The Paintitute

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Ever the bargain hunter, I was seeking the services of a house painter. You would think I’d take the logical approach, which in this case would mean using the Yellow Pages or getting a recommendation from a friend. Instead, I discovered a handsome, nicely built man on a social networking site who was a gay house painter.

The economy is bad. The self-employed don’t have money to pay for advertising, so I figured since I have the same sexual proclivities as he does, he would give me a good deal. You know: the brotherhood and all that. And by putting together all my pre-conceived stereotypes I have about gay men, I assumed he would be fussy, detail oriented, clean, and do an exceptionally, obsessively perfect job, just as I would, since I am fussy, obsessive, detail oriented, and, well, you get the picture.

I have a well-earned hatred of painting houses, stemming back to 1984, when my ex-partner decided he wanted us to quit our decent city jobs and run off to the Shenandoah Valley and refurbish an ancient, decaying, riverfront barn.

The prior owners had put in a kitchen (if you consider a sink, refrigerator, and absence of cabinetry a kitchen), a bedroom, and a bathroom. The rest was just pretty much just space and hayloft. The water source was a cistern, which meant that when you ran out of water, you stopped showering until the water delivery man showed up. There was no electrical wiring on the first and third levels. The pine siding on the exterior of the dwelling was rotten, and the place didn’t show well. A realtor was really taking a chance listing it as a “handyman special” since it had only plywood floors, no heat, and was infested with snakes, rats, bats, and birds. The first floor was made of dirt and manure, and the walls in the living area on the top two floors were stained with bird shit. When it rained on the galvanized roof, you couldn’t hear the television even if you turned the volume all the way up and stood with your ear to the speaker. If you imagine the kind of person it would take to become voluntarily unemployed and not have a substantial trust fund to finance all the repairs and rehabilitation for such a filthy pit of a dwelling, then you have a pretty good clue of how my ex’s brain failed to function. And it doesn’t put me on the Nobel list of great minds for not packing my bags and running away.

The barn was understatedly large. At three stories tall, the barn had a total square footage of over six thousand square feet. Every single piece of rotten pine siding had to be ripped off and replaced with new white pine siding that we trucked in. After the wood, which was freshly milled, had a chance to stay up and dry, we had to paint it. But of course, first we had to prime it. When all was said and done, it took 42 gallons of paint to cover the barn, and the re-siding and repainting took us six months. I was young, I was strong, I was energetic, and I was an idiot. We put up rented scaffolding, and because money was tight, instead of also renting the sturdy aluminum crosswalks, we balanced ourselves on rickety 2 x 12 hand- hewn oak planks from the Civil War era. And of course, we drank beer all day long, too. There I was, three flights up, no safety harnesses, and Painting Under the Influence. I was lucky I didn’t end up dead, yet unlucky that the ex didn’t.

And dead is what I would rather be these days than have to paint a house. Several years later when the barn paint started peeling, we sold the barn and split up because I swore I’d put a gun to my head before spending another minute teetering on rickety scaffolding. I had sobered up as well.

The happiest days of my life were the years I spent in a brick house. You don’t have to do anything to a brick house except enjoy the wonderful feeling you get from never having to paint it. It’s like living in a self-cleaning oven, without the heat, and without having to flick a switch.

So now I’m back in Florida, where brick houses are few and far between. I suspect that in the summer they would just turn into non self-cleaning brick ovens, with the heat, and mildew in the shady areas. So most of the homes are stucco over concrete block, including ours.

So after Mr. Handsome Gay House Painter prodded me enough, I agreed to let him come over and give me an estimate for painting the house. I also agreed for the three of us to go grab a burger somewhere after that. I followed him as he did a walk around, during which I enjoyed looking at his broad shoulders, nice tight biceps and hairy legs. After the circumnavigation of the house, he told he’d think about it and give me a price after dinner.

You know, I probably would have given him the job just on looks alone if he had given me the price right then. He planned on spraying the house and could get it done in two days. It would have been so nice to just get it all behind us, and not to worry about it for another ten years or so. But unfortunately, Other Bill and I agreed to go out to dinner with him to talk things over.

It was then we were subjected to a 90 minute, non-stop biography of Mr. Gay Paint Man. I could tell you more about him than I could tell you about most of the people I work with. A former construction contractor, he was divorced, down on his luck, and obviously self-employed in order to get out of paying alimony and child support, I also learned that in addition to house painting, Mr. Goodlooking also performed 60-minute massages for a steep fee (“which includes release,” he said, euphemistically, which was exactly, by then, what I was looking for: to be released from his company. RIGHT THEN.) We were also treated to extensive monologs that explained his workout regimen, how he ate nothing but protein, and was trying unsuccessfully to stop drinking. That’s probably tough to do, when most of your evenings after work are spent in gay bars (searching for people in need of “release,”) and your vacation days are spent at gay circuit parties across the globe. Apparently, when you’re handsome and you’re in demand in Fort Lauderdale, you can make a lot of money that you can spend on yourself, and not on your daughter, who just wouldn’t fit in with the crowd at the annual International Mr. Leather contest (in which he competed but did not win.) I guess it is possible, of course, that the International Mr. Leather contestants are now 8 year old girls. I haven’t attended, so I don’t know. Rules change.

On the flip side, here’s what he could tell you about us: We owned a house that needed painting. In addition, had he been picking up on my body language, he also knew we weren’t going to take him up on his not-so-subtle massage offer.

So away he jabbered on and on, all about him, while I was trying to think of a way I could get him to shut up. The restaurant we were in had a three-level refrigerated showcase of enormous, thick pies of all flavors. I’m sure that a whole lemon meringue pie would have cost over 20 dollars, and it would have been worth every penny for me to remove it from its spinning, well-lit glass display and press it tightly into his face and hold it with all my strength from behind, so it would have suffocated him. Death by pie: who could ask for a nicer way to go?

There were no sharp knives around, but I remembered reading recently in a police periodical in the men’s room at work that average citizens can now buy their own full-strength, professional Tasers, assuming your background check comes back clean. They now come in fabulous, pocket-or-purse-sized designer colors (although they apparently have discontinued my personal favorite, faux-leopard. Go to taser.com if you don’t believe me. I buy these for a living.) What I wouldn’t have given to just zap him a good one. He would drop to his knees, speechless, and before he could snap out of it, Other Bill and I could have escaped and left him to pay the check.

Life just isn’t that way, regrettably, so I just sat there and endured. I was wondering if he’d ever re-sided and painted an enormous barn. I bet he hadn’t. The more I sat there and listened to his life history, the more I turned against him. I thought, I bet he doesn’t even do a good job. I bet he would use dollar store paint poured into Sherwin-Williams Duration cans. Even better, I bet he has a standing order with Kinko’s for forged Sherwin-Williams can labels that he could around the cheap paint. I bet he wouldn’t be as diligent about scraping off the old paint as I would be. I bet I would end up having to repaint after a year, because the paint would blister and peel due to his lack of caring about prepping the old surface. I wish he’d shut up and stop squirming in his chair. I bet he has anal warts.

He could have been the best painter in the world. He could have been Van Gogh, but the more he talked, the more I talked myself out of it. He could offer to do the whole job for fifty dollars, and I wouldn’t have given him the job. I thought: Clearly the only thing in the world this guy cares about is himself. If only he’d spent just part of that 90 minutes talking instead about prior jobs he’d done, or compared brands of paints, or maybe offered to provide me with some references (Oh, I could absolutely recommend Mr. Painter Dude. He gave me the best hand job I’ve ever had.) But instead it was just Me, beautiful Me! Hot sausage and mustard!

Thank merciful Christ, the check finally came, and we settled up the bill, and he finally gave me his “rock-bottom, lowest price of desperation,” as he called it: $2,250. For two days’ work with counterfeit paint. So much for “the brotherhood.”

I told him we’d think about it, even though I’d already done all the thinking I wanted to do. By then I decided that no house painter would do as thorough a job that Other Bill and I would do ourselves. We all shook hands, and he got in his truck and drove off.

Other Bill and I sat down in our car. “Wow, no one’s ever taken me on a date with a prostitute before,” he said, chuckling.

I deserved everything he could dish out at me for this disaster. Fortunately, he was gracious enough to not twist the knife too far. With Other Bill, when it comes to going out to dinner, it can never be bad as long as there’s food. Plus, it doesn’t have to be good food as long as there’s a lot of it.

“Don’t you think he was stoned?” Other Bill asked me.

“I didn’t think about it, but now that you mention it, he must have toasted one sometime before he met us,” I said. That would, in part, explain the jabbermouth.

“I thought so, too.”

“Yeah, that’s what I want in a house painter, someone buzzed and high on a ladder with no insurance,” I said.

“Yeah, like you when you painted the barn,” he said.

And then the knife completed the 360 degree turn. But as I said, I deserved it.

We have spent the last three weeks pressure washing, scraping, sanding, caulking, and priming. And we haven’t completed one full side of the house yet. We should have it done in another couple of months. So as painful and tedious as it is, we’ll at least save some money and get the job done right.

I’m just grateful that the house is only one story. I’m glad to be sober and not teetering on haphazardly placed, hundred year old lumber, thirty feet in the air. I’ll be so glad when it’s done. Maybe we’ll celebrate then by calling Mr. Paint Guy for a nice release session.

But only if he gives us a discount. I don’t think we’ll need the full hour, as long as he keeps his mouth shut.

Not Just a Fuzzy Navel

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I think that it’s past time to reclassify criminal charges, specifically in the sex offender arena. I say this because teenagers are being charged with possession and distribution of child pornography when they e-mail pictures of their anatomy, or someone else’s anatomy, to people who don’t take kindly to that kind of thing. This action, termed “sexting,” is destroying the lives of kids who are just being kids. After they are released from detention, they have to be on the national registry of sex offenders. Generally this means it’s tough to find a job or housing or get accepted into a college. In short, they are pretty much guaranteed a life of misery. For emailing a picture of their naughty parts. It’s insane.

These people are not sex offenders, and they are certainly not predators, so it’s high time for them to be given a new title. “Obnoxious Digital Idiot” comes to mind. Instead of doing time and not being able to live within X number of feet of a school or playground or Toys R Us, they should just get spanked. They are kids. Maybe they should be brought to the front of the auditorium during assemblies and ridiculed and shamed, or pelted with pies. Something painful but not life-destroying.

Mercifully, I was an adolescent before technology got to be so sophisticated. Therefore, we had to present our naughty bits in public. If I had a nickel for every time I pressed my youthful buttocks against the window of a car, or saw the same thing, I’d have, oh, I don’t know, a couple of bucks, maybe. Pressing your butt up against a window was far better than simple mooning. Specifically, it expanded the size of your ass exponentially, like flattening a hamburger on the grill. We referred to this mooning variant as “Pressed Hams.” Kids love to be outrageous and push the envelope, and back in the 70’s, mooning, which dates back several decades before then, was about as far as the envelope would go. Brave, well-endowed women would frequently do the same thing with their breasts. We called them “Pressed Melons.”

The perfect car for mooning was the Volkswagen Squareback. A miniature station wagon, the Squareback offered an unobstructed piece of flat glass that was the perfect height for kneeling down and smashing your cheeks against. There was no back shelf to get in the way. Sure you could moon without pressing your butt against glass, but it wasn’t nearly as shocking or repulsive, which were the goals.

Luckily, my mother owned a Volkswagen Squareback, as did my best friend, Julie. We mostly just used her car, because the car I owned was a Beetle, and there wasn’t a car less suited for mooning than a VW bug. Our idea of ecstasy was driving two Squarebacks, side by side, slowly, across the Courtney Campbell Causeway, preventing anyone from passing us. This forced both lanes to look at up to six asses, and possibly a pair of breasts, pressed against clear glass. Eventually we’d pull off and let people pass so we could refresh our audience of repulsed octogenarians who were just trying to get back to their condos in Clearwater, for crying out loud.

It was all fun and games, and no one arrested us for being sex offenders. We were just Obnoxious Idiots, the Analog version.

Like most acts of immaturity, there comes a time where something forces us to reconsider our antics and find something new and hopefully even more offensive to get involved with.

The point of melon or ham pressing was the surprise factor. A bare ass showing up when someone least expected it was what made self-exposure all worthwhile.

We were at Sand Key beach in Clearwater. After several hours of putting ourselves at risk for melanoma later in life, we were packing up Faith’s Chevy Nova with our towels, kites, coolers, and snacks. I quietly slipped into the back seat, pulled down my pants, stretched my ass for maximum coverage, and smashed it against the window. Seconds later, Stacey approached the door and burst out laughing, pointing, and making the rest of my friends come over and see. We were so used to receiving just a non-response from our peers to this behavior, so when I heard the rest of them laughing, too, I started to wonder. Why were they so tickled at this pair of hams, and why was this lame act creating so much attention?

“What’s so funny?” I shouted from inside the locked car.

I was told, and quickly pulled up my pants. I was laughing, too, but not in a good way, but in a wanting-to-cry kind of way.

This action was referred to then, and probably still is now, as The Lint Incident. I tried to comfort myself and lessen the embarrassment by realizing it could have been worse. A lot worse. It could have just as easily been The Dingleberry Incident. And the possibility of that ever happening was great, given the extra blessing of hair I had in that area. If that ever occurred, it would be grounds for suicide. I would never live it down. Lint was tough enough. My mooning career was officially over. I retired, a victim of my own “criminal” behavior.

From then on I was either the driver or the one who Windexed off the butt prints made on the dusty windows of the cars. I never went to prison, and I didn’t have my life destroyed. I’d learned my lesson through public humiliation. (Hey Wiley, there’s a sign on every dryer in the laundry that says, “Scrape Lint Trap After Each Load. Take the hint!) Nothing works better on an adolescent than being called out and humiliated in public. And that’s exactly what should happen to these “sexters.”

To me, “sexting” is a lot less harmful than mooning or ham pressing. Usually these pictures are sent from and to young peers who are amused or mildly titillated by seeing a digital image of someone’s naughty bits. And the best thing about it is that all sext messages come with a Delete key. Not the case with live ham and melon pressing. In a speeding car, you were displaying your goods to strangers, who, for the most part, would just wince. But it was a safety hazard. People could be shocked and end up driving off a bridge. I’m thinking this could have been the event leading to Chappaquiddick. Oh, Miss Kopechne, put that awaaaaaaaay!

Live nudity is much more traumatic than digital nudity. Ask any non-professional nudist if they’ve ever been to a nude beach. If they say yes, ask them if they’ve gone more than once. The fact of the matter is, the majority of us do not have bodies worthy of display. That’s why there are pictures. And pictures can be airbrushed or edited, or at least the bad ones can be deleted before sharing. I’m willing to bet that of all the racy self-portraits individuals have e-mailed or texted throughout the world, not a single one displayed lint. And that’s saying a lot.

With new technology come new challenges, especially legal challenges. Some of those challenges should include revising punishments to fit the crimes. I would be devastated if a child of mine were deemed a sex offender just for doing something stupid. Therefore I am writing my congressman to introduce a new bill. Once it gets passed, like any sex-related laws, such as the Amber Alert, this one will have a catchy name, which I am suggesting to be called the Lint Law. Anyone caught sending lewd, underaged photos via electronic media shall be subjected to watch a two-hour PowerPoint presentation (eyes taped open) that displays lint in very aged areas where lint, or anything else for that matter, should never be seen.

Just don’t ask me to pose. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have clothes in the dryer that I need to remove and put on hangers. And yes, I’ll scrape the lint trap.

Bad Guy Me

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I enjoy doing volunteer work. It gives me a sense of usefulness and satisfaction, especially if that volunteer work involves shooting at cops.

Every year there is a training exercise attended by several SWAT teams from my county’s police and sheriffs’ offices. The cops are there to hone their skills and to learn how to be better cops and work with other teams. They rely on untrained administrative police department employees to volunteer to be the bad guys and hostages. That’s where I come in. I don’t get to wear the uniforms or the guns, but I do get to buy them.

At the SWAT roundup, each team is tested with several scenarios requiring handling by skilled professionals who know how to deal with violent and potentially deadly situations. It goes without saying that the majority of these teams are all male, and they are all tough, muscular, deep-voiced, well groomed macho studs, sweating in full tactical gear. That’s why I come in.

What’s not to like?



Last year, my first year, I had no idea what my role would entail. I was nervous and sweaty, standing around during the orientation, taking in all the testosterone, which was as thick as pea soup. I was the shortest, skinniest, and probably the oldest male in the crowd. Clearly I would have made even a lame victim.

Our scenario was this: Three shooters on a bus, threatening to kill hostages and any cops that stepped on board. I was immediately resigned to the fact that I was going to be a hostage, but we were told to mix it up, make it different for each team. Sometimes be a shooter; sometimes be a hostage; sometimes threaten to shoot yourself. Make things confusing.

Oh, well cool, I thought. This is theater! This is improv! I’d always wanted to major in theater in college, but my mother threatened to cut off my tuition money if my degree could land me in the world full of part-time-working homosexuals. (Instead, my English degree would commit me to the underemployed, underpaid world of homosexuals.) I was delighted that this little bus trip would provide me with the first opportunity since high school to be on.

They gave me a gun that contained blue-tipped bullets that splatted a soap blob into anything it was fired against. It’s called Simunition. It’s basically just a high velocity paint ball, but it can rip a small chunk of skin right off of you. I wore a ballistic vest, gloves, a riot helmet, and a cup to keep the tender parts from being stung by the bullets. I was told it “wouldn’t hurt that bad.”

When the first team came on the bus, I was too shy. I couldn’t shoot a cop. What if he shot back? What if it did hurt? The team hurried in, shot me immediately, and the scenario was over. Pretty lame. In take two, I was a hostage, and was held from behind with the shooter’s arm around my neck and the gun pointed at my helmet. The SWAT team shot the bad guy, who did a nice job of holding me tightly (he was an off-duty non-SWAT cop who smelled very pleasant and had huge biceps), and I escaped, lightheaded but unharmed.

As the day wore on and I became less afraid to use the gun, I became more confident and spontaneous in this all-male production. One time I didn’t even give them a chance. I started shooting at the first three guys who stepped foot on the bus. Another time I hid in a spot on the bus that no one suspected a man could fit into, and I surprised and shot four of them in the back. Score one for the skinny homosexual terrorist. Another time, when I held the gun to my own head and threatened to kill myself, a SWAT officer grabbed me by the throat, wrestled me to the floor of the bus and pulled my gun away.

These guys were dead serious about what they were doing, and after each scenario, they got out of the bus and reviewed what had happened, what was good, what had gone wrong. Sometimes, like the time I shot four in the back after no one had noticed me, they were yelled at. So the better I did the job, the more they got in trouble.

The best part of the day is the first half hour, when all the teams are putting on their armor, moving around in groups, and just looking hot. While this is going on, I hang out with the role players, specifically, the female role players. (I’m a gay man. It’s what we do. You go where the love is.) For this half hour we stare at butts as teams walk by. All the men know they look hot. And even if they are in reality only semi-hot, the uniform upgrades their hotness rating a level or two. Most of them are young and virtually fearless. They are so built and so good looking and so, I don’t know, male, I guess, is the word I’m looking for here. They are all high school football captains, which is why it is so much fun to shoot them. If I didn’t know better, I would swear that SWAT teams are cast by porn directors. And by that I mean good porn directors. The hi-def kind.

My bald head and bony hands, as seen on TV.



This year, the bus scenario was different. First of all there were more role players on the bus, so I didn’t get but one chance to shoot. Fortunately, I shot at the officers I work with every day, which made this volunteer work more meaningful. Secondly, it was more structured. One active shooter in the front, and a sleeper in the back, so there was no room for improvisation, which was a little disappointing to this theater-major wannabe.

A couple of us, after being taken of the bus and set on the ground, ended up kneeling in dog shit. There were some really ugly flesh wounds this time, due the fact that some role players didn’t wear protective gear. One volunteer playing the active shooter was accidentally pushed out the back door of the bus. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think SWAT teams are put here to help bad guys escape.

But even though it was not as much fun this time, if I’m asked to go again next year, I’ll gladly accept the invitation. And if I’m not, I just may take the morning off work so I don’t miss the first half hour.

Business

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I’ve come to find out my dog is homophobic. Or she could possibly be jealous, or maybe she has a Victorian sense of propriety, but Bungee does not take kindly to my hugging Other Bill. Each time one of my arms goes around his waist or two arms around his neck, Bungee will run into the room and start barking at us until we stop.

She reminds me a little bit of Other Bill’s Aunt Eleanor. Eleanor was not cantankerous or mean spirited, but could easily be mistaken for cranky. She didn’t take shit from anyone, and when she said no, there was not a sole on earth who could change her mind to say yes. When she wanted her way, she got her way, and she liked making her way known.

The day of Bill’s mother’s funeral, we were in the kitchen where his mom had cooked us hundreds of meals. Other Bill had a flashback of one of those meals while remembering that no matter what, a meal in that house would never be the same again. I saw tears filling his eyes and put my arms around him and held him tightly. Eleanor, who was also in the room, turned around and saw us, and apparently she thought we were having a moment of passion instead of a moment of grief.

“STOP IT!” she barked. “STOP THIS BUSINESS!”

Instantly, the weeping stopped and turned into laughter, just as she was realizing that she misinterpreted our reason for being tactile and muttered, “Oh, I’m sorry, I thought—” and the sentence was never completed.

That was nine years ago, and now neither of us says, “Stop it” without adding on the addendum, “Stop this business.”

And now Aunt Eleanor is gone, but apparently a part of her ended up in our dog. “Stop it!” Bungee barked the other day when I was teaching Other Bill how to waltz out on the patio, “Stop this business!”

What is it about dogs and the things they eat? I don’t know if it’s just the boxer breed, or if all dogs behave like this, but anything that tastes either bad or like nothing at all has to be eaten and sent through the digestive system.

Our former boxer, Murphy, whom we inherited after their two owners died, was just like that. She ate, for example, drywall. Nothing quite like the taste of powdery plaster stuff encased in thick paper to put a smile on her pushed-in face. And we couldn’t keep a Frisbee in the house to save our lives.

Murphy was no retriever. You’d flip the Frisbee across the yard, and she’d chase it, grab it in her mouth, lie down and start chewing on it. I accidentally left her in the fenced yard alone once, only to discover that the latest Frisbee (one that glowed in the dark) was nowhere to be found. One night after a heavy rain, I went out back with her and noticed tiny star-like specks glowing in the grass. It was magical, like Tinkerbell fairy dust. On closer inspection, the glowing confetti was just undigested glow-in-the-dark Frisbee that had been pooped out and scattered by the shower.

Murphy had been trained, oddly enough, to quit her sniffing around and hurry up and poop. She would now and then respond to the command “Business” to do this.

“Murphy: BUSINESS,” Gary used to say. Usually she would just turn around and look at him like: What do you mean, BUSINESS? Am I supposed to run and get my steno pad? After Gary died I no longer used this command. I’d just let her out in the back yard. She could business when she wanted to.

In order to maintain peace, I continue to occupy a bed with a noisemaker. Other Bill cannot or will not go to sleep unless the television is on. Conversely, I need absolute silence and stillness in order to sleep. Breathing will wake me up. My ideal sleeping spot would be in an insulated coffin off stage in a sound-proof booth, as they used to say in the game shows. Other Bill lies in bed, wearing ear buds plugged into the TV, but I can still hear the noise coming out of them. So I have to wear industrial foam earplugs.

And I have to buy several hundred pair a year. This is because early in the wee hours, the industrial foam earplugs start to hurt my inner ear so much I pull them out and put them in one of a hundred choice spots, all of which are known to Bungee. It is quiet then unless there is snoring, so I can just continue sleeping without the plugs in my ears.

And when I wake up, they’re gone. No matter where I put them—and I’ve left them in and under the bed, under my pillow and on the nightstand—Bungee has already put them in her stomach. She thinks they are Snausages. So after a rain, the back yard is filled with neon yellow, bullet-shaped little foam inserts that are good to no one. And all I can do is order more.

Bungee likes to let us know when she is ready for some freshly bought dog food. Along about the time the 40 pound bag of food is about 80% empty, she will insist it’s stale and that it’s time for new food. Even though she can talk, (or at least say, “Stop this business!”) she likes to inform us of her decision that she’s not eating anything else from That Bag by shitting somewhere inside. Usually on furniture.

We naturally always assume she is sick again and do what the doctor who charged us $600 did the first time this happened: We stop feeding her for a day or two. This only pisses her off. We will give her a morsel of Expensive Canned Food That Only Vets Can Sell a few times a day. She likes that, but she wants more, and we are afraid to give her more, because we’re worried she’ll shit in the house, which she does no matter what we do. But she will continue her protest, ratcheting it up to another level. Not only will she shit in the house, but she will eat the shit and then vomit it up all over the two-room domain she rules over while we are at work. We had so much shit-puke in so many places in our house one day that I considered just coming inside wearing a hazmat suit and brandishing a pressure washer. That stuff gets in your tile grout and will not come out no matter what. The smell is worse than rotting flesh. We have to open all the windows and wrap crime scene tape at the perimeter of the property. Eventually she will just come to reason and continue eating what she considers to be stale food.

It’s all very futile of her, because the end result is still the same: She eats the old food until it’s gone. I don’t know why she just doesn’t just stop it.

Stop this business.

Who Wants to Be an Idiot?

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A defense contractor in Washington, DC hired me in 1980 solely because I could type 120 words per minute. I was a 23-year-old slacker, who, with my bachelor’s degree in hand, drifted among employers who would pay me five dollars an hour to sit at a machine all day.

I didn’t really have much of an interview. I had a typing test. I didn’t know anything about the company or what they did. I didn’t really care, either, as long as they cut me a check every two weeks.

I was a phototypesetter. This was before personal computers and laser printers. The machine I used was a hundred-thousand dollar wonder the size of a chest freezer, and it flashed light through a spinning disk of mostly black X-ray film. The disk was about the size of a 45 RPM record, and held four clear sets (each a different font) of all the letters of the alphabet, both cases, as well as the numbers and some typographic symbols. As the disk spun, a light would flash through the clear letters onto an unexposed piece of photographic paper, which was then developed, dried, and glued onto cardboard mats that were photographed and sent to press. My machine was especially coveted because you could use four disks at once, thereby having sixteen fonts on the fly, without having to pause the machine to change the disk.

In order to work there I had to get a Department of Defense security clearance. There were different security levels, each of which seemed to take a long time to get, due to the intense background investigations that were done. Federal employees spied on you and talked to friends, neighbors, former friends, former neighbors, and anyone else they could track down that would talk to them. For the first few weeks I was there I worked on unclassified material. It didn’t take too long to get my Confidential clearance. A few months later I got my Secret clearance, and then a few months after that, my Top Secret clearance. I was paranoid that I’d lose my job because I was gay, but apparently if you were out, you were fine. It was the closet cases they had a problem with, because they could be easily blackmailed.

None of these clearances did me any good, because most of the time I sat and typed a whole lot of acronyms, and I had no understanding of what they stood for, except NATO.

I was paranoid the whole time I worked there. Remember, this was 1980, before the time when every place on earth was covered with webcams. There were cameras in the parking lots, and there was not one corner of the building of all the floors that was not being videotaped, except, allegedly, the bathrooms, and even then I had my doubts that someone in security was watching me pee.

I worked behind a door with a push-button combination lock on it, and the code would be changed every sixty days. All publications that were confidential and higher had to remain in a safe until they were distributed for people to work on. Only one person had the safe combination. So any time I had to leave the locked room, I had to print out what I had typeset, clear the screen, pack up the paperwork, and give it to the lady who knew the safe combo, and then go and pee or get a sip of water, and then come back and do the reverse of everything.

When you worked on Secret material and you were near a window, you had to close the blinds, and when someone came in the room, you had to check their little badge and see if they had the little red box, which meant they had a Secret clearance. If they just had a blue dot, they only had a Confidential clearance, and you had to dim your screen and turn over everything you were working on. It was officially called, “protecting your work.” I never once worked on anything Top Secret, which was represented on my badge as a black triangle.

The Graphics department, except for the supervisor and the safe lady, were a bunch of low paid hippies. On several occasions I can recall, those of us with Top Secret clearances would go out to lunch or on our 15 minute break in my 1963 Volkswagen convertible and pass around a joint, sing along with Blondie, and end up eating from large feedbags bought at Jo-Ann’s Nut House in the mall just down the street. People with lower clearances couldn’t be so bold, because they had something to lose. They still had creepy people spying on them and interviewing people who knew them.

The people not in Graphics or Editing were white men in suits, presumably Republicans. They had meetings; long meetings with big slide shows.

The bigwigs met in a bomb-proof think tank in the sub-basement. I never saw it and had no idea how to find it, but I pictured getting to it would take some kind of Get Smart maneuver, passing through multiple doors, and then finally dropping down into an atomic bomb-proof area from a fake telephone booth. Frequently the bigwigs would have a Ridgewell-catered lunch, and when they were finished, the omnivores from Graphics were allowed to go eat their scraps and leftovers, provided we cleaned up the mess.

It was an odd place to work. You had to know the rules. I was always worried that someone was watching me. Security was tight. You weren’t allowed to talk about what you were working on, which was fine, because you never knew really what it was. We made a lot of maps, never knowing what country the map was representing. Before there were insertable digital images, there was clip art and rub-on graphics that you could adhere to the map. I loved the rub-ons. I used to walk around with a rub-on mushroom cloud on my forehead, until I was told to cut it out. They were very serious there, totally humorless, and completely committed to the security of whatever it was we were doing. For the most part, you minded and protected your own work and kept your mouth shut, unless you were out of the building eating bags of cashews. Privacy procedures were always adhered to, even if you were high.

I was thinking about this today after I made a major faux-pas at work. It was at this time I longed for the days when I had security and privacy paranoia built in to my modus operandi.

Our photocopier had been down for two days, and when I heard it running again, I grabbed my pile of stuff I needed to copy and headed into the copier room.

“Oh, great, it’s working again,” I said to the detective sergeant who was using the machine, photocopying multiple yellow pages of diagrams of wide-open vaginas. That was something that for the entire eight years I’ve worked here, I had never laid eyes on. And quite frankly, I didn't really want to. There or anywhere.

“Whoa!” I exclaimed, “What are you doing?”

With a stern look on his face, he quickly flipped over the beaver shots and muttered, “You’re not supposed to look at that! She’s still here, right over there.” He pointed around the corner.

“Oh. Sorry. God, I’ll come back later to make my copies,” I said as I quickly fled the room. I didn’t look up and see what was around the corner, because I knew there was a sexual assault victim there, probably staring at me with laser-burning eyes.

And for the first time in decades, I had a yearning for a Volkswagen convertible and a joint, just so I could forget about what I'd done. I felt horrible, and I was crippled from doing any work the rest of the day, because all I could think was: What an idiot you are!

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Brrr

I’m cold.

I can’t get much further south and still live in the US. I live in South Florida, yet I’m cold. It’s 78 degrees outside, and it’s February. You’d think I’d be warm. But it’s about 70 inside, and I’m cold.

I have a small ceramic heater that is pretty much pumping out the heat all day long. Sometimes I stick my feet right up next to it until the soles of my shoes are almost gooey. I frequently wrap my hands around my neck to get them warm.

I’m cold here at work because they cannot regulate the climate control system in this building. Last year it was so cold that there were rockhopper penguins mating on the south side of the building. People complained. The HVAC guys quickly found a solution to the problem: they routed all the cold air to the north side of the building, where I sit.

Since then I have shut off the two vents that blast Arctic tornadoes through them. So nothing gets through, except the whooshing sound of the wind, bypassing the vent. Even the heat, which is on maybe two times a year, doesn’t get through. I would leave the vents open at night for heat, but I don’t know when they will run the heat and when they will run the air conditioner. They run the air conditioner here when it’s 47 degrees outside.

I don’t complain about it. It doesn’t do any good. The people on the south side of the building belong to a stronger union. Other people have complained about it, to no avail, and shut off their vents, too. Apparently no one is disturbed by the side of beef I leave hanging in the hallway. I slice off a slab each day for my lunch.

I’ve always been cold. When I worked in Virginia, I worked in a trailer, so I was even colder then. For 5 months out of the year, there was a glacier frozen to the exterior paneling that lined the outside of my office. I was literally working from an igloo. You had to either wear ice cleats or be a figure skater to navigate the treacherous ice-covered plywood deck between the groups of trailers. The Winter Olympics could have been held there. I’m a morning person and was always the first to work, and I always worried that Jeff Gallooly would be hiding, ready to spring out and break my kneecaps with a collapsible ASP baton.

I had my little space heater on in my office 24/7 during the winter. When someone else turned on their space heater, the breaker would trip. I had seniority, so my heater got precedence. I’ve had this space heater for 20 years, and it did a good job in my Virginia office, which was small. Now I have a big office that I share 3 days a week with a woman who is always hot. She wears too much perfume that constantly has me sneezing, so until she lays off with the Avon, she’ll just have to sweat. That’s my compromise. I haven’t mentioned the scent, and she hasn’t mentioned the heat. We seldom speak. It’s complicated.

I take Coumadin, which some people refer to as a blood thinner. It really doesn’t really make your blood more watery. It just makes coagulation a little more difficult. Coumadin is basically rat poison in small doses. When a rat eats Coumadin it explodes in a messy hemorrhage. Maybe Coumadin is making me cold. Maybe it’s another age-related thing. I don’t care. I just want to be warm.

I need a bigger heater. I need something that’s propane-fed. I need something that is a fire hazard, like an eternal flame. I wonder if I could get JFK’s gravesite moved from Arlington Cemetery to my office. They can keep the body; all I want is the heat. I’ve even thought of importing some very cold homeless people to my office so they can burn big 50 gallon drums of trash in my office. I’ll arrange for a ventilator fan to suck out the smoke.

I was trying to stay warm by growing out my hair. I have a reverse Mohawk hairline. Hair grows perfectly well on the back and sides, but there’s a strip of flesh that’s exposed in the dead center of my head. I was actually thinking about doing a comb-over once the back and sides grew long enough. That’s how desperate I am for warmth. But when I started looking like Dilbert’s boss, I had to take the clippers to my scalp. Now my head’s cold again. And I work at a paramilitary institution. They punish you if you wear a hat inside.

When I moved from Virginia to Florida, I sold all my nice soft, thick wooly socks that I used to order every year from LL Bean. That’s right: sold. eBay foot fetishists will pay big money for used socks, frequently more than they cost brand new. Now I wish I had them back. My desperation is so deep that I have actually Googled “Electric socks.” I found a pair for $154 for the plug-in model. Another hundred bucks for the lithium battery pack and charger. That seems a little extreme. Are they machine-washable? You think I’m taking one pair of socks to the dry cleaner every day and waiting for them to be 1-Hour Martinized? I think not.

Maybe my problem is acclimation. Because of my location, I have adapted to the heat. I love the warmth. I don’t complain anymore in the summer when it’s 96 degrees outside with 90% humidity. That just feels like home. Even in the summer, our home thermostat is set at 80, and we keep cool under ceiling fans, which are in every room. Maybe I need to go back and spend some time in Virginia, or Maine, or, God forbid, Quebec, so I can de-acclimate. I’d rather spend time in a small, sealed aquarium filled with starving piranhas. At least the water would be warm.

Canadians and other annoying northern folk come here for the winter. When I retire and get cold, where am I supposed to go? Ecuador would be nice. It’s hot there year round. But I don’t speak Spanish. I can’t even stop and get directions in Miami. I once vacationed in Seychelles, tiny little islands in the Indian Ocean just south of the Equator. They are so small they don’t even show up until the fifth zoom level on Google Maps. I’ve always wanted to go back. It’s the most amazing place on earth, with friendly English speaking inhabitants and sand smooth as corn starch. Every day I ate fish that were still swimming an hour before dinner. That would be a perfect winter retreat. The problem is cost. I entered “Flexible Dates” from Fort Lauderdale to Praslin Island, Seychelles in Travelocity. Apparently Travelocity is too embarrassed to give me a quote. When I entered it into Orbitz.com, it came back with “Prices from: $10,524.” That’s four stops, and that’s coach. You’d think for ten grand I’d at least get a Mylar envelope of honey roasted peanuts.

So I guess I’m just stuck. Nothing to do except bitch about it, which I think is my calling in life, anyway. But if things get beyond that, I’m bringing in a case of Sterno.

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Seniority

The first time it happens to you, you are ill-prepared to deal with it. You are shocked, appalled, and later depressed or possibly suicidal after being asked one simple question: “Do you qualify for the Senior Discount?”

I wasn’t having a bad day, or even a bad hair day. I had not been up all night drinking and smoking crack. For a man of 45, I thought I could pass for, say, 50. I spent my youth at the beach before sun block existed, and my wrinkled, leathery face reflects that. I just didn’t see it coming.

I was in a Salvation Army store in Hallandale Beach. It was 4 pm on a Wednesday. This is how vivid this memory is. I had a couple of vintage t-shirts resting on the counter, and before the cashier rang them up, she asked me, “Are you a senior?”

You have to understand that at that time, and still today in most thrift stores in South Florida, Wednesday is Senior Day, when you get a 50% discount if you are sixty-five (read: 65) years of age or older.

I’m sure my jaw dropped, and my face, I’m sure, looked as if I had just taken a bite of compost. “No!” I exclaimed, while thinking, that’s right I said NO, you little minimum-wage earning, lowlife hussy.

Immediately after that, I rushed home and looked in the mirror. Maybe I should moisturize, I thought, but I never followed up on that. I was two decades behind Senior Discount Day. Clearly, the cashier had vision problems.

That was seven years ago, and since then, from time to time, I am asked not only in thrift stores, but restaurants and other businesses, if I am a Senior. Even worse, and more often, I get the Senior Discount automatically, without being asked. I have become complacent with it. I have learned not to obsess about it but instead, be happy that I got a discount, often a big one.

One thing that irritates me: It has never happened to Other Bill. He is two, sometimes three, years older than I am (depending on the current month.) He did not grow up at the beach. His eyes don’t droop, and he has plenty of collagen left around his eyes and cheeks. But last week we were out and stopped off at Wendy’s for a quick burger. We ordered the same value meal but paid separately. I noticed that his meal cost less. And I knew why. I have gotten the 10% discount at Wendy’s several times. I wasn’t going to say anything, because I do what I can to protect Other Bill, especially if it involves silence and doing nothing.

But then he asked, “How come mine was cheaper?” He had to go there.

I raised one eyebrow. “Do you really want to know?” I asked.

He said, “Yeah.”

I looked at him with pity. I knew this was going to sting. I put my hand on his shoulder. “You got the Senior Discount,” I told him.

It was his first time. He’s still not over it. The first time is difficult. You think it’s a mistake.

I could have said, “I don’t know.” But it had been seven years from the first time I had been shocked by it, and my misery loves company. My misery, in fact, wants an audience with stadium seating.

His jaw dropped, and he turned maroon. I tried not to gloat while he was busy switching back and forth from being appalled to wondering if he should bitch-slap the cashier.

·

There comes a time in every gay man’s life when he has to just quit trying. You cruise someone in the bar in your twenties and take home what you want. In your thirties, you check someone out, and maybe they’ll check you out, too. In your forties you find younger guys who are “into daddies.”

In your fifties, you should just stay home in bed. There are no younger guys “into granddaddies.” You should just order delivery pizza every night. Shop via Internet. Like it or not, you are The Elephant Man. You are invisible to kids in their twenties. People in their thirties might smile at you from a distance, but when they see you up close, you literally vaporize. Men in their forties are trying so hard to look like they’re not fifty that they don’t have time to look at anything but the mirror.

When you’re fifty, it’s time to give it a rest. Game over; give it up. You stop looking at men in their 20’s and 30’s, because if they see you looking at them, they look as if they just took a bite of compost. Ew. Lumpy old man just cruised me! Maybe you can wink at a guy in his 40’s, but if you wink at a guy in his fifties, he is like: Ew. I want someone younger!

I say this because today I got the one-two punch. It’s a Thursday. At 2:30 pm I was in a different thrift store. Thursday is Senior Day there. I am 52. I took a six dollar shirt up to the front of the store. The cashier was an older, white gay man, I guessed in his late sixties. He rang it up for three dollars. Didn’t even ask.

Great. Just great.

I’m used to it now. I even do things to make myself look older. Instead of shaving my head, as a lot of my younger gay brethren do these days, I’m letting it grow out, just to see where the hair ends and the baldness begins. I intentionally walked crookedly and slowly up to the cash register. I wanted the cashier to think that maybe I was recovering from a stroke. Hey, it’s fifty percent off, baby.

I was pleased to get the big discount. It’s like the rush a shoplifter gets after getting away with a heist.

After I left there, I went to the grocery store and bought some stuff for dinner, and, as always, I got in the line with the cutest bagboy. I don’t mind waiting. I could take a decent amount of side glances at him since I was wearing my sunglasses. This bagger was in his late 20’s or early 30’s and was just drop-dead gorgeous. Nice head of thick, brown hair, cut beautifully; bulging biceps and sharp hazel eyes. His taut pecs rose above and to the sides of his tightly-tied black apron, and he bagged my groceries with military precision. I paid the cashier, and then the bagboy said to me:

“Do you need help getting that to your car, sir?”

Do I need HELP with that! I thought. What IS it about me that says “Medicare Patient” to you, you delicious-beefcake-minimum-wage-earning runt? (He was short, but who cared? He was Adonis.)

So I’ve reached The Point. I’m staying in bed. I am not going to bother to go to the gym anymore. I will eat at McDonalds after a thirty-year boycott. I will start taking blood pressure medicine. I will sit home and look at Internet porn while wishing I could afford some Viagra. I might even stop bathing.

I am Senior.

Hear me roar.

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