WHEW. As if buying a place and ripping out the closets and having the floors redone and changing addresses on every investment and credit card and magazine and découpage club and all those other new-home obligations weren’t enough to suck my life dry, I’m also leaving tomorrow on a week-long cruise through the Caribbean. And it’s wearing. me. out.
Worst of all, the boyfriend won’t be joining me; this trip was booked and paid for a good six months before we even met. It started when my friend Jeremy invited a handful of friends to come help him celebrate his 30th birthday in the Caribbean sun. Of course, they told two friends … and they told two friends … and suddenly there are at least 20 of us with bottles of Wella Balsam packed into our carry-ons.
And since this is a gay cruise, the basic stress factors—the current rules about toothpaste in carry-ons, the amount of Advil and Immodium and even more embarrassing OTCs I should pack, etc.—are multiplied exponentially. It comes as no surprise that gay men—at least gay men on cruises marketed as giant nautical eating disorders—are hyper-aware of their bodies and how they compare to the bodies around them. And when one is (hypothetically) 38 years old with a new condo to worry about and a busy job and extremely limited time to hit a gym, one’s hypothetical body-comparing anxiousness level has a tendency to grow. Hypothetically.
And then there are the costume parties. It seems that Atlantis, in addition to being the purveyor of gay cruises, is also an active lobbyist for the Federal Every Citizen Must Buy Ten Pieces Of Luggage Act. It’s not enough to bring shorts and tank tops and flip-flops and extra sunscreen on an Atlantis cruise. No! You also have to pack elaborate costumes for parties with the following themes: military, Mardi Gras, under the sea, not pretty enough, del Fuego, disco, not popular enough, and white. The boys in my touring party and I have dug around and found some fun group costumes to wear, but as I ponder the logistics of packing feathered masks and ruffled shirts and soldier boots and white top hats, my lugging-suitcases-to-looking-fabulous cost-benefit analysis takes me way past the point of diminishing returns. The ruffled Mardi Gras shirts we found are pretty cool, and they pack well, so they’re coming along. But the white top hat/waiter coat/bow tie combo is more of a packing liability than a fun way to attend a white party. And since in fashion you’re either in or you’re out …
But! Since the boyfriend didn’t have the foresight to book this trip as my roommate last January even though we weren’t scheduled to meet until July, his punishment involves getting our new floors refinished while I’m gone. Which seems fair to me: As I’m engaged in the exhausting act of holding in my stomach for a week, he will be leisurely getting quotes and coordinating the acts of sanding, staining, refinishing, cleaning and check writing here at home. And when I return, there will be lovely new floors. Just like magic!
In any case, there will most likely be no new posts here until I return on the 4th. So you’ll have to go back and re-read this post every day to tide yourself over. You may want to pace yourself and just read half a paragraph a day to ensure you don’t get bored. And take a break on the 1st to mentally wish my mother a happy 66th birthday.
Be good while I’m gone!
Friday, January 26, 2007
Monday, January 22, 2007
Bring on the property tax bills!
The long housing nightmare is almost over; we closed on our condo on Friday without a hitch, and now all that’s left to do is the moving. Let us all breathe a collective sigh of relief.
Actually, there was a tiny bit of a hitch: The boyfriend got called away to work the day before the closing, so I had to close on my own—and sometime this week we get to do a follow-up legal procedure to make us official co-owners.
Fortunately, though, his absence gave me the advantage I needed to defend my Most Romantic Boyfriend title. My first order of business was getting a suitable frame for the print I had made of this picture, taken by our friend Jim the day we met:
I like the way it captures us looking off into our metaphorical future, which makes it the perfect image to commemorate our first housewarming. I remember being positively giddy around him that day—and incredibly confident that when I put my arm around his chair he’d see it more as a gesture of friendship than as a tacky come-on.
I’d been so busy the last few weeks I hadn’t had time to do much frame shopping, but I figured I’d find what I was looking for at Target. So I went right there after the closing. I found a frame—along with a mountain of candles and holders, a set of red bowls, a bag of Hershey’s Kisses, a card, and some champagne flutes, which I spread out on the dining room floor to surprise him the first time he stepped foot in our new home. My camera phone makes the spread look kind of paltry, so you’ll have to trust that when all the candles were flickering in the boyfriend’s tear-moistened eyes, he could hardly see how paltry it really was:
Helpful hint: If you want to do something romantically cheesy to mark the purchase of your first home together, set your closing date in the month before Valentine’s Day. All the stores have tons of red heart-shaped crap all over their shelves to help you set the stage for gooey schmaltz.
Another helpful hint: Don’t go shopping for it all at Target on a Friday night. Because the people who go to Target on Friday nights are typically the people who don’t get invited on dates or to parties on Friday nights. And there are very good reasons they don’t get invited on dates or to parties on Friday nights.
Target on a Friday night is also populated by families with multiple children. These children whine loudly about the toys they think they neeeeeeeeeeed. And if there’s anything more annoying than a child whining in a store, it’s a child whining in a store in a language you don’t understand.
But back to the spread on the dining room floor: We used the champagne flutes for sparkling water because neither of us really loves champagne. We used the bowls for ice cream because both of us LOVE our ice cream. I stocked our freezer with four kinds of gourmet ice cream so we can celebrate repeatedly into the near future. And into larger pants.
I also wrapped the picture, slapped on a giant bow (4¢ worth of ribbon tied up nice enough that I willingly forked over a good $5 to buy it) and hung it on the wall over the fireplace. It looked pretty cool all wrapped, but it looks even cooler hanging unwrapped in its place of honor.
And what did the boyfriend bring to make our first moments together in our house as magical as a Pat Robertson leg press? He brought … a list. A roomful of candles and ice cream vs. … a list. A meticulously wrapped framed photo (with a freakin’ five-dollar bow) vs. … a list.
Actually, it was a list of romantic things he would have done and/or bought had he not been stuck at work as much as I have been lately. And his list ended with peanut butter and jelly, so I am officially swooning over his romantic thoughtfulness.
Our first project as new homeowners was to rip out the closets. Our place has three smallish closets in which we’re expected to store everything: coats, tools, paint, games, vacuums, ironing boards, dead or dying hookers … not to mention our vast wardrobes of discount couture. So we tore out the old, inefficient closet shelves and rods on Saturday, filled in the resulting holes with almost an entire canister of spackle, slapped on two coats of paint, took measurements and headed to The Container Store to take advantage of their annual 30% sale on elfa closet systems.
And it’s a good thing the elfa woman who helped us design our closets had a high tolerance for giddy queens, because I was borderline insufferable with excitement as we picked out shelves and baskets and finishes and other accoutrements of modular organization. elfa is the new porn, and I have no intention of going into rehab for my addiction.
Our next project: refinishing the floors. Our building is 80 years old, and our floors are currently stained that orange-juicy color you’d normally find on the floors of an elementary-school gymnasium—and since we don’t have any plans to stage dodgeball or four-square tournaments in our living room, we’re going to try to get them looking as dark and walnut-y as chemically possible.
Once the floors are done, we want to do some indirect-lighting projects in the kitchen and painting in probably every room in the house, but otherwise we’ll be free to move in, adjust our elfa shelving systems as frequently as we deem necessary, marvel how cool they are, adjust them some more, and then go shopping for things to cram into all that fabulous storage space.
Just. Like. Real. Homeowners.
Actually, there was a tiny bit of a hitch: The boyfriend got called away to work the day before the closing, so I had to close on my own—and sometime this week we get to do a follow-up legal procedure to make us official co-owners.
Fortunately, though, his absence gave me the advantage I needed to defend my Most Romantic Boyfriend title. My first order of business was getting a suitable frame for the print I had made of this picture, taken by our friend Jim the day we met:
I like the way it captures us looking off into our metaphorical future, which makes it the perfect image to commemorate our first housewarming. I remember being positively giddy around him that day—and incredibly confident that when I put my arm around his chair he’d see it more as a gesture of friendship than as a tacky come-on.
I’d been so busy the last few weeks I hadn’t had time to do much frame shopping, but I figured I’d find what I was looking for at Target. So I went right there after the closing. I found a frame—along with a mountain of candles and holders, a set of red bowls, a bag of Hershey’s Kisses, a card, and some champagne flutes, which I spread out on the dining room floor to surprise him the first time he stepped foot in our new home. My camera phone makes the spread look kind of paltry, so you’ll have to trust that when all the candles were flickering in the boyfriend’s tear-moistened eyes, he could hardly see how paltry it really was:
Helpful hint: If you want to do something romantically cheesy to mark the purchase of your first home together, set your closing date in the month before Valentine’s Day. All the stores have tons of red heart-shaped crap all over their shelves to help you set the stage for gooey schmaltz.
Another helpful hint: Don’t go shopping for it all at Target on a Friday night. Because the people who go to Target on Friday nights are typically the people who don’t get invited on dates or to parties on Friday nights. And there are very good reasons they don’t get invited on dates or to parties on Friday nights.
Target on a Friday night is also populated by families with multiple children. These children whine loudly about the toys they think they neeeeeeeeeeed. And if there’s anything more annoying than a child whining in a store, it’s a child whining in a store in a language you don’t understand.
But back to the spread on the dining room floor: We used the champagne flutes for sparkling water because neither of us really loves champagne. We used the bowls for ice cream because both of us LOVE our ice cream. I stocked our freezer with four kinds of gourmet ice cream so we can celebrate repeatedly into the near future. And into larger pants.
I also wrapped the picture, slapped on a giant bow (4¢ worth of ribbon tied up nice enough that I willingly forked over a good $5 to buy it) and hung it on the wall over the fireplace. It looked pretty cool all wrapped, but it looks even cooler hanging unwrapped in its place of honor.
And what did the boyfriend bring to make our first moments together in our house as magical as a Pat Robertson leg press? He brought … a list. A roomful of candles and ice cream vs. … a list. A meticulously wrapped framed photo (with a freakin’ five-dollar bow) vs. … a list.
Actually, it was a list of romantic things he would have done and/or bought had he not been stuck at work as much as I have been lately. And his list ended with peanut butter and jelly, so I am officially swooning over his romantic thoughtfulness.
Our first project as new homeowners was to rip out the closets. Our place has three smallish closets in which we’re expected to store everything: coats, tools, paint, games, vacuums, ironing boards, dead or dying hookers … not to mention our vast wardrobes of discount couture. So we tore out the old, inefficient closet shelves and rods on Saturday, filled in the resulting holes with almost an entire canister of spackle, slapped on two coats of paint, took measurements and headed to The Container Store to take advantage of their annual 30% sale on elfa closet systems.
And it’s a good thing the elfa woman who helped us design our closets had a high tolerance for giddy queens, because I was borderline insufferable with excitement as we picked out shelves and baskets and finishes and other accoutrements of modular organization. elfa is the new porn, and I have no intention of going into rehab for my addiction.
Our next project: refinishing the floors. Our building is 80 years old, and our floors are currently stained that orange-juicy color you’d normally find on the floors of an elementary-school gymnasium—and since we don’t have any plans to stage dodgeball or four-square tournaments in our living room, we’re going to try to get them looking as dark and walnut-y as chemically possible.
Once the floors are done, we want to do some indirect-lighting projects in the kitchen and painting in probably every room in the house, but otherwise we’ll be free to move in, adjust our elfa shelving systems as frequently as we deem necessary, marvel how cool they are, adjust them some more, and then go shopping for things to cram into all that fabulous storage space.
Just. Like. Real. Homeowners.
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
I see towers where there were trees
A lot of things have changed for me in the last few months. Big things:
• New job
• New living arrangement
• New boyfriend (if six months qualifies as “new”)
• New underwear*
*I told myself when I was unemployed that when I finally got a new job, I’d reward myself with some fancy Calvin Klein and/or 2(x)ist underwear. Then I kind of went overboard in my celebratory glee. I think I’m set on underwear for a good five or six years now.
This week is bringing some other new stuff as well. Big stuff. In addition to the new Two Bathroomed One Fireplaced Barbie Dream Condo that the boyfriend and I close on this Friday (woo-hoo!), I have also become a member of an entirely new gym.
“Wow,” I can hear you say. “Jake joined a new gym. Alert the media!” I can totally hear you saying that. And frankly, I don’t like your tone.
But as of Friday, I am no longer a member of Crunch, the gym that has been frustrating me on many levels for the last six years. And why did I stay with such a discombobulated organization for so long? (There’s that tone again.) Well, because I used to get a corporate discount. And the gym was in the basement of my office building. And with my work schedule, convenience trumps competence if I’m going to make any gains in the self-absorbed world of physical culture.
But we lost our corporate discount last year. And my rapidly aging bod had developed a marked level of indifference toward every piece of equipment at my Crunch. And when I got laid off and started a new job last fall, my old gym was suddenly in a very inconvenient location.
So I joined a new gym last week. It’s a mere two blocks from the Two Bathroomed One Fireplaced Barbie Dream Condo, so it’s very handy. It’s considerably cheaper than my old gym, so it’s practical. It has so many different kinds of equipment, my rapidly aging bod doesn’t stand a chance of getting bored. And it’s populated with actual homosexuals—albeit the kind who pretend not to see you but still surreptitiously check you out in the mirror. Hey, homosexuals! I know how to use a mirror too! So I can totally tell you’re playing little reindeer games!
On the other hand, this gym is also home to veritable herds of Men of a Certain Age who show up every day to throw weights around in a desperate attempt to stay physically relevant in our youth-obsessed culture. My people!
My Crunch membership expired on Friday. But somehow I had it in my head that it expired on Tuesday. So when I showed up bright and early Monday morning for one last futile attempt at getting a pump off their equipment, I discovered I was no longer a valued customer. But the lady behind the desk waived me in anyway. So we are officially parting company on a good note.
And I’m about to get so huge with all this new gym equipment that they won’t even recognize me when I come back to visit.
• New job
• New living arrangement
• New boyfriend (if six months qualifies as “new”)
• New underwear*
*I told myself when I was unemployed that when I finally got a new job, I’d reward myself with some fancy Calvin Klein and/or 2(x)ist underwear. Then I kind of went overboard in my celebratory glee. I think I’m set on underwear for a good five or six years now.
This week is bringing some other new stuff as well. Big stuff. In addition to the new Two Bathroomed One Fireplaced Barbie Dream Condo that the boyfriend and I close on this Friday (woo-hoo!), I have also become a member of an entirely new gym.
“Wow,” I can hear you say. “Jake joined a new gym. Alert the media!” I can totally hear you saying that. And frankly, I don’t like your tone.
But as of Friday, I am no longer a member of Crunch, the gym that has been frustrating me on many levels for the last six years. And why did I stay with such a discombobulated organization for so long? (There’s that tone again.) Well, because I used to get a corporate discount. And the gym was in the basement of my office building. And with my work schedule, convenience trumps competence if I’m going to make any gains in the self-absorbed world of physical culture.
But we lost our corporate discount last year. And my rapidly aging bod had developed a marked level of indifference toward every piece of equipment at my Crunch. And when I got laid off and started a new job last fall, my old gym was suddenly in a very inconvenient location.
So I joined a new gym last week. It’s a mere two blocks from the Two Bathroomed One Fireplaced Barbie Dream Condo, so it’s very handy. It’s considerably cheaper than my old gym, so it’s practical. It has so many different kinds of equipment, my rapidly aging bod doesn’t stand a chance of getting bored. And it’s populated with actual homosexuals—albeit the kind who pretend not to see you but still surreptitiously check you out in the mirror. Hey, homosexuals! I know how to use a mirror too! So I can totally tell you’re playing little reindeer games!
On the other hand, this gym is also home to veritable herds of Men of a Certain Age who show up every day to throw weights around in a desperate attempt to stay physically relevant in our youth-obsessed culture. My people!
My Crunch membership expired on Friday. But somehow I had it in my head that it expired on Tuesday. So when I showed up bright and early Monday morning for one last futile attempt at getting a pump off their equipment, I discovered I was no longer a valued customer. But the lady behind the desk waived me in anyway. So we are officially parting company on a good note.
And I’m about to get so huge with all this new gym equipment that they won’t even recognize me when I come back to visit.
Monday, January 15, 2007
Ice! Doubt! Pee!
The boyfriend and I were supposed to road-trip to Dayton this weekend so I could meet his grandmother. But the prospect of dying along the highway in the massive ice storm sweeping the continent over the weekend kept us safely in Chicago—and kept the boyfriend’s grandmother from finally meeting her first gay grandson-in-law-to-be, a title I hope she never tries to embroider on a set of towels for me.
Suddenly faced with an open schedule, we did what most couples do to celebrate surprise bouts of unsupervised free time together: Errands! And brunch! And theater!
The brunch was a final meal for our AIDS Marathon training group; one of us got a job in London, and we all sent her off in style at the diner where we clogged our arteries all summer after our runs. The team obviously wasn’t expecting the boyfriend and me, but we were all able to squeeze together at a small table and have a lovely time reminiscing. And snarfing down food. Like total pigs.
The theater was Doubt starring Tony-winning Cherry Jones, who was spectacular. The boyfriend had seen the play on Broadway and had wanted to share it with me when it came to Chicago this winter. We’d kind of written it off, though, given our jam-packed schedules, but when the weekend opened up, we beelined to the theater and got ourselves some kick-ass seats. The show examines the ideas of sexual abuse, political hierarchies, racism and doubt in the absence of concrete evidence in a 1960s Catholic school. The script is nicely paced and well-written, filled with innocuous little details that become huge conversation points on further inspection—a theatrical device I totally love if it’s handled well. Which it is. I love how the entire plot—is the priest having an inappropriate relationship with the boy? how can we prove it if the boy hasn’t even shown any signs of abuse?—is such an apt metaphor for the faith in the absence of proof that drives the church in the first place. I didn’t understand why the statue of the virgin kept moving in the background, though. And I totally don’t get the purpose of the little “snapshot” poses at the end of every scene. I was also a little disappointed in the ending. I’m not giving away any details by saying this, but the play seemed to be a little unfinished. Seriously—when the play ended, I wasn’t sure if we should clap or wait for another scene. I can’t tell if it was from the writing or the acting or the staging or some combination all three, but that’s really my only criticism. And for the record, the boyfriend and I had complete opposite opinions on the play’s probable truth.
The errands were … um … do you really care that much about my errands?
Saturday night we were just on the verge of making some concrete plans when we got an invitation for dinner from the guys I’m living with until we close on the condo. After a garlic-themed meal that sent me into the stratosphere of happy-tummyness, we hunkered down in front of the TV and watched The Women, a movie on the must-watch list for any licensed homosexual … which I still hadn’t managed to see at the age of 38. And I found it a little dull. The actresses all play the sassy, fast-talking ’30s society dame thing with such over-the-top conviction that they all kind of blur into the same character after a while. And if there is any clever dialogue, it’s totally lost in their rapid-fire delivery. I like the hats, though. And I loved watching a 40-something-looking Joan Crawford try to play a home-wrecking ingénue. That woman was just creepy.
Now it’s Monday and I just had a physical in my office. The boyfriend and I are opening life insurance policies to cover the mortgage should one of us die, and part of the new-life-insurance procedure involves blood and pee. And the company issuing my policy actually sent a nurse to my office to collect my liquids today. Handy! So I just spent half an hour in a conference room answering a litany of embarrassing questions, being measured on a portable scale with a tape measure attached to it, bleeding into a collection of tubes, and sneaking off to the bathroom to fill two vials with pee—without anyone knowing what I was up to. Of course, the moment I reached the point of no return in the stall, the whole office found the need to use the bathroom. So much for my dignity. At least my hands stayedrelatively dry.
Now I’m off to the gym. Then to a fitting. I’m fat.
Suddenly faced with an open schedule, we did what most couples do to celebrate surprise bouts of unsupervised free time together: Errands! And brunch! And theater!
The brunch was a final meal for our AIDS Marathon training group; one of us got a job in London, and we all sent her off in style at the diner where we clogged our arteries all summer after our runs. The team obviously wasn’t expecting the boyfriend and me, but we were all able to squeeze together at a small table and have a lovely time reminiscing. And snarfing down food. Like total pigs.
The theater was Doubt starring Tony-winning Cherry Jones, who was spectacular. The boyfriend had seen the play on Broadway and had wanted to share it with me when it came to Chicago this winter. We’d kind of written it off, though, given our jam-packed schedules, but when the weekend opened up, we beelined to the theater and got ourselves some kick-ass seats. The show examines the ideas of sexual abuse, political hierarchies, racism and doubt in the absence of concrete evidence in a 1960s Catholic school. The script is nicely paced and well-written, filled with innocuous little details that become huge conversation points on further inspection—a theatrical device I totally love if it’s handled well. Which it is. I love how the entire plot—is the priest having an inappropriate relationship with the boy? how can we prove it if the boy hasn’t even shown any signs of abuse?—is such an apt metaphor for the faith in the absence of proof that drives the church in the first place. I didn’t understand why the statue of the virgin kept moving in the background, though. And I totally don’t get the purpose of the little “snapshot” poses at the end of every scene. I was also a little disappointed in the ending. I’m not giving away any details by saying this, but the play seemed to be a little unfinished. Seriously—when the play ended, I wasn’t sure if we should clap or wait for another scene. I can’t tell if it was from the writing or the acting or the staging or some combination all three, but that’s really my only criticism. And for the record, the boyfriend and I had complete opposite opinions on the play’s probable truth.
The errands were … um … do you really care that much about my errands?
Saturday night we were just on the verge of making some concrete plans when we got an invitation for dinner from the guys I’m living with until we close on the condo. After a garlic-themed meal that sent me into the stratosphere of happy-tummyness, we hunkered down in front of the TV and watched The Women, a movie on the must-watch list for any licensed homosexual … which I still hadn’t managed to see at the age of 38. And I found it a little dull. The actresses all play the sassy, fast-talking ’30s society dame thing with such over-the-top conviction that they all kind of blur into the same character after a while. And if there is any clever dialogue, it’s totally lost in their rapid-fire delivery. I like the hats, though. And I loved watching a 40-something-looking Joan Crawford try to play a home-wrecking ingénue. That woman was just creepy.
Now it’s Monday and I just had a physical in my office. The boyfriend and I are opening life insurance policies to cover the mortgage should one of us die, and part of the new-life-insurance procedure involves blood and pee. And the company issuing my policy actually sent a nurse to my office to collect my liquids today. Handy! So I just spent half an hour in a conference room answering a litany of embarrassing questions, being measured on a portable scale with a tape measure attached to it, bleeding into a collection of tubes, and sneaking off to the bathroom to fill two vials with pee—without anyone knowing what I was up to. Of course, the moment I reached the point of no return in the stall, the whole office found the need to use the bathroom. So much for my dignity. At least my hands stayed
Now I’m off to the gym. Then to a fitting. I’m fat.
Friday, January 12, 2007
The countdown is on!
In one week, the boyfriend and I will be homos. I mean homeowners. But! Instead of moving all our crap into our new place immediately, we’re going to hold off until we take a couple trips that were planned long before our closing date was set. Hell, they were planned long before we even knew we’d ever get out of Bad Developer Smackdown 2006.
How long is the wait before we officially move in? A month. But we’re going to use that lag time to do all kinds of projects that are just easier to do without furniture in the way: Refinish the floors. Customize and paint the closets. Replace the sagging Barbie mantle over the fireplace. (For the record: sagging modifies mantle in the previous sentence—not Barbie.) Update some wiring. Add fancy little under-cabinet lights in the kitchen. Maybe add fancy little over-cabinet lights too. Maybe even wire the wall above the fireplace for a flat-screen TV. Maybe even add a fancy tile backsplash in the kitchen. And while we’re thinking so big here, we may as well dig a tunnel to the White House as well so we can advise Dubya directly on gay-marriage legislation.
The first little vacation happens a week after the closing date. I am going on a gay cruise through the Caribbean (sans boyfriend, who was still just a faraway dream when I booked it) with about 30 friends and 3,000 strangers. In preparation, I have been (warning! vanity alert!) working out at every possible moment, whitening my teeth, making sure my swimsuits don’t make me look positively delusional, and eating a diet of about 90% good stuff. I’m so hungry for chocolate or a doughnut (or a chocolate doughnut!) right now I would sell my own brother for a cruller. (And I commit that thought to writing—exposing myself to innumerable brother-trafficking and carb-policing legal ramifications—for two reasons: I don’t have a brother and I think cruller is a funny word.)
The trip is a Saturday through a Sunday, effectively killing the first two weekends we own our place. The third weekend is our first theater pilgrimage to New York as a couple—something the boyfriend and I planned pretty much on the day we met. On the docket: Follies, Grey Gardens, Jersey Boys and Cats (if it’s still playing—we keep hearing it’s going to be a hit, but you never know). The boyfriend, who is the entertainment director for our tour, habitually plays box-office roulette every time he goes to NYC, so we currently have big theater dreams and no tickets to our names. So we may end up seeing five back-to-back performances of Rush Limbaugh: The Musical. Time will tell.
And on the fourth weekend, our crap gets delivered. And we move in. And we don’t fight even once about where any of our combined stuff goes.
And we live happily ever after.
How long is the wait before we officially move in? A month. But we’re going to use that lag time to do all kinds of projects that are just easier to do without furniture in the way: Refinish the floors. Customize and paint the closets. Replace the sagging Barbie mantle over the fireplace. (For the record: sagging modifies mantle in the previous sentence—not Barbie.) Update some wiring. Add fancy little under-cabinet lights in the kitchen. Maybe add fancy little over-cabinet lights too. Maybe even wire the wall above the fireplace for a flat-screen TV. Maybe even add a fancy tile backsplash in the kitchen. And while we’re thinking so big here, we may as well dig a tunnel to the White House as well so we can advise Dubya directly on gay-marriage legislation.
The first little vacation happens a week after the closing date. I am going on a gay cruise through the Caribbean (sans boyfriend, who was still just a faraway dream when I booked it) with about 30 friends and 3,000 strangers. In preparation, I have been (warning! vanity alert!) working out at every possible moment, whitening my teeth, making sure my swimsuits don’t make me look positively delusional, and eating a diet of about 90% good stuff. I’m so hungry for chocolate or a doughnut (or a chocolate doughnut!) right now I would sell my own brother for a cruller. (And I commit that thought to writing—exposing myself to innumerable brother-trafficking and carb-policing legal ramifications—for two reasons: I don’t have a brother and I think cruller is a funny word.)
The trip is a Saturday through a Sunday, effectively killing the first two weekends we own our place. The third weekend is our first theater pilgrimage to New York as a couple—something the boyfriend and I planned pretty much on the day we met. On the docket: Follies, Grey Gardens, Jersey Boys and Cats (if it’s still playing—we keep hearing it’s going to be a hit, but you never know). The boyfriend, who is the entertainment director for our tour, habitually plays box-office roulette every time he goes to NYC, so we currently have big theater dreams and no tickets to our names. So we may end up seeing five back-to-back performances of Rush Limbaugh: The Musical. Time will tell.
And on the fourth weekend, our crap gets delivered. And we move in. And we don’t fight even once about where any of our combined stuff goes.
And we live happily ever after.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Carlotta is no longer still here
Yvonne de Carlo has died. And just a month short of the 35th anniversary Encores production of Follies.
The boyfriend and I are going to see it next month in New York, and we were kind of hoping to see the ghosts of some of the show’s original stars floating about the audience.
But in more immediate news, I just sent off the cashier’s check for the deposit on our new Two Bathroomed One Fireplaced Barbie Dream Condo. And in one week and two days, we will FINALLY be homeowners again. I’m exhausted just thinking about it.
Which means I can finally send out my epic four-page single-spaced holiday letter, which has been languishing in a pile in my bedroom until I was certain of my new address. I’m cheap enough that I don’t want to pay postage twice to disseminate holiday cheer and change-of-address announcements if I can help it.
I have better things to buy with my money. Like mortgage payments. And theater tickets. And black sable. And plush velvet. And pretzels. And beer.
The boyfriend and I are going to see it next month in New York, and we were kind of hoping to see the ghosts of some of the show’s original stars floating about the audience.
But in more immediate news, I just sent off the cashier’s check for the deposit on our new Two Bathroomed One Fireplaced Barbie Dream Condo. And in one week and two days, we will FINALLY be homeowners again. I’m exhausted just thinking about it.
Which means I can finally send out my epic four-page single-spaced holiday letter, which has been languishing in a pile in my bedroom until I was certain of my new address. I’m cheap enough that I don’t want to pay postage twice to disseminate holiday cheer and change-of-address announcements if I can help it.
I have better things to buy with my money. Like mortgage payments. And theater tickets. And black sable. And plush velvet. And pretzels. And beer.
Monday, January 08, 2007
Haul away the holly
When I lived in Shoebox Manor, all my Christmas shit fit in two boxes: the box for my four-foot tree and the smallish packing box that held all my lights, the assorted garlands and other crap I strung on my tree, my stocking, my garter, the Santa hat I put on my cheap knockoff reproduction David bust, and a handful of candles and other doodads I scattered around the house. Total decorating-for-Christmas time: two hours. Total un-decorating-for-Christmas time: 45 minutes, including vacuuming.
But this year I got to experience Christmas in my friends Jim and Jeff’s fabulous Five-Bathroomed Barbie Dream Castle, while New Condo Smackdown 06-07 kept my own Christmas shit packed away in a distant storage locker. The boys spent inordinate hours decorating their home for the holidays, and I pitched in on the nights I was actually home to help. And everything looked lovely. Sumptuous, even. And this Saturday we tore it all down, boxed it all up and packed it all away until next year. Total time for the three of us: seven hours, plus a few random little things we still have to deal with. And on one of my last trips to the basement with one of the last boxes of holiday cheer blocking my view of my feet, I missed the last step and gave my ankle a jarring little shock. Nothing’s swollen or discolored, so I think my future as an ankle model is still assured. But it hurts enough that I am considering myself a martyr for the cause. A Misfit Toy in a world of high-kicking Rockettes. A 6'1" Tiny Tim for the gay home-decorating set.
I always imbue the act of packing up the Christmas crap with a weird time-capsule sentimentality. As I wrap and box and store my stuff every January, I feel like I’m packing up the memories of the whole previous year—until they’re unwrapped again in 11 months or so when my whole world could be completely different. Or boringly the same. This feeling probably grew out of the years my mom was recovering from breast cancer, when she’d make sure my sister and I understood the importance of various ornaments every year in case she wasn’t there to tell us about them again the next year. This was to be her legacy: a thorough understanding of Aunt Lottie’s homemade Christmas crafts. And every time we packed stuff up and hauled it to the basement, we were haunted by the idea that this could be the last holiday act we committed as an intact family. Fortunately, Mom is still with us. But if any of her ornaments are to survive through the generations, they’ll have to do it on my sister’s branch of the family fir; I’m strictly a garlands-and-coordinating-ribbons kind of guy. My tree may be emotionally meaningless, but it sure matches the drapes nice.
I also like to pack stuff up using the current newspaper, so when I unpack the glories of Christmas each year I can be reminded of that funny thing Paris Hilton said to the press a year earlier. It’s a great way to combine the fun of decorating with the excitement of remembering which blockbuster movies you’ve completely forgotten about, what stores have gone out of business, and the things like Pat Robertson’s unhinged world predictions and Mr. Blackwell’s inarticulate fashion rantings that yet again have failed to create a blip beyond the end-of-year news holes they once filled.
This unpack-decorate-undecorate-repack-store pattern has been repeating itself every year since I bought my first house in 1993. And next year, for the first time ever, unless Something Too Horrible To Contemplate happens, I’ll be blending holiday traditions with the boyfriend. Unfortunately, since neither of us put up a tree this year, we have no idea how compatible we are in the holiday department. Fortunately, though, my decorations are all pretty much cheap crap and I don’t think he has any decorations to his name, so we can start fresh if we want. And now we’ll have extra storage and nothing but time, so we’re gonna be fabulous.
But this year I got to experience Christmas in my friends Jim and Jeff’s fabulous Five-Bathroomed Barbie Dream Castle, while New Condo Smackdown 06-07 kept my own Christmas shit packed away in a distant storage locker. The boys spent inordinate hours decorating their home for the holidays, and I pitched in on the nights I was actually home to help. And everything looked lovely. Sumptuous, even. And this Saturday we tore it all down, boxed it all up and packed it all away until next year. Total time for the three of us: seven hours, plus a few random little things we still have to deal with. And on one of my last trips to the basement with one of the last boxes of holiday cheer blocking my view of my feet, I missed the last step and gave my ankle a jarring little shock. Nothing’s swollen or discolored, so I think my future as an ankle model is still assured. But it hurts enough that I am considering myself a martyr for the cause. A Misfit Toy in a world of high-kicking Rockettes. A 6'1" Tiny Tim for the gay home-decorating set.
I always imbue the act of packing up the Christmas crap with a weird time-capsule sentimentality. As I wrap and box and store my stuff every January, I feel like I’m packing up the memories of the whole previous year—until they’re unwrapped again in 11 months or so when my whole world could be completely different. Or boringly the same. This feeling probably grew out of the years my mom was recovering from breast cancer, when she’d make sure my sister and I understood the importance of various ornaments every year in case she wasn’t there to tell us about them again the next year. This was to be her legacy: a thorough understanding of Aunt Lottie’s homemade Christmas crafts. And every time we packed stuff up and hauled it to the basement, we were haunted by the idea that this could be the last holiday act we committed as an intact family. Fortunately, Mom is still with us. But if any of her ornaments are to survive through the generations, they’ll have to do it on my sister’s branch of the family fir; I’m strictly a garlands-and-coordinating-ribbons kind of guy. My tree may be emotionally meaningless, but it sure matches the drapes nice.
I also like to pack stuff up using the current newspaper, so when I unpack the glories of Christmas each year I can be reminded of that funny thing Paris Hilton said to the press a year earlier. It’s a great way to combine the fun of decorating with the excitement of remembering which blockbuster movies you’ve completely forgotten about, what stores have gone out of business, and the things like Pat Robertson’s unhinged world predictions and Mr. Blackwell’s inarticulate fashion rantings that yet again have failed to create a blip beyond the end-of-year news holes they once filled.
This unpack-decorate-undecorate-repack-store pattern has been repeating itself every year since I bought my first house in 1993. And next year, for the first time ever, unless Something Too Horrible To Contemplate happens, I’ll be blending holiday traditions with the boyfriend. Unfortunately, since neither of us put up a tree this year, we have no idea how compatible we are in the holiday department. Fortunately, though, my decorations are all pretty much cheap crap and I don’t think he has any decorations to his name, so we can start fresh if we want. And now we’ll have extra storage and nothing but time, so we’re gonna be fabulous.
Thursday, January 04, 2007
You say you want a resolution
There is no easier way to set yourself up for documentable failure than to post a list of new year’s resolutions on your blog. When I compare my 2006 goals with my actual 2006 accomplishments, though, I don’t come off as much of an achiever. Then again, I’m not Dubya, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Rush Limbaugh, Mark Foley, Tom DeLay, Ted Haggard, Paul Barnes, Rick Santorum or Mel Gibson. Or Britney Spears. So I still feel like a winner.
In any case, here are my 2006 resolutions, followed by relevant quotes from the news reports, police blotters and gossip rags that document their ignoble outcomes:
Take a tap class with some regularity. I took one class in 2006. On Valentine’s Day. Right after doing a massive leg workout. And I was pretty rusty. So the class wasn’t one for the record books. Or the photo albums. But I choreographed a tap number for the chorus Christmas show, so by some definitions I taught a tap class. Does that count?
Practice the piano more / learn a new piano piece from scratch. Oh, my goodness! Is that Brad Pitt over there?
Read ten books. Um … I got three-tenths of the way there:
• American Gothic: A Life of America’s Most Famous Painting (Steven Biel) Interesting, but I was hoping for more behind-the-proverbial-scenes information, and this book was more of a look at the sociological impact of the painting on the American Zeitgeist.
• The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown) Great story. Sloppy writing. I actually liked the movie much better, if only because it didn’t contain Brown’s clumsy, adjective-laden descriptions of stuff.
• The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic and Madness at the Fair that Changed America (Erik Larson) I was hoping for more gore and less horticulture, but the book was thoroughly engrossing no matter what it was discussing.
Stop saying it’s 2007. I was shooting out 2007s prematurely at this time last year. I learned to stop, and I’m sure you’ll be relieved to learn I’ve had no trouble transitioning back into 2007 mode this week.
Travel someplace fun. In 2006, I hit Disney World twice, Iowa many times, Indianapolis, a couple Chicago suburbs … and I went on tons of business trips to New York City, the Twin Cities and even Cleveland. And it was all fun.
Decide once and for all if I’m on the right career path. And then follow up on that decision. Wow. THAT problem kind of solved itself this year. (For those of you just joining us, my career path this year went from boredom and frustration to layoffs to unemployment to a new job (in the same industry) that I really, really love.)
Keep shooting for my four-hour marathon goal. Yeah. I’m almost certain that’s Brad Pitt over there.
Find a bigger condo. Check. Now that I’ve survived more than three months of New Construction Purgatory and Bad Developer Smackdown and I’m in the middle of Negligent Property Owner Negotiation, the boyfriend and I should be happily ensconced in our Two Bathroomed One Fireplaced Barbie Dream Condo by the end of January. Please.
Add at least five pounds of muscle to my upper body. Brad! Over here! I saved you a seat! (Move over everyone! Brad Pitt is joining us!)
In any case, here are my 2006 resolutions, followed by relevant quotes from the news reports, police blotters and gossip rags that document their ignoble outcomes:
Take a tap class with some regularity. I took one class in 2006. On Valentine’s Day. Right after doing a massive leg workout. And I was pretty rusty. So the class wasn’t one for the record books. Or the photo albums. But I choreographed a tap number for the chorus Christmas show, so by some definitions I taught a tap class. Does that count?
Practice the piano more / learn a new piano piece from scratch. Oh, my goodness! Is that Brad Pitt over there?
Read ten books. Um … I got three-tenths of the way there:
• American Gothic: A Life of America’s Most Famous Painting (Steven Biel) Interesting, but I was hoping for more behind-the-proverbial-scenes information, and this book was more of a look at the sociological impact of the painting on the American Zeitgeist.
• The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown) Great story. Sloppy writing. I actually liked the movie much better, if only because it didn’t contain Brown’s clumsy, adjective-laden descriptions of stuff.
• The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic and Madness at the Fair that Changed America (Erik Larson) I was hoping for more gore and less horticulture, but the book was thoroughly engrossing no matter what it was discussing.
Stop saying it’s 2007. I was shooting out 2007s prematurely at this time last year. I learned to stop, and I’m sure you’ll be relieved to learn I’ve had no trouble transitioning back into 2007 mode this week.
Travel someplace fun. In 2006, I hit Disney World twice, Iowa many times, Indianapolis, a couple Chicago suburbs … and I went on tons of business trips to New York City, the Twin Cities and even Cleveland. And it was all fun.
Decide once and for all if I’m on the right career path. And then follow up on that decision. Wow. THAT problem kind of solved itself this year. (For those of you just joining us, my career path this year went from boredom and frustration to layoffs to unemployment to a new job (in the same industry) that I really, really love.)
Keep shooting for my four-hour marathon goal. Yeah. I’m almost certain that’s Brad Pitt over there.
Find a bigger condo. Check. Now that I’ve survived more than three months of New Construction Purgatory and Bad Developer Smackdown and I’m in the middle of Negligent Property Owner Negotiation, the boyfriend and I should be happily ensconced in our Two Bathroomed One Fireplaced Barbie Dream Condo by the end of January. Please.
Add at least five pounds of muscle to my upper body. Brad! Over here! I saved you a seat! (Move over everyone! Brad Pitt is joining us!)
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Out with the old
Just as I was packing up at work to start the holiday weekend, I got a call from AMEX. It seems that yet again some mouth-breathing cousin-fucker has gotten ahold of my credit card information and tried to make a DMP (Dumbass Major Purchase) guaranteed to trip the fraud alarms. Thankfully, those fraud alarms work, but until I get my new card (and contact every company who auto-bills to my AMEX), I am credit cardless—and I’m not earning cash back on everything I buy. I hate you, mouth-breathing cousin-fucker!
But on to cheerier things: The boyfriend and I were invited to three parties on Friday night, but we committed to only the first two invitations we got. The first was a goodbye party for one of his former coworkers, who is embarking on an exciting new career. The party was at the Grotto, whose lounge décor is almost as cool as its bathroom décor—which will totally influence the bathroom renovation of the Two Bathroomed One Fireplaced Barbie Dream Condo the boyfriend and I are buying. Once we scrape up enough money to renovate the bathrooms. But that’s not the point of this paragraph. The point is this: I’ve finally found a big-boy drink I actually like, and I’m ordering it more and more when I hang out with the big kids. So on Friday night I ordered a vodka tonic as though I’d been drinking them all my life. And when it came, it was even more drinkable than the last one I had—meaning it was the first vodka tonic I finished all the way to the bottom. Just like a big boy! Curious as to why this vodka tonic tasted more like grapefruit Kool-Aid than the last two I’d tried to choke down, I asked the waitress what the house vodka was. She told me it was Gordon’s. Having never heard of Gordon’s, I told her that I really liked it—in the tone one might use to describe an exciting new wine or an innovative lamb dish. She smiled at me as though I had just shown her the contents of my nose, and when I relayed this story to the boyfriend, he told me that Gordon’s is so cheap I could probably fill a bathtub with it for under $20. I made a point to avoid the waitress when we left. From there we headed to a party thrown by one of my former coworkers, where I rediscovered the endless deliciousness of Doritos and brownies. Urp.
We had the official inspection of the Two Bathroomed One Fireplaced Barbie Dream Condo on Saturday morning, followed by a ton of errands—including poking through the going-out-of-business-sale remains at Bad Boys, where generations of gay Chicago boys have bought trashy underwear, sexual-innuendo-laden T-shirts and up-to-the-second fashions of dubious taste. I stumbled out of the store half an hour later with two new swim suits, three foo-foo trendy shirts and 10 pair of Calvin Klein (which makes them not trashy) underwear. All at 50 to 70% off!
New Year’s Eve Day was one of those magical days best described by the poets. But I’m going to try anyway, without ever resorting to haiku: The boyfriend and I stayed in bed all day—literally until the sun went down—getting up only to forage for food and to pee. But we didn't sleep there all day; we watched TV. For seven solid hours we took in a marathon of Law & Order reruns on his TiVo and a couple random things we stumbled on as we flipped through the channels. There was a point, though, where he went to check his email and he left me alone with a Lifetime TV Movie that promptly sucked me into its gaping maw. I will never get that half hour back. Or those tears. Since none of our friends invited us to any NYE parties (harrumph), we sauntered over to the nearby Cheesecake Factory for an early dinner and then walked a mile round-trip to the closest Jewel to burn off what we just ate … and to stock up on ice cream. Then we spent the rest of the evening back in bed watching a Sex and the City DVD marathon and fattening ourselves on creamy frozen goodness. We ushered in 2007 on his rooftop deck, watching the Navy Pier and Grant Park fireworks from our wind-whipped perch 64 stories in the sky. And discreetly aiming our ice cream burps away from one another.
And yesterday, the boyfriend had to work, so I did laundry (somehow losing one of my new swim suits in the process), paid bills, cleaned out emails and went to Sidetrack for show tunes, where I developed a migraine that kept me up most of the night praying for death. But I survived long enough to blog about it, so it looks like 2007 is off to a good start. Yay!
But on to cheerier things: The boyfriend and I were invited to three parties on Friday night, but we committed to only the first two invitations we got. The first was a goodbye party for one of his former coworkers, who is embarking on an exciting new career. The party was at the Grotto, whose lounge décor is almost as cool as its bathroom décor—which will totally influence the bathroom renovation of the Two Bathroomed One Fireplaced Barbie Dream Condo the boyfriend and I are buying. Once we scrape up enough money to renovate the bathrooms. But that’s not the point of this paragraph. The point is this: I’ve finally found a big-boy drink I actually like, and I’m ordering it more and more when I hang out with the big kids. So on Friday night I ordered a vodka tonic as though I’d been drinking them all my life. And when it came, it was even more drinkable than the last one I had—meaning it was the first vodka tonic I finished all the way to the bottom. Just like a big boy! Curious as to why this vodka tonic tasted more like grapefruit Kool-Aid than the last two I’d tried to choke down, I asked the waitress what the house vodka was. She told me it was Gordon’s. Having never heard of Gordon’s, I told her that I really liked it—in the tone one might use to describe an exciting new wine or an innovative lamb dish. She smiled at me as though I had just shown her the contents of my nose, and when I relayed this story to the boyfriend, he told me that Gordon’s is so cheap I could probably fill a bathtub with it for under $20. I made a point to avoid the waitress when we left. From there we headed to a party thrown by one of my former coworkers, where I rediscovered the endless deliciousness of Doritos and brownies. Urp.
We had the official inspection of the Two Bathroomed One Fireplaced Barbie Dream Condo on Saturday morning, followed by a ton of errands—including poking through the going-out-of-business-sale remains at Bad Boys, where generations of gay Chicago boys have bought trashy underwear, sexual-innuendo-laden T-shirts and up-to-the-second fashions of dubious taste. I stumbled out of the store half an hour later with two new swim suits, three foo-foo trendy shirts and 10 pair of Calvin Klein (which makes them not trashy) underwear. All at 50 to 70% off!
New Year’s Eve Day was one of those magical days best described by the poets. But I’m going to try anyway, without ever resorting to haiku: The boyfriend and I stayed in bed all day—literally until the sun went down—getting up only to forage for food and to pee. But we didn't sleep there all day; we watched TV. For seven solid hours we took in a marathon of Law & Order reruns on his TiVo and a couple random things we stumbled on as we flipped through the channels. There was a point, though, where he went to check his email and he left me alone with a Lifetime TV Movie that promptly sucked me into its gaping maw. I will never get that half hour back. Or those tears. Since none of our friends invited us to any NYE parties (harrumph), we sauntered over to the nearby Cheesecake Factory for an early dinner and then walked a mile round-trip to the closest Jewel to burn off what we just ate … and to stock up on ice cream. Then we spent the rest of the evening back in bed watching a Sex and the City DVD marathon and fattening ourselves on creamy frozen goodness. We ushered in 2007 on his rooftop deck, watching the Navy Pier and Grant Park fireworks from our wind-whipped perch 64 stories in the sky. And discreetly aiming our ice cream burps away from one another.
And yesterday, the boyfriend had to work, so I did laundry (somehow losing one of my new swim suits in the process), paid bills, cleaned out emails and went to Sidetrack for show tunes, where I developed a migraine that kept me up most of the night praying for death. But I survived long enough to blog about it, so it looks like 2007 is off to a good start. Yay!
Friday, December 29, 2006
I got shushed!
I’ve been getting up at some godawful hour every morning to trudge to the gym before work. Because with the new job and the awesome boyfriend, it’s the only time I can guarantee myself a workout. And if I don’t get my regular workouts in, I feel both fat and skinny. Which makes me irritable. And nobody likes to be around a fat, skinny irritable guy. Least of all me.
I have a bit of a head cold, so I wasn’t in the mood for anything super exertiony this morning. So I worked my core: abs, obliques and lower back. Lower-back exercises are pretty much limited to hyperextensions, where you balance the front of your hips on a little ledge and raise and lower your torso with a weight hugged to your chest. Someone from a smarter sexual orientation might think ahead and realize that repeatedly swinging your head above and below your heart when it’s full of snot would be perhaps a really stupid thing to do, but some of us gay types place tight little waists (or at least the pursuit of tight little waists) over sinus comfort on any hierarchy of importance.
I have no idea why I just gave you a belabored explanation of hyperextensions, but meandering off topic seems to be a hobby of mine. In any case, I was at the hyperextension bench this morning when a woman came up to me and started talking to me as though she knew me. And I had no clue who she was—most likely because she had on a baseball cap and no makeup and it was morning and I was bleary-eyed and snot-headed and I’d just done 20 hyperextensions.And I was a gay and she was a girl and all girls pretty much look the same to me. But we started talking and—like anyone who has a conversation at Crunch—we had to kind of yell over the loud thump-thump music Crunch seems to view as a basic fitness requirement.
So as we were chatting, some woman with her back to us on a stair-stepper at least 10 yards away started yelling something shush-y over her shoulder in the general direction of us and/or the entire western half of the gym. The woman was one of those working-out-is-an-event types: coordinated outfits instead of workout gear, an obvious application of hair and skin products even for a pre-dawn workout, and stacks of fashion magazines as standard-issue cardio tools. She had a bank of TVs in her face, a thump-thump speaker right over her head, a whirring stair-stepper under her feet and a Cosmo spread out on the reading stand in front of her. And yet our very top-line conversation (remember, I had no clue who my conversation companion was, so it’s not like the stuff we were talking about was interesting enough even to distract Dubya from his animal flash cards) was distracting her to the point of shushing faraway strangers speaking at a volume not unlike any other she’d hear in a loud gym.
On the other hand, my conversation companion was so engrossed in our non-conversation that she didn’t even notice the shush fascist. And, apparently happy with the interaction we’d just shared, she eventually said her good-byes and sauntered off to the rest of her workout. I tried to shoot the shush fascist a look that said both holy shit are you in need of a good slapping and your shoes SO don’t match your headband, but she had gotten herself caught up in one of those 20 Insignificant-To-The-Rest-Of-The-World Things He Does That Are Nevertheless Grounds For Divorce Cosmo articles, so she didn’t notice.
And I made a point to grunt through my last 10 hyperextensions. Which is surprisingly hard to do with a head full of snot.
I have a bit of a head cold, so I wasn’t in the mood for anything super exertiony this morning. So I worked my core: abs, obliques and lower back. Lower-back exercises are pretty much limited to hyperextensions, where you balance the front of your hips on a little ledge and raise and lower your torso with a weight hugged to your chest. Someone from a smarter sexual orientation might think ahead and realize that repeatedly swinging your head above and below your heart when it’s full of snot would be perhaps a really stupid thing to do, but some of us gay types place tight little waists (or at least the pursuit of tight little waists) over sinus comfort on any hierarchy of importance.
I have no idea why I just gave you a belabored explanation of hyperextensions, but meandering off topic seems to be a hobby of mine. In any case, I was at the hyperextension bench this morning when a woman came up to me and started talking to me as though she knew me. And I had no clue who she was—most likely because she had on a baseball cap and no makeup and it was morning and I was bleary-eyed and snot-headed and I’d just done 20 hyperextensions.
So as we were chatting, some woman with her back to us on a stair-stepper at least 10 yards away started yelling something shush-y over her shoulder in the general direction of us and/or the entire western half of the gym. The woman was one of those working-out-is-an-event types: coordinated outfits instead of workout gear, an obvious application of hair and skin products even for a pre-dawn workout, and stacks of fashion magazines as standard-issue cardio tools. She had a bank of TVs in her face, a thump-thump speaker right over her head, a whirring stair-stepper under her feet and a Cosmo spread out on the reading stand in front of her. And yet our very top-line conversation (remember, I had no clue who my conversation companion was, so it’s not like the stuff we were talking about was interesting enough even to distract Dubya from his animal flash cards) was distracting her to the point of shushing faraway strangers speaking at a volume not unlike any other she’d hear in a loud gym.
On the other hand, my conversation companion was so engrossed in our non-conversation that she didn’t even notice the shush fascist. And, apparently happy with the interaction we’d just shared, she eventually said her good-byes and sauntered off to the rest of her workout. I tried to shoot the shush fascist a look that said both holy shit are you in need of a good slapping and your shoes SO don’t match your headband, but she had gotten herself caught up in one of those 20 Insignificant-To-The-Rest-Of-The-World Things He Does That Are Nevertheless Grounds For Divorce Cosmo articles, so she didn’t notice.
And I made a point to grunt through my last 10 hyperextensions. Which is surprisingly hard to do with a head full of snot.
Thursday, December 28, 2006
All you have to do is dream
The boyfriend and I first met on a Saturday morning, at a brunch. We spent the rest of the morning and afternoon together and parted ways only when … um … I had to leave for … um … another date. Which says either that I’m too stupid to recognize The Rest Of My Life when it’s grinning adorably in my face or that I’m conscientious enough that I honor my prior commitments, even if it means waiting another day for the rest of my life to kick in.
In any case, the boyfriend and I had our second meeting—which one would probably consider to be our first official date—the next afternoon. We met for a late lunch at a downtown restaurant and then saw The Devil Wears Prada and then headed to Sidetrack for show tunes. Which is probably not as gay as a pedicures-and-opera date, but it comes awfully close.
So there we were, smiling coyly at each other and making calculated small talk and singing along with our favorite show tunes, when one of the Dreamgirls clips came on. And the future boyfriend, in a fit of prescience and romantic foreshadowing, turned to me and invited me to see the Dreamgirls movie with him when it came out. In December.
Which was pretty huge; he’s a big Dreamgirls fan (I hesitate to use the word freak) who’s been waiting a long, giddy time for the movie to come out, and I know now he wouldn’t invite just anyone to share it with him.
I told him that making a five-months-out date was projecting an awful lot on our first 24 hours together, jumpy heart things and blinding fireworks notwithstanding. But I said yes anyway.
And last night, we fulfilled that date. The boyfriend got us our tickets yesterday morning and got to the theater an hour early to stake out prime seating for us. By the time I got to the theater—45 minutes before the movie started—they were making us latecomers wait in a roped-off area to the side of the lobby. Which kind of sucked because I wanted to share my pre-movie excitement with the boyfriend, but I knew that no matter how much they made us wait I’d still have a great spot saved for me next to the most wonderful guy in the theater. AND I got to see Roger Ebert himself saunter through the lobby while I waited in the cattle chute. Roger Ebert! At the movies! Who knew?
I also spent my half hour in that line standing in front of a poster for the movie version of my favorite childhood book. At the risk of sounding like a complete exaggeration junkie, I can honestly say that Bridge to Terabithia changed my life. The story is pretty fantastic, and the book was the first to show me the awesome powers of the written word. While my own writing powers waited until I was in college before they emerged, I can still draw a pretty straight line between that book and my present career. And I am SO taking the boyfriend to see the movie when it comes out in February.
But back to Dreamgirls. It’s everything we’d hoped for, and it’s generally outstanding, despite the homophobic blemishes of Eddie Murphy and Jennifer Hudson in the cast. (Not that their homophobia has anything to do with the characters they play, but they chose to be in a gay-man-created show with a massive gay following, and their performances, though both good, will always be tainted by the things we know they’ve said about us.) The movie stays extremely faithful to the original Broadway material, cutting only a few songs and adding new ones the boyfriend and I really like. The costumes and wigs and makeup are over-the-top spectacular and must have been a hoot to design. I loved Fatima Robinson’s choreography, even though numbers like “Steppin’ to the Bad Side” and “One Night Only” looked heavily influenced by 21st century music videos and gay circuit parties. I’m pretty amazed in this age of hyper-realistic animation and perfectly synched music videos, though, that we’ve somehow lost the ability to make movie musicals where singers’ lips and voices match up realistically. We could do it in the 1940s. We could do it in the 1950s. We could do it in the 1960s. We had some obvious hiccups with 1985’s A Chorus Line, but they were the least of that movie’s problems. And 20 years later, we still have huge chunks of distractingly unsynched music in Dreamgirls—most lamentably in “And I am Telling You (I’m Not Going).”
The movie was good enough that I’d totally see it again in the theater. And before I could even suggest it, the boyfriend informed me we’d be coming back for a second showing. Which is, of course, why he’s the boyfriend.
In any case, the boyfriend and I had our second meeting—which one would probably consider to be our first official date—the next afternoon. We met for a late lunch at a downtown restaurant and then saw The Devil Wears Prada and then headed to Sidetrack for show tunes. Which is probably not as gay as a pedicures-and-opera date, but it comes awfully close.
So there we were, smiling coyly at each other and making calculated small talk and singing along with our favorite show tunes, when one of the Dreamgirls clips came on. And the future boyfriend, in a fit of prescience and romantic foreshadowing, turned to me and invited me to see the Dreamgirls movie with him when it came out. In December.
Which was pretty huge; he’s a big Dreamgirls fan (I hesitate to use the word freak) who’s been waiting a long, giddy time for the movie to come out, and I know now he wouldn’t invite just anyone to share it with him.
I told him that making a five-months-out date was projecting an awful lot on our first 24 hours together, jumpy heart things and blinding fireworks notwithstanding. But I said yes anyway.
And last night, we fulfilled that date. The boyfriend got us our tickets yesterday morning and got to the theater an hour early to stake out prime seating for us. By the time I got to the theater—45 minutes before the movie started—they were making us latecomers wait in a roped-off area to the side of the lobby. Which kind of sucked because I wanted to share my pre-movie excitement with the boyfriend, but I knew that no matter how much they made us wait I’d still have a great spot saved for me next to the most wonderful guy in the theater. AND I got to see Roger Ebert himself saunter through the lobby while I waited in the cattle chute. Roger Ebert! At the movies! Who knew?
I also spent my half hour in that line standing in front of a poster for the movie version of my favorite childhood book. At the risk of sounding like a complete exaggeration junkie, I can honestly say that Bridge to Terabithia changed my life. The story is pretty fantastic, and the book was the first to show me the awesome powers of the written word. While my own writing powers waited until I was in college before they emerged, I can still draw a pretty straight line between that book and my present career. And I am SO taking the boyfriend to see the movie when it comes out in February.
But back to Dreamgirls. It’s everything we’d hoped for, and it’s generally outstanding, despite the homophobic blemishes of Eddie Murphy and Jennifer Hudson in the cast. (Not that their homophobia has anything to do with the characters they play, but they chose to be in a gay-man-created show with a massive gay following, and their performances, though both good, will always be tainted by the things we know they’ve said about us.) The movie stays extremely faithful to the original Broadway material, cutting only a few songs and adding new ones the boyfriend and I really like. The costumes and wigs and makeup are over-the-top spectacular and must have been a hoot to design. I loved Fatima Robinson’s choreography, even though numbers like “Steppin’ to the Bad Side” and “One Night Only” looked heavily influenced by 21st century music videos and gay circuit parties. I’m pretty amazed in this age of hyper-realistic animation and perfectly synched music videos, though, that we’ve somehow lost the ability to make movie musicals where singers’ lips and voices match up realistically. We could do it in the 1940s. We could do it in the 1950s. We could do it in the 1960s. We had some obvious hiccups with 1985’s A Chorus Line, but they were the least of that movie’s problems. And 20 years later, we still have huge chunks of distractingly unsynched music in Dreamgirls—most lamentably in “And I am Telling You (I’m Not Going).”
The movie was good enough that I’d totally see it again in the theater. And before I could even suggest it, the boyfriend informed me we’d be coming back for a second showing. Which is, of course, why he’s the boyfriend.
Saturday, December 23, 2006
Our first Christmas apart
Or, to punctuate that more specifically:
Our first Christmas. Apart.
I'm in Iowa with my family for the holiday weekend. The boyfriend has to work. So we're celebrating together in different cities. Which is actually fine. Christmas is really just another day, and (Warning! Noxious sentiment ahead!) every moment with the boyfriend is like a major holiday to me. We celebrated five lovelyyears months together yesterday doing what most couples do to mark special milestones: making an offer on a condo.
Peggy Sawyer Gardens, the condo we made the offer on on Tuesday, fell through. The developer, whose Realtor repeatedly described as "willing to negotiate," bottomed out a whopping 1.0137% below its list price. Assuming my math is correct. So we're moving on to a cheaper place with smaller bedrooms ... and more charm, better views, a rooftop deck, a fireplace and gated parking. And two-year-old bathrooms I hate as though they were the pope.
My drive to Iowa this morning was uneventful, but challenging on two fronts: First of all, we got up at 4:00 so I could take the boyfriend to the airport on my way out of town. I am a morning person in the same way Dubya is a good president, so I had serious sleepy issues on what was an otherwise painles, traffic-free four-and-a-half-hour drive. The second front is something I'm thrilled about even less. I've always been Cap'n Camelpee, the guy who could pee once in the morning and once before bed and be pretty much unencumbered by a need to find a bathroom the rest of the day. But as I'm inching toward my 40s, I'm finding I need to pee more often. Like every three or four hours. And when I'm trapped alone in a car with nothing to think about except how much I have to pee, I make a lousy travel companion. Which is why it's probably a good thing I'm alone when I'm alone.
But I'm here, and I accomplished an entire season's Christmas shopping in one afternoon today -- finding everything that is sold out in Chicago abundantly stocked on the store shelves in Iowa. I even ran into my fifth-grade teacher, who seemed genuinely impresed to find out I grew up to be a big Broadway star with seven patents and an eponymous line of grooming products for incredibly handsome men. But she was probably impressed mostly because I knew the word eponymous.
Enough about me. I have to get back to my uncommonly photogenic niece and nephew.
Happy holidays!
LATE-BREAKING NEWS! As of 10:00 tonight, the boyfriend and I became the proud owners of Our Very First Condo! Well, the proud owners of a piece of paper stating that we're going to buy Our Very First Condo for $25,000 less than we would have spent on Peggy Sawyer Gardens. The closing date is January 19. We'll let you know when to show up and help us move.
Our first Christmas. Apart.
I'm in Iowa with my family for the holiday weekend. The boyfriend has to work. So we're celebrating together in different cities. Which is actually fine. Christmas is really just another day, and (Warning! Noxious sentiment ahead!) every moment with the boyfriend is like a major holiday to me. We celebrated five lovely
Peggy Sawyer Gardens, the condo we made the offer on on Tuesday, fell through. The developer, whose Realtor repeatedly described as "willing to negotiate," bottomed out a whopping 1.0137% below its list price. Assuming my math is correct. So we're moving on to a cheaper place with smaller bedrooms ... and more charm, better views, a rooftop deck, a fireplace and gated parking. And two-year-old bathrooms I hate as though they were the pope.
My drive to Iowa this morning was uneventful, but challenging on two fronts: First of all, we got up at 4:00 so I could take the boyfriend to the airport on my way out of town. I am a morning person in the same way Dubya is a good president, so I had serious sleepy issues on what was an otherwise painles, traffic-free four-and-a-half-hour drive. The second front is something I'm thrilled about even less. I've always been Cap'n Camelpee, the guy who could pee once in the morning and once before bed and be pretty much unencumbered by a need to find a bathroom the rest of the day. But as I'm inching toward my 40s, I'm finding I need to pee more often. Like every three or four hours. And when I'm trapped alone in a car with nothing to think about except how much I have to pee, I make a lousy travel companion. Which is why it's probably a good thing I'm alone when I'm alone.
But I'm here, and I accomplished an entire season's Christmas shopping in one afternoon today -- finding everything that is sold out in Chicago abundantly stocked on the store shelves in Iowa. I even ran into my fifth-grade teacher, who seemed genuinely impresed to find out I grew up to be a big Broadway star with seven patents and an eponymous line of grooming products for incredibly handsome men. But she was probably impressed mostly because I knew the word eponymous.
Enough about me. I have to get back to my uncommonly photogenic niece and nephew.
Happy holidays!
LATE-BREAKING NEWS! As of 10:00 tonight, the boyfriend and I became the proud owners of Our Very First Condo! Well, the proud owners of a piece of paper stating that we're going to buy Our Very First Condo for $25,000 less than we would have spent on Peggy Sawyer Gardens. The closing date is January 19. We'll let you know when to show up and help us move.
Thursday, December 21, 2006
18 years
It’s been almost two decades since Miriam was murdered.
That’s enough time for someone to raise a child and send him or her off into the world. Enough time for four presidential elections and three new Sondheim musicals. (Five, if you count Saturday Night and The Frogs.)
It’s enough time for a gangly, unsure college boy to cycle through three cars and four houses and five jobs and three cities on his way to becoming successful, confident (more or less) man.
It’s enough time for him to realize that the world is not fair. That bad things happen to good people. That the bad people who did them don’t always get punished. That horrible tragedy gets easier to accept over time, though it remains impossible to forget.
I often wonder what Miriam would be if she were alive today. Famous actress? Influential journalist? Stay-at-home mom? She was among those people you just knew were going somewhere big with their lives. I’m sure that wherever the fates would have taken her, she’d be someone people knew about.
I also wonder if we would still be friends. Our friendship lasted only seven months until her murder. I’m only barely in touch with the other friends I made at the theme park where we all worked during the summer of 1988. I haven’t talked to her family in years. Would she and I have drifted apart as well?
Since at this point I’m pretty much in control of our story, I choose to believe that by now I’d have sung in her wedding and taken her kids to Disney World and given her a prominent link on my blogroll and kept her on my speed dial from the moment I got my first cell phone.
And I’m pretty sure she’d have written the same story for me if our fates had been reversed.
I miss you, Miriam. The world you never knew misses you. But I'm keeping track of everything you miss while you're gone: The musicals. The world events. The job changes. The bad haircuts.
And I'll get you caught up the moment our paths cross again.
That’s enough time for someone to raise a child and send him or her off into the world. Enough time for four presidential elections and three new Sondheim musicals. (Five, if you count Saturday Night and The Frogs.)
It’s enough time for a gangly, unsure college boy to cycle through three cars and four houses and five jobs and three cities on his way to becoming successful, confident (more or less) man.
It’s enough time for him to realize that the world is not fair. That bad things happen to good people. That the bad people who did them don’t always get punished. That horrible tragedy gets easier to accept over time, though it remains impossible to forget.
I often wonder what Miriam would be if she were alive today. Famous actress? Influential journalist? Stay-at-home mom? She was among those people you just knew were going somewhere big with their lives. I’m sure that wherever the fates would have taken her, she’d be someone people knew about.
I also wonder if we would still be friends. Our friendship lasted only seven months until her murder. I’m only barely in touch with the other friends I made at the theme park where we all worked during the summer of 1988. I haven’t talked to her family in years. Would she and I have drifted apart as well?
Since at this point I’m pretty much in control of our story, I choose to believe that by now I’d have sung in her wedding and taken her kids to Disney World and given her a prominent link on my blogroll and kept her on my speed dial from the moment I got my first cell phone.
And I’m pretty sure she’d have written the same story for me if our fates had been reversed.
I miss you, Miriam. The world you never knew misses you. But I'm keeping track of everything you miss while you're gone: The musicals. The world events. The job changes. The bad haircuts.
And I'll get you caught up the moment our paths cross again.
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Squeaky wheel. Grease.
Sometimes being a bitch is all a woman has to hold onto.
And sometimes it pays off. I've devoted every available hour since Friday morning to irritating the living hell out of every heel-dragging, buck-passing, dead-ending, half-truthing person on the shady developer's side of this three-month runaround hell I've been stuck in. Fortunately, some key people on their end were frighteningly easy to intimidate some useful information out of. You should have heard the surprise and irritation in the developer's attorney's voice when he realized I'd tracked him down today.
And an hour after that call, I was suddenly, magically free from my Two-Bathroomed Barbie Dream Condo That Wasn't Meant To Be. The contract release was signed, the earnest money release papers were faxed, and by 4:00 the boyfriend and I had an offer on the table for an even better condo—a Three-Bedroomed Barbie And Midge Dream Condo With A Wine Refrigerator—that we had waiting patiently in the wings for its big chance to go on. We shall christen it Peggy Sawyer Gardens.
Assuming we didn't insult the developer into never working with us; we made a freakishly lowball offer. On new construction. But we are unrestrained by bogus condo contracts and real-estate-selling contingencies and bad credit, and we can get it off the developer's hands by the end of the fiscal year. Let's hear it for good things coming out of bad situations.
But don't cheer too loudly; this day has aged me in dog years, and I'm going to bed.
And sometimes it pays off. I've devoted every available hour since Friday morning to irritating the living hell out of every heel-dragging, buck-passing, dead-ending, half-truthing person on the shady developer's side of this three-month runaround hell I've been stuck in. Fortunately, some key people on their end were frighteningly easy to intimidate some useful information out of. You should have heard the surprise and irritation in the developer's attorney's voice when he realized I'd tracked him down today.
And an hour after that call, I was suddenly, magically free from my Two-Bathroomed Barbie Dream Condo That Wasn't Meant To Be. The contract release was signed, the earnest money release papers were faxed, and by 4:00 the boyfriend and I had an offer on the table for an even better condo—a Three-Bedroomed Barbie And Midge Dream Condo With A Wine Refrigerator—that we had waiting patiently in the wings for its big chance to go on. We shall christen it Peggy Sawyer Gardens.
Assuming we didn't insult the developer into never working with us; we made a freakishly lowball offer. On new construction. But we are unrestrained by bogus condo contracts and real-estate-selling contingencies and bad credit, and we can get it off the developer's hands by the end of the fiscal year. Let's hear it for good things coming out of bad situations.
But don't cheer too loudly; this day has aged me in dog years, and I'm going to bed.
Monday, December 18, 2006
Dear Guys We Met At Sidetrack Last Night,
The boyfriend and I love show tunes. We love show tunes in the way hipsters love trendy clothes and children love puppies and Paris Hilton loves attention.
And we love going to Sidetrack to bask in the warm show-tune glow together as often as we can. Even though they have played that insufferable “Nothin’ Dirty Goin’ On” to the point that the footage is starting to degrade and I’ve started to hate Dolly Parton just a little in the back of my throat. Even though it’s totally not her fault they keep playing that goddamn clip.
So it was great to find another couple last night who shares our weird-obsessive little passion. And when you started comparing notes on the Barbra Streisand concerts you’ve seen all over the country … well, let’s just say the boyfriend needed a cigarette and a cold shower when you were done.
But we have a little confession to make.
You see, we kind of lied to you about something. Something we lie about to a lot of strangers. Something that totally doesn’t matter, but you guys kept going back to it and then we started feeling really bad.
So …
Remember how you walked up to us and asked us how long we’d been together because people who’ve been together for a long time never hold hands and act all lovey-dovey in public the way we were? And remember how we told you we’d been together for five years?
Well, we kind of rounded up a bit. By … um … four years and seven months. (And five days, if we’re clearing the air here completely and starting again on a foundation of absolute truth.)
You see, we’re so sure of our future that we’re moving in together. Very soon. Once we survive the nightmare we’re mired in with an ugly consortium of incompetent developers and their Realtors we’re filing ethics charges against, that is.
I’ve never even considered moving in with a boyfriend before. He’s never introduced a boyfriend to his family—and I’m already in his family photos albums and email address books. We’re that kind of serious.
So we’ve started to resent the looks we get when we tell people how long we’ve been together. I’m sure you got them too when you started dating: the looks that say Five months? It’s obviously all about sex. You two will never last. I’ll give you my I-told-you-sos now so I won’t have to make the effort when you break up next week.
So we decided around our two-month mark to translate every month we’ve been together into years. But only with strangers who ask—and only with strangers who ask in casual, there’s-probably-a-really-good-chance-we’ll-never-see-you-again settings.
And until last night, it’s worked quite well—inquiring strangers get answers to their questions and we get to enjoy our young love free from the doubtful glares of people we just met. We even pulled it off on the bus on the way to see Barbra—and we figure if our dirty little lie was good enough for a busful of rabid Barbra fans, it was certainly good enough for consumers of the more general-interest show-tune selections they play at Sidetrack.
But you guys kept coming back to it. Five years! you’d say. Wow—you two grope each other like priests at a Cub Scout rally. Then a few songs would go by. Then Do you know [name of person who knows darn well that Jake's longest Chicago relationship has been only nine months]? He’s my best friend in the whole world. In fact, he just gave me his kidney. And all the while, the boyfriend and I kept muttering We are SO busted to each other. In between verses of “I’m Still Here,” that is. And when Shirley started pounding on the piano with her bare hand in that last verse, each beat was like a smack on the back of our heads—like in “The Tell-Tale Heart,” except to tell us we were liars instead of murderers. And that our hair looked fabulous.
But no one mourns the wicked, so we hereby apologize for misleading you.
On the plus side, you two totally nailed our young love when you saw us. We have no intention of ever losing our pathological need to cling to each other in public, though, so we promise to be just as nauseatingly in love on our real five-year anniversary. Maybe we’ll invite you to the party.
Hope to see you guys again soon. And this time we promise to lie only about things you’ll never be able to fact-check. Like what we do for a living.
We’re Broadway stars, in case you were wondering. HUGE Broadway stars. Just don't ask which shows we've headlined in.
And we love going to Sidetrack to bask in the warm show-tune glow together as often as we can. Even though they have played that insufferable “Nothin’ Dirty Goin’ On” to the point that the footage is starting to degrade and I’ve started to hate Dolly Parton just a little in the back of my throat. Even though it’s totally not her fault they keep playing that goddamn clip.
So it was great to find another couple last night who shares our weird-obsessive little passion. And when you started comparing notes on the Barbra Streisand concerts you’ve seen all over the country … well, let’s just say the boyfriend needed a cigarette and a cold shower when you were done.
But we have a little confession to make.
You see, we kind of lied to you about something. Something we lie about to a lot of strangers. Something that totally doesn’t matter, but you guys kept going back to it and then we started feeling really bad.
So …
Remember how you walked up to us and asked us how long we’d been together because people who’ve been together for a long time never hold hands and act all lovey-dovey in public the way we were? And remember how we told you we’d been together for five years?
Well, we kind of rounded up a bit. By … um … four years and seven months. (And five days, if we’re clearing the air here completely and starting again on a foundation of absolute truth.)
You see, we’re so sure of our future that we’re moving in together. Very soon. Once we survive the nightmare we’re mired in with an ugly consortium of incompetent developers and their Realtors we’re filing ethics charges against, that is.
I’ve never even considered moving in with a boyfriend before. He’s never introduced a boyfriend to his family—and I’m already in his family photos albums and email address books. We’re that kind of serious.
So we’ve started to resent the looks we get when we tell people how long we’ve been together. I’m sure you got them too when you started dating: the looks that say Five months? It’s obviously all about sex. You two will never last. I’ll give you my I-told-you-sos now so I won’t have to make the effort when you break up next week.
So we decided around our two-month mark to translate every month we’ve been together into years. But only with strangers who ask—and only with strangers who ask in casual, there’s-probably-a-really-good-chance-we’ll-never-see-you-again settings.
And until last night, it’s worked quite well—inquiring strangers get answers to their questions and we get to enjoy our young love free from the doubtful glares of people we just met. We even pulled it off on the bus on the way to see Barbra—and we figure if our dirty little lie was good enough for a busful of rabid Barbra fans, it was certainly good enough for consumers of the more general-interest show-tune selections they play at Sidetrack.
But you guys kept coming back to it. Five years! you’d say. Wow—you two grope each other like priests at a Cub Scout rally. Then a few songs would go by. Then Do you know [name of person who knows darn well that Jake's longest Chicago relationship has been only nine months]? He’s my best friend in the whole world. In fact, he just gave me his kidney. And all the while, the boyfriend and I kept muttering We are SO busted to each other. In between verses of “I’m Still Here,” that is. And when Shirley started pounding on the piano with her bare hand in that last verse, each beat was like a smack on the back of our heads—like in “The Tell-Tale Heart,” except to tell us we were liars instead of murderers. And that our hair looked fabulous.
But no one mourns the wicked, so we hereby apologize for misleading you.
On the plus side, you two totally nailed our young love when you saw us. We have no intention of ever losing our pathological need to cling to each other in public, though, so we promise to be just as nauseatingly in love on our real five-year anniversary. Maybe we’ll invite you to the party.
Hope to see you guys again soon. And this time we promise to lie only about things you’ll never be able to fact-check. Like what we do for a living.
We’re Broadway stars, in case you were wondering. HUGE Broadway stars. Just don't ask which shows we've headlined in.
Friday, December 15, 2006
Storming the Bastille
So my fabled Two-Bathroom Barbie Dream Condo has become a bit of a nightmare. After endless delays and a wall of silence from the developer whenever my Realtor or my attorney or I pose questions, my attorney found a clause in my contract that said I could demand to close in 14 days or the contract would be void and I could move on to something even more Barbielicious.
Well, that 14-day deadline came and went almost four weeks ago. And all we need is a signature of release from the developer and I get my down payment back and I can move on to another Two-Bathroomed Barbie Dream Condo.
Of course, there’s been no word at all from the developer.
So I took time off from work today to storm the developer’s office in person and demand a signature. I put on my most intimidating power suit and I wore my I’m-rich-and-important-so-you’d-better-do-what-I-say top coat and I marched in with release forms and pens in hand, ready for Contract Smackdown 2006.
And I left half an hour later even more frustrated than before. Because there was nobody there to sign it. But at least I got some answers:
• The developer essentially shut down in May after a personal tragedy. The office laid off its entire staff and halted construction (except for a few essential projects) on my building. Yet they still decided to sell me a unit (and they had no trouble finding someone to sign my contract) with the verbal promise that it would be done in September.
• The only person currently on the office staff is a receptionist. She claimed to have no clue about who could sign my contract release, but she promised she’d “get on it” and told me to call her on Monday if I haven’t heard anything.
• She said that a number of other potential tenants are working to get out of their contracts as well, and that she was afraid to come to the receptionist desk every time someone came in the door. Apparently lots of people got my idea to storm the Bastille. And apparently repeated demands for signatures haven’t inspired her to get very far “on it” and find a goddamn fucking person authorized to sign our goddamned fucking contract release forms.
• She also said there’s a title company in California who has the power to get the project going again, but the company isn’t returning calls. Yet she told me repeatedly the project would be up and running again next week. Because when a title company won’t return your calls or give you money, of course you’ll call in all your angry contractors the week before Christmas and have them start hanging drywall again.
• And she told me that filing a lawsuit or a lien is useless because every unpaid contractor on the project is already in line ahead of me. And while I find it hard to believe most of everything else she told me, this seems like it might be true.
In the mean time, my life is kind of hijacked: I can’t make an offer on a different Two-Bathroomed Barbie Dream Condo (my favorite place got bought out from under me last week). I can’t access any of my winter clothes or the clothes I’ll need for my January cruise, all of which are stored in a POD 50 miles away. I really don’t want to lock myself into a new gym membership (I’m currently going to my old gym by my old job, which isn’t very convenient) until I know where my new place will be. I don’t want to mail my epic four-page Christmas letters until I have a permanent return address. And while I love the friends I’m staying with and I love their beautiful home, I feel like I’m always in the way. They’d bargained for a month at the most when they agreed to let me live with them last fall. And now they’re forced to look at me AND the boyfriend day after day, month after month. And with only a few changes of clothes at my disposal, I’m probably getting pretty boring to look at.
But! Tonight is our company holiday party. And the boyfriend is coming with me. And while the abovelong, boring, whiny drama is unpleasant and unfair and at its core probably illegal, I have a lot to be happy about: I really love my new job. I’m living in a beautiful home with people who don’t wear Capri pants or stab me in my sleep. And I somehow landed me a boyfriend who is kind and decent and attentive and loving (and hot!) and brimming with more show-tune trivia than your average encyclopedia. I love him and he loves me back. And no unscrupulous developer can take that away. No matter how many Two-Bathroomed Barbie Dream Condos they steal out from under me.
Well, that 14-day deadline came and went almost four weeks ago. And all we need is a signature of release from the developer and I get my down payment back and I can move on to another Two-Bathroomed Barbie Dream Condo.
Of course, there’s been no word at all from the developer.
So I took time off from work today to storm the developer’s office in person and demand a signature. I put on my most intimidating power suit and I wore my I’m-rich-and-important-so-you’d-better-do-what-I-say top coat and I marched in with release forms and pens in hand, ready for Contract Smackdown 2006.
And I left half an hour later even more frustrated than before. Because there was nobody there to sign it. But at least I got some answers:
• The developer essentially shut down in May after a personal tragedy. The office laid off its entire staff and halted construction (except for a few essential projects) on my building. Yet they still decided to sell me a unit (and they had no trouble finding someone to sign my contract) with the verbal promise that it would be done in September.
• The only person currently on the office staff is a receptionist. She claimed to have no clue about who could sign my contract release, but she promised she’d “get on it” and told me to call her on Monday if I haven’t heard anything.
• She said that a number of other potential tenants are working to get out of their contracts as well, and that she was afraid to come to the receptionist desk every time someone came in the door. Apparently lots of people got my idea to storm the Bastille. And apparently repeated demands for signatures haven’t inspired her to get very far “on it” and find a goddamn fucking person authorized to sign our goddamned fucking contract release forms.
• She also said there’s a title company in California who has the power to get the project going again, but the company isn’t returning calls. Yet she told me repeatedly the project would be up and running again next week. Because when a title company won’t return your calls or give you money, of course you’ll call in all your angry contractors the week before Christmas and have them start hanging drywall again.
• And she told me that filing a lawsuit or a lien is useless because every unpaid contractor on the project is already in line ahead of me. And while I find it hard to believe most of everything else she told me, this seems like it might be true.
In the mean time, my life is kind of hijacked: I can’t make an offer on a different Two-Bathroomed Barbie Dream Condo (my favorite place got bought out from under me last week). I can’t access any of my winter clothes or the clothes I’ll need for my January cruise, all of which are stored in a POD 50 miles away. I really don’t want to lock myself into a new gym membership (I’m currently going to my old gym by my old job, which isn’t very convenient) until I know where my new place will be. I don’t want to mail my epic four-page Christmas letters until I have a permanent return address. And while I love the friends I’m staying with and I love their beautiful home, I feel like I’m always in the way. They’d bargained for a month at the most when they agreed to let me live with them last fall. And now they’re forced to look at me AND the boyfriend day after day, month after month. And with only a few changes of clothes at my disposal, I’m probably getting pretty boring to look at.
But! Tonight is our company holiday party. And the boyfriend is coming with me. And while the above
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
Dirty little secret
So the new job is making it impossible to work out over lunch—and almost impossible to work out after work. But that’s not my dirty little secret.
Since the boyfriend often has to leave for his job at ungodly morning hours, I’ve been getting up with him and working out before work this week. Which hasn’t been as hateful as I’d expected; I always get a seat on the train, there is almost no competition for gym equipment, I’m surprisingly energetic enough to get in a decent workout, and so far I’m 3 for 3 for getting to watch a muscular little cowboy go through his morning ablutions at the locker room sink. But that’s not my dirty little secret either.
I’ve been chugging a protein shake before I leave the house each morning, and I have an Odwalla smoothie after my workout—followed by grazing on oatmeal and cereal and bananas and whatever else I’ve stashed in my desk for the rest of the morning.
Which is where the dirty little secret comes in. You see, toothpaste doesn’t go well with protein shakes. And it’s positively revolting with fruit smoothies. And I get so busy between meetings and food grazings all morning that I often don’t do my first tooth-brushing until later in the day. Like when I leave the office. At … um … 8 pm. (Does anyone want to kiss me right now?)
But! In my defense, I have four toothbrushes (at home, at work, in my gym bag and in my travel bag) so I could brush my teeth any time I want. So I at least get credit for good intentions.
And if anyone does want to kiss me right now, my teeth feel as smooth as angora sweaters. Mmmmmmmm.
Since the boyfriend often has to leave for his job at ungodly morning hours, I’ve been getting up with him and working out before work this week. Which hasn’t been as hateful as I’d expected; I always get a seat on the train, there is almost no competition for gym equipment, I’m surprisingly energetic enough to get in a decent workout, and so far I’m 3 for 3 for getting to watch a muscular little cowboy go through his morning ablutions at the locker room sink. But that’s not my dirty little secret either.
I’ve been chugging a protein shake before I leave the house each morning, and I have an Odwalla smoothie after my workout—followed by grazing on oatmeal and cereal and bananas and whatever else I’ve stashed in my desk for the rest of the morning.
Which is where the dirty little secret comes in. You see, toothpaste doesn’t go well with protein shakes. And it’s positively revolting with fruit smoothies. And I get so busy between meetings and food grazings all morning that I often don’t do my first tooth-brushing until later in the day. Like when I leave the office. At … um … 8 pm. (Does anyone want to kiss me right now?)
But! In my defense, I have four toothbrushes (at home, at work, in my gym bag and in my travel bag) so I could brush my teeth any time I want. So I at least get credit for good intentions.
And if anyone does want to kiss me right now, my teeth feel as smooth as angora sweaters. Mmmmmmmm.
Monday, December 11, 2006
Weekend adventures
Standing ovations
The chorus show was a smashing success, undermined only by tiny technical glitches and the occasional misguided usher trying to seat latecomers during a tender ballad. My parents had to cancel their trip to see the show at the very last minute as my mom got violently ill on Friday morning. And her illness was not, as early reports had indicated, induced by the fact I wore a discount-brand shirt on stage. But some family friends from Iowa and Tennessee—all women of a certain age who come to Chicago every December for a girls’ shopping spree and a group mothering of yours truly—came to see the show without my folks. And the boyfriend met them sight-unseen for dinner beforehand while I was getting ready backstage, and then he very graciously sat with them during the show. Then he came to all the rest of the shows. And he didn’t once embarrass me by doing a monkey dance. Which makes him the best boyfriend ever. I shall buy him socks for Christmas.
Vacation plans
The boyfriend and I are making a show-tune pilgrimage to New York the first weekend in February. We’ve been talking about it literally since the hour we met last July, and we finally booked our tickets this weekend. So our first vacation together is set in stone—or, more accurately, floating somewhere in the ether. And if that weren’t enough to induce heart-fluttering excitement, we got the tickets for a whopping ninety-five dollars. Round-trip. No stops. Major airline. Holy shit.
Parking tickets
I got my first parking ticket in Chicago a month ago. Well, the first one that I will accept as my fault. The first one I received happened soon after I moved here in 2000. The ticket was for parking too close to a fire hydrant, and it cost $100. Having just moved here, I had just read the book and taken the Illinois driver’s license test, so I knew quite well that cars should be parked nine feet from any hydrant in Chicago. The hydrant in question, though, had no paint on the curb, so my eyeballed nine feet didn’t match the goddamn fucking meter maid’s eyeballed nine feet. And even when I submitted photographic proof that no paint = an obvious money-making trap, the city denied my appeal. Stupid fucking city. The second ticket I got was for a surprise street cleaning not in synch with the once-a-month street cleaning that had happened two weeks earlier, which was also a goddamn fucking money-making trap. And the third and fourth tickets were earned by people who had borrowed my car. Totally. Not. My. Fault.
The ticket I paid this weekend was also for a street cleaning—on a street where I’d left my car for a whole week without bothering to check the cleaning signs. So I will accept responsibility for it, and I paid my ticket this weekend without using a single goddamn or fucking in the process. Not even under my breath.
Uncle Boyfriend
The boyfriend’s niece’s birthday was yesterday, and we had an extended-family-including-the-uncle’s-gay-boyfriend celebration last night that was quite lovely. First of all, I got to hold the baby. I haven’t held a baby in a long time, and there’s something about holding a baby (at least a happy, cooing baby) that makes me feel so nurturing and valid that I almost produce milk. (Come to think of it, though, the baby should have been listed as second of all; the first-of-all part was where the boyfriend’s brother made me my very first (light-on-the-vodka) vodka tonic, which I actually liked. So I hereby revise the order of this paragraph to: 1. Drink vodka. 2. Hold baby.)
My first boyfriend’s parents didn’t know he was gay. And the parents of the other two guys I’ve dated either met me once or never met me at all. So I’m incredibly new with the “Hi! I’m now a part of your family. Can I eat your food and hold your baby?” stuff. I’ve long entertained a delightful-inlaws domestic fantasy, and the boyfriend's family delivers everything I’d hoped for in spades. Though I have met his nieces a total of three times now, their parents are already calling me Uncle Jake—which we could call a premature unclejakeulation if we were inclined to make a vulgar pun, but we aren’t so we won’t. Besides, words can hardly describe my delight over being considered such an integral part of the boyfriend’s family that his niece’s parents are already committing me to honorary uncle status. I wear the title with pride, and I’ve gotten tears in my eyes twice just by writing this paragraph about it.
In discussing the party last night, I would be remiss in not mentioning 1) the free legal advice I got from the boyfriend’s brother to help me combat the negligence of the developer of the Two-Bathroomed Barbie Dream Condo I am now not buying, 2) the boyfriend’s brother’s mother-in-law’s Jell-O® salad that was so good it caused me to disrespect my own mother’s delicious Jell-O® salads in comparison, 3) the fact that the birthday niece loves horses and I had the presence of mind not to buy her glue and 4) the fact that there were TWO desserts: a giant delicious fruit tart and a giant cupcake cake with those soft-crunchy candy sprinkles that are so delicious they make you blurt out inadvertent yummy sounds even as they pack doughy poundage on your hips.
The fire
The boys I’m staying with until the Great Condo Fiasco gets resolved have a fireplace. The boyfriend and I snuggled and talked in front of it last night when we got home. It was perfect.
The chorus show was a smashing success, undermined only by tiny technical glitches and the occasional misguided usher trying to seat latecomers during a tender ballad. My parents had to cancel their trip to see the show at the very last minute as my mom got violently ill on Friday morning. And her illness was not, as early reports had indicated, induced by the fact I wore a discount-brand shirt on stage. But some family friends from Iowa and Tennessee—all women of a certain age who come to Chicago every December for a girls’ shopping spree and a group mothering of yours truly—came to see the show without my folks. And the boyfriend met them sight-unseen for dinner beforehand while I was getting ready backstage, and then he very graciously sat with them during the show. Then he came to all the rest of the shows. And he didn’t once embarrass me by doing a monkey dance. Which makes him the best boyfriend ever. I shall buy him socks for Christmas.
Vacation plans
The boyfriend and I are making a show-tune pilgrimage to New York the first weekend in February. We’ve been talking about it literally since the hour we met last July, and we finally booked our tickets this weekend. So our first vacation together is set in stone—or, more accurately, floating somewhere in the ether. And if that weren’t enough to induce heart-fluttering excitement, we got the tickets for a whopping ninety-five dollars. Round-trip. No stops. Major airline. Holy shit.
Parking tickets
I got my first parking ticket in Chicago a month ago. Well, the first one that I will accept as my fault. The first one I received happened soon after I moved here in 2000. The ticket was for parking too close to a fire hydrant, and it cost $100. Having just moved here, I had just read the book and taken the Illinois driver’s license test, so I knew quite well that cars should be parked nine feet from any hydrant in Chicago. The hydrant in question, though, had no paint on the curb, so my eyeballed nine feet didn’t match the goddamn fucking meter maid’s eyeballed nine feet. And even when I submitted photographic proof that no paint = an obvious money-making trap, the city denied my appeal. Stupid fucking city. The second ticket I got was for a surprise street cleaning not in synch with the once-a-month street cleaning that had happened two weeks earlier, which was also a goddamn fucking money-making trap. And the third and fourth tickets were earned by people who had borrowed my car. Totally. Not. My. Fault.
The ticket I paid this weekend was also for a street cleaning—on a street where I’d left my car for a whole week without bothering to check the cleaning signs. So I will accept responsibility for it, and I paid my ticket this weekend without using a single goddamn or fucking in the process. Not even under my breath.
Uncle Boyfriend
The boyfriend’s niece’s birthday was yesterday, and we had an extended-family-including-the-uncle’s-gay-boyfriend celebration last night that was quite lovely. First of all, I got to hold the baby. I haven’t held a baby in a long time, and there’s something about holding a baby (at least a happy, cooing baby) that makes me feel so nurturing and valid that I almost produce milk. (Come to think of it, though, the baby should have been listed as second of all; the first-of-all part was where the boyfriend’s brother made me my very first (light-on-the-vodka) vodka tonic, which I actually liked. So I hereby revise the order of this paragraph to: 1. Drink vodka. 2. Hold baby.)
My first boyfriend’s parents didn’t know he was gay. And the parents of the other two guys I’ve dated either met me once or never met me at all. So I’m incredibly new with the “Hi! I’m now a part of your family. Can I eat your food and hold your baby?” stuff. I’ve long entertained a delightful-inlaws domestic fantasy, and the boyfriend's family delivers everything I’d hoped for in spades. Though I have met his nieces a total of three times now, their parents are already calling me Uncle Jake—which we could call a premature unclejakeulation if we were inclined to make a vulgar pun, but we aren’t so we won’t. Besides, words can hardly describe my delight over being considered such an integral part of the boyfriend’s family that his niece’s parents are already committing me to honorary uncle status. I wear the title with pride, and I’ve gotten tears in my eyes twice just by writing this paragraph about it.
In discussing the party last night, I would be remiss in not mentioning 1) the free legal advice I got from the boyfriend’s brother to help me combat the negligence of the developer of the Two-Bathroomed Barbie Dream Condo I am now not buying, 2) the boyfriend’s brother’s mother-in-law’s Jell-O® salad that was so good it caused me to disrespect my own mother’s delicious Jell-O® salads in comparison, 3) the fact that the birthday niece loves horses and I had the presence of mind not to buy her glue and 4) the fact that there were TWO desserts: a giant delicious fruit tart and a giant cupcake cake with those soft-crunchy candy sprinkles that are so delicious they make you blurt out inadvertent yummy sounds even as they pack doughy poundage on your hips.
The fire
The boys I’m staying with until the Great Condo Fiasco gets resolved have a fireplace. The boyfriend and I snuggled and talked in front of it last night when we got home. It was perfect.
Friday, December 08, 2006
The lazy blogger
Instead of real content, today I give you a bunch of links. Cat links. Which are like sausage links but not as quiet when they want you to pet them.
Cats that Look Like Hitler
The Infinite Cat Project
Stuff on my Cat
Cats that Look Like Hitler
The Infinite Cat Project
Stuff on my Cat
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
Farts on a Plane
I’m a pretty polite farter. I may let the tiny ones slip out in my cube* or other settings where I think they’ll have no impact on innocent passers-by, but if I feel I have something brewing that might register on the Richter scale, I’ll head to the bathroom or even outside, where I have a more direct chance of making my way into an Al Gore PowerPoint presentation.
*The moment I fart in my cube is usually the moment that every co-worker in the office finds the need to drop by and have me proof something. I usually tell them to come back later when they don’t smell like they just farted.
Of course, all bets are off around my posse. We’re the kinds of rebels who drink beer, wear flannel, play loud music, laugh at children who can’t compute logarithms and fart proudly in front of each other.*
*I don’t have a posse, so none of that stuff is really true. But I do fart in front of the boyfriend. And, for some reason, my brother-in-law and I share a kind of fart-positive symbiosis. We really have a gas together.
I’ve never had a fart so caustic, though, where I felt the need to light a match to burn off its lingering toxicity. In fact, I’d never even heard of the idea until a guy I used to work with (hi, Marc!) came up with the idea of marketing BathrooMatches™ for just such occasions. Marc is still toiling away in the same line of work, though, so I’m assuming BathrooMatches™ never really burned up the fart-masking market. So to speak.
Politeness notwithstanding, there are a few places where even the most epic of farts can rush an entire room without even being noticed: Smoky bars. Funeral homes. Foo-foo stores that sell scented soaps and candles. Long car trips with a dog you can blame. Dance floors where the music is so loud it overwhelms all your other senses. Airplanes with all their whirring engines and fast-circulating dry air and lingering scents of spilled diesel fuel.
And on an airplane—where they specifically tell you that smoking is banned and they remind you that there are smoke detectors in the bathrooms, which they always call “lavatories” because “bathroom” probably offends the delicate sensibilities of people who honestly think that letting gays get married will somehow cause straight people to get divorced even faster—only a complete moron would light a match for any reason.
Which is what makes this story so funny.
You have to admire the woman on that plane for her misguided sense of politeness. She was probably horrified beyond belief that her attempts to hide a fart grounded an entire airplane. But every person she delayed on that flight—and on all subsequent flights domino-delayed by her actions—deserves to give her a blue-water swirly.
I just wouldn’t bend her forward over the toilet to do it.
*The moment I fart in my cube is usually the moment that every co-worker in the office finds the need to drop by and have me proof something. I usually tell them to come back later when they don’t smell like they just farted.
Of course, all bets are off around my posse. We’re the kinds of rebels who drink beer, wear flannel, play loud music, laugh at children who can’t compute logarithms and fart proudly in front of each other.*
*I don’t have a posse, so none of that stuff is really true. But I do fart in front of the boyfriend. And, for some reason, my brother-in-law and I share a kind of fart-positive symbiosis. We really have a gas together.
I’ve never had a fart so caustic, though, where I felt the need to light a match to burn off its lingering toxicity. In fact, I’d never even heard of the idea until a guy I used to work with (hi, Marc!) came up with the idea of marketing BathrooMatches™ for just such occasions. Marc is still toiling away in the same line of work, though, so I’m assuming BathrooMatches™ never really burned up the fart-masking market. So to speak.
Politeness notwithstanding, there are a few places where even the most epic of farts can rush an entire room without even being noticed: Smoky bars. Funeral homes. Foo-foo stores that sell scented soaps and candles. Long car trips with a dog you can blame. Dance floors where the music is so loud it overwhelms all your other senses. Airplanes with all their whirring engines and fast-circulating dry air and lingering scents of spilled diesel fuel.
And on an airplane—where they specifically tell you that smoking is banned and they remind you that there are smoke detectors in the bathrooms, which they always call “lavatories” because “bathroom” probably offends the delicate sensibilities of people who honestly think that letting gays get married will somehow cause straight people to get divorced even faster—only a complete moron would light a match for any reason.
Which is what makes this story so funny.
You have to admire the woman on that plane for her misguided sense of politeness. She was probably horrified beyond belief that her attempts to hide a fart grounded an entire airplane. But every person she delayed on that flight—and on all subsequent flights domino-delayed by her actions—deserves to give her a blue-water swirly.
I just wouldn’t bend her forward over the toilet to do it.
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