I didn’t get as much writing done yesterday as I would have liked; but I get some of it done. Yesterday was one of those days where I questioned everything I wrote–which is annoying, because it’s part and parcel with imposter syndrome. I hate doubting myself, but at the same time I think I want this to be good so badly that I am being much harsher with myself than I usually am; I guess being in the midst of a tropical storm didn’t help matters much, either.
I finally gave up–I did make some progress, which I’ll settle for–and retired to my easy chair to read around three. I made some good progress on Night Has a Thousand Eyes–Woolrich was a master at setting mood–and then last night we started watching the final season of 13 Reasons Why–which is kind of silly, as the actors playing the teenagers have all aged over the course of the series but haven’t on the show, and, as I said to Paul last night, “they should have called this season 13 Reasons Why: Grad School.” Not to mention the fact that over the course of the show’s run these kids have been involved in first, covering up a sexual assault; proceeding with charges for the sexual assault; another sexual assault; stopping a mass shooting and covering that up; a murder; and on and on and on….it seems to me like all of their parents would be a lot more deeply concerned about their mental health and their response to the trauma they faced; college is going to be an interesting experience for them all. But it’s entertaining–they certainly have dealt with a lot of issues for teens, including coming out; bullying; sexual assault; bodily autonomy; and suicide–which is what kicked the show off to begin with.
Tropical Storm Cristobal passed over us last night as well; it wasn’t so bad here around the Lost Apartment as we had feared it could be; it rained pretty steadily all day, and we certainly had off-and-on rain all day, but the walk and yard never filled up with water (we’ve had more rain from just a regular thunderstorm) and I don’t think any streets in our neighborhood flooded at all; I’ve not checked the news to see how bad it was in the city. I know the coastal parishes got some storm surge flooding, and I do hope those folks are all okay. That’s the thing about tropical storms, depressions and hurricanes–the mix of relief and guilt; relief that where you live didn’t get hit that hard; guilt because somewhere else did and you kind of wished it on by wishing it away from you.
Incidentally, it just started raining again, which will make the trip to and from work a lot of fun, he typed sarcastically.
I was tired pretty much the entire weekend; I’m not really sure what that is all about, but I didn’t sleep well any of the three nights of this past weekend, nor did I sleep well last night or most of last week, which is making me very tired and punchy, and also is contributing to my general sense of exhaustion, I think. I slept well last night–I only woke up a few times–and am a bit lethargic this morning (the endless cycle of ‘didn’t sleep-need caffeine to wake up–can’t sleep–more caffeine is draining, frankly); but am hopeful to be able to kick it into a relatively high gear soon.
And on that note, best to get to it, I suppose. Have a lovely Monday wherever you are–and stay safe.
So, I kind of had a candy-assed workout yesterday morning. I haven’t, as I said in this morning’s post, been to the gym since last Saturday, and even then, my workouts were wearing me out–and that was after several weeks of trying to get my body back into the rhythm of exercise. I decided, when I got there this morning (managing to get there and back between rainstorms), to just lower the weights a bit from the last time and only do one set–and that wore me to a nub. I don’t think I could have made it through the workout I was doing before exhaustion this past week kept me out of the gym–but recognizing your own physical limitations is very key to not getting injured or over-exerting yourself. I hate that I can’t work out the same way I did ten years ago, let alone twenty, but it’s my reality and one that I need to get used to and accept.
I also felt pretty worn out all day with very little energy afterwards. I watched a documentary series called Europe on HBO MAX, and then we finished watching London Kills while we started waiting for Cristobal. The outer bands started coming in around seven o’clock last night, but it was mostly rain and no high winds. It’s dark out there this morning, but quiet. The storm seems to be still very disorganized as it’s coming ashore this morning; the rain wasn’t hard enough to wake me up last night, and apparently there was no thunder and lightning or high winds with the outer bands. My primary concern is a loss of power; but Entergy was out on Friday cutting down tree branches; the city was on our street cleaning out our catch basin, so maybe our street won’t have rising water if the rain comes quickly. I also fear this is going to be an extremely busy hurricane season, like 2004 or 2005 (YIKES!). I mean, why not? This year has already been a steaming shit show, why wouldn’t we have a dreadful hurricane season?
Today I want to get the Secret Project finished; which means I need to stay off-line the rest of the day once I get some of my emails finished. I think it should be relatively easy; as I said, the story is starting to really bloom in my head which is very exciting. I’m always afraid that my creativity is going to go away–which is kind of funny, since I will never ever have the time or energy to write all the stories I have ideas for–and so when it kicks back into gear on a project, that’s very exciting for me. I suppose I will never get over that fear; I think it’s one all writers have on some level–at least I tell myself that, so I can feel a little better about myself.
It was getting windy there for a minute, but now all is still outside; still grayish-dark.
I slept well last night, waking up a few times (one time was opportune, as I’d forgotten to turn on the dishwasher for bed, and all the parts of the espresso machine were in there) and finally got out of bed about an hour ago. I do have some odds and ends to clean around here this morning; I’ve not done the floors in a while and they are getting pretty damned disgraceful. (I can hear my mother’s voice in my head, and the disgust in her tone comes through loud and clear.)
But she don’t pay my rent, so she don’t get a say in how I keep my house.
So, it’s probably about time for me to head back into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I’ll chat at you later.
And now we enter that eerie period of waiting and anticipation; as a storm hovers over the overly warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico and decides which way north to follow. It appears that the eye of Cristobal is going to pass over Houma on it’s way ashore; Houma is about an hour drive from here, but southeastern Louisiana geography and direction is confusing. You do, for example, have to drive west out of New Orleans, out past the airport, to get there; and you cross the river on the way (I have a horrible story about coming back from doing an HIV testing event out there, but I’ll save that for another time). It’s more due west and south of New Orleans, and it’s levee backs up to what used to be wetlands, but because of coastal erosion the Gulf is on the other side. There’s a native reservation out there as well–Houma is named after the Houma tribe–and it’s one of those places we will undoubtedly lose to the encroaching Gulf at some point. Nicholls State University is also there. Some day when I have time I would love to go out there and explore the town more; when we used to test at Nicholls State I used to think about writing a story set there a lot. There’s a lot of sugar cane fields in the surrounding area as well.
It’s gray outside my windows this morning, which is to be expected; it’s going to be periodically raining and of course, there is the potential for flash flooding as always. I stopped to make groceries on my way home from work last night so I wouldn’t have to go out in it this weekend at all; I am going to go to the gym (I’ve not gone once this week, which is terribly disgraceful, but I was exhausted on every level all week) in a little bit, after which I am going to come home and write and clean the kitchen. My kitchen is absolutely a disaster area–I cleaned up in here on Thursday night, and it’s shocking how quickly it can again look like a bomb went off in here.
We’re still watching London Kills, which I do recommend, and we’ll probably finish it off this evening. We tend to watch movies a lot on the weekends as well–last weekend we watched Dolemite Is My Name, and I have to say, Eddie Murphy should have at least been nominated for an Oscar for that; the fact he’s only gotten one nomination over his lengthy film career is a disgrace–and there’s some good stuff on HBO MAX, which, along with Disney Plus, is a treasure trove. I also keep forgetting we have CBS All Access, which means I have all those new Star Trek series to watch as well as Jordan Peele’s reboot of The Twilight Zone, and we also have Apple Plus. THERE ARE SO MANY STREAMING SERVICES NOW.
And it’s been so long since I’ve had the energy to pick up a book I had to stop for a minute to remember what I am actually reading, which is Cornell Woolrich’s Night Has a Thousand Eyes. I do think it’s appropriate reading for Pride Month, and then when I finish that I am going to go back and reread Larry Kramer’s Book Whose Title Got Me a Facebook Ban. I am also thinking I might revisit one of my favorite Three Investigators stories this weekend as well.
I got an idea for two stories yesterday–because when don’t I get ideas for new stories, right? One is “Dance of the Burning Fools”, which is something that actually happened in history, as described by Barbara Tuchman in her seminal work A Distant Mirror; a party at the court of Charles VI of France, which descended into madness when some of the costumed revelers, dressed as animals in fur and pitch, caught fire and some of them burned to death; the King was one of the men in costume but was rescued. I’m not sure how the story will take shape, but I just thought that perhaps an investigation into the tragedy after the fact? I don’t know, it’s very amorphous right now.
The other is called “Happy Hour at the Hangover Bar,” which was inspired by my noticing on my way to work yesterday that there is a bar on Claiborne Avenue with that very name: the Hangover Bar, and yesterday they had a Happy Hour sign out on the sidewalk in front, and the title popped into my head, with a vague idea about a story told from the point of view of the bartender, watching something unfold in his bar during Happy Hour.
Many years ago, maybe in the late 1990’s, I had an idea for a series of short stories about gay men that were all interconnected through a central character of a nameless bartender at Cafe Lafitte in Exile; one of my best (in my opinion) short stories was one I wrote with that idea in mind; it eventually evolved and the bartender himself became the main character. The story was called “Unsent”, and in one of my proudest moments as a writer, a friend who’d arranged for a collection of my erotic stories to be published in Spanish (thanks again, Lawrence Schimel!) forwarded an email to me from the copy editor, who’d emailed him to tell him that the story had made her cry. I think about that collection–that I’d intended to call The Bartender–every now and again; but so many ideas, so little time, and so much laziness will leave it on the backburner probably forever.
And now, I have to depart for the gym. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and keep the people of Houma, Louisiana in your thoughts this weekend.
In case you’ve been wondering, Constant Reader, my blog titles are usually song titles; back when I first started doing that, I just used whatever song was playing on the stereo or my iPod (remember those?) when I started writing the entry. I’ve tried not to use the same title twice, but after fifteen years or so it’s kind of hard not to. I started using the Top 100 lists from certain years, but those got exhausted after a few years, and now I’ve moved on to singles by the Pet Shop Boys….many of their titles are awesome and wry and witty; today’s, I am not so sure about, hence my decision to explain.
It’s been a very exhausting week, and I am bone tired. I’ve not been to the gym this week at all; I will assess how I feel tomorrow about going; I can certainly, in a worst case, go on Saturday. There’s a tropical storm out in the Gulf heading our way, the country has seemingly gone mad, and sometimes I just feel so completely overwhelmed I don’t even want to get out of bed, let alone check social media or my emails.
But I persist.
Today wasn’t quite so bad as I feared when I started writing this post this morning; it was actually rather pleasant. The sad thing is I am starting to adjust physically to the heat and humidity; they did get us an enormous fan and a couple of smaller ones–but when I had to go into the building to do my timesheet and send my activity log to my supervisor I thought it was freezing inside the building–and had the same experience when I stopped at the grocery store. Naturally, the first floor of the Lost Apartment and my kitchen/office is miserable, even with the ceiling fans on, but I ordered two of those small, portable Arctic air conditioners–a co-worker highly recommended them–and when they arrive, we’ll see how they work.
I do think I am going to be able to sleep tonight. I am feeling sleepy–my mind is still going strong though–but I guess we will see. We started watching a show called London Kills on Acorn, and are enjoying it–we gave up on Dead Still after two episodes because it was, while very well acted and produced, kind of slow and not as interesting or engaging as I would have hoped.
Well, it’s now Friday morning and I’ve actually skipped a blog day. Shortly after I wrote the above I got so sleepy I barely managed to make it upstairs and into bed before sleepwalking, seriously, and I slept very well last night. I could have stayed in bed easily for another hour or so, but I have things to do and work to get to and so forth. But it feels absolutely lovely to have rested–perhaps tonight I will rest again–and maybe I can make some progress on work i have to do.
I got some glorious short story feedback on a submission I’d sent out, and am really looking forward to revising it. This is “The Affair of the Purloined Rentboy,” for those of you keeping track; the Sherlock story which was very far outside my comfort zone. I do think the notes I got will make it a much better, and stronger, story; and I am going to trust my instincts–as I read the notes, ideas began to form in my head on how to make this story stronger and better, and I couldn’t be more pleased.
And on that note, with the Gulf Coast now under a hurricane warning, I shall head back into the spice mines.
So here we are on middle-of-the-week Wednesday, and this has thus far not been a good week, for those who are keeping score. This entire year has already been pretty fucking bad, and we are still not even halfway through it yet.
Yesterday I got banned again on Facebook; this time because I mentioned “Larry Kramer’s Faggots“–exactly like that–in a post sharing a blog entry in which I talked about Larry’s death and wanting to reread the book; I, an actual gay man, was BANNED for using “hate speech” by quoting the title of a book, all the while indicating that it WAS a book in the post. And yes, while I applaud whatever algorithm they have now that locates certain words as ‘hate speech’; I have reported any number of people for using that word as a slur, among others, including racial slurs…only to be told those posts “didn’t violate Facebook’s community standards.”
So, hey Zuckerberg? Go fuck yourself. And enjoy hell when you get there.
It’s a gloomy morning in New Orleans; there’s a thunderstorm rolling in and we are also now–all of south Louisiana–in a flash flood watch. Tropical Storm Cristobal is somewhere out there in the Bay of Compeche, will probably hit landfall in Mexico before heading north. The cone of uncertainty runs from Houston to Pensacola, approximately, with the dead center showing a run for south-central Louisiana and up through Lafayette. If this track holds true, New Orleans will be on the east, and wet, side of the storm, and it will get here in late night Sunday/early Monday morning; the landfall projected currently is 1 a.m. Monday morning. It looks like it’s going to be a busy season–we’re already up to the C named storm and it’s only June 3rd.
I’ve really been tired all week; exhausted, emotionally, mentally and physically. I haven’t written a word since the weekend–I started writing a new story called “Waking the Saints”, mainly because I saw the opening scene so vividly I had to write it down: a dealer at Harrah’s, walking home from work at one in the morning, and makes a habit of walking home along the river on top of the levee. I don’t know what the rest of the story is; but I really enjoyed writing about walking along the top of the levee beside the river late at night. I wish I lived close enough to do it more often.
And on that note, tis back to the spice mines with me. Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader.
Yesterday was a strangely low-energy day for me; it was kind of overcast all day and I never really did seem to kick into a higher gear at all.
I did manage to rewatch Body Heat last night, one of my all-time favorite movies, and am delighted to report that it does, indeed, hold up after forty years. And what a film. I saw it originally in the theater; drawn in by a great review I read in the paper that compared it to Double Indemnity, or said that it was loosely based on it, or something like that. I went by myself–I trained myself to go to see movies alone in my late teens–and it was a matinee so there weren’t many people there. I remember that opening shot, of William Hurt’s bare, sweaty back as he watched a fire in the distance from his bedroom window while his hook-up dressed behind him, sitting on the edge of the bed. I remember thinking how sexy he was, and once the character of Kathleen Turner appeared on screen, I also remember thinking how gorgeous she was, as well. I knew who she was–I knew her from her role as Nola on The Doctors, and I also knew she’d been fired from the show for being overweight….which was incredibly hard to believe as I watched her slink across the screen, saying my favorite line ever from a movie: “You’re not very smart, are you? I like that in a man.” I also knew she’d been replaced by Kim Zimmer–I knew all of this because flipping through the channels one day I stopped on The Doctors because Kim Zimmer was on screen and I thought to myself, she’s really pretty and kind of reminds me of Jane Elliott–who’d played my favorite character on General Hospital, Tracy Quartermaine–and at first I did think it was Jane Elliott. I used to read Soap Opera Digest in those days, and shortly thereafter they did a piece on Kim Zimmer, which was when I learned about Kathleen Turner. (Interestingly enough, there was a strong physical resemblance between Zimmer and Turner as well; Zimmer appeared in the film in a supporting role as well)
Body Heat blew me away that first time I saw it; I watched it again when it debuted on HBO, and I try to watch it again periodically. It showed up when I was searching through HBO MAX, and last night I thought, as I waited for Paul to come home, why not? It was very tightly written as well; although last night I spotted a couple of holes in the plot–but the cast was fantastic an it moves so quickly and inevitably to its climax that you don’t really have time to catch those holes until you’ve watched it numerous times. You also have a pre-Cheers Ted Danson as the assistant prosecutor who is a friend of Ned Racine, the low-rent shitty lawyer played by William Hurt, and a very young and beautiful Mickey Rourke as Freddy, the arsonist client of his who holds several keys to the plot in his sexy hands, and of course, both Hurt and Turner at the peak of their youth and beauty.
As I watched Body Heat again last night, something else about the film struck me: it was the first time I can recall seeing a film where the camera sexualized a man in the same way it usually sexualized a woman. Hurt was shirtless or naked at least half of the time he appeared on screen, and his body–which was, for the time, quite spectacular–was shot lovingly by the camera. One of the sexiest sequences I’ve ever seen on film was one shot, where Hurt’s hook up for the night is getting dressed and he is lying in bed, naked, with a sheet draped over his groin but his left leg is uncovered, and you can actually see his naked hip, and the curve of his ass on the bed; it’s an incredibly sexy shot, and not the kind of thing that was standard for a male in a film of the time. He was meant to be seen as sexy and hot; and I don’t remember ever seeing that before in a movie; men were usually considered to be hot and sexy by dint of just being male in movies…I could, of course, be wrong, but at least that’s how I remember it. And as the 80’s progressed, what I call the “gay male gaze” began to be used to shoot beautiful actors more regularly–think about how Rob Lowe was sexualized in almost every movie he made, and it became more of a regular thing.
Body Heat inspired me to start writing noir, quite frankly. I had already read some James M. Cain (Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Mildred Pierce, Love’s Lovely Counterfeit), but as much as I loved his books it never occurred to me to start writing in that style. Body Heat, on the other hand, inspired a story I started writing called Sunburn (which was used by Laura Lippman as a title for her own noir homage to Cain a few years ago and is one of my favorite noirs), which eventually was retitled Spontaneous Combustion, and now sits in my files, waiting to be written. When I first moved to Tampa, and went for a drive along Bay Shore Boulevard, the big beautiful houses lining the road also inspired me; one in particular seemed the perfect locale for the story of the middle-aged wealthy widow who falls for a hot young man, which kicks off the story.
I’m reminded of that idea every time I watch Body Heat, and as I watched it last night, I thought about the noirs I want to write–a queer noir quintet–and as I write this I realize Spontaneous Combustion isn’t one of them.
Interesting. And on that note, I am off to the spice mines.
Well, here it is Monday again and we’ve made it through another weekend; the last of May. Perhaps June will be the month this annus horribilis will turn around, but somehow I rather doubt it.
I grew up in the 1960’s. I was born in 1961, so when the decade ended I was nine and my earliest memory is me, maybe two years old or so, and the air raid sirens were going off in Chicago–they went off as a test every week on a certain day at a certain time, to ensure they were working and if Chicago was suddenly attacked by air–missiles, I suppose, from the Soviet Union or Cuba or perhaps a Canadian Air Force attack–we could get proper warning. I remember that the basement of my elementary school was a nuclear fallout shelter–or perhaps there was one accessible through the basement; my memory on this is cloudy but I can remember seeing the symbols (the black circle with three yellow triangles) on the wall above the stairs when I’d go down there to use the bathroom. I remember the Civil Rights movement and Vietnam and the violence meted out against people who protested inequality or an unjust war. I remember riots, and cities on fire, and leaders being murdered, shot and killed in a time when it seemed like the very fabric of the nation was being torn apart.
As a society, we tend to look back at the wild and crazy Sixties as a bizarre decade that opened with malt shops and bobby sox and the sock hop, which gradually morphed into something darker, and vastly different. The darkness and disillusionment didn’t lead to change in society or more equity; if anything, the resistance to civil rights for people of color became even more entrenched as other marginalized groups began advocating for their own rights and freedoms and equalities: women and queers. But the problems and inequities protested in the Sixties never went away completely; more doors were opened, to be sure, but the progress was slow and incremental, but below the surface it continued to simmer, and here we are, in 2020, dealing with these same old problems still.
Why is this so fucking hard, people? It doesn’t have to be.
I remember when Dr. King was murdered. I remember when RFK was murdered. (And yes I know these were political murders, so they were technically assassinations, but I’m sorry–murder is murder and it doesn’t need a fancy name to dress it up nice and pretty for consumption. MURDERED. They were MURDERED.)
I also remember the busing riots in the 1970’s.
My elementary school was segregated–in Chicago. I don’t know if all public schools in northern cities were segregated back then, but I do know ours was. The story was our principal would regularly turn away Black families trying to enroll their children by telling them the school was full, but any white family who came in was permitted. We had a lot of Hispanic/Latinx students at my school though; so clearly the bigotry was targeted at Black families. It was very strange, and even stranger to think about now, looking back; my elementary school was (with the exception of no Black children) the proverbial melting pot of cultures and countries (as taught to us as children–no mention of non-whites in that melting pot, of course). Most of my neighborhood–and therefore my schoolmates–were immigrants, either first or second generation; the woman down the street who babysat my sister and me’s parents immigrated from Poland. We had Poles and Latvians and Lithuanians; Czechs and Slovaks and Serbs and Croatians; Greeks and Mexicans and Nicaraguans and Guatemalans and Cubans and Puerto Ricans. Ironically, I also had classmates who identified by their principality in what used to be the Holy Roman Empire before it became Germany: Bohemians and Bavarians and Hessians (they were made very uncomfortable when we studied the mythology of the American Revolution, since the Hessians were mercenaries hired by King George III).
My high school in the suburbs, despite its size, only had a handful of black students; Bolingbrook is much more integrated now than it was at its inception. And of course, my high school in Kansas was completely free of black children. I had one black teacher before graduating from high school; and that was the sixth grade. My first black teacher in college was in Women’s Studies–she was a great teacher, and during that semester was denied tenure. I often wonder what ever happened to her; I don’t even remember her name. But she was the first teacher I ever had that truly opened my eyes to what our society and culture was actually like, rather than viewed through the rose tinted lenses all white children were given back then; what it was like for women and minorities in this country. As I was also beginning to realize at the same time that I didn’t necessarily have to be closeted and miserable for the rest of my life, and maybe wasn’t, and didn’t have to be, a square peg, she had a profound influence on me and this was when I first began to challenge, and question, everything I had been led to believe was carved into stone as truth.
It disturbs me that I do not remember her name. It disturbs me now to realize had I not been gay and had I not taken her class…I might not have ever questioned and reevaluated everything I was raised and socialized to believe. Sometimes when I see this right-wing assholes bloviating and spewing their bullshit and lies and bigotry, I sometimes think that, but for an untenured Women’s Studies professor and my sexuality, could have been me.
And it sickens me.
I don’t have the answers to how to solve what’s wrong with our country. But I do know the answer of how not to–which is to continue not listening to the people, to not listen to people of color, to not listen to anyone who is a minority of any kind in this country; to not listen to anyone who is anything other than a cisgender white male.
The Pledge of Allegiance ends “with liberty and justice for all.” It doesn’t say “with liberty and justice for white people.”
I’m not perfect. Every once in a while a thought will pop up in my mind that no longer fits my current worldview, something from the lizard part of my brain and the way I used to think, was conditioned to think, before my gradual enlightenment and reexamination of everything was I trained to think and believe, and it horrifies me. But I don’t pretend it doesn’t happen; I examine it, try to dissect and dismember it, to ensure it never pops into my brain again.
It’s work, but it’s work that needs to be done.
Black lives matter. No one should have to live in fear for their life every time they leave their goddamned house, or go into a nice neighborhood, or just go about their fucking day-to-day business.
This country and what it stands for was a terrific ideal that we, as flawed people and humans, have never actualized into reality or lived up to. It isn’t too late for us to start now. But we have to examine everything we’ve been taught, white people. We need to look at our art, our culture, our society, and our politics, with a skeptical, questioning eye, and we need to do the work. Our country will never heal without it…and if you care about this country as much as you claim you do–or you are, indeed, a true Christian–you will do this work so that everyone is equal in the eyes of the law and everyone has the same opportunities to succeed, to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Because we who are minorities–whether racial, gender, class, sexuality, religion–are never going to shut up and we are never going to go away. You don’t have to like us; you can still think I’m a faggot if it makes you happy and you somehow think that’s what your invisible sky lord demands. But your business has to serve me, and you have to treat me the same way you treat everyone: with the respect and dignity every human being deserves.
I don’t really understand what is so controversial about that.
Sunday morning and I’m sipping away at my first cappuccino (the cappuccinos went so well yesterday morning that I decided to treat myself to them again this morning) and I feel pretty good. It’s absolutely lovely outside this morning–the temperature is in the low eighties–and bright, sunshine glowing everywhere. New Orleans has the most beautiful sky when the sun is shining, and the light here is exceptionally gorgeous.
It also occurs to me that cappuccinos are probably the most cost effective way for me to get my morning caffeine as well. If I used the Keurig, I can go through as many as four K-cups each day, and even the cheaper ones from off-brands aren’t exactly cheap. But cappuccinos require me to grind beans, and bags of beans are certainly cheaper than boxes of K-cups (I also have the reusable ones, but they don’t work that great; I always wind up with grounds in my coffee, grounds in my coffee and you’re so vain…oops, sorry for the musical interlude) and they also go further. I also only need two of these every morning, and they are kind of delicious.
Yesterday was kind of a nice day, really. I slept really well on Friday night, and so was rested, and of course, the cappuccinos gave me an awesome joly of caffeine that gave me the energy to power through some work I had to do yesterday. I finished that around two, and then went to the gym. I worked out very hard, which felt amazing, and then I came home to do the dishes and laundry. I also intended to do the floors, but my muscles were worn out and tired, and instead I repaired to my easy chair, where I watched the last two episodes of The Movies, and, being kind of mentally exhausted, just curled up with Barbara Tuchman’s essay collection, Practicing History. I do love Tuchman, and I also love that she didn’t really have any background in studying history, yet became a major historian.
I went to bed relatively early last night as well, and again, had yet another lovely night’s sleep. And here I am this morning, with a cup of cappuccino, preparing to answer some emails and try to get my inbox cleared out (for now, at any rate) and then I am going to try to work on the Secret Project for a while. My goal was to get it done and out of the way today, so I can send it off into the wilds tomorrow; wish me luck. Most of this is revising and rewriting, with very little new writing needing to be done. I actually enjoy revising and rewriting, surprisingly enough; it always seems easier to me than writing the first draft, which inevitably is a disastrously written horrible mess. I love making order out of chaos; which also explains why I let messes build in the house and the filing to pile up. I simply love making order out of a mess. I’m not sure what that says about me and who I am, but it’s true.
However, I’m also kind of hoping today that I’ll be able to dive into Night Has a Thousand Eyes. I do want to reread Faggots for the Reread Project, but it can wait, and the Woolrich has been waiting far too long for me to get to. Besides, it’s also been a hot minute since I’ve read something new to me, and I really want to start reading more of the Woolrich canon. I’ve got one of his short story collections on my Kindle, and between reading one of his novels and adding him into the Short Story Collection (which reminds me, I need to read W. Somerset Maugham’s “Rain”, which I started reading a while back), I think I can start developing an appreciation for him, as well as an understanding for his work. I want to enjoy reading them for what they are, but I will also, of course, be looking for that elusive “gay sensibility” in his writing that is most likely there and has been ignored by critics for decades.
It was definitely there in “It Had to Be Murder.”
And on that note, I’m going to head back into the spice mines. The sooner I get the work finished, the sooner I can get back to my easy chair with a book, and is there any better way to spend a Sunday afternoon than with a book?
And here it is, Saturday morning. After some more coffee, I am going to go to the gym and get in my workout (masked, of course) and then I will return home to get cleaned up, buckle down, and get to some serious work. I have high hopes for this weekend, quite frankly; we’ll see how that ends up turning out, of course, but for now? I am feeling relatively confident that I’ll be able to get everything handled that I need to get handled.
The Lost Apartment is still a sty, of course, but that can wait another week, methinks.
I broke out my espresso machine for the first time in a long time because I’ve been feeling the need for a cappuccino the last few days; I actually even wrote a scene in the Secret Project where my character gets one the other day, and like Pavlov’s dog I’ve been wanting one ever since. So, when I stopped to make groceries on my way home last night–I decided to do that and get it out of the way, and picked up my prescription as well–so that I could pretty much lay low and stay inside the Lost Apartment most of the weekend, getting stuff done and relaxing and all that jazz. Once I post this I intend to close my Internet browser (well, after answering some emails) and I intend to stay off social media for the majority of the weekend. I have far too much work to do this weekend and I don’t need the easy distraction of the Internet fucking with me, you know? (And let me tell you–this cappuccino is delicious, wonderful, marvelous; everything I needed it to be this morning)
We watched two more episodes of The Movies last night, taking us through the 1970’s and the 1980’s; and you know, the 1970’s (the decade of my puberty and teens) produced some amazing pictures. It was the decade that saw the bloat of the big budget expensive musical gone and the transition into the smaller, more realistic, intimate movie…but it was also the decade that, with Jaws and Star Wars, that launched the tradition of the big summer blockbuster movie; and as we watched I thought to myself, I haven’t seen this and oh I’d like to see this again and I definitely should rewatch this as an adult–and thanks to HBO MAX and all of my other streaming services, I should be able to watch or rewatch most of them. I definitely want to rewatch Body Heat this weekend; and the Disney adaptation of Mary Stewart’s The Moon-Spinners has finally gone live on Disney Plus. I’ve been wanting to rewatch that ever since I reread the book recently; I started it last night, just the first few minutes, and…yeah, I can already see why I preferred the book. (I saw the film years before I read the book.) For one thing, the main character isn’t traveling alone as she was in the book; her aunt, whom shows up later in the book, is with her when she arrives in the small village in Crete where everything happens, and of course, they turned her from a young independent woman in her early twenties to a teenager, so it could be a vehicle for Disney’s biggest female star of the time, Hayley Mills. The opening sequence on the crowded Cretan bus is a classic example of how not to open a movie–and of course, there are pigs and chickens on the bus along with people…a traditional first-world movie way to depict how backward another country is (this same trick was used much better in Romancing the Stone, but it’s still kind of offensive, even if it is realistic).
Paul’s going to spend the evening visiting some friends of his, so with luck, I can watch both Body Heat and The Moon-spinners tonight.
I also am going to go to the gym at some point today as well. I was originally thinking I’d drink a cappuccino or two, have my breakfast, finish the laundry and maybe do some work around the kitchen before heading to the gym and then coming back home to get the work done I need to get done to day–but now I’m thinking it makes more sense to get everything done and then get to the gym before they close at six this evening. Why risk the distraction of the workout and being too worn out from it to do my work? And no, this isn’t simply my way of rationalizing my way out of going to the gym today–although it could be my evil, lazy subconscious, trying to get me out of it. I will admit my workouts of this past week have not been good ones; but a bad workout is always better than no workout.
And on that note, boring as it may seem, I am going to go head into the spice mines. I’m going to make another cappuccino–I bought espresso beans at the grocery store last night, to give you an indication of how far in advance I’ve been fantasizing about this morning’s cappuccinos–and I’m going to put the dishes away, and then I’m going to get to work.
And what a week it was, was it not? I made some progress on the Secret Project–not enough, of course–and got some things done around the Lost Apartment; I have some more things to get done today so I can coast into the weekend feeling good about being able to get some things done this weekend. I will, of course, need to resist the lure of HBO MAX and all its wonderful movies (I could easily go the rest of my life never watching another episode of Friends; I’m not sure why they thought that would be a selling point–I don’t even care about watching the reunion show they filmed). I do, however, recommend the CNN docuseries The Movies, which is on HBO MAX. If you’re a fan of film and film history, it’s an interesting overview of the rise and development of American cinema. If you’re an aficionado, you probably won’t enjoy it nearly as much as it doesn’t get into a lot of depth.
It’s been a draining week, one that has left me very tired in its wake and unable to get nearly as much done as I would have liked over its last few days. Obviously, the world doesn’t stop turning and things don’t stop being due; for me it’s not so much about wanting everything to return to normal (I don’t think anyone understands or grasps the fact that regardless of what happens, the world isn’t going to return to its pre-pandemic state; New York and New Orleans never returned to their pre-9/11 or pre-Katrina states, after all) as it about me wanting to get a routine established so that I can know what to expect from week to week and when I can do this and when I have time to do that and so on and so forth. I am looking forward to a highly productive weekend–there’s not much choice there, really; I either have to get it all done over the course of this weekend or I am really going to be up the creek…I perform well under pressure, but the pressure and how I react to it is so bad that I really don’t want to ever have to perform under pressure, if that makes any sense.
I doubt seriously that I’ll have time to read anything this weekend, alas, and I am really looking forward to digging back into Larry Kramer’s Faggots.
But as the coffee kicks into gear this morning, I am starting to feel a little more confident about myself and what I can do and what I can get done in the meantime, which is always a better mindset to be in, anyway.
One of the weirdest things about me–really, there are so many–is how easily I can get overwhelmed and descend into depression; the depression also makes me snappy, and I’ve learned that when I am in that kind of state the best thing to do is not interact with anyone outside of Paul, Scooter, and my co-workers at the office, and generally I try to do that as little as possible. Yesterday, after working in the garage all afternoon screening–and as our temperatures continue to rise here in New Orleans, you can imagine how lovely that is–when I came home last night I was despairing of being able to squeeze everything in that I need to for the next three days; this morning, after a good night’s rest and some coffee this morning, I feel like, well, I can do this and then I can do that and then I’ll do this in the morning and then I’ll have the rest of the day free to do this and of course you can get everything done, why do you always have to doubt yourself?
And I’m sure the despair/depression thing has come from not having the energy to write the last two days.
And on that note, tis off to the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader.
Queer and Loathing in America 