Dancing queen

Before blogging, I regularly kept a journal between the ages of 13 and 35. There are minor gaps, but for better or worse my life, or at least aspects of it, have been chronicled for the ages. Looking back at those entries is fascinating--largely because I can see clearly now my journey down the Yellow Brick Road to gaydom. In my first journal I began each entry with "Dear Joe"--Joseph is my confirmation name. Few boys my age were as gossipy as I was. Even when I was 13 and dating Allison Daly, the prettiest girl in the class, my inner gushing school girl was busting out.

Sunday, April 25, 1976. Cloudy, rainy.

Dear Joe--

You know what? My cousin hates me! She wrote it in her diary. I guess I'm a fink for snooping, but I'm nosy. She thinks I always have my own way. She can't kid around, I guess.

Now, normally you'd think such a provocative statement would develop into a tirade, with name-calling and drama and some kind of resolve to retaliate. Not in my journal. This entry continues:

Well, so much for that. I went to 11:15 Mass at Holy Innocents. The rest of the day was reading, listening to the radio, and watching TV. I still have to work on my science project. I don't know if it's due tomorrow. Well, I have nothing to say. Until tomorrow, Kieran.

Juicy, huh? The content in this journal followed a similar pattern: the weather, what I did at school that day, and lots of TV watching. Then, I hit 14 and revolutionized the journal-writing community by ending each entry with my favorite song of the day. Starting on December 18, 1976, and continuing for what seemed like forever, every journal entry ended with Dancing Queen" by ABBA as my favorite song.

By the time I got to high school, I still seemed to be watching an enormous amount of TV, especially Charlie's Angels and Saturday Night Live. And my writing became even more high-school girlish (a foreshadowing of my big gay life):

Thursday, January 7, 1977. Cold, cloudy.

Dear Diary--

Well, you haven't heard! I'm going with Barbara! Richie and Arlene "have broken up." Yesterday, Allison came to 18th Ave, with Arlene, Barbara, and Eddie. She sure has changed. I can't stand her! Also, Richie has been unknowingly insulting Arlene. He says he's "beginning to believe what [Jimmy] Diver says [that Arlene is loose]." Today, I met Arlene & Barbara. Tomorrow is Barbara's birthday. I was figuring out this month I have 3 days off and 7 that I go in late or get out early. My midyears start on the 19th and I don't take any Regents [state exams]. It has been a good start so far this year. Bye. Favorite song: "Dancing Queen."

Glimpses of teenage angst exist, but the writing is controlled, deliberate, and downright boring. At this stage I was constantly afraid that someone other than I would read my journal, so the tone was light and superficial.

Anyone looking at my journal would never have guessed the inner turmoil I was going through in my home life. There are almost no references to my late father, who was an abusive alcoholic, and no mention of my tortured erotic feelings toward men. A few years ago I found a passage that I had scratched out when I was about 15. I couldn't figure out what I could have written that would cause me to assiduously strike it out. After lots of squinting and near-blindness (unfortunately not from self-abuse), I determined that I had written about wanting to watch a boxing match on TV that night. To most people this wouldn't mean a thing, but to me, watching a fight--in which two half-naked men were hitting each other, clinching, and hugging each other afterwards--was like watching porn. I had sublimated my same-sex attraction in a combat sport.

Although this entry seemed innocuous, it was the first time I had ever written about my same-sex feelings. But it's clear I was scared. I hadn't been ready to deal with those feelings--or to have anyone else discover them. It was not until I got to college 3 years later that I could even reluctantly entertain the possibility that I had the jones for other guys. Although I was never attracted to girls, I wrote as if I were, and the ensuing interior monologue is painful to read even today.

I wonder if biographers looking at my journals would be able to piece any of my angst together. If you examine my journals and they don't reveal what's really going on, how can you get an accurate picture of my life? However, I guess if someone's favorite song is Dancing Queen for that long, the clues are already there.

Continue reading...

Taking care of business

I used to consider myself easygoing. To some degree I still am, although curmudgeon keeps flashing like redrum in my mind. But I am also a perfectionist, and as with any personality disorder, certain things really irk me. One, which all my friends know and ceaselessly chide me about, is my intolerance for bad grammar and punctuation. I would like to have an impact on people who use impact as a verb; brite (except in Lite Brite) is not a preferred spelling; and don't even get me started on the rampant abuse of quotation marks....There, breathe, breathe...and...back to center.

Another bugaboo of mine is the utter lack of decorum in business today. When I first entered the work force, around 1980, etiquette in the workplace was still followed, mostly by people who had been working for hundreds of years and were considered crotchety and unhip. Most men wore ties and women wore dresses or pantsuits, and it was de rigueur to address superiors formally (Mr. Pflugenhoople, Ms. Schnurr). People respected your time and your priorities, and personal conversation was kept to a minimum. By the 1990s things were considerably more relaxed. While fostering more congenial environments, informality opened up people to the ugly truth about their colleagues. They had lives; not only that, they had hygiene issues, medical conditions, divorces, psychological problems. Worst of all, they had sex lives. It's not that these things were never talked about before informality plopped itself down and stayed, they were just not talked about so openly and widely.

Fast forward to the Internet Age, an era in which communication methods proliferate. If someone can't get in touch with you by post, landline phone, cell phone, voice mail, messenger, fax, e-mail, pager, BlackBerry, or satellite transmission, you either live in a cave or in some place backward like Zanzibar. Some people apparently now feel compelled to communicate with me repeatedly, and inappropriately, in more than one of those ways.

Just the other day I answered the phone: "Did you get my e-mail about the meeting?" asked my colleague Bren.

"Haven't checked it yet," I said. "Is it urgent?"

"I just wanted to make sure you got it," she said.

"I'll take a look--oh, I have to go, I have Chris at my desk." Chris, one of the directors, was standing near me.

"I just wanted to give you a heads up," he said. "The application is going live any day now."

"Thanks," I said, wondering why Nervous Caller and Lurking Director hadn't trusted in the e-mail system to deliver their messages. I suppose it's the culture of instant gratification we live in.

Just then, another colleague appeared at my desk. She looked worried. "What's wrong?" I asked.

"I just found out I have to have a bunion removed," she said, creasing her forehead.

"Tough break," I said. "I'd love to talk about it, but I have a meeting to run to. This application will be going live any day now."

Continue reading...

Female trouble

In high school my friend Ted invented two characters, Chicklet and Concetta, guidettes from Bensonhurst who talked incessantly about makeup, other girls, and their boyfriends. Chicklet Dardanelles works at Burger King, and her favorite store is Kiss and Makeup, on 86th Street. Her nail polish of choice is plum, and she loves all things glitter (this was, after all, the 70s). She's in her fourth year at Kingsborough, a two-year college, where she's majoring in evolution. Her boyfriend, Marco, always seems to be the object of lust of all the girls at school, especially Paula Tittitiglio, and Chicklet is forever foaming about what she'll do to Paula if she ever lays a finger on Marco. Chicklet's tirades always end with, "I hate her! She's such a fucking bitch," and then the conversation usually turns to anything about plum. Concetta Ritiglione, Chicklet's best friend, is the Ethel to Chicklet's Lucy. She works at Disco Girl and gladly suffers her best friend Chicklet. Chetta even plays the "straight man" in Chicklet's favorite joke:

"Want some gum?" Chicklet asks.

"What kinda gum?" says Chetta.

Barely able to contain herself, Chicklet blurts out, "ASS-pergum." Then the two girls giggle at their own joke. They can't even stand how clever they think they are.

The funniest thing that Ted ever did as Chicklet was to write a letter in character and send Concetta pictures (which were actually photos cut out of magazines) from Chicklet's trip to Europe. I realize that this type of humor relies on a certain sensibility and, in large part, to having grown up in Brooklyn, but to this day I still think the letter and photos are hilarious. If something can still make me laugh after more than 25 years, it must have another appreciative audience too.

Chicklet and Concetta (who, incidentally, were named after characters in John Waters's Female Trouble) preceded by about 2 years the quintessential movie character whom they most resemble: Stephanie Mangano (Karen Lynn Gorney) in Saturday Night Fever. C & C were aging guidettes by the time Marisa Tomei won an Oscar for portraying Mona Lisa Vito in My Cousin Vinny. ("Oh yeah--you blend.")

The letter (page 1, page 2) is full of hyperbole, inconsistency, and teenage-girl emphasis. The photo captions seriously undermine the visual content, resulting in unintentional (at least on Chicklet's part) humor.

• Panties in France


• Moping in Ireland


• Gina on a swing


• Earthquake in Switzerland


• No plum in Russia


• Flood in Rome


• Pumps in Paris


• Execution in Russia


• Dogs are nice


• Fallen tree and Aspergum

Continue reading...

In the bush

Genius. Sometimes it's the mark of destiny; other times, it's revealed through discovery; and still others, it's, well, the product of lack of self-awareness. Genius can come in packages big or small, old or young, male or female (or hermaphroditic). A mundane business meeting is the last place you would expect genius to appear, but at one such meeting today it was present and actively participating in the discussion. The brainiac in question was a manager who earnestly was trying to get to the bottom of things. He wanted answers, and he wanted those answers to be clear.

Picture Brad Garrett, the actor who plays Robert on Everybody Loves Raymond. Then throw in a heavier New Yawk accent and stir.

"So," Mr. New Yawk said, "uh, just how finute do you want to be in these calculations?"

Finute. A thrilling combination of "finite" and "minute." But did Mr. New Yawk utter a brilliant neologism or a malaprop? Was he James Thurber's worst nightmare, or more disturbing, has he been reading too many Bushisms?

Later in the meeting, Mr. New Yawk once again showed either his brilliance or his ignorance. He expressed concerns about the outcome of the statistics being presented. "You know," he said, "certain people have expertations about these things." Ouch! Was that the razor-sharp nick of genius--again? "Expert" plus "expectations" equal "expertations." Inspired.

The meeting appeared to progress without further incident of genius--that is, until the very end. Just when Mr. New Yawk's linguistic mastery seemed to have run its course, genius let out its last shuddering gasp. When a colleague asked Mr. New Yawk how things were going with the new house, he appeared somewhat reflective and ambivalent. "Ah, you know," he said dismissively. "So far...so what."

True genius like that must be encouraged--or at least written about in someone's blog.

Continue reading...

Let's put it all together

The new front entrance to the Brooklyn Museum of Art

Continue reading...

Spring has sprung

The veil of winter was fully lifted today to reveal a spectacular spring day. I felt very Audrey Hepburn, determined to wear vibrant colors that shouted (not merely said) SPRING! I was partly successful. The problem is that my skin color does not allow me to get away with hues such as honeydew, sweet midori, or pink begonia. I'm more of a cornflower-, spring moss-, or mocha-tinged guy. Luis always says that I'm so white that animals simply don't see me. Our neighbor's dog, Wilson, sniffs around when I'm nearby, thinking he sees something but never fully trusting his judgment.

Sheri had to go to Virgin at Union Square, and that's an opportunity I never pass on. Chocolate and records are the two things I always have too much of but can never refuse. I was hoping to get some Pizzicato Five CDs, but they were clean out. At one time I had about a dozen things in my hand, but I questioned whether I really needed the Upside Down Flint Rubble Bubble mixes of all the Cher songs I already have on vinyl, cassette, and CD (thankfully, though, no 8-track). I settled on the greatest hits of Earth, Wind, and Fire; The Clash; and Will Smith, as well as the original Verve Remixed, since I love the second one so much. I also bought the DVD of Footloose, since, well, I HAD TO. (Plus, it was only $10.)

There were lots of teeny dogs all around Union Square, leaving me to wonder if there was a convention in town. Donut, Eric and Sheri's pug, is small, but this little terrier was like a Shrinky Dinks creation. I wouldn't want to come back as something that small and risk being trampled in New York.

I went to get some water at a deli on Fourth Avenue, and when I gave the cashier my money, she couldn't get the cash register open. She started hitting the drawer and banging the machine all over the counter, all the while trying to keep a smile on her face. Finally she got a gigantic knife and started trying to pry the drawer open. I had to try to not to laugh as I pictured the woman cutting her arm off and blood spraying all over the place while still smiling. After about 10 minutes and a host of "helpers" punching, shaking, and disassembling the cash register, the drawer finally popped open and I got my change. Everyone else waiting to pay just sort of shrugged and looked like, "Oh, well, it's New York. Anything can happen."

After attending Lynne Truss's reading of her new book Eats, Shoots and Leaves at Barnes & Noble with Andrea last Tuesday, I've been especially vigilant for errant punctuation and misused quotation marks. Here's a good example I saw in a laundromat window in Manhattan yesterday.

Continue reading...

Ring my bell

What I like most about training at a straight boxing gym is not having to feel self-conscious. Unlike gay gyms, where perfectly built, gorgeous men are on parade like a Miss Universe pageant, constantly sizing up their competition and potential conquests, my boxing gym has guys who may not have the tightest abs or the biggest pecs or the perfect bubble butt, but they're attractive because they don't act it. This actually makes training there hotter, because there's virtually no chance of being picked up, but I can fantasize all I want.

I feel privileged--and maybe even subversive--as a gay guy being involved in what is usually considered a heterosexual activity. Many gay men I know feel excluded from athletics. They may work out, but they would never consider themselves athletes. Athletes compete. Athletes dominate. Athletes beat others. To me this sounds like a typical leather bar.

Boxing is something I claimed on my own terms. I didn't do it to fit in. I did it because it's right for me. I didn't do it to prove anything to anyone. I did it because I was afraid of it, and I wanted to overcome my fear. After 17 years, it still feels good.

Continue reading...

With the impending dismantling of our neighborhood to make way for the Nets basketball arena across the street, my neighbors and I have decided to deal with things by getting drunk every Sunday night. Well, that's not really our goal--we're actually blind-tasting different wines and grooving off the benefit of getting tipsy. Each week we decide which varietal grape or region we're going to sample, and then we buy three wines of that variety at three different price points. The price points--usually under $10, $10 to $25, and over $25--allow us to figure out what kind of palates we have. I, for example, have consistently favored the most inexpensive wine, and Luis has chosen the most expensive, at least for the St-Emilions and Chianti Classicos we sampled. Tonight we did two Italian pinot grigios and an Alsatian pinot gris. The pinot gris was the most expensive, at $40. It was sweet, more like a dessert wine, and the other two were acidic and grassy. The clear favorite among 4 people was the $8 bottle; 3 of us liked the $40 bottle, but few people guessed the price points in the correct order.

It's fun to taste new wines, especially since growing up all I knew was the screwtop jug of Ernest and Julio Gallo, which instilled in me that all wine had to taste like sewer water-- I got better wine at church. Despite my father's love for all things alcohol-based, quality was not one of his criteria. Even our neighbor Jon, who is a Real Guy, seemed to have a good time with the whites. Paired with sushi from Blue Ribbon and music by Pizzicato Five, wine tasting was an excellent start (or finish) to a week. The only problem is getting up for work the next day, which will be more difficult tomorrow thanks to the start of Daylight Saving Time.

Continue reading...