Dear Brother

This hits me right in the feels every time I watch it.

Walking the roads of our youth
Through the land of our childhood, our home, and our truth
Be near me, guide me, always stay beside me
So I can be free
Free
Let’s roam this place, familiar and vast
Our playground of green frames our past
We were wanderers
Never lost
Always home
When every place was fenceless
And time was endless
Our ways were always the same
Cool my demons and walk with me, brother
Until our roads lead us away from each other
And if your heart’s full of sorrow, keep walking
Don’t rest
And promise me from heart to chest to never let your memories die
Never
I will always be alive and by your side
In your mind
I’m free

A CHRISTMAS VISIT

He came! He was here! I didn't see him, but I know for sure that he's been here. No, no, no- not Santa Claus. My old nemesis, you've heard me talk of him before: Loki, the Trickster god.
It was a lovely, early December evening. Mark was just home from an overnight visit with Mom and some Christmas shopping. Presents were piled under the tree, which has been up for a week or so already. Mark was wrapping, and had placed a few more gifts underneath the branches, heavy with ornaments and bubble-lights. The dog had been walked and was blissfully gnawing on something at my feet. I myself had even poured a rare glass of Pinot Grigio, left over from Thanksgiving, the perfect complement to the buzz of another kind which we were enjoying thanks to an early Xmas gift from a kind friend (thank you, kind friend). David Archuleta was singing Christmas carols on the iPod, for God's sake. It was some kind of Gay Christmas Bliss, like a Hallmark commercial on LOGO TV. 
Mark stepped into the kitchen to make himself a cocktail. I stood up to get... something. 
That's when he was here! He must have been right behind the tree; that's probably why I didn't see him. Because when the tree started falling, it started falling right towards me.
It's funny, because as it fell, time seemed to slow down, so that it was falling very, very slowly, and the antique glass ornaments made the most delicate sound as they, slowly, shattered, one by one. But even though time had slowed down, and it took so very long for the tree to stop falling, the only thing I actually had time to do was to give a short, choked scream like a schoolgirl who has just stepped on a dead squirrel. 
Loki laughed and laughed. "Ho ho ho!" said Loki.
The first thought in my mind was that I was very, very glad that I was nowhere near the tree as my husband came back in from the kitchen.
So, the up-side is that it can be a positive bonding experience between partners to clean up a disastrous mess like that one. 
You smile. You wear red. You go on.
And Merry Christmas to you, too, Loki. Good one.

ON GRACE AND GRATITUDE

I was watching an episode of "American Experience" on PBS the other night, which was about the Mayflower Pilgrims and their journey to the New World, and how their story became the beginning of the legend of the birth of America. Mark was beside me on the sofa, his eyes glassed over as he silently endured the searing boredom of a two-hour PBS program, but that's what happens when you hand Paulie the remote and say, "Find something."
To be honest, the only reason I began watching the program was to see whether they were going to get it right and mention the fact that the Pilgrims came ashore here In Provincetown first, before eventually moving on to Plymouth. They did get it right, as a matter of fact, although the name of "Provincetown" was never mentioned in favor of "off the shore of Cape Cod." That was acceptable, though, considering the spot had no English name at the time, and the first Tea Dance wouldn't be held until the arrival of Cher, years later in 1687. I kept watching, though, because it was pretty interesting; and I do secretly enjoy those times when Mark has been mesmerized into a kind of anesthetic silence.
The story was just reaching the point of what came to be known as "the first Thanksgiving". Hanging, as I do, on language and words, I was struck by something one of the commentators said. "But part of the reason that they were grateful was that they had been in such misery, that they had lost so many people, on both sides." Interesting, I thought to myself; bit of a contradiction in terms. She continued, "So, in some way, that day of thanksgiving is also coming out of mourning; it's also coming out of grief."
Thankful, because they had lost so much.
Sometimes, when we hear about history, it all just seems like a bunch of dates and numbers, names of monarchs and battles. But sometimes, if we really think about it, apply the dates and the numbers to things we can really relate to, it can give history a little bit more relevance. I began to think about these "Pilgrims" a bit, what they had been through and what had brought them to that feast, that moment of thanks.
The Mayflower Compact was signed in Provincetown harbor on November 11, 1620. November 11 - that is just a few weeks ago. Have you ever spent a November in Provincetown? It's usually pretty cold, in the first place, and not a whole lot going on in the way of abundance. So, what that means is that these people were setting foot for the very first time in a land they had never seen before, now, at this time of year. They had no growing season, no glorious summer, no time to "put aside" for the leaner seasons. They had maybe a month, if they were lucky, to find or build shelter, gather some food, and figure out how to keep warm for the next six months. It takes me at least a month to figure out what to pack for a two-week vacation in Cabo, for God's sake. And these were not superhuman, civil engineering, loaves-and-fishes miracle workers. They were a rag-tag assembly of religious nuts, sailors, and Dutch profiteers who didn't necessarily know more about building a house, or a road, or a mill, than you and I do. 
45 of the 102 immigrants died during the first winter.
So, no wonder a year later, when they looked around themselves and saw how far they had come, when they saw the corn and the squash and the firewood they had put by, they prepared, as Edward Winslow said, "to in a special manner rejoice together, after we had gathered the fruit of our labors."
Thankful, because they had lost so much.
They had been hungry, so they were thankful for the harvest. They had been cold, so they were thankful for a house, no matter  how humble. They had been alone, so they were thankful for an ally, even if their skin was a different color and they prayed to a different god.
So, what's the lesson here? Jason Mraz sings "Son sometimes it may seem dark, but the absence of the light is a necessary part." Today, while we're counting our blessings and basking in the warmth of families and friends and buttery Chardonnay, remember that the reason we are grateful for all those things we find precious, is that none of it is given to us without conditions. 
And perhaps also remember that some day in the future, and that day will come, when we mourn, when we hunger, when we find ourselves on the shore of some unknown world, that the time will come again, through the grace of God, through the love of friends, and through our own inner strength, when we will be filled with gratitude.

ON THE VERGE

Well, here we are, on the far side of "The Verge". Costumes have been hung up, scripts are being forgotten as we speak, and I saw pictures on Facebook today of that spectacular set being dismantled and relegated to history. I've been trying to figure out how I want to tell the story of the last couple of days, because there is a story to be told there. I'm just not sure how to go about telling it. The usual Facebook post, which would read something like, "Fantastic performances from the cast and crew of "The Verge" for the past couple of nights! Great houses, good energy, and we managed to leave it all out there for our final show on Sunday despite a few minor obstacles..." somehow doesn't quite tell the story.
I considered telling it in one of my first-person, observational essays. It would have started with a little background about how I don't really drink alcohol very much any more, at least not enough to actually get drunk. The proverbial "glass of wine at Christmas", as it were. Then it would segway into a description of how disoriented I felt when I got out of bed before dawn to go to the bathroom, before I realized exactly how dark it was in the house and exactly how wobbly I was at that moment, ending with a spectacular face-first dive into the pillows, safe, as if I had just completed an arduous climb of K2. Then, I had thought up a couple of fairly droll turns of a phrase to describe my condition the following day, such as, "While my misery on Sunday mercifully registered a mere 3 on the Richter Scale of Hangovers, it was sufficient enough to prevent me from ingesting anything more substantial than coffee and bottled water all day; and sufficient enough to warrant that arched-eyebrow, sideways sneer from my husband which very clearly was meant to say, 'Suffer, idiot.'" 
But that was pretty much all I had, and I couldn't come up with a good way to actually conclude an essay like that, so I thought I'd have to try something else. So, I thought I would try to fictionalize the events, and tell the story that way. I came up with some fairly promising characters: Veronica, the leading actress "of a certain age", who abandoned a mercurial career as a hard-driving, trash-talking, tough-as-nails district attorney from the mean streets of Ann Arbor to pursue her dream of a life on the stage; Betty, the wide-eyed ingenue who descends into a sordid life of boxed wine and one night stands; Ralph, the crotchety stage manager with a heart of gold and a secret; and Monty, the dashing yet sexually frustrated heterosexual leading man (well, it is fiction after all). The story would begin as Anthony, the narrator, walks in through the stage door of the Fillmore Theatre, a dowager, Gilded Age theater in a small town called something like Oakville or Maple Falls, something like that. It is the last night of a six month run of a play called "The Edge", about the moral dilemma of a female scientist, responsible in part for the invention of Round-Up. Anthony sees Ralph, the ornery but lovable stage manager sitting in the corridor, an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips, a copy of the Racing Form open on his lap and still wearing sunglasses. "Oh, my god," Ralph would hack, "I feel like shit." 
Anthony would respond by saying something like, "You too? I'm glad I'm not the only one." The story would then flash back to the previous night, a blurry montage of Korean cars filled with marijuana smoke, vodka stingers and shots of $30 French brandy. The reader would be drawn back into the present when Ralph removes his sunglasses, rubs the bridge of his nose, and says, "Yeah, well, wait until you see Monty." The rest of the story could be a humorous yet poignant reconstruction of the events which led up to Monty, the leading man, a complex character, rich with contradictions, waking up in a hospital three hundred miles away while a surgeon is gingerly reattaching a severed thumb. 
But there's the problem on how to portray Anthony, the narrator. Should he be presented as the Tragic Talent: an immensely capable character actor whose name no one can ever seem to actually remember, or the Heroic Everyman: someone who basically lives a fulfilled life and is happy just to draw a paycheck doing something he loves? Either interpretation would draw scoffs and sneers from a certain percentage of the people who think they know the writer, despite the fact, once again, that it is fiction.
And, as always, there is the quandary of how to end the story. Something amusing yet somehow resonant, so that the reader doesn't end up asking himself, "OK, so what was the point of that?" I couldn't really come up with anything, so I abandoned the idea of fiction. 
And I've already done a few posts about this production, the kind filled with glowing prose about the Theatre Experience, which inevitably end up using words like "craft", "talent", and "process", so I didn't want to do that over again. So, what am I left with? Journalism class, I guess. Who, what, where, that sort of thing. 
So: The cast and crew of "The Verge" descended on a local watering hole on Saturday night for an impromptu and probably somewhat premature "cast party". A number of us, myself included, got, well, hammered. The next day, the last day of the production, was, of course, a matinée. Many of us, myself included once again, were somewhat "fragile" (that's a euphemism). One of us (not me this time) spent the morning getting sick and wondering whether he would be able to make it to the theater at all, and another cast member, somewhere between said watering hole and home, had managed to acquire a number of stitches, as well as other contusions and abrasions, which he was trying rather unsuccessfully to conceal with pancake. Nevertheless, the show did go on, and we were fabulous, I must say; leaving it all out there on the stage as one is wont to do for the last night. Or afternoon, as it were. By the end of the play, we all felt sufficiently human enough to convene at the swank Red Inn, where we were able to toast to one another and enjoy the last moments of an incredibly satisfying project. Not surprisingly, though, a few of us, myself included, were clinking glasses filled with iced tea or Coca Cola.
So, another production under the belt. Another family of friends, another script full of lines which will soon be all but forgotten. This one, well, this one was a really good one; the kind of experience that makes me want to do it again. 
And one day, who knows, maybe I'll write that story. And wouldn't it be awfully amusing, or ignominious, if you were to find yourself in it?

"On Friday night you stole away the life of an exceptional being, the love of my life, the mother of my son, but you will not have my hatred. I do not know who you are and I don’t want to know, you are dead souls. If the God for whom you kill so blindly made us in His image, each bullet in my wife’s body would have been a wound in His heart. 
Therefore I will not give you the gift of hating you. You have obviously sought it but responding to hatred with anger would be to give in to the same ignorance that that has made you what you are. You want me to be afraid, to cast a mistrustful eye on my fellow citizens, to sacrifice my freedom for security. Lost. Same player, same game. 
I saw her this morning. Finally, after nights and days of waiting. She was just as beautiful as she was when she left on Friday evening, as beautiful as when I fell madly in love with her more than 12 years ago. 
Of course I'm devasted with grief, I will give you that tiny victory, but this will be a short-term grief. I know that she will join us every day and that we will find each other again in a paradise of free souls which you will never have access to. 
We are only two, my son and I, but we are more powerful than all the world's armies. In any case, I have no more time to waste on you, I need to get back to Melvil who is waking up from his afternoon nap. He’s just 17 months old; he’ll eat his snack like every day, and then we’re going to play like we do every day; and every day of his life this little boy will insult you with his happiness and freedom. Because you don’t have his hatred either."
 – ANTOINE LEIRIS

I've been pondering something all day today. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to articulate my thoughts very well, but I guess I'll have to try. I may come off sounding somewhat un-PC, or worse, but I want to be honest and candid and I think I come from a good place.
It didn't take long yesterday, as people posted their feelings about the terrorist attacks in Paris, and started to change their profile pictures to the colors of the French flag, for the memes to appear, and for individuals to begin making their case; admonishing us, wondering where was our grief and outrage over the attack in Beirut just one day before? Or for the hundreds of innocent victims of the Russian airliner, blown up by ISIS on their way home from vacation? Baghdad, Syria, on and on... Where were their flags on our Facebook newsfeed?
Compelling arguments. At first, I chided myself a little. "Where is my outrage? Where is my grief?" Almost protectively, I began to dial back my empathy for Paris just a little bit. Do you know what I mean? It was as if I had to save some of my outrage and grief for all those others.
Then it began to dawn on me that if anything is inappropriate for this day, this time, it is that.
It seems to me that every single one of those tiny gestures, each profile picture tinted bleu blanc et rouge, every eloquently composed comment or simple "pray for Paris" indeed amounts to a type of prayer. A tidal wave of good intentions, of sympathy and empathy. Is there anything really wrong with that? Do we really need to dial it back at all?
Intellectually, one can begin to argue about the fact that six corporations control 90% of the media, and therefore they control not only how we receive information, but what information we receive in the first place. I for one, had never even heard about the twin suicide attacks which had taken place in Beirut just one day before Paris. How can I react at all to something I know nothing about? But is this really the discussion we need to be having right now? Should the names on our lips right now be "Time Warner" or "Viacom"? No. They should be Nohemi Gonzalez, or 33-year-old Aurelie De Peretti, or the dozens of other nameless, faceless victims: kids out for a concert, or an old, somewhat surly married couple drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes at a sidewalk café. Lets think of them, at least for today. It could have been us.
Then, I began to really examine myself, and I asked myself the question, "If I had indeed known about the attacks in Beirut, would I have felt as strongly about it as I do about Paris?" Would I? Probably not. And it's hard for me to answer that way, because I like to think of myself as someone who takes people as people, regardless of what they look like or where they're from. Obviously, I am imperfect in that goal.
I think a part of it has to do with familiarity. It is easier, I think, for humans to relate emotionally with things which are familiar to them. I have been to Paris; I spent my 50th birthday there at a restaurant in the Marais. But even people who have never been to Paris, I would venture, have a picture of it in their minds: the Eiffel Tower, sandstone buildings lining wide boulevards, lovers embracing on the banks of the Seine in autumn. The same, sadly, cannot be said for Beirut. Ask me to draw a mental picture of Beirut, and to be perfectly honest, all I see is bombed-out buildings. That's probably awful and it's probably not right, but it's the way that it is. 
But familiarity goes to more than just knowing what a place looks like, or what the people who live there look like. We begin to think about values. The big ones, like Freedom. Freedom to think for ourselves, to express ourselves freely, to love whom we choose and worship as we see fit. In this respect, the French are our close brothers. And who doesn't grieve for a brother?
In some ways, I think that we in the West feel a bit indignant, for lack of a better word, when the battle spills over and ends up being waged on our own streets. Now, this is where I can seem way more un-PC than I intend to, but I don't know how else to explain my thoughts. It's almost as if the Arab world is going through an evolutionary process right now. They are in the midst of determining which way their culture will go: towards so-called "Western" values of individual freedom and secular government, or towards theocracy and conformity to a religious ideal. They're killing one another over it, and I for one can do little except wait and hope that love will win and that history will eventually unfold the way it ought to. It's almost as if we in the West feel like we've already had these growing pains. We've fought these battles already, in the brutal Middle Ages, in 1776, at Gettysburg, Omaha Beach, and at the Bastille in Paris. We get angry and resentful when their fight spills over into cities and against values for which plenty of blood has already been spilled. 
Fucking bastards, we think. And we circle the wagons, at least for a time.
So, some time later, when I'm walking the dog and my mind is wandering, I will think about that again. I will be angry that information is owned. I will try to work on my own imperfect humanity, and remind myself that the world is "falling apart in all corners
and not simply in the towers and cafés we find so familiar."
But for today I will remember the man on the sidewalk, and the two towers in Manhattan, and someone just like me who won't have a husband snoring beside him tonight. I will wrap myself in the flag of France and grieve for them. 

PARIS EST À PLEURER

So it seems that while I was inside the theater tonight, creating a fantasy world with some new friends and some dried flowers and some smoke and mirrors, the lives of hundreds of innocents were being ended or forever altered in a city half a world away; combatants in a war for which they never enlisted. 
For most of us in this world, the "struggle" consists of the daily battle to just get through the day; to feed our families and ourselves; to be able to end the day in the same safe, comfortable bed where we started it. We couldn't care less which God our neighbors worship, whether they are Sunni or Shia, Methodist or Presbyterian, Coke or Pepsi; we still say "good morning" as we're picking up the newspaper and "nice weather we're having!" on that first warm day in May. It is not fair, and it is not right, and it simply cannot be the Will of God, any God, that an innocent man, woman, or little child should lose their life in the simple act of trying to live it, so that some religious, or political, or militant group can "make a point". 
Forgiveness. Love. Compassion. Tolerance. Kindness. We are One People. 
Pray for Paris.

SWEET SERENDIPITY

Years ago I read something in a book. If my memory serves me properly, it was "Another Roadside Attraction", by Tom Robbins. It is about what could be fairly described as a hippie couple, who, among other things, own and run a small restaurant and "museum", a roadside attraction, as it were. There is a passage which describes them as they walk through the rain, and how they never really seemed to mind it or worry about it, how it never really seemed to get them wet; because they simply didn't fight it. The story, by the way, takes place in the Pacific northwest, so there's plenty of rain. Anyway, Tom Robbins has always been for me somewhat more than just an author. His books are not just novels, they are psychedelic mushroom-induced parables, they are stories which tell you to shift your consciousness, to try to look somewhere other than where the magician wants you to look. So I've always tried to walk in the rain like the hippie couple in that novel: without tensing my shoulders or hunching over and hightailing it for the nearest shelter. Just walk in it. It's only water.
So, tonight, I was heading over to the theater, on foot, and it was raining. Not like holy-crap-where's-the-ark pouring, but definitely more than just a drizzle. I had no umbrella. I rarely do because I always use them for 15 minutes and then end up leaving them someplace.
I was listening to "Sweet Serendipity" by Lee DeWyze on my iPod, an infectiously cheerful and boppin' little song, and as it played I was thinking how the lyrics pretty much describe my life perfectly: "I can't say what's next - and I got nothin' up my sleeve - but I don't lose my head - 'cause it ain't really up to me." The music was practically taking over my body, I found myself smiling at the happy absurdity of it all and the miracle, or miracles, that brought me to that exact moment in time. I was one step away from breaking into full-on Gene Kelly Singin'-In-The-Rain dancing with streetlights and puddles. Thankfully for my dignity's sake, the street was pretty much empty anyway. So I made this half-hour walk through the rain, when most people would be gathering their coats around them and grumbling about the weather, just feeling, well, kind of happy, for lack of a better word. 
And I'll tell you something. When I arrived at the theater, aside from a little dampness in my shoes, I was dry.

"Don’t look fate can only find you

You can’t choose for something to surprise you

Set sail without a destination

Just see where the wind will take you

You never know when you're gonna fall

But I'm not worried

No I'm not worried

at all"

ICE ON FIRE

Were I a painter,
My studio would be mad, filled with paintings of your face,
Attempt after vain attempt to remember your eyes,
To paint them-
But how do you paint ice on fire?

Were I a musician,
The chords and keys at my fingertips
Would play but one song:
Your name
In a thousand melodies.

Were I a poet,
I would be drunk of an afternoon,
Describing how you looked that day,
The sun shining behind your head like a halo,
In a hundred different ways
In smeared and garbled pencil in the corner of a shadowy bar.

But I am none of those things.
My only art is the way I feel.
My painting for you is the way I see you,
When I see you.
My only song is the crack in my voice when I struggle to find
Something to say
When we talk on the phone.
And my poem for you
Is this one.

TU ME MANQUE

Today, I walked through the woods, my green cathedral, my church of trees and dragonflies and autumn flowers. I was looking for something, a balm to soothe my bruised heart, some sort of answer or comfort for the precious sadness in my soul for the missing of you. 
The dog ran blissfully, every stick a toy, every bend in the footpath a new adventure, living happily in the moment. I envied him, as I found myself trapped between a soft-focus past that I can't seem to forget, and fantasies of heart-breaking, Hollywood-ending futures which will never happen.
I wanted to say a prayer, but no pious wise man before me had written down the words to say. I wanted to sing a hymn, but this chapel in the woods, of the woods, today offered up no hymnals. I fell to my knees in a leaf-strewn clearing and wept, asking God for an answer. But today, the answer was, no answer. Or perhaps the answer was, find your own answer.
As I left the forest, angels clad in crimson and gold fluttered from the treetops. I thought to myself that maybe the bruise upon my heart is my prayer; the pearl of sadness in my soul is my hymn.

FINE WINE

I've been thinking a lot lately about getting older. Probably because it seems to be happening to me at an alarming rate over the past few years. At the moment I am standing, immobile, fixed squarely in the headlights of my 53rd birthday, which is barreling at top speed down the highway towards me with no intention of applying the brakes. And it's weird, because as far as I'm concerned, I am always the same age. I am always one day older than I was yesterday.
I remember way back in the 1983, when Joan Collins turned 50. She played mega-bitch Alexis Morell-Carrington-Colby-Dexter-Carrington on "Dynasty", and was viewed as nothing less than a goddess at the time by gay men aged 18-25, which was precisely my demographic. She did a spread in Playboy, and the buzz the whole time was "Joan Collins: still Fabulous at Fifty!" That may be all well and fine, although almost anyone could manage to be fabulous with Bob Mackie and professional lighting. But what they are really implying, though, is that by age fifty, just about everyone else should hang it up because your days of fabulosity are over. And I think to myself, I am 53. 
That's not to say that I don't have moments when I still feel fabulous. I still get compliments on my pretty shirts, and once in a while, people on the street will smile at Mark and me as we walk along together, or tell us that we look good together. Then I wonder for a moment whether they're saying that because they're thinking, "Look at those two old guys- it's so cute! They still hold hands!"; or smiling at us the way you smile when Grandma and Grandpa slow dance at a wedding. 
The thing is, I don't feel old. To be honest, I don't feel any older than I did when I was, say, 25, at least not on the inside. Of course, back then I used to drink and do drugs and carouse all night, and nowadays I'm all tucked in safe and sound by 10:30, but I still wake up with bad breath and a coffee jones, and I still spend much of the day wishing I could lie down. So it seems that nothing much has changed.
I am fortunate that I don't feel old physically. My teeth were a mess, but I had those taken care of back in my forties. Years of waiting tables, tending bar, running around in size 10 women's heels from Payless, and general abuse have left my poor feet hideous and looking like they belong to two different people. But they still work and I've never really been one for open toes anyway. My eyesight sucks and I'm stuck behind coke-bottle glasses, but that's been the case since kindergarten. I have spots on the back of my hands which make me look like the "before" picture in a Porcelana ad, but other than those few minor complaints, I'm still pretty much intact, physically. 
But the main thing is that I don't feel "old" mentally, either. I haven't resigned myself to a long, boring future of falling asleep in front of the TV. I still think, I think, the way I thought when I was 25. I don't see myself as "old me", I'm just me.
We've all had those moments: someone is getting out of a car, for example, or standing up from a sofa. Perhaps unconsciously, they moan and groan with the effort. "Gettin' old..." they'll say. Someone responds, "Well, consider the alternative!" Well, I've been considering the alternative, but the alternative I've been considering is one where I get to keep my 32 year-old body, with its not-too-shabby biceps and fairly smooth face, for as long as I want, and still maintain that 20 years' worth of sweet lifetime. 
Unfortunately, no such alternative exists.
The other day, I was probably grabbing my crotch or raising my eyebrows suggestively, or some other such charade which a husband will do which is intended to mean, "Any chance of...?" Mark just looked at me and rolled his eyes at the same time, if such a thing is possible, and said in the sweetest way, "I'm glad you still think you're a stud." Just a little joke, a little repartée between spouses, but ouch, baby. It might have been better without the word "still".
Then there's always the mirror. Much of the morning routine, for me, is actually spent without my glasses on. My face is really just a Paulie-shaped blob in the mirror. 99% of the rest of the time, when I can actually see myself, is spent under the dysmorphic delusion that most of us have, that the face we are seeing today is the same face we saw yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that, and so on, so that we never really notice the ravages of time as they happen. But then there is that other 1%, those moments when you regard your own reflection and you suddenly realize that all those birthdays, all those cigarettes, all those sunburns, have really taken their toll. I'll usually try to laugh it off and say something like, "Jesus, when did that happen?" And it may be shallow, but sometimes it makes me a little bit sad to admit and accept that the days when I can walk down Commercial Street with my shirt off and actually get cruised are long over. I have to get used to the idea that at this point in life, when people do say nice things about your looks, they usually have to qualify it. They don't just say, "He's got a nice ass." They say, "He's got a nice ass for a guy his age."
Of course, there are the two gifts that came with every one of those birthdays: experience and wisdom. This is what we're given when we surrender the perks of youth. 
I'm just waiting for that hot summer day, when I am walking down Commercial Street. A hot beefy farmboy-type stops dead in his tracks in front of me, lowers his Ray Bans, giving me the once-over, and says, "Man, look at the wisdom on him!"
Then I'll feel a lot better about the whole thing. 

Four years ago, September 10, 2011, was a typical late-summer Cape Cod afternoon, balmy, still, blue skies, the sunflowers and morning glories clinging to the last weeks of summer sun. He was nearly 15 years old at the time, somewhat frail, a little feeble, but my beautiful dog Buster was waiting in the front yard for me to come home from work. He greeted me as always, a wag of the tail, sloppy dog-kisses, sniffing my hands to get an idea of where I'd been and what I'd been doing. A few minutes later, Mark and I watched as he lay down on the grass and drew his last breath.
My heart broke that afternoon, and it has never really been the same since.
So, all these years later, here is my struggle: I can do a roll-call in my head of all the souls I've known who have moved on before me. I have lost both my parents, all my grandparents, most of my aunts and uncles, a few cousins and one beautiful young nephew who was taken long before his time. I've lost best friends, roommates, and countless buddies and pals along the way. I miss them all. I miss the way my mom used to gently stroke my skin when I was sick. I miss watching my nephew grow from a little boy into a man. I miss sharing memories with the one person on earth who made them with me. And I miss all the laughs and all the brilliant deeds they all could have done. But what I miss the most is Buster.
He never once held my hand. He never uttered a single word to me, took me to lunch, or cried in front of me. But if a genie from a bottle appeared to me today and told me that I could bring one soul back, the name I would give would be his. 
That sort of freaks me out a little, though. I mean, shouldn't I want my mom, or give my young nephew a second chance at life? I probably should. But when I finally do join that big party of the Dead, and they're all coming to greet me with their white robes and harps, the face I'm going to be looking for is going to be at knee-level.
I guess that's love, huh?
Miss you so much,  buddy.

THE GAY AGENDA

It's possible that many straight people have overheard a conversation between gay folks and may have heard us mention our "gay card". More than likely, it was in the context of having it revoked, probably as a result of having admitted that we have no talent at flower arranging, or incorrectly identifying Barbara Stanwyck as one of the stars of "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte". You may be confused as to what our "gay card" is. Allow me to explain.
Over the years, you may have heard the Religious Right and other opponents of equality for sexual minorities refer to the "Gay Agenda". Gay people have always vigorously denied the existence of such a thing, much as Jewish people have always denied the existence of the immense "Zionist Conspiracy" proclaimed by anti-Semites and Fascists over the centuries.
The thing is, we've been lying about it. There is indeed a vast underground network of gay people all over the world, and membership is mandatory, sort of like joining the Union when you get a job at Stop & Shop. The very first time a gay person has sex with someone of the same gender, they are issued a temporary I.D. card, usually by their partner, until a more permanent one can be issued at one of the compulsory meetings. Or, people who are gay but don't have access to an actual partner or gay friend, or folks who live in rural or remote areas, have for years been able to apply for a card by mail by returning a subscription card from an issue of "GQ" magazine.
For centuries, we have been meeting in secret, determining our "Agenda" and crafting devious yet amusing ways to implement it. Unfortunately, for many years, gay people were just as illiterate and uneducated as everyone else. That meant that we were filled with self-loathing, and our "Agenda" seems to have been to get ourselves beat up, ostracized, and murdered, and we were pretty darn successful at it.
With the Age of Enlightenment, we became enlightened along with everyone else. We began to realize that we could get out from under the oppressive thumb of the Church and began to think about ways to actually improve our lives. Of course, there was always a great deal of in-fighting, mostly from the many priests, bishops, cardinals, popes, and so forth, who were actually gay themselves. Rome had provided them with big hats and pretty dresses and comfortable lives and they saw no reason to change the status quo. These are battles which have continued to this very day.
The years, the decades, and the centuries passed. All the while, we worked tirelessly to further our Agenda. The big issues, things like acceptance and equality, were hard won, but nevertheless the fights were continuously being fought through the years, behind the scenes, and without fanfare.
But the Agenda also encompassed the frivolous, the trivial, the purely aesthetic. We have had many successes in this regard: we've kept women's hemlines rising and falling arbitrarily since the Renaissance, strictly for amusement; and we managed to keep wigs for men around for over three centuries. We had our share of failures, as well, such as late 18th-century France, when despite all of our efforts, it was somehow decided that high heels were actually going to be for women.
Things really started moving for us in the last quarter of the 1800s, though. We elected Oscar Wilde as Queen of the World at our annual meeting in 1890. We partnered with our Lesbian sisters to eliminate the corset before World War I. Gay people actually took over Hollywood in 1939. We got Eleanor Roosevelt into the White House. We began to make ourselves visible to the masses, with Liberace in the 1950s; "Lost in Space's" Dr. Zachary Smith in the 1960s; and finally, with Billy Crystal's character on "Soap" in the 1970s, a gay character who was neither closeted, a drag queen, or a sociopath.
Contrary to popular belief, the Gay Agenda has never included "converting", or "recruiting" new members. Not that we're above such things, actually, but to be honest we've never had any trouble filling out the ranks. So, even if there is a "Gay Agenda", it still does not justify any argument against gay people teaching, preaching, adopting, showering in the same room, or leading a den of Cub Scouts.
In recent years, of course, we have made tremendous strides in advancing the Agenda. In America, the Supreme Court's recent decision to recognize gay marriage across the country concludes one of our longest and most difficult efforts. We've managed to make ourselves normal, almost unremarkable. We are as common a sight in America's suburbs as gazing balls and lawn jockeys, and nowadays a movie or television show is remarkable only if it doesn't feature a gay character. Many, although certainly not all, of our most pressing items on the Agenda have actually been achieved, and that has left a great deal of time for us to once again concern ourselves with the trivial. The framework for the upcoming meeting in January is largely concerned with exactly how long this whole beard thing is going to be allowed to continue.
Which brings me back to the "gay card". This year, before the big meeting in January, we are all required to renew our cards. Never before in history have we had to concern ourselves with people who are not actually gay, who for some reason want to apply for a card. Who would want to join a group whose membership meant discrimination, derision, and possibly execution? It is a sign of how far we've come that some imposters now see membership as a ticket to beautiful women, great parties and even political clout. So, in an effort to weed out poseurs, for the first time, this year's official Gay Card Renewal Application will include three questions which must be answered correctly, much like the Bridge Keeper in Monty Python's "Holy Grail". Here they are, along with the acceptable responses, according to documents found on WikiLeaks:

1) What is the gayest song ever released?
 (A: "It's Raining Men" by the Weather Girls)
2) Who made the better Auntie Mame: Lucille Ball or Rosalind Russell?
 (A: Anyone who answers "Lucille Ball" is automatically banned for life)
3) Have you slept with Michele Bachmann's husband?
 (A: I would rather eat glass.)

See you all in January.

I never felt like a soldier. I marched in the marches, I carried the banners, I endured the dirty looks and the sniggers and being called "faggot". But I never felt like a soldier. I chanted "Shame!" and pointed my finger at the Reagan White House, I gave money and time and sold baked goods, I Acted Up, but I never felt like a soldier. I just felt like a guy trying to live my life, trying to circle the wagons with my brothers and sisters, trying to maintain some level of self-respect and dignity in the face of hate and bigotry. I married my husband at a time when most people would still roll their eyes and smirk at the idea.
I never felt like a soldier, but now, after watching this little video, I do. I realize now that I was fighting, in my own small way. And now, "Gay Pride" doesn't only mean to me that we are proud of what we are, but that we are proud of what we have done.

I'm sure this is the one and only time I'll ever post a politician's speech.

 But this one, well, this one moves me. 

"We are people who believe every child is entitled to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness. There is so much more work to be done to extend the full promise of America to every American. But today, we can say in no uncertain terms that we’ve made our union a little more perfect.

That’s the consequence of a decision from the Supreme Court, but more importantly, it is a consequence of the countless small acts of courage of millions of people across decades who stood up, who came out, talked to parents, parents who loved their children no matter what, folks who were willing to endure bullying and taunts, and stayed strong, and came to believe in themselves and who they were.

And slowly made an entire country realize that love is love.

What an extraordinary achievement, but what a vindication of the belief that ordinary people can do extraordinary things; what a reminder of what Bobby Kennedy once said about how small actions can be like pebbles being thrown into a still lake, and ripples of hope cascade outwards and change the world.

Those countless, often anonymous heroes, they deserve our thanks. They should be very proud. America should be very proud."

ON THE OCCASION OF MY 20TH ANNIVERSARY

You'd think it would be easy, for someone like me, to write about something as real and as personal as the love of my life, or the love in my life. But to be honest, it's easier sometimes to write fiction, to make stuff up rather than look long and unblinkingly enough at something like that to actually write about it. Where does one begin?
Chronologies are tedious: how we met, our first kiss, the first person to blurt out, "I love you," all that sort of twaddle which interests no one but the parties involved. It's like a slideshow of tedious vacation photos: "Here's Margaret at the Grand Canyon." "Here's Margaret in front of the Econo Lodge." "There's Margaret eating a sandwich." Very nice, but get me the hell out of here. 
I certainly can't start going on about The Nature of Love. My experience here on this earth is no different than anyone else's and I don't feel qualified to start spouting aphorisms about two souls completing one another or anything remotely Kahlil Gibran-esque. I mean, I could throw some real Hallmark-worthy gems out there if I wanted to, but I wouldn't want anyone to actually take it seriously. I can't claim to know any more about The Nature of Love than the next guy, but I could B.S. my way through it if I had to. I am Irish.
I don't really want to wax maudlin about how blessed I am, either, how it is not lost on me that I have been given a rare and desirable gift. Despite the fact that it's true, acknowledging it can sometimes lead to resentment from others. Someone who never found the real thing, for example, or someone who had it but let it get away, perhaps, might read such a thing, and their honest reaction might be to think, "Yeah, well, how  nice for you. Now shut the hell up, bitch." 
I guess what I can do is write about my own experience, this twenty year pilgrimage I've been on. I am qualified to talk about that. How unlikely our love is. How it has changed over the years, and how it hasn't changed at all. Those moments, unscripted and unexpected, when I find my heart overflowing with affection and gratitude and relief and so many other things. Moments like that still happen.
As humans, we are always struggling with questions like, "Was this fate, or was it chance?" Were we just bouncing along like marbles on a roulette wheel, and just happened to land on double-zero? Or were we placed where we were by some greater force, by some unseen Universal Chess Master? I've given it some thought, quite a bit over the years, actually, and I am leaning a bit towards the "Chess Master" theory. Here's why:
It's ridiculous how opposite Mark and I are in so many ways. Some of them are superficial: he's meat-and-potatoes, I'm fish-and-rice. He likes TV, I well, would prefer music. He likes things neatly planned, I am more of a "we'll see what happens" type of guy. We share very few interests: he finds history and literature to be mind-numbingly boring, and after about ten minutes, I find HGTV to be like watching paint dry. 
Mark has dyslexia. He has overcome it, thanks to his mother, who forced him to keep reading. He can chew through books like a maniac when he's got the time. But for him, the written word is still an effort, it's still something he has to work at. In other words, it's not the best method of communication for him. Then you have me: a crazy reading addict and lover of language. I sometimes find myself tongue-tied when speaking aloud, and sometimes I find that I'm not able to really say what I want to say; and sometimes I say nothing at all. But when I'm writing it down, it's different. I can think, and I can choose my words carefully and deliberately, and it's much easier for me to get my points across. So "Fate" or "Chance" has seen fit to pair up someone for whom the written word is the best way to communicate with someone for whom it is the worst; someone who loves Mexican food with someone who craves Yankee Pot Roast; The History Channel with Food Network. Why? I think it's because we both needed some improving. I needed to improve my verbal communication skills and Mark needed to learn to hear my voice in my writing. I needed to eat more broccoli, Mark needed to eat more jalapeños. It's not so much that we complete one another, but that we encourage one another to become more complete. That, to me, sounds like Fate.
After twenty years, the love that Mark and I share constantly shifts its shapes, sort of like a lava lamp. The white-hot passion of the first couple of years hasn't so much cooled as morphed into something else. Just don't ask me to define exactly what that is. It's a sense that with this other soul beside me, this person, this partner, I will be able to face whatever life throws at me. I can act like an idiot, I can cry, I can cut the world's most toxic farts; in other words, I can let all the masks and all the pretense just fall away, and at the end of the day, he will still be there. Well, maybe after he leaves the room for a few minutes to let it air out.
I do remember the first moment that I fell in love with Mark Taatjes. I will not share it here. I would rather keep that one to myself, like a secret little portrait inside a locket. But I have those moments even now. When I turn to catch him at just that angle, that jawline and those blue eyes can take my breath away. When he talks to animals. When he's singing in the shower and mangles the lyrics to some song, and every time he does it I smile to myself. When he thinks of me first, which is, like, all the time. I fall in love with him all over again, and the edges of my vision go all soft-focus, and I think to myself, "You are a lucky man, Paul Halley." Because I am.

ROMANIAN HOLIDAY

The city of Bucharest, Romania, had not always been bleak. At one time, during the late 19th century, its streets were lined with opulent, Art Nouveau apartment buildings, punctuated by remnants of its past going back to the Crusades. Byzantine chapels, medieval castles, neoclassical arches glistened on the city's wide boulevards like diamond earrings on a Kenyan princess. But by this day, this damp, dull April day in 1968, much of its jewelry had been stripped away by the regime in Moscow, bulldozed to make way for mile after mile of square, dull, utilitarian Soviet apartment blocs. The city had the look of an old Kodachrome photo, left out in the sun too long until all the color had been drained away, leaving nothing behind but greys and browns and anemic reds. 
One of the few remaining gems from the not-so-Communist past was the Hotel Paris, a sensuous, sinewy six-story hotel built in 1898 by a young architect, a protégé of the great Antonio Gaudí himself. 
Ironically, the Hotel Paris owed much of its preservation to the Party itself, who decided that rather than being stripped of its fine furnishings and decadent western amenities, the hotel would be preserved as a showplace for distinguished visitors from Moscow and from abroad. Such surroundings would be powerful evidence of the prosperity of Romania's people, either thanks to the Glorious Party, or in spite of it, depending on the intended audience.
On this day, only one room at the Hotel Paris was occupied: the Presidential Suite, which the People's Committee for Pointless Semantics had incongruously renamed the "Suită pentru Muncitori", which loosely translated means "Suite for Laborers". There we find Stella, seated on the bench of a pristine white 1896 Steinway & Sons baby grand piano. She is wearing a made-to-order olive tweed Evan Picone suit and a smart pillbox, looking slightly rumpled after a fifteen hour flight from New York on some inept East German airline.  She is frantically trying, in vain, to get a live phone line, rattling the receiver and squawking, "Hello? Hello? What's the goddam Romanian word for hello?" She gives up eventually, extracting a Belair 100 from her sequined cigarette case, lighting it, and taking the sort of long, deep drag which alone could no doubt erase a week from her overall lifespan.
"Shit." 
She exhaled. The smoke lingered near the ceiling, swirling in tendrils around the crystals of the chandelier.
"It was an honest mistake, 'Stelle," said a voice from the bathroom. Lila had been in there for the last twenty minutes. It was the same in every hotel they checked into. "QMT!" she would claim, which meant 'Quality Mirror Time', and in she would go to acquaint herself with every silvery square inch of her new best friend. "Anyone could have done it."
The fact was, Stella hadn't even realized her own mistake until they had already gotten off the plane in Bucharest. No limousine, no adoring fans, no paparazzi, very unusual for a ScreamGirls world appearance. She fished the crumpled telegram from the bottom of her voluminous Italian handbag. Shit! It wasn't Bucharest, it was Budapest. And it wasn't Budapest, it was Paris.
"Hotel Paris in Bucharest, Hotel Budapest in Paris, yeah, it's almost the same thing. Close but no cigar!" said Stella.
"Have no fear, darlings, vodka is here!" came the voice of Svetlana, kicking the door open with one exquisite pump, holding a frozen bottle of fine Russian vodka in one hand and three glasses in the other. Her long, platinum blond tresses billowed effortlessly behind her, as did the blood red folds of her lustrous silk Dior travelling ensemble.
"Finally, Queen! What took you so long?" said, Lila, emerging at last from the bathroom, enticed by the thought of a syrupy, frozen Stolichnaya. Behind her, on the bathroom vanity, she left an astounding debris field of eyebrow pencils, lipsticks, powders, potions, lotions, and strange implements. She looked absolutely no different than she had when she had gone in. The ringlets of hair falling around her face were just as red, her skin just as porcelain, and the lipstick on her full, heavy lips was just as whorish. "Well, at least the show's not scheduled until tomorrow night."
"There's not going to be a show if I can't get a line out and book a flight to Paris!" said Stella, checking to be sure that the phone was plugged in to the wall. 
Svetlana poured three glasses of the viscous, frozen vodka. Handing one to Stella, she and Lila both made themselves comfortable on one of the 1840 Empire-style sofas which dotted the enormous suite. Lila admired the amazing, mirror-like finish of the exquisite 18th-century Catherine the Great mahogany table in front of her. "Perfect!" she said, reaching into her purse and pulling out a gram of nearly-pink Peruvian cocaine, a one hundred dollar bill, and a gold American Express card embossed with the name Stefano DiPullyanack III.
Sensing the stares of the other girls, she looked up, innocently. "What?" she said. "Does this Empire sofa make my butt look big?"
Just then, Stella's eyes lit up. "Hello? Hello?" The line had finally come alive. 
"Hello, yes, American Embassy please. A-mer-i-can.... No, I don't speak Romanian. A-mer-i-can-Em-bass-see! Please!"
Stella, like all Americans, believed that people who don't speak English will somehow understand if it is spoken very slowly and very loudly.
"I said A!-Mer!-I!-Can! Yes! U! S! A! Bay of fucking Pigs Godammit!"
She stopped screaming and covered the mouthpiece for a moment. "Well," she said to the other girls, "that seems to have worked!"
Svetlana was not so much sitting on the sumptuous mauve upholstery as she was displayed upon it. At the moment, she was straightening the seam in her stocking which ran up the back of her leg. Lila was spelling out dirty words in cocaine.
After a slight pause, Stella chirped into the telephone. "Helloo-oo! Monty! Montgomery Reynolds! Of course you are, darling, of course you are! It's 'Stelle, darling. Stella? Stella Estelle-Steenburg-Steinberg-Steinsteen-Bloom? That's right! Remember that weekend in Milwaukee- what was that, '63? '64?" She laughed the laugh of a pregnant debutante at the Spring Cotillion. "That's right, Monty, darling, that weekend in Milwaukee!"
A slight pause.
"Don't be ridiculous, darling. Of course I still have the pictures! Now, listen, darling, I do need just the littlest favor..."
"How the fuck does she do it?" Lila asked Svetlana, snorting up the entire word "boobs" in one go. "Has she slept with the entire diplomatic corps?"
"Only the ones you haven't slept with, darling," said Svetlana. She took the rolled up hundred-dollar bill, looking down at the beautifully inlaid tabletop, where Lila had written "tittys' in white powder. She snorted up the letter "i", daintily dabbing the dot with her forefinger and rubbing it on her gums.
Lila eyed her suspiciously. "Where did you find that bottle of Stoli, Svetlana?" she asked.
"Svetlana knows people, darling! All over the world!"
This was true. She had spent fully half her life on this side of the Iron Curtain, that is to say, the wrong side. Over the years, the girls had learned her life story in dribs and drabs, during long taxi rides home when Svetlana had had one or twelve too many scotches. Something about being born to poor dirt farmers in the Russian steppes, where as a young girl she had to push a plow to help feed the family. From those humble beginnings, there were other hints about careers as an international fashion model,a medalist for the Hungarian Women's Synchronized Swim team, and/or a hired assassin for the East German Secret Police, the Stasi. Nothing about Svetlana surprised them at this point.
"Well, pour me another shot, will ya?" said Lila. "And make sure to thank whoever he was, Missy. Frozen and everything... It's almost as if they knew you were coming."
" 'Poop' has two "o"s, darling," said Svetlana, glancing at the table.
Stella was wrapping things up on the telephone. "Marvelous! Thank you so much, Monty darling. And do give my warmest regards to your lovely wife, won't you? Margaret, isn't it? Yes, well..."
A brief pause.
"No, no, you've done quite enough already!  Lovely chatting with you! Ta-Ta!" She hung up the phone, her voice oozing sincerity like a mall Santa on Black Friday. "Pompous asshole," she muttered.
Stella turned to the other girls. "OK, we're all set for tomorrow. Non-stop for Paris, departs from Vlad the Impaler International at 8:30am."
"Eight-thirty?" moaned Svetlana, downing another glass of Stolichnaya. 
"We can stay here, in Babushkaville, Svetlana, and put on a show for the huddled masses, the non-paying huddled masses," Stella admonished, "or we can get up early and go to Paris. Paris, France! Jean-Claude is in Paris!"
Svetlana's face brightened. "8:30 it is, then! Remind me to get dressed before I go to bed, will you? That way all I have to do is put lipstick on."
"What about tonight, ladies?" said Lila. "What are we going to do for fun in this berg?"
"Well, Monty did mention a nightclub..." said Stella. 
"What are we wearing?" shrieked Lila, running back into the bathroom.

Several hours later, the sun had set over Bucharest. With the darkness, a kind of Iron Curtain gloom settled over the city, an odd blend of paranoia, boredom, and resignation that seemed to suck all the mystery and promise out of the night until it was just, well, dark. The lobby of the Hotel Paris was empty, save for one desk clerk, one bellman, and one elaborately uniformed bartender, swaying unsteadily behind the bar, waiting for customers who would never come. 
The elevator doors slid open slowly. The Hotel Paris being what it was, the elevator was a bit, well, slow, to say the least, and the trip down from the sixth floor had taken fully eight minutes. The bellman and the desk clerk turned to see Lila fanning herself furiously with a powdery one hundred dollar bill. "Jesus Christ!" she was saying, "Don't they have air conditioning in Russia?"
"Romania, darling, we are in Romania," said Svetlana. She was holding the dregs of the once-frozen Stoli bottle to the nape of her neck.
"Ladies! Please!" said Stella, heading off any further hysterics. "We have arrived!"
The three queens gathered themselves and stepped out of the elevator as if they had just arrived at Buckingham Palace. From sheer habit, or perhaps training, they stopped to strike an impromptu but nonetheless fabulous pose just after exiting the elevator, stopping just long enough for any flashbulbs to go off. None did. The desk clerk was speaking quietly into his telephone and the bellman was trying to hide an erection. The bartender still swayed unsteadily, dreaming of retirement and a cottage by a lake.
"God, this place is worse than Atlantic City," said Stella as they crossed the lobby. Svetlana had apparently noticed the bellman's predicament and was whispering something to him in Russian while she squeezed his crotch with one hand. 
"Come on, Missy," said Lila, leading Svetlana away by the wrist. Without turning around, she raised her other hand in a wave as they walked out of the lobby. "Goodnight, boys!" she said. "Don't wait up!"
The ladies stepped out into the somber Bucharest night. "Taxi!" shrieked Lila as they looked up the street, and down the street in unison. Nothing. The only car on the street was a broken down Trabant with three tires and no windscreen.
"How far is this place?" said Svetlana.
"Not far, ladies," said Stella, heading off confidently towards the city's east side.
"Alright, then," said Lila, fishing through her smart evening bag for a Xanax.
"Off we go," said Svetlana, draining the last of the Stoli and throwing the empty bottle high over their heads. It fell back down to the street with a thunderous crash and shattered into a million pieces. Not a soul was around to notice.
For a while, the only sound to be heard was the telltale sound of three queens, doggedly making their way through the cobblestone streets of the old city. Click - click - scrape! Click - click - click - scrape!
After a few minutes, the girls began to notice a change in the light of the street around them. Soon they realized that it was the headlights of a car, and as it grew closer they began to hear the rather rheumatic sound of an Eastern Bloc engine bearing down on them. 
Something in them knew. Some sixth sense, some intuition told them this could mean nothing but trouble. But, a spotlight is a spotlight, so as the headlights grew brighter, the girls threw their handbags to the ground and did what they did best. They struck a pose.
The car stopped in front of them. Both the doors on the car's left side opened, and two men in identical, ill-fitting Romanian suits stepped out. One was holding a gun. The other was applauding.
"Very nice, ladies, very nice," the man said. His thick mustachioed Russian accent spoke of beets, Bolsheviks, and Beluga. "I would ask for an autograph, but I find myself without a pen."
"I've got a pen!" said Lila, making a move for her purse, which was still on the ground.
"I wouldn't do that, if I were you, Miss Jewels," the man said. They heard the sound of the other man, cocking his gun.
"How do you know my name?" said Lila.
"Oh, we know all about you, Miss Jewels. All three of you, in fact," said the man. "But all we are really interested in, 'ladies'," he said, looking directly at Svetlana, "is the jewels."
"Jewels?" said Stella.
"I know we're in Russia, honey-" Lila's speech was beginning to slur just a little bit.
"-Romania!" Svetlana interjected.
"-Romania," said Lila, "but honestly, darling, all this could be yours for $3.98 at Woolworth's!" She was trying to remove her necklace over her head without messing her coif.
"Not those jewels, Miss Jewels!" snarled the man. "I think Miss Falana knows what we are looking for."
Stella and Lila turned. "Svetlana?" said Stella. "What are they after?"
Svetlana shrugged and rolled her eyes. "Oh, alright," she said, bending over to pick up her handbag. "It's the diamonds they want."
Stella regarded her sideways. "What diamonds?"
"Well, these diamonds," answered Svetlana, taking a small velvet pouch from her purse. 
"Oh, those diamonds!" said Stella.
"Where the hell did those come from?" asked Lila, looking a bit wobbly. She seemed to have forgotten that there was a gun pointed at her and had already picked her purse up off the ground. "Who's got a cigarette? I've got a lighter in here goddam somewhere..."
"Well, I figured since we were here in Bucharest..." started Svetlana. "My friend, Pavel, he always needed a little, well, assistance, you see. Moving things around."
"Smuggling, Svetlana? Really?" said Stella. "At what point were you going to let us in on your little scheme?" She had also retrieved her handbag and was handing a Belair to Lila. 
"Menthol? No thanks," said Lila.
The man with the gun was beginning to look a little confused. He glanced apprehensively towards the other man.
"Well, sometimes, you know, the less you know about something, the better off you are," offered Svetlana. "Besides, I was going to tell you all about it, afterwards, when we were spending all of the lovely money I was supposed to be making."
"Here, Miss Jewels, a real cigarette," said the man with the mustache. 
Lila took the cigarette without looking, still rooting around in her purse for a lighter. "Aha!" she said, "Here it is!"
She put the cigarette between her lips. She then pulled from her purse a Luger model 1908 pistol, and within half a second had shot both men right between their eyes. 
"Ladies," she said, returning the pistol to her purse. Stella lit the cigarette which still dangled from her lower lip. "I got us a ride to the club."
"I'm driving," said Svetlana, discreetly dropping the velvet pouch back into her evening bag.
They stepped over the bodies of the two men and drove off into the inky gloom of Bucharest.

Twenty four hours later, and the lights of Paris' famed Moulin Rouge were going up, as was the curtain. The crowd, decked out in their finest Parisian fashions, was frenzied with anticipation. The orchestra began to play and a thousand hearts skipped a beat when at last the spotlights came on, and there they were: The ScreamGirls themselves, legends of stage, screen and gin joint. Their hair- so big! Their eye shadow- so blue! Their heels- so high! And those dresses - oh, the dresses! So very, very sparkly!

GIVE ME AN AMISH FARMER

If you didn't know already, it's "Bear Week" here in Provincetown. I've always felt like a fish out of water during Bear Week to begin with, what with having a BMI under 30 and a hairless chest, but now it's even worse, because I'm clean shaven. Just took a walk through town with the husband, and by the looks of things, they might as well add a "D" and call it, "Beard Week". Combine the current fashion trend for beards in general with a group who already favored the furry, and it seems the beards have gotten bigger and flouncier than ever, like petticoats at a square dance jamboree. As we strolled up and down Commercial Street, it seemed to my over-analytical mind that the old descriptions we've given to beards, like "VanDyke" or "Goatee", are simply no longer adequate. 
Below are the names which I have assigned to just a few of the popular beard styles we are seeing in the streets of Provincetown.  I think they speak for themselves.

"The ZZ Top"

"The Amish Farmer"

"The Hagrid"

"The Gabby Hayes" a/k/a "The Prospector"

"The GI Joe"

"The Rasputin"

"The Garden Gnome"

"The Burger King"

"The Bald Pirate"

"The BinLaden"

.. and many many more.