Surviving Equality

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Good evening, students, and welcome to the Surviving Equality seminar. This will take about two hours, but we’ll take a little break for coffee and donuts in about forty-five minutes. So thank you for joining me today in this lovely library conference room. First, I want to I tell you a little bit about myself. Why am I qualified to teach this seminar, you might be asking. Well, as one of the thirty-six thousand some-odd people who was married in California during the 137-day window when that benefit was offered to gays and lesbians, I profess I’m not an expert at it, but I can offer you a little insight. And because this is a free seminar, what have you got to lose?

You, there! You in the back! Other Bill! Would you please wait until the break for your donut? Go ahead and finish that one, but please wait for the rest of us. I had to pay for those myself.

So class, to start, let me explain that there are more choices than being either single or married today for gays and lesbians. In the majority of American states, if you’re gay you’re not allowed to marry someone of the same sex. You can only be single or straight, which in my opinion is pretty dreadful. I wouldn’t want to be either.

In four states, if you’re gay, you can get married or be single, no matter what your sexual orientation is. Still, in some states you can register as domestic partners.

If you’re gay in California, you’re not allowed to marry anyone of the same sex, unless you got married, as I did, in between June 17 and November 4, 2008. So you can be married, but can’t get married, or you can be single, or you can register as domestic partners.

See? Choices.

As you can see by the map here, these are the four states that offer same sex marriage, the states shaded in green. The rest of the country, the white states, do not offer or recognize same sex marriage. The yellow states recognize your same-sex marriage if you were married in a green state, or the brown state, California, between June 17 and November 4, 2008, but they neither issue marriage licenses to, nor legally allow the marriage of same sex couples. Thus, the yellow.

Now I would like to create a couple of scenarios that have to do with portability of benefits.
Let’s say you’re gay, live in chilly Boston with your two adopted tweenagers and same-sex partner of 20 years who legally married you a couple of years ago. You are all tired of the snow and lack of warmth that comes with being a Massachusetts resident. Not to mention those grating accents. Because of the economy, your employer does some consolidation of responsibilities, and you are given the option of accepting a promotion to the company’s swank South Beach office, or a lateral move to a dumpy, dark building located in an unsafe neighborhood in DC. Which do you choose? Raise your hand if you choose Miami Beach. ALL of you! Wow, it’s a good thing you showed up tonight, because you are all wrong.

People, this is a no brainer. You take the lateral move to the District and work in a neighborhood full of crackheads. That’s because DC recognizes same-sex marriages that originated in other states. Florida doesn’t. And if you wanted to adopt another child, you couldn’t in Florida, because it’s illegal.

Next scenario. You’ve lived in Florida for 10 years, but just for kicks, you took a vacation to San Francisco in September of 2008 and married your same-sex partner of sixteen years. Against your better judgment, you move to New York City to pursue your dream of becoming a mime. Your donut-sucking husband—That’s your sixth cruller I count, Other Bill!—agrees to pay for your health insurance policy offered by his employer, Krispy Kreme. They reject you, citing that because you lived in Florida for the last decade, and Florida has a constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex marriage, and you therefore do not qualify. What do you have to show them in order to ensure your coverage? Is it A) an official copy of your marriage certificate dated between June 17 and November 4, or B) Your Lark?

No, Other Bill, showing them that is not the correct answer. Put that away and zip it shut. Yes, class, of course the correct answer is A). That was a give-away, because I felt bad that you got the first one wrong. You all answered correctly, mainly because you don’t understand what “Show Us Your Lark” means.

So you can see by those two scenarios, portability of your rights as a married couple can be difficult. Currently, if you want to be protected under state law, your options are to move from Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, or, incredibly, Iowa, to Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, or, incredibly, Iowa, or states like New York, which recognize same-sex marriages from these states, or Districts like the Of Columbia, which will also recognize your vows, but apparently only if you work in Anacostia or another bad neighborhood.

Now let’s talk for a minute about domestic partnership vs. same-sex marriage, and again I will use California as an example and health insurance as the issue, but there are hundreds of additional issues at stake here. If you register as domestic partners in California, your employer is required by law to offer you all the benefits that it offers its married heterosexual employees. In the white states, some counties and cities allow you to register as domestic partners, but they do not necessarily require employers to give you benefit equality. So why do they do it? The answer is simple: because they can collect revenue to do so. The only sure way to get benefits for your same-sex partner is to go to work for a company that offers that benefit. Don’t depend on government.

As a little aside here, when I worked for Coors (as in beer), they offered domestic partner benefits only for its gay and lesbian employees. If you were unmarried, cohabitating heterosexuals, you were not given those benefits. This created a small group of straight employees who really hated me. And apparently, Coors taught this little trick to California.

California can’t make up its mind. They flip-flop back and forth between making gay marriage legal and then reversing themselves. They recently announced a compromise that will appear on the 2010 ballot: Same sex marriages will be legal on even days, illegal on odd ones. On Feb. 29 of leap years, only same-sex marriages will be legal. California issued same-sex marriage licenses in 2004, but then all those marriages were annulled and the license fees were refunded. This time, in order to hang on to the 18,000-some-odd license fees, the bankrupt state of California decided not to annul, thereby creating a unique class of people who are hated by two opposing groups: straight people who think gay marriage is wrong, and jealous gay people who want to marry but can’t. Those people are referred to as the PGL’s (Privileged Gays and Lesbians).

When I visit California, I am a privileged gay man. But when I’m home in Florida, I’m just another gay man with a ring and an useless framed marriage certificate hanging on the wall. There, I have rights but everyone hates me. Here I have no rights, but only some people hate me. When I’m in DC this September to see my nephew get married, I can call him my nephew there, because my vows are recognized, but I work with crack whores. I can’t call him my nephew here, because I work with cops.

Or something like that. It's very confusing, and I’m trying to understand. It’s difficult for a man my age. Why don’t we take a fifteen minute break, have a little snack, and I’ll try to organize my thoughts a little better.

What do you mean, Other Bill, that there are no snacks left?

Shivagit

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One thing that makes Other Bill and me a good fit together is that neither of us gives a shit. You can tell that by looking at our home furnishings, our clothes, the things we eat, and the way we behave.

We pretty much live for comfort, and we don’t care how that looks. We have a 30-year-old maroon leather couch in the living room that is the summer lounge for Bungee, because it sits right under an air conditioning vent. It is really comfortable. It has great lumbar support and just absorbs you when you sit in it.
Every now and then, Bungee gets curious as to just what makes that couch so damned comfortable, so she’ll slice open a worn bit of leather, pull out a tiny bit of stuffing, and then, satisfied with her answer, goes back to her gin and tonic, Eve cigarette, and another afternoon in front of the Soap Opera Channel.

Her little slices have been taped up with not-very-well-color-matched maroon duct tape. This couch is pretty much the first thing you see when you walk into the front door of our house. Does it cause us embarrassment? Not in the least. We don’t give a shit.

I would rather wear a 30-year-old threadbare t-shirt that rips every time you stretch than any other shirt in the world. Nothing feels better against my skin than soft, aged cotton, preferably so old that it weighs less than a Q-tip. After work and on the weekends, what I wear is basically fabric vapor. And usually it’s stained or holey in small areas that aren’t that noticeable. Oddly enough, my ancient t-shirts and frayed shorts are now being replicated and sold as mock-vintage stuff at stores like American Eagle and Abercrombie and Fitch. My stuff is just genuine, and usually costs and weighs about 95% less.

We don’t have nice things. We don’t want nice things. I was surprised that when the burglar broke into our house in March, he didn’t just turn around and walk out. We don’t want to spend money on new things. Our home is furnished with a mishmash of thrift and antique store furniture that doesn’t match or particularly look all that nice but is functional and comfortable. Practically everything we owned or have ever owned is secondhand. Even Bungee was used when we got her. Twice used, in fact. We could afford better stuff (including a better dog), I guess, but the thing is, we don’t give a shit, so why bother?

When I was a kid, we got plenty of hand-me-down clothes from a well-to-do family of 10, and apparently I have trouble letting go of that ritual. These days, our benefactors are Billy and Ron.

Billy and Ron’s house is immaculate. Everything is new, clean, shiny, and unblemished. Because Ron is retired, he has a lot of time for making their place lovely and downright perfect. Even though they have two dogs, they don’t have any dirt on the floor of their patio. We have one dog, and our patio floor is 45% concrete, 55% dog track-ins.

Billy and Ron have high turnover rates for their stuff. And they are always comfortable calling us to see if we want their old stuff before they put it out on the street for gypsies to take. We have their old mini-fridge sitting on top of our mini-freezer outside on the patio. When they called and offered us the fridge, even though we didn’t need it, we accepted, because you can’t just throw away a perfectly good refrigerator. So we went and picked it up, even though nothing says White Trash louder than exterior major appliances. Luckily, we don’t give a shit.

Billy and Ron are good friends, and in turn we are also their own personal Salvation Army. Other Bill and I are thinking about starting our own 501(c)3 for them just so they can get a tax credit for the stuff they give us. It’s the least we can do. It’s not like there’s anything in our house that they’re going to want. For the most part, they’ve already proven that.

We have their old patio lounge chairs now sitting in the breezeway in front of our house. Billy and Ron got a new patio floor covered in elegant earth tone paving blocks that appear to be self-vacuuming. They also bought some really nice rattan cushioned furniture, which I am praying will mildew in a year or two so we can put it on our patio. Since a lot of their possessions eventually end up in our house, you’d think they’d make it a point to take us shopping with them when they buy new stuff to make sure it’s something that would go with our motif once they’re done with it. The problem with that is, we have no motif.

They don’t know it, but when we are at their house and are not looking, we have stuck labels on many of their possessions we’d like to have. “The Bills would like to have these if you’re getting rid of them,” the labels remind them.

They also have really nice cars and pretend not to mind us being passengers whenever we go anywhere with them. On the other hand, they’ve never asked for us to drive one of our cars, for the reasons shown below. Their cars never lose the new car smell and have things like global navigation systems, roomy, orthopedic leather seating, and steering wheels that have memory positions. Other Bill drives a 12-year-old Toyota Tacoma truck, which could use a significant body work, a paint job and one of those nice cardboard deodorizers that swing from the rearview mirror, but it comes in handy for picking up hand-me-downs. I now drive a Honda Fit, which is frequently mistaken for a cockroach because of its size. Pedestrians at crosswalks frequently pull off a shoe and smack my car with it as they make their way across the street. SUV’s that pass me on the interstate often hold passengers who lean out their windows and spray me with Raid.

Recently Other Bill told Billy that when they get done with their sleek, quiet, comfortable Infiniti, we’d be happy to take it off their hands. But it was too late. They had already traded it in on this year’s model. Next time we’re over there, we’re putting labels on their new Infiniti as well as Ron’s candy-apple-red convertible Mustang, which I know for a fact never gets shoe-smacked or sprayed with toxic chemicals.

When we got married in September of 2008, we made a big mistake in the gift registry process. Having never had to face posting a list of demands for “things” that friends should spend lots of money on for us, we instead told people we were registered with Wachovia. Further illustrating our ignorance of these matters, we neglected to give people deposit slips, so we ended up getting no gifts at all. If we’d been smart, we would have informed our public that we were registered at Billy and Ron’s House of Nice Things. Maybe we would have gotten some nice granite countertops or one of the quiet-flushing toilets they have. Or even one of their nice, clean dogs.

You’d think we’d be ashamed that we have several pieces of dog-ruined furniture in our house, two of which are covered over with sheets and towels. They do go well with the taped-up couch. But because we don’t give a shit, we are shameless. In fact, we are always on the lookout for additional benefactors who have great taste, big wallets, and the ever-evolving urge to redecorate; philanthropists who would love to come over for dinner, but don’t want to be in a house that looks as if it was decorated by a group of mentally challenged NASCAR fans. Or is that redundant?

I could easily say that we are doing this for the good of the environment, that we are dedicated to recycling and saving the planet. But that’s not necessarily so. The real reason is that we just don’t give a shit. When hand-me-downs come to us, they stay here until they further decompose over time, and when it’s our turn to throw things out, the stuff usually has less than 72 hours before it disintegrates, evaporates, rusts out or rots into the earth. Our home is a holding tank, a middle ground between the retail store and the compost heap. Well, maybe a little bit to the right of the middle ground. Maybe a lot to the right. Okay, our home is the compost heap.

We both think that if you have nice stuff, the more traumatic the time will be when you spill something on it, scratch it, dent it, crack it, have it stolen, or otherwise devalue it. The great thing about not giving a shit is that the dog’s tongue can satisfactorily clean up spills adequately for your needs, and you never know if the scratch, dent, or crack came from you or if it was like that the day you unloaded it from your 12-year-old scratched, dented Toyota Tacoma. Worrying is a thing of the past, and you don’t run around your house during a party with a can of warm club soda and a sponge. You can stop being that skinny, mink-wearing in the Sixties who avoided the buffet table at The Club in order to prevent herself from dipping her stole into the Swedish meatball pan. Not giving a shit sets you free.

I can’t tell you steps to take to stop giving a shit. It’s not learned behavior. My mother gave a shit. She had a psychotic meltdown and didn’t speak to me for a week after I spilled a bottle of red ink on the new powder blue shag carpet she spent years saving for. It was a big, bloody-looking, horror-movie red stain that made it look like carpeting that was dragged out of the home of a Manson family victim. Maybe not giving a shit is something you’re born with. Nature, not nurture. When I took a razor knife to the ink stain, and cut it out and replaced it with a scrap of leftover carpeting, you could still see the outline of the hole where the ruined carpet had been. It was an improvement. It was good enough. Who gave a shit? Certainly not me.

I thought that not giving a shit was something that came with age. When I was in my twenties, I wanted everything beautiful and immaculate, matching, and awe-inspiring. I even made my bookshelves beautiful with enormous, expensive art books (which, to be honest, I stole from the library I worked at). I thought that as you age and move, you let go of things and learn to live more simply. But that’s not necessary true. Billy and Ron are a little older than we are, and they still give a shit. They give a lot of shit.

The bottom line, I guess, is that not giving a shit is the basic result of inertia. It takes work to give a shit, as well as motivation to seek better jobs that pay more money. And it takes time. You have to shop and browse catalogs and develop vision and a coordinated color palate. It’s so much more relaxing just to lean back in our sagging recliner sofa, click the remote and watch reruns of Judge Judy.

Maybe it takes retirement to have the time to give a shit. Maybe vision and the hope and possibility of living in a house that looks nice come with spare time. Maybe one day if I’m ever able to retire, I’ll experience that. If I ever learn to give a shit, I’ll call you. You can come pick it up.

The Only Way to Fly

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There’s a great new way to fly these days. True, the Concord is gone, and First Class is out of my price range, but I have discovered a greater way to go: unconscious.

Some people take books, portable DVD players or laptop computers for in-flight amusement and to pass the time. Me, I take Valium.

I usually have quite a high tolerance for pain medications, muscle relaxers, and the normal maintenance dose of Atavan. But give me one little Valium, and it’s Good Night, Nurse for the rest of the day.

I'm not the only one who has adopted this tactic. Watch the passengers with the bottled water. They'll pop a pill as soon as they're seated. And they always look hungry. You get an extra kick if you take it on an empty stomach.

I tell my doctor I need “a little something” each time before I go on an extended flight. And by extended flight, I mean beyond the county line. The last three trips to San Francisco have been paradise for me. Even if we have to stop for an hour and change flights, the minute the second plane lifts off, my face is in my soup. Or it would be, had I brought a bowl on board. When the flights were over, the drug seemed to have run its course, and I woke up feeling very refreshed and mellow. For me, jet lag is a thing of the past.

I no longer miss my free beverage or $2 headphones. I always make sure I pin my Do Not Resuscitate order to my shirt so the air nurse won’t wake me up. I learned this trick from my mother, who for the last few years of her life, slept under her DNR order that was taped to the wall (which she had brusquely attacked with a fluorescent highlighter and scribbled in her own addenda). When Rescue came, they ignored it anyway, but air nurses tend to be much more sympathetic. They’re thinking, “Hey, that’s just one more jerk I don’t have to wait on.”

No longer do I have to be worried about being cramped or uncomfortable in those sardine-can coach seats. When you’re as out of it as I am while under the influence of one little Valium, you can fold yourself into a pretzel shape and still be dreaming away as if you were stretched out on a king-sized Tempur-Pedic mattress.

This trip, I slept for two hours with a starlight mint in my mouth. During hour 1, I had woken up, and in order to alleviate my sleeper’s breath, popped one into my mouth. Twenty seconds later, I was back asleep, and it was still there two hours later, staining my tongue and teeth cherry red as we began our descent into Dallas.

This medication trick is not for everyone. Other Bill will Pop a Chocks before takeoff and will still be vigorously reading his book about Joni Mitchell as we prepare for landing. Frankly, I could probably read the Joni Mitchell book instead of taking the Valium, but the drugs take much less effort. Moving your eyes and comprehending can be so taxing.

I am pleased to have Other Bill in the waking world so that he can nudge me when I snore or soak up my drool with a cocktail napkin. He says he does that frequently during the flight, but I remember none of it. He could probably put me in clown makeup and pull my pants down to my knees, and I wouldn’t discover it until the captain pulled up to the gate and turned off the fasten-seatbelt sign. That's how out of it I am.

I am not saying that drugs are cool or that this method of flight will help others, but it's right for me. What I don’t understand is how people function while taking this medication. And by function, I mean simply staying awake. I’m beginning to think that Valley of the Dolls was fiction.

I am pretty certain I could have open-heart surgery while taking this medication.
All the misery of air travel can completely disappear if you pair that pill with a couple of good foam earplugs. Screaming babies? Never heard ’em. Sloppy, loud drunks molesting the air nurses? Where? On this flight?

The first time I tried this was on a 14-hour, nonstop flight from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia to Kennedy in 1983. It was on a big-belly 747 that held extra fuel for extended flights. It was during some Moslem holiday when some hypocritical Saudis, the kind who drink, gamble, and play with prostitutes, flee the country for destinations where those things are easy to do.
Unfortunately, they tend to bring along their herds of Saudi toddlers and pre-schoolers, who, once the fasten-seatbelt light is turned off, are more than free to roam about the cabin. They run up and down the aisles shrieking and speaking in tongues while their parents, all five of each of them, peruse the duty free liquor magazines.

Valium, in Saudi Arabia at that time, did not require a prescription. Unfortunately, I never knew that until the day before my repatriation flight took off. I could have had a much better time there that year. I should have networked more.

So at the first sign of unruly children, I popped a 5 mg. tablet. In no time their disturbing ways stopped irritating me, and I felt really happy. I slept until the first meal came, which was after the first movie. Disturbingly, I did not at the time have a DNR order that was written in hieroglyphics from right to left, so the air nurse set food down in front of me and woke me up. I ate half of the beef, or maybe it was lamb. Whatever; dark meat in gravy, and a mouthful of baba ganoush, which I’m not fond of but love the name. It quickly led to my singing in my head a modified Beach Boys song: “Ba-ba-ba, ba-ba-ganoush; Ba-ba-ba, ba-ba-ganoush.” Like just about everything else, except for the black-haired babies going berserk up and down both aisles of the plane, I found that song interminably funny, and I figured I could stop my giggling and make those kids disappear with another ten milligrams. Hey, I was 26. What did I care about a slight overdose? I was going to live forever.

Two unseen movies, a skipped breakfast and eleven hours later, I woke up just as we were making our descent into New York. The captain had already illuminated the fasten-seatbelt sign, and I hadn’t peed in over fifteen hours, so I couldn't run to the back to relieve myself. Needless to say I had busting-at-the-zipper happy pants, but it also felt like I had half a dozen ice picks stabbing me in the bladder. I could only find relief by leaning forward, as if I was bracing for impact. When we docked at the gate, I couldn’t stand up until everyone had left the plane. I fled as fast as I could, bent over like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. I made it to a sit-down toilet. (I couldn’t stand at a urinal, or I would have poked myself in the eye with the now-extinct flush handle.)

Later that afternoon, Customs officials wanted to know why I had taken so long to get to them. I told them I’d taken Valium and fallen asleep. They bought it.

But as I said earlier, don't assume this in-flight medication will help you. I do feel, for the sake of the safety of others, that I should put in one of those prescription medication warnings here.

Valium is not for everyone. Ask your doctor if taking Valium on a jet is right for you. In some cases, Valium may make you miss your connection, cause drooling that will stain your garments, make you fall in your soup, or lie in the lap of an unknown adjacent passenger. Don't take Valium while traveling alone or without a willing passenger who will nudge you when snoring and mop your face when drooling. Valium can be habit forming among frequent travelers. Side effects of Valium include erections lasting over four hours, euphoria, and fiery bladder pain. Stop using Valium if you experience death. For more information and a discount on your first prescription, visit www.airvalium.com.

Painting for Jesus

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I don’t suppose anyone’s been holding their breath, but after six grueling weeks, we are about to put the cap on the exterior house painting we have been engaged in for the majority of our off-work waking daylight hours.

I never imagined it would end up taking 6 weeks. Actually it took longer, because for the last two years, I’ve been saying, “We really need to paint the house,” and then failing to act on it.
We tackled it one side at a time. After I bought the sealer, primer and paint, I started the pressure washing.

Lesson 1 learned: I will spread mulch next to the house so that if I should ever be so inclined to pressure wash the house again, I will not end up looking like I just joined a minstrel show. The backsplash of mud from the ground edge of the house was thick, severe and often painful when little pebbles splashed back and pitted my flesh.

I discovered that pressure washing does not do an adequate job of removing the old paint. Not by a long shot. We ended up buying a total of 8 single-edged razor scrapers, all of which we broke in no time, and we peeled off garbage bags full of loose paint that I know that any average painter, especially the Paintitute, would have just sprayed over.

Lesson 2 learned: Make sure you double up on your OCD meds while scraping the outside of the house. No matter how hard you try, you are not going to get every last smidgen of paint to chip off. You can see as you circumnavigate the house clockwise from the northwest corner that paint removal became less and less of a concern as the weeks passed by. Yesterday, my mantra was: To hell with it. Paint over it. Who’s going to know?

In the early days of the project, while Other Bill was away visiting family, I decided to get creative and paint Keith Haring dogs on our aluminum awnings that hang over the north side windows.

Lesson 3 learned: Don’t get creative when you paint a house. It causes massive delays. Just splash on the paint. Because there were three colors to deal with (black, white, and the green awning color) it took up to a week to paint each Keith Haring dog awning, because we had to use 4 coats of paint for it to cover. Not only was there the painting, but there was the cutting of the stencils, the tracing, the masking, and the never ending touching up. And regrettably, it was all for nothing, because I ended up painting the dogs too high up on the awnings for them to be seen. When the next hurricane approaches and the shutters go down, I’m sure our neighbors will just be delighted to see the cartoon-like replicas of our handiwork.

The first coat I applied to the house is a product called Kilz, which is a sealer and a mildew inhibitor. If you live in Florida, you need it.

Lesson 4 learned: Kilz does not wash off your body. I used a scrub brush and steel wool on parts of my body that should have never been exposed to such abrasive tactics, and the paint still stayed on me. I assume it will wear off as my skin cells are replaced. Kilz also doesn’t come off your hair. You have to shave your arms or chest to get it off. I can only assume that you would have to do the same with head hair. Perhaps I should have read the label or worn long sleeves. The label probably instructs me to wear long sleeves.

When we got done with the north side of the house and started on the east side, we had the opportunity to paint the biggest awning on the house just the color of the trim. But we had to be creative again, because we are gay, so an extra large Keith Haring dog stencil was cut, traced, and is still being painted even as we move toward completion of the south side of the house. This dog’s feet touch the bottom lip of the awning, so hopefully it will be visible from the street and will frighten off burglars, being that our living, breathing dog failed to.

Lesson 5 learned: Paint tends to sting when it gets in your eyes. So does primer. So does sealer. When you’re standing 10 feet below and painting eaves with a roller on a stick, you have to look up so you don’t roll off the house. There are devices known as goggles. Who knew? As long as we are talking lost-time accidents, there are also garments called gloves that could have prevented the near-severing of my finger while I opened a ladder with a razor blade in my hand. My finger looks like an overcooked baked potato that was just split open. Steam is still coming out. I look forward to the day when I’ll be able to bend it again.

I have to always remember that when I start a project, it tends to spawn other side-projects. Projects breed themselves like rats, and it is ever-so-complex to find abortion clinics for rats. On the front and side of our house are—or should I say, were—these evil and unhealthy plants called ixoras. They tend to stab you, grab your shoelaces and tie them together and trip you, prevent you and your ladder from passing by, and they can even penetrate orifices you stopped having penetrated years and years ago. I got so sick of being sexually molested by plants that we got out the pruning shears, then the hatchet, then shovels and dug the evil bastards out of the ground.

This spawned the project that will no doubt turn into The Re-landscaping Project. Other Bill has already put in new, less aggressive plants to take their place, and this will no doubt spawn the need for other plants to be purchased and planted. And God knows what else that will spawn. The rat is pregnant and in her last trimester and is about to whelp a massive litter of time-consuming chores that will probably fill up our summer. We once ended up remodeling the entire house because I had to install a new toilet paper holder. It’s almost biblical the way it happens. The toilet paper holder begat repainting the bathroom, which begat repainting the bedroom, which begat While You’re At It, Why Don’t You Put Up Crown Molding in the Bedroom, which begat Why Don’t You Put Up Crown Molding in Every Room and Paint Them Too, which begat I Hate This Kitchen, which begat demolition that required a trip to the emergency room, which begat hiring a cabinet maker who depleted our bank accounts and brought in termites. See how it works? Should I be thanking Jesus for this?

This is the second time in my life that I painted a house. The first house was much bigger, and when it came time to repaint the house, I opted to sell it instead. I pretty much feel the same way with this house. Unfortunately, the $60-a-gallon paint we used has a lifetime guarantee, so I might end up stuck here. The good news is that in laymen’s painting terms, “lifetime guarantee” means you’ll probably have to paint again in three years. I told Other Bill in three years I will be ready for a condo, rental apartment, or assisted living. Or, if I have to paint the house again, I will soon afterwards find a nice home in a psychiatric hospital. Doing a project of this scale used to give me a sense of pride and accomplishment. This time all I got were aches, pains, exhaustion and possibly hemorrhoids and rape trauma, thanks to the ixoras. I Googled “Ixora abuse,” and all the hits were just all about the plant itself. Isn’t that always the case?

Tonight, if it doesn’t rain, and I don’t collapse and my arthritic old hands can still grasp a brush, the last of the paint will finally be applied. And hopefully by the weekend the last freakin’ Keith Haring Dog Awning will be reinstalled, and I can finally start vacuuming up the massive amounts of paint chips that have left our lawn looking like it has been seized by a cruel snow storm.
And that will beget vacuuming the patio, which will beget re-staining the concrete, because there are paint drippings from the Haring dogs there, which will beget having the pool resurfaced, which will probably beget the need to obtain a second job, thus begetting the need for extra medication for me, so maybe it’s not such a bad thing after all.

Career Mistakes

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I’ve never, ever told anyone this, but there is one time in my life I had a definite career goal. And after that was squashed, I fell into a spiral of inertia and accepted just about every job that was offered to me. I can remember just two that I turned down.

I figure that possibly if my father lived (here we go, I hear you groaning), maybe I would have received a little more career guidance. Maybe I would have wanted to grow up and become a writer, as my dad was, instead of having this oddball assortment of jobs:

• Busboy
• Library Aide
• Phototypesetter (4 different jobs)
• Secretary
• HR Rep for a year in Saudi Arabia
• Financial Analyst (me, being the person who can’t balance his own checkbook)
• Unemployed alcoholic (also referred to as “semi-retirement” and “construction engineer” (while I was working on rehabbing my house, when I should have been rehabbing myself)
• Shipping clerk
• Coordinator in a maintenance department
• Technical Support geek
• Buyer

Try to find the common denominator in those. You could be here all day.

It would have been nice to have worked for a newspaper, starting off as a delivery boy, then a go-fer, maybe do some time in classified ads before eventually writing puff pieces, leading to serious journalism, leading to management, leading to writing a bestseller. I just didn’t know how to go about that. A concerned family friend whose husband ran the town newspaper offered to get me an interview when I was 18, but I somehow got out of it. I was too young, too shy, too inexperienced, and it would just have been freaky working with former colleagues of my dad’s.

I don’t know if I would have been happier or sadder with an actual career instead of a string of loser jobs. Without my Saudi job, there are parts of the world I never would have seen. Without my tech support job I never would have earned enough money to buy my own home. I could have been richer. I could have been poorer. I could have been a contender. Or not. I’m not bothered by my inertia spiral and always taking the path of least resistance. I was in Saudi Arabia the first year that AIDS arrived on the scene. That alone could have prolonged my life for decades. I’m 52 and still alive, which is a lot farther than the 20-some-odd people I knew who succumbed to the disease got.

So here it is, what I’ve been postponing telling you.

I wanted to be a mime.

Now, I don’t clearly remember why I wanted to be a mime. I know that I was very moved seeing Marcel Marceau perform at the Kennedy Center, but that was long after my mime dream was out of the way. I know that Toni Allen played the role of the mime in “The Fantasticks,” one of our high school productions. Did that influence me? I don’t think so. That’s about all I know about mimes.

When I was in high school I actually thought that I could actually build a career as a mime. Hey, if Marcel Marceau could do it, why couldn’t I, I reasoned.

When you say mime, what do you think of? You think of Marcel Marceau. Have there ever been any others? Name two, and Red Skelton doesn’t really count, because he wasn’t Just A Mime.

I actually thought that I could go to college, major in theater, and then, without learning French, board a plane and attend the Compagnie De Mimodrame Marcel Marceau (or, as simple philistines called it, The Marcel Marceau School of Mime). And then after that I could go and silently perform at the Kennedy Center and have my own Playbill.

I am basically a quiet, introspective person, even though these stories might give you a different idea. Other Bill probably does 80-85% of the talking in our house, and I am happy that he does. Maybe having a career as a silent person was why I was so drawn to the mime occupation. Plus it’s a job you can do all by yourself, which then and still does appeal to me.

All I remember is that I wanted to be a goddamn mime. When I told my mother I wanted to major in theater, she basically said, “Over my dead body,” which, given my attitude, could easily have been arranged. We even marched out to the university and saw a career counselor together, also an old family friend. It was then my mother confessed she didn’t want me joining a homosexual industry. I believe those were her exact words: homosexual industry. Whenever I think of that, I can’t help but imagine a factory assembly line, off of which is rolling a bunch of skinny, bitchy queens in outrageous outfits, being packaged up and sent to major cities where homosexuals thrived: San Francisco, New York, West Hollywood, Key West.

Lee, the counselor, asked my mother why she thought only homosexuals were theater majors. Wouldn’t it be worse if I chose graphic or fashion design?

My mother said, “I just don’t want them to get their hands on him. I’ve seen them looking at him.”

“What?” I interjected, “when was this?” Homosexuals were looking at me? Why hadn’t I known? I certainly would have looked back (wink, wink, nudge, nudge).

“Why, just the other day in the elevator at work,” she said.

“In the federal building? Where you work?”

“Yes,” she said, “when we were going down.”

I suppressed a smirk. At this point in time, at age 18, I had already gone down on three men.

“There were two guys obviously sizing you up. I’m surprised you didn’t notice.”

“I certainly did not,” I confirmed.

Seeing that this conversation was going to a bad place, Lee interrupted. She gave my mother a long but friendly, encouraging talk about how it was time, as much as she might hate it, to let go and let what ever would be, be. Que Sera. There was no guarantee in life that even if I chose English or journalism as a career that I wouldn’t be cruised or even recruited by homosexuals. She was very gentle, chose her words carefully, and talked on my mother’s terms. She was a brilliant, eloquent woman whom my mother respected. And Mom listened very carefully and agreed to everything she said. We showered her with thanks and complimented her wisdom.

My mother and I went down in the elevator of the building (and I remember watching men’s eyes). We got out in the muggy Florida heat, and I said, “So, is it okay if I major in theater?

“It is certainly not goddamned okay,” she snapped, and that was the end of that. She’s the one who cashed the Social Security checks that came in my name that were paying the tuition (and for a lot of bourbon for her), and since she held the purse strings, she got final say.

What was I going to do, take her to court?

I want to say she was right. A career in mime was a waste of tuition money which would only have led to the same string of loser jobs that I received as an English major grad. Either way, I would have ended up in the same place. Although going through theater classes would have been a lot more fun than reading and reporting on The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Sometimes Mom was right; a lot of times she was wrong, but most often it just didn’t matter.

Que Sera.

After doing a Google search on the Compagnie De Mimodrame Marcel Marceau, I found that the joint is closed. Marcel Marceau is dead. It does, however, have an extensive listing of links to other mime schools throughout the world. The closest one to me is near Orlando.

Am I about to ditch my latest loser job and apply for a scholarship there?

Uh, no. There’s nothing more pathetic than an Old Mime.

Unless, of course, you’re Marcel Marceau.

Lucky, Lucky Me

.

Ever notice when you suffer a tragedy, people always try to force you to see the good side of the misfortune? Someone close to you dies, and your friends say, “At least he’s no longer in pain.” Yes, it’s true; napalm can be very uncomfortable. Other clichés include:

• He’s in a better place now.
• I’m so glad he didn’t suffer for long.
• He had a long and wonderful life.

And then people always give you their thoughts and prayers. Sometimes they give them to you for good (“Our thoughts and prayers are always with you.”) Other times their thoughts and prayers are with you “during your time of sorrow.” After your sorrow’s gone, they want those thoughts and prayers back. Overdue charges may apply. Frankly when someone close to me dies, I don’t really want thoughts and prayers. I’ve seen a lot of death in my life, probably a lot more than most people my age. I was a hospice volunteer. I know the stages of grief and work through it. I’ll be fine. Really. So keep your thoughts and prayers and make me a nice German chocolate cake. I’d much rather hear, “Our cake and ice cream is with you until you finish it, but please return the Tupperware.” It’s even better for Other Bill if I get to keep the Tupperware. He has a bit of a burping plastic fetish.

When you get burglarized, the trite phrases everyone uses are:

• It could have been a lot worse.

• At least they didn’t _________ (Fill in the blank with something like: kill your dog, microwave your cat, stain your carpeting, take your Franklin Mint collections, etc.)
• You were lucky.

“You were lucky” is my favorite, and I’m making that my mantra. On March 27 someone smashed the glass out of our back French door, entered the house, opened up a bunch of drawers (probably looking for jewelry, said the responding officer. Our wedding rings cost $8 each on eBay. That should give you a clue as to the important role precious metals and rocks play in our lives.) Along the way, the crooks got the new laptop, my iPod, an early 90’s era laptop, a digital camera, and a few pounds of change.

The worst, of course, was the good laptop. You worry about identity theft, emptied out bank accounts, and the pictures of you in that leather peek-a-boo teddy and stilettos being sent to your boss.

But really, I’m lucky. That laptop was ten months old and only had a dual core processor, so it was a relic. It was time to upgrade, anyway.

I keep telling myself we were lucky. I’m trying to convince myself of it.

My luckiness has failed to take away my anger at the dog. I can just picture her, sitting in her Belgian tapestry chair with her Arlene-Frances-What’s-My-Line night blinder-mask, nursing her hangover from the night before. A soothing icepack on her head, a calming Eve cigarette dangling from her lips while Yanni serenades her overconsumption consequences away. “Take anything you want, boys” she mumbles to the intruders while sipping a hair-of-the-human appletini, “just don’t touch the Iams, the icemaker, or the liquor cabinet, unless you want your blood drawn.”

Yes, I’m lucky. They didn’t kill or hurt the dog. Although once I realized she was unharmed, I wanted to. She should have at least fought them and procured a DNA sample.

I responded to this intrusion in a very girl-victim type way. The violation of it all. They went through my underwear drawer. They touched sex toys. For the first few days after the burglary, I couldn’t concentrate on anything. I’d be in the middle of work and remember something that might have been compromised, and then make a call, change a password, or cancel an account, and then completely forget about what I was doing before the panic set in. My jaw was permanently clenched, and there was a knot in my stomach. I realized that this would be a great excuse to see my doctor for some tranquilizers. He happily prescribed me 30 Ativan. I didn’t even have to show him the police report. I should get robbed more often. I’m so lucky to be able to feel as carefree as I do now.

A burglary is an eye-opening experience. You’ve been ripped off, and your smashed-opened house is compromised. So what do you do? You call a glass company to rip you off some more. We paid $900 for the set of French doors . The glass company charged us $700 to replace the glass in one of the doors. And that is WITH the law enforcement discount. Damn, I’m so lucky to work for a police department. Otherwise it would have cost $750.

Luckily, everything I’ve written for the past two years has been saved on a 16 gig thumb drive. I even had an external hard drive to back up the laptop with. So lucky me, the thieves left the backup drive. Unfortunately, just buying a backup drive doesn’t automatically give you a backup of your data. You have to actually plug it in and back it up. Ten days later, when I finally found the power cord and plugged it in to my new computer, I saw that the last backup I did was in 2006. And even then it didn’t include Other Bill’s iTunes. I didn’t want to wait that long to clone that many bytes.

Note to thieves: the computer I plugged the backup drive into is a heavy desktop model secured by a Glock lock and a kryptonite bicycle lock, secured through the hole I drilled in my 500-pound desk, and I buried most of the computer in a bucket of cement. You will need a refrigerator dolly, a forklift and dynamite to get it out of the house.

It’s taken days to get things back in order, and I’m still not done. I restored Other Bill’s Internet bookmarks last night so that he doesn’t have to hunt so hard to find his favorite porn sites. Did I say porn? I meant recipe. Now I just have to figure out how to put his iPod music into iTunes on the new computer without erasing the iPod. I’m very iPod-phobic. So I’ll down an Ativan before tackling that little job.

I’m lucky. My iPod was something I won in a drawing at work, and I never used it. I don’t like having things stuck in my ears. I appreciate silence. And I wouldn’t have backed up the music on it, either. The digital camera they stole was malfunctioning, so I am going back to my analog film camera. Nothing takes pictures better than my Minolta SRT100 camera that my aunt co-bought with me in 1972. Even better, no one wants to steal it. Lucky me!

As lucky as I am, I don’t feel that lucky. That’s because I want revenge. I totally agree with the Middle East practice of cutting off the hands of thieves. I would like to use a dull hatchet on the ones who invaded my home. Or perhaps I could fire up an electric carving knife to help drown out the thieves’ screams. If I need a chisel to cut through the bone, I am prepared for that.

Instead I have opted for a Karmic substitution to torture.

We scanned Craigslist for used laptops, and went to look at one in a really bad neighborhood. The guy had advertised an HP laptop that looked just like our stolen one. Bubba (not his real name) was clearly dealing in stolen property. When we went into his apartment (which was armed with a burglar alarm), he had us take a seat at the one table in the unit. He then went into another room, which was dark, and he shut the door behind him when he entered it. In a minute he came out with not one, but two HP laptops (neither was ours; I checked the model numbers while his back was turned). He wanted $500 each for them, which was an excellent deal. He couldn’t tell me anything about them: how long he had owned them, how much he paid for them, why he was getting rid of them. Zilch, nada, nothing. I wasn’t about to buy someone’s stolen computer which had been scrubbed clean with a fresh, probably illegal version of Vista. I told him it was too much money and that I really didn’t need that much computer or the built-in web cam.

“I have more,” he said, “What are you looking for?” he asked me.

I thanked him, shook his hand, and we left to go find some hand sanitizer.

And today I made a call to Crime Stoppers and deposited his name, address, apartment number and phone number, and most of the above paragraph explaining my experience at his burglar-alarmed apartment.

Maybe I’ll get lucky and receive a reward. It’ll probably come to nothing, but I sure felt better afterwards. Or maybe it was just the Ativan.

The Paintitute

.

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.