of you ... but they drench everything in soy sauce so it all ends up tasting the same when you finally get it. The kids get a huge kick out of the little peeing chef doll they use to put out fires, which helps overcome the dull blandness of the menu. At $300, the evening averaged out to $5 per year of celebrated marriage. And that's a pretty affordable way to honor the people I love the most in this world.

Shopping: I love to shop for stuff when I'm home in Iowa because there's parking! and lower taxes! and merchandise that hasn't been picked over! And on this trip I came home with fabulous new 1,000-count sheets and fluffy, fluffy pillows, a trunkful of protein shakes and other potions of aging gay male vanity, new knee-length (like the kids wear!) gym shorts (with pockets!), new foo-foo trendy T-shirts that are probably a size too small (see: gay male vanity, above), and storage containers for organizing our tools and painting supplies since our condo has all the storage of a pair of Barbie® panties.

The dog: Could she be any cuter? Only if we put her in a little polka-dot hat. Or taught her to walk in pantaloons:

Bucolic bliss: My nephew is turning out to be a pretty fierce pitcher. He's kind of a shy little kid—just like his lonely uncle Jake was—so I'm glad he's found a skill that will bring kids to him as he becomes a rockstar baseball player and eventually buys us all mansions and unnecessary surgeries on his Major League salary. But he still needs to practice his fundamentals if I'm gonna get pec implants. So on Sunday afternoon, his dad took him out in the front yard to practice pitching and catching and fielding while the rest of us sat in the shade and cheered him on in our little Mayberry world. And, despite what this picture might indicate, he did not lose a leg in a Hannah Montana-related stampede:

Speaking of Hannah Montana, my niece loooooves her. She also loooooves doing anything her big brother does. So she took her turn at pitching practice as well. Even though she's already declared that her sport will be golf. Or maybe choir:

I know this is kind of gay—and probably more than a little unsafe—but I still had my camera in my side pocket of my cargo shorts when we hit my favorite stretch of highway 30 on our drive home on Sunday. And I was able to dig it out in time to snap this picture of its simple beauty: a mile of arrow-straight road carved out of a thick woods just east of the Wapsipinicon River. It's even more breathtaking after a fresh snow. And it's always a goofy little highlight of drive back and forth to my hometown:

Packing for a roadtrip to visit the family in Iowa

Clothes. Check.
Toiletries. Check.
Protein shakes. Check.
Running shoes. Check.
Running watch. Check.
Running watch charger. Check.
Sunglasses. Check.
Cell phone. Check.
Cell phone charger. Check.
Camera. Check.
New Billy Elliot CD. Check.
New Hair CD featuring a girl from my home town. Check.
New In the Heights CD. Check.
New Legally Blonde CD. Check.
New Little Mermaid CD. Check.
New Next to Normal CD. Check.
New Shrek CD. Check.
New West Side Story CD. Check.
Stuff to return at the Cedar Rapids Lowe’s since it’s in many ways easier to get to than the Chicago Lowe’s. Check.
My parents’ house key. Oops.

So the drive home to Chicago today was fun.

And by “fun” I mean “so snowy and treacherous that my shoulders still hurt from hunching them up for six hours as I stressed about dying in a horrible car crash.”

To pass the time and to distract me from our impending death, the domestic partner and I listened to these CDs in this order: the new Gypsy, the new A Chorus Line, the original Big River, the original (the only, actually) La Cage Aux Folles. Plus we finally compared notes on our prom dates’ dresses. (Mine wore magenta; his wore red. Mine had ruffles; his had beading. Mine went home without a kiss; his … well, we don’t want to talk about that right now.)

The normally 4.5-hour drive took us six hours, but that included a stop at a small-town convenience store for a Diet Coke that ended up taking 20 minutes because the CO2 canister needed to be changed and the rheumy lady behind the counter was struggling so much with the mechanics of it that we changed it for her.

But we made it to Chicago in one piece, and by the time we got to the east end of Lower Wacker Drive—where the street is four lanes wide and protected from the elements by Upper Wacker Drive—the horrible snow had become a slight drizzle. We were thrilled to finally be safely in downtown Chicago, and we were greatly looking forward to getting home and peeing … when the car ahead of us and one lane to our left suddenly fishtailed, did a powerful 270, skidded across the lane to its left and slammed violently into a support beam. It’s amazing that it missed hitting all the cars around it. And it’s revolting that only one of those cars stopped to help.

By the time we pulled over and ran to the car, the domestic partner had a 911 operator on his cell phone and the people from the car behind us had started yanking the doors open and helping the dazed people out. The car had hit the support beam squarely on the rear passenger’s side door and crushed into it the depth of a human body, but miraculously nobody was killed. The front of the car had bucket seats, so we were able to extricate the driver and passengers—totaling four adults and a baby—pretty easily.

Nobody looked hurt beyond some minor cuts, but the driver was in some state of catatonic shock and the front-seat passenger was in the kind of shock that made her hyperactive. They were both unstable to the point of collapsing every few minutes, but they wouldn’t let go of the baby. So I spent my time holding them up and keeping my arms around the kid to make sure they didn’t send the poor thing crashing to the glassy pavement as they swayed and staggered and babbled out of their bloody mouths.

By the time the ambulances, fire trucks and police cars arrived, I was sure the crashed car wasn’t going to explode and everyone we’d gotten out of it was in pretty good shape. But one preliminary police report I found online says all five people are in “serious to critical” condition at various hospitals, though another says the injuries aren’t life-threatening.

A police officer took witness information from me and the driver of the one other car that stopped, who it turns out was also driving home to Chicago from Cedar Rapids. We didn’t exchange information ourselves because it seemed to be an inappropriate place to make a new friend connection. The officer thanked us and then kind of implied that at this point we were just in the way and we should leave. So we got back in the car and headed home … and finally peed.

On our drive home from the accident scene, the domestic partner and I compared our memories of what we’d seen, and we both came up with matching stories and details about stuff … which makes me think we’d be reliable witnesses if we get called. I love that in this day of the Internets I can go online within hours of something like this and get some semblance of an ending to the story. But am I weird to be kind of disappointed that the officer has yet to call me with any questions? (Potential sample questions: Who is that tall hunky man in your car with you? What color dress did his date wear to prom? Does Patti LuPone chew on all her vowels in the new Gypsy cast recording?)

If he does call, though, I’m ready with all my answers.

Red is dead. Blue is through.

The domestic partner and I are road-tripping to Iowa tonight for a bipartisan* weekend.

* And by bipartisan I mean, of course, two-party. We’re going to two parties!

The first party on our dance card is my niece’s Hannah Montana-themed, sugar-and-screaming-fueled seventh-birthday blowout on Saturday morning. In theory, we can’t wait to jump and dance around and be goofy uncles with a roomful of seven-year-olds. But in all honesty, it’s already giving us a headache.

Once we’ve sent my niece’s little friends home to burn off their residual party energy on their unsuspecting parents, we’re boiling the house, digging out the china and having a second, more sedate, party to celebrate my mom’s 20th cancer-free year.

Mom survived a pretty brutal bout of breast cancer in 1988, and she’s had a few scares but had no relapses since she kicked it. To reflect the breast cancer survivors’ pink-ribbon theme, my sister and I thought it would be fun to have pink food at the party: shrimp, pinkish-reddish fruits, and even kringle—a sweet, soft Norwegian pretzel—dyed pink and baked in a ribbon shape.

Unfortunately, Mom so loved the pink idea that she wanted the whole family to wear pink. Even though Dior says black and rust. And those of you who know me or who have seen pictures of me no doubt have noticed I’m pretty much a black/blue/brown/gray kind of guy. So I had to go buy a pink shirt last night. The only one I could find in my size is actually “dusty rose,” but it fits nicely and I can totally wear it again.

And if I remember to haul out my camera phone at some point on Saturday, I’m sure I’ll post grainy pictures of all the festivities.

Could you just DYE?

This weekend, the domestic partner and I are taking our friends Matthew and Craig to my hometown to give them a tour of some of the haunts of Grant Wood, who is most famous for teaching art at the high school that was later attended by a certain Chicago blogger with a readership in the tens if not the fifteens but who is also also (much less) famous for painting American Gothic.

While we're there, we'll also be attending my sister's annual Halloween gala, which is normally attended entirely by heterosexual parents of pre-teens. The four of us wanted to make a splash as the token homosexuals, but we're far too lazy to dress up as The Golden Girls or the Sex and the City girls or anything for that matter that involves the word girls and/or frighteningly large high-heeled shoes. I thought it would be fun to go as a boy band (mostly because I wanted an excuse to get another tattoo) but nobody was down with that idea, yo. Then I suggested The Costume Idea That Everyone Loved But Me: the Australian singing sensation known as The Wiggles. Or, for those of you who aren't pre-teens or parents of pre-teens, these dorks:
On the plus side, everyone at the party, being parents of pre-teens, will know EXACTLY who we are, especially once I print four copies of the Wiggles logo to put on our shirts. On the even pluser side, the costumes look pretty easy; they're just black pants and mock turtlenecks in basic, easy-to-find colors, right?

WRONG. Mock turtlenecks—at least the ones that fit adult men–come in two colors in the United States: generic earth tone and white. But! The white ones we found are 100% cotton, so we can dye them, right?

WRONG. Apparently Chicago has fallen victim to the powerful anti-dye lobby, because I have been to the following stores this weekend and none of them carries any damn dye: CVS, Jewel, Dominick's, Whole Foods, Target, Home Depot, Hancock Fabrics, Walgreens, Walgreens, Walgreens (there are lots of Walgreens in Chicago ... just no Walgreens with any damn dye).

But! My sister reports that she found some dye in Cedar Rapids, so we'll be dying our shirts once we get there this weekend, just in time for the party.

Also but! We didn't feel like sewing all that colored piping onto our black dress pants, so while I was at Home Depot I got a package of colored electricians' tape. Unfortunately, it doesn't come in teal (or the purple option we found in some other Wiggles photos), so one of us will have to be a green Wiggle.

Speaking of green, every year on our emploanniversaries, my company gives us each a $100 bill for every year we've worked there. So I just got an envelope with two crisp $100 bills in it. I put the bills in my wallet and got to work fantasizing about all the fun, frivolous things (Shoes! Halloween decorations!) I was going to buy this weekend with my bounty. Besides some damn dye, I mean.

So imagine my crestfallenness, then, when I reached in my wallet at DSW on Saturday to find ... only one $100 bill. I have no idea where the other one went. Maybe I gave it to a cabbie thinking it was just a $20. Maybe I was robbed by a thief in the night who just took one bill out of my wallet and left everything else of value in the entire house. Maybe I spent it on something I have no recollection of. In any case, it's gone. But it's not like it was really mine, so while I'm disappointed it disappeared, I'm not destroyed by it.

In other words, it's not like losing it is gonna make me dye. At least not until we get to Cedar Rapids.

The birthday adventures continue

We are in Dayton for the weekend to celebrate the domestic partner's grandmother's 95th birthday. Which totally trumps the epic accomplishment of my 40th birthday last week, but in the spirit of my boundless magnanimity we are choosing not to dwell on that at the moment. Even though—if I may point this out—I successfully turned 40 just eight days ago with no lost teeth, no embarrassing stains and no pushing. And only three boiled cakes.

But since we're on the topic of MY birthday, let me take a moment to report that the domestic partner got me the Young Frankenstein cast album as part of a suite of lavish birthday gifts. And we listened to it last night on our six-hour road trip. And it's really quite good. Especially Doug Besterman's lush, inventive orchestrations. And Sutton Foster's mad yodeling skilz. And what, really, is life without yodeling ingénues?

But I digress. We are here for the domestic partner's grandmother's birthday. And I must focus. Because there will be a dinner tonight. With cake. If I'm lucky. And yodeling. If I'm luckier.

Partying, shopping, traveling

Partying
We survived my niece's birthday party over the weekend, but not before 18 little six-year-olds discovered that the goofy uncle and his equally goofy … um … friend could be used as emergency jungle gyms. We'd all been dancing around the living room like fools when my niece grabbed my hands and we started spazzing around like goofy uncles and six-year-old nieces are supposed to do when they dance together. But suddenly everyone wanted to spaz around with the goofy uncle. And spazzing somehow morphed into throwing children in the air. And before I knew it, the kids had formed a line in front me (and the fiancé, who gamely threw himself into the ring as well), all not-so-patiently waiting for their turns to be thrown in the air. From the looks on their faces, some of these kids had never been thrown in the air by a goofy uncle and his … um … friend before. And the fiancé and I needed the exercise anyway, so everyone came out of the party with giant smiles, new experiences and/or bigger deltoids.

Shopping
Since no trip to Cedar Rapids is complete without a shopping excursion where parking is plentiful and merchandise is actually displayed on the proper shelves, we also made a pilgrimage to our friendly neighborhood strip mall, where we eventually stumbled back to the car with new shoes, new jeans, new shirts, and even a stainless steel toaster and crock pot to replace the hideously-not-stainless-steel toaster and crock pot that have been ruining our otherwise-completely-stainless-steel kitchen experience since the day we bought our condo. And all of it was on sale.

Traveling
We also budgeted a little extra time on our trip home for me to stop and take pictures of some of the landmarks I pass every time I drive between Cedar Rapids and Chicago. Since all I had was my camera phone, I didn't entertain any fantasies that I'd be taking pictures that were by any stretch of the imagination "artistic," so I physically stopped the car only once on my junior photojournalist travelogue. But I did slow down on occasion. And all because I wanted to share my experience with you people. Please enjoy:

There is a stretch of Highway 30 just east of the Wapsipinicon River that cuts straight and true through a thicket of woods. Driving through it can be a magical experience in winter when the trees are covered in snow or frost. And even in the fall when the trees are just brown and boring, the visual effect can be stunning. Except when it's recorded on a camera phone through a windshield hurtling through space at 55 mph. I had always assumed this section was straight and brush-free to maintain compliance with that fabled law requiring that one of every five miles of interstate must be built straight and flat so it can be used to land airplanes in emergencies. But a quick google search for this law shows it's just an urban legend.

Travel about an hour farther east on Highway 30 (near the exit signs for DeWitt) and you'll find yourself in an entirely different kind of forest—one made of paperboard trees and pine-scented chemicals. Because DeWitt is not only the eponymous home of the wacky brunette from Three's Company (at least it should be), but it's also home to one of the manufacturing plants for the world-famous Little Trees® brand car fresheners. Which, of course, were invented in Watertown, NY, by the Car-Freshner Corporation way back in 1952.

There's this bluff along Highway 30 in Morrison, IL, that's home to some beautiful old mansions. I imagine that in their day they looked down over vast expanses of pristine land, but now the lots across the street from them are packed with 1950s-style bungalows, many in states of obvious neglect. This handsome quasi-Beaux-Arts manse has been a favorite of mine since I first started driving through Morrison 15 years ago, though I know nothing about it. I've done some creative googling and I still can't find anything to share with you. But I sure know it's pretty.

Update: A reader named Doug has this fabulously helpful background to share: Here's what I know about it...It was built by Leander Smith around 1976. Mr. Smith was born in 1819 and graduated from Dartmouth in 1842. He married Dolly Allen in 1855, and was elected to the state legislature in 1862-64. He was also a city councilman and established a banking company named, Smith, Root, and Company, later renamed the first National Bank

I'm assuming these little silos off I-88 were designed to hold corn or grain or something agricultural. But I think they look like breasts. There, I said it.

Nothing says "your long drive home is almost over" (also: "only about 30 more minutes until you can pee") quite like the Sears Tower waving up at you over the Eisenhower Expressway.

Jake Regrets: Theater in the '80s

Summer 1987: Raise a Ruckus
Sheriff Sam's Saloon, Adventureland, Des Moines, Iowa

Ain't no time to sit and brood! Raise a ruckus tonight!
Those stirring words launched six sweaty, high-kicking shows a day, seven days a week at Adventureland's orange-and-creamsicle-hued Sheriff Sam's Saloon in the summers of 1986 and 1987. And for the vast majority of the performances, I was shaking my bony ass right up there on the stage, squished into my slim-hipped, high-waisted jeans held firmly at my ribcage by a snappy pair of suspenders. I have no idea how I still have working testicles 20 years after I last peeled myself out of that costume, but I carry with me to this day the ugly personal truth I learned that summer: I look really, really, really bad in orange. And I was half of the orange couple that summer (the others being red, yellow and pink … and thank goodness I wasn't the poor guy in pink), so millions of audience members and seven other cast members are still working to focus their eyes after watching me flail around on stage in a blur of jangly elbows and knees, marzipan skin, and orangy orange-orange plaid.



January 1988: Disney audition roadtrip
Somewhere in Oklahoma
Katie and Mike (the Raise a Ruckus pink couple) and I decided that our C-level amusement park experience in Iowa was just the stepping stone we needed to launch ourselves into our collective dream job: dancing at Disney World! We somehow missed the audition in nearby Chicago, so we piled our poor college selves into Mike's beat-up old jalopy one cold weekend morning and road-tripped to the next nearest city on the audition tour: Dallas (or Ft. Worth or some other city in that general area). We got there, we had pretty decent auditions, we all got damn close to making the final cut, someone stole my Les Miz button off my dance bag while I was on stage, and then we piled in the car and headed home. But not before stopping at a cheap motel for the night, where we recorded for all posterity just why I didn't find a husband until I was 39 years old. Where should we start?

The hair: Sun-In is a friend to nobody. Least of all a dark-haired scarecrow with ghostly skin.

The shirt: I was a Manhattan Transfer freak in the '80s. And not just because I thought Alan Paul was totally dreamy. I saw them in concert only once, and I came home with a pale neon pink (because confident men wore pale neon pink in the '80s) batwing sweatshirt emblazoned with that forced-perspective tuxedo image from their eponymous 1975 album. In teal. And since there wasn't a natural fiber in it, the thing never faded!

The jeans: Reverse tie-dye! With bleach! At wacky angles! Like what a bar mitzvah clown might wear! In prison!

The curtains: Totally not my fault. We were poor college kids in a cheap Oklahoma motel room on a roadtrip to Disney rejection. What the hell do you want from us? Toile?



1989ish: Kennedy Center lobby
Intermission, Tyne Daly's tour of Gypsy
Nothing says I sit down to pee quite as efficiently as a bow tie. I taught myself to tie a bow tie when I was in high school, while all the other kids were doing more useful things like—oh, I don't know—hanging out with each other and forming meaningful friendships. I thought my little Madras plaid bow tie made me look so cool that I went out and bought a bunch more bow ties in all kinds of colors and patterns. Which makes this plaid one kind of a gateway bow tie. One reason I was so good at tying bow ties was those glasses. Their lenses were so expansively huge—like the Hubble telescope!—that I barely had to bend my neck to look down and see what I was doing. Big glasses + small bow tie = man who goes to the theater with his mom. Every time.

It's supposed to balance out

At family reunions, I mean. You gorge yourselves on every kind of food that's not good for you and/or not nailed down. Then you chase after the kids and do goofy uncle things. And you burn off all the calories.

So why do I still feel so unpurgeably full?

Our Dayton visit with the fiancé's grandmother and extended family was lovely, exploding tummies notwithstanding. Everyone has welcomed me—the gay boyfriend of the tallest grandson—as though I've been a member of the family since Justin and I both were suffering through our child-nobody-could-love phases. (Did I mention we went through some old photo albums while we were there? Did I mention the fiancé and I are now joining the local chapter of Survivors of Childhood Haircuts that Involved Tape to keep our Bangs Straight (SCHIT–BS)?)

Here are some memories of our trip home this afternoon, starting with a taken-from-a-moving-vehicle shot of the Warm Glow Candle Outlet, which is shaped like an actual candle:
Then the freakishly huge cloud of smoke we drove through on the Indianapolis beltway:

Then the bathroom stall of the BP Amoco in Frankfort, IN, where we didn't see Larry Craig, but we did learn valuable lessons about Jesus and following the rules:

Letter from Indianapolis

It's Saturday morning and we're STILL full from last night.

Bill took us to Santorini Greek Kitchen for dinner, and we each ordered the chef's combo platter. Which the menu failed to note contained enough food to feed seven deadly sinners and a professional football team. But it didn't stop us from ordering dessert. Something called galaktabouriko. Which was possibly the most delicious custard I've ever eaten. And the serving was the size of my head. Urp.

Afterward we headed back in time to the 1950s where we could pretend we'd never eaten the entire country of Greece AND we could engage in a couple wholesome games of duckpin bowling in a nuclear-age-themed setting. I'd never heard of duckpin bowling, but rest assured it doesn't involve the wounding of any ducks. But it does involve cute little bowling balls, cute little pins on invisible strings that yank the pins up into the heavens after you knock them down, and apparently the need for Bill and Justin to kick my ass.

This morning, Bill took us to a gay brunch place (is there any other kind?) and a walk along the scenic Indianapolis canal. And since the boys spent the morning being decidedly insensitive about my wounded bowling pride, I'm totally posting this goofy, unfocused picture of them in retribution:

Vacation Day #2

We had so much fun yesterday painting the dining room (whee!) that we woke up early today and slapped up a second coat.

But now that it's up, we're not loving it. We're liking it enough not to start over, but the elegant Wedgwood blue shade we were hoping for has more of a periwinkle baby's-room hue to it. We're going to install those big rectangular frames of molding on the walls that can transform a gay dining room into a totally faggy dining room, so the color might recede behind the façade of gracious living. Time will tell.

But there's nothing we can do about it now; we're taking off in a few minutes to visit my friend Bill in Indianapolis tonight and then we're spending the rest of the weekend with the fiancé's grandmother in Ohio.

Be good while we're gone!

I know a place where dreams are born

We were related by only the most tenuous of threads—he was my fiancé’s brother’s father-in-law. I had met him maybe five times over the last 10 months, and we had bonded over our shared love of Disney and Chicago architecture.

And his love eclipsed mine heartily on both counts. He had been fascinated by Walt Disney’s sense of design since his childhood in Belgrade. And when he wrote Walt to express his admiration, Walt sent him a personal note along with some sketches. The response led to a lifelong passion for all things Disney, including annual trips to the parks and a museum-scale collection of cels, posters, sculptures, books, decorations and DVDs lovingly organized in endless displays that dominated his basement.

But Disney was just his hobby. He made his living as an architect, and he had been on the design team behind Chicago’s mighty CNA Plaza. His colleagues even attribute the building’s iconic red color to him. I’d always admired that building—especially the bold color that rocked its stoic International Style dignity, imbuing it with unmistakable new charisma. And it was a personal thrill for me to meet one of the minds behind it.

I could tell from the moment I met him and his wife that they had won the lottery with each other. They’d enjoyed almost five decades of marriage and raised two children and doted over five grandchildren together, and they were still best friends. Effortlessly, happily best friends. They’d integrated their Serbian culture into their American identities, peppering their world with Slavic customs and expressions. Their children and grandchildren called them Baka and Deka (I’m guessing on the spellings here as I’m finding a range of options on the Internet) instead of Grandma and Grandpa. Uncle Justin was Cika Justin, and on the day I met the whole family I became Cika Jake, an honor I wear with extreme pride. And the occasional happy tear in the corner of my eye.

Deka had been winning a seven-year battle against an insidious, stubbornly persistent brain cancer when I met him last fall. But when he got home from (where else?) a Disney cruise with his family earlier this summer, the cancer started to win … and with alarming swiftness. There was a day almost a month ago where we were told he had only a matter of hours to live. But he rallied, and a week later we all took him out for baked apple pancakes, one of his favorites. He made a special effort to thank me for joining his family before we packed him and his wheelchair back in his van—an undertaking that took four adults to accomplish.

Unfortunately, it was a short rally. He died Friday morning in his home, surrounded by the people who loved him.

There was a family get-together that evening, and Justin and I stayed until about 10:00. Then we drove all night to Iowa so Justin could finally meet my entire family and see where I grew up. (One anecdote: Justin was attempting to play Battleship with my nephew … with my niece’s dubious assistance. She eventually leaned over to my nephew and stage-whispered, “Is he a part of our family?” When my nephew and Justin couldn’t give her an answer, she eventually asked me. One guess what I told her.) We got back to Chicago at midnight on Sunday and spent all day Monday at the funeral, where the immediate family adorned its somber black suits and dresses with Mickey Mouse ties and pins.

A Serbian Orthodox funeral is a beautiful memorial, rich with chants and rites and traditions both in the church and at the gravesite. I was honored to be included as part of the private family events, but as the newest member of the extended family, I tried to keep in the background, staying on Kleenex alert and entertaining the youngest granddaughters when they got impatient during the service.

I am sorry to have known Deka for such a short time, but I’m richer for having witnessed his legacy first-hand: an unselfconscious love for the creative work of a childhood hero, a string of architectural landmarks, fond accolades from his colleagues, and a shining example of a happy, loving, triumphantly successful relationship that I vow to emulate for the next 50 years with Justin.

I’ve been grandparent-less since 1999, so I’ve already made plans to adopt Baka as my own and make sure she never feels lonely—even though her own grandchildren are probably going to exhaust her with their own love and concern. And I’ll give Deka’s big red landmark a big sweaty hello every Saturday morning when I find myself running south of the Loop:

Oh, there’s nothing halfway

The fiancé and I are due to make his first trip to Iowa to meet the whole fam damily this weekend. On the docket: hours of him being adorable for the niece and the nephew, pizza from Happy Joe’s or Tomaso’s (or both!), a 10-mile run past every school I ever attended and every house I ever lived in, perhaps a meet-n-greet(-n-show-off) soirée with as many old friends as I can scare up, and—if we can squeeze it in between rounds of canasta—some free labor as my folks and my sister’s family continue settling into their new homes.

Be good while we’re gone.

A weekend in the vowel states

The boyfriend, his cousin’s girlfriend and I (got all that?) are picking up the boyfriend’s cousin (who is also the boyfriend’s cousin’s girlfriend’s boyfriend) at the airport at 1:00 am Saturday and deadheading to Dayton so I can finally meet their grandmother and assorted sisters and cousins and aunts, some of whom have become regular readers of this here blog thing. Which means I like them already. Especially if they can pick out all the show-tune references in this post.

A year ago Sunday was the fateful party where the boyfriend and I first bonded over show tunes and puppy-dog eyes and repeated—albeit completely accidental—brushes up against each other. While I never thought I’d meet a prince, I certainly never thought I’d be celebrating a one-year prince-a-versary on a 5-hour road trip. With relatives in the car.

And I couldn’t be happier.

Monday in the Park with Gays

On Monday, the Department of Unexpected Coincidences gave both the boyfriend and me the day off from work. As a bonus, the Department went even further to make Monday the unofficial Gay Days at Six Flags.

And—though we had never had The Roller Coaster Talk—we abandoned our grouting project, filled our baggy cargo shorts with emergency sunscreen and headed north (which is mysteriously called “west” on 90/94) for a day of big gay fun.

Gay Days at Six Flags used to be nothing more than a barely noticeable demographic shift—a few additional adult gay men wearing modest shirts and baggy cargo shorts filled with emergency sunscreen, all traveling unobtrusively from ride to ride in small, well-groomed groups. You know: the predatory child molesters that homo-obsessives like Jerry “Finally Dead” Falwell warned you about.

But somewhere along the way—maybe when the priests started getting caught buying season passes to Little Boy Land, maybe when conservatives’ breathless the-world-is-ending predictions at the dawn of Massachusetts’ legalized gay marriages failed to come true, maybe when Ted Haggard got caught crystal mething in the arms and butt of a male hooker—things have changed.

Because Gay Days on Monday was an endless parade of gay kids. And not “kids” in the sense that I’m almost 40 and everyone looks young and irritating to me—these were actual high-school and college kids traveling in we-don’t-care-if-you-know-we’re-gay groups, casually draped all over each other to the unfazed disinterest of their heterosexual friends.

That’s not to say they weren’t irritating. While I have serious reservations about the way these kids were dressing and behaving in public—wholly unlike the respectful, mature way kids dressed and behaved in my day—I have to say I was impressed. And heartened. And more than a little jealous. I spent three years scouring my high school for a single gay friend without finding one. On Monday, we waited in line (for over an hour for a roller coaster that gave me a headache*) behind a group of five affectionate lesbian couples who all looked too young to vote against Mitt Romney. Granted, they were mostly dressed in black on a hot summer day and they had more holes in their faces than Romney has in his campaign speeches, so I’m not saying they were totally living the dream. But they’d found each other and they were happy and they weren’t forced to grow up alone and terrified of being outed in Jerry Falwell’s world of Gay People Are Evil And Deserve To Be Abandoned By Their Parents And Die Alone Of AIDS Just Like It Says In The Bible Praise The Loving Lord.

* I must be too old for thrill rides. If they’re not noisy as all hell, they jostle me around and bang my head painfully against the padded things that are supposed to offer protection. But I’m not afraid of them, which is more than I can say for the boyfriend. To his credit, he rode every ride I dragged him on, but the poor boy looked positively ashen through every seatbelt check, twist, loop and plummet. Which was actually adorable, but a little shocking to discover for the first time the moment we climbed into our first coaster. So with my headaches and his abject fear, I guess we’re in a roller-coaster-concordant** relationship. But not for the usual reasons.

** Boys and girls (and boys and boys and girls and girls)! Make sure you have The Roller Coaster Talk before you start to get serious with each other. The same applies to The Good Decorating Taste Talk and The Pleated Vs. Flat Front Talk and The Mitt Romney Drinks The Blood Of Puppies Talk. Mixed marriages are nothing but heartache.

Why you should always carry a firearm in a theme park:

Reason No. 54: Gaggles of junior-high girls. They travel in packs. They sit right in front of you on the scary rides. They scream and scream and scream and scream and scream and scream and scream and scream and scream and scream and scream and scream and scream and scream and scream and scream and scream and scream and scream and scream.
And then the ride starts.

Reason No. 72: Glamour Smurfs. They show up in discount couture, gravity-defying hair and cologne. They carry backpacks filled to bursting with what one can only assume is more discount couture. They stand in front of you in long lines and they keep hitting you with their backpacks every time they spin around to exclaim ohmyGODyouguys! to their friends.

Reason No. 105: Ted Haggard. You never know when he’s gonna pop up and demand a bump of meth and a fingerbang.

Who’s your Hoosier?

I am! I am!

I spent the weekend visiting my formerly-of-Chicago friend Bill in his fabulous new Indianapolis home, with its cool architecture and its multiple bathrooms and its endless supply of closet space. (Bill, knowing the depths of my storage envy, showed considerable restraint by not rubbing my face in his ample closets. So to speak.)

Our weekend was packed with the best kinds of fun, much of which involved lounging around chatting. But we also squeezed in two lovely brunches, an expert driving tour of Indianapolis’ fabulous neighborhoods and museums and historical buildings, and a lovely afternoon in the ultra-cool Indianapolis Museum of Art.

The IMA building is an authoritative structure situated in a corner of the sumptuous Oldfields-Lilly House & Gardens. Like much of the newer architecture Bill showed me in Indianapolis, the IMA building has a sense of adventure, achieving its intended purpose with creativity and humor and a little visual experimentation. And the collection inside, while not as exhaustive as the building’s epic scale would suggest, is thoughtfully displayed, with useful information and a logical flow of ideas.

The best part of our tour: The Amy Cutler exhibit in the museum’s Forefront series. Amy (I call her Amy) has defined her own post-feminist genre, commenting on the social and familial experiences of women with a visual vocabulary that’s at once amusing, resigned, earnest and at times unapologetically ridiculous. Her images walk a line between the disturbing grotesqueries of Grimm’s Fairy Tales and the oddly pedestrian horrors of Edward Gorey—especially in my favorite of her works, Dinner Party (left column, middle row), which features corseted ladies in gargantuan farthingales fighting each other with antlers made of upturned chairs and strapped-on cutlery.

If you do go to the museum—and you should—take care not to gesture too closely as you point out the carved penises on the wooden chair in the African exhibit. Because you’ll set off an alarm. And a suspicious-looking guard will follow you around and treat you like the penis-obsessed threat to moral decency you are.

One more word to the wise: Don’t go see The Hills Have Eyes just because your friend Bill’s hunky friend Eric wants to see it. Eric will still be attractive if you elect to do something more useful with your time, like organizing your celebrity crushes in the order of who has the prettiest feet.

My bad-movie-dar started beeping the moment Eric suggested it to us, but I was being polite—and for a man who saw all of three movies that got any Oscar nominations this year, I was in no position to pretend I was any kind of cinema authority.

But oh, the pain! With all the production qualities of an early episode of Land of the Lost and the kind of snappy, smart dialogue you’d find in the rough draft of a junior-high book report, The Hills Have Eyes was most definitely NOT alive with the sound of music. In fact, its best feature was its tagline: The lucky ones die first. And it wasn’t even true! Bill and I left soon after the first sleestack mutant desert creature appeared munching on a very unrealistic severed limb, and we learned that the lucky ones leave after losing only an hour of their lives—and get a refund without even a hint of resistance! We figured the road had already been paved for us by armies of equally insulted movie-goers who opted instead to get their money back and head home to watch Dynasty reruns on the Soap Opera Channel. Just like we did. (Maxwell Caulfield … mmm …)

Butt-stupid movies notwithstanding, the vacation was a delight from start to finish, and it ended way too soon. But I did get to enjoy a sunny drive home in the land of 70-mph speed limits. And there were no laughable mutant desert creatures hiding in my tiny closets when I got home.

When you just know

I was leafing through an old New Yorker on the bus recently when I stumbled on a review for an opera at the Lyric that I almost attended. As I skimmed through the glowing descriptions of artists I’d never heard of and epic story arcs I’d probably never encounter in real life, a name suddenly jumped out at me: A guy I’d actually gone on a date with two years earlier—a guy who was trying to make a career as an opera singer—was actually reviewed in the New Yorker … and the critic liked him!

I’d first met him in a bar soon after I’d moved here. He was handsome and charismatic … and wearing leather jeans on a hot summer night. Sexy leather jeans. He was all smiley and chatty, but I could tell he was a bit of a playa—though we had a lot in common and I enjoyed talking to him.

He was a friend of a friend, and we kept bumping into each other off and on over the next few years. And one day he finally asked me out to dinner. And I said yes.

We chose a popular little Mexican place in the heart of Boystown and had a very nice chat over chips and salsa and various Taco-Bell-on-nicer-dishes foodstuffs.

And it was somewhere between the last bite of enchalidas verdes and the first mouthful of sopapillas that it hit me. The waves of goosebumps … the rapid heartbeat … the back-of-the-neck heat … that undeniable feeling in the pit of your stomach that makes you just know … beyond all doubt … that you have food poisoning.

Yes, I was on a nice date with a nice guy and I literally threw money on the table and bolted out the door on him. And after an iffy cab ride home, I spent the next 24 hours never more than 10 steps away from the toilet, alternately lying naked on the cool tile floor and crawling deliriously toward the kitchen to find some Gatorade to keep myself electrolyted (electrolit?).

And then—total moron that I am—I decided it would be a good idea the next day to take a 5-hour road trip with some friends to a little weekend getaway we’d been planning for months. In a car. With close proximity. With what we will euphemistically call a still-jumpy tummy.

And when we got to our little getaway, the only bathroom was mere steps away from the family room area where we all hung out. And I didn’t bring any matches.

But we survived, and my euphemism jumpy tummy didn’t kill anyone—though it didn’t help generate any close friendships either.

And the date? He was pretty understanding about the food poisoning, so there were no hard feelings. But when I found out he already had a boyfriend, he never got a second chance at a start-to-finish dinner.