Category: childhood

Turn Me Loose

Sunday morning blog after an uneventful yet sort of productive day yesterday. Our Internet went out around one yesterday afternoon, and was essentially in and out (mostly out) until about eight o’clock last night. I did finish reading my book, which was superb (more on The Cypress House later) and I did get two more blog post drafts finished, which felt great. I ran my errands, cooked outside last night, and did some cleaning up around here as well. When it came back and we could watch television, we finished Pray Away and moved onto The Gentlemen, which we are really enjoying, on Netflix.

It was actually nice not having Internet, if odd–you never realize how much you depend on it until you don’t have it, seriously–because I was able to relax all day, instead of getting caught up on the news (rage-inducing, as always) or watching old LSU football highlights (always a joy) or finding new documentaries to watch. Pray Away was the final step in our “teenager abuse programs” watching, following The Program and Hell Camp, and what’s truly frightening is the gaslighting involved, for both kid and their parents–and that the troubled teen industry is still chugging along, abusing kids and bilking their parents of money. I’ve never wanted to do a conversion therapy story–I briefly touched on this in Baton Rouge Bingo and again in Royal Street Reveillon; that Taylor’s parents wanted to send him to one in Mississippi. I had also talked about a conversion therapy camp in Mississippi before in other works, some of them my Todd Gregory stuff, and maybe someday that will come to fruition in some way. Watching all these documentaries has put me in mind of how to write about one in a Scotty book or a stand-alone; there’s also another idea for a mystery/crime novel I’ve been thinking about a lot as I watched these horrific documentaries, only set in Kansas. (Oddly enough I find myself thinking about Kansas a lot more and more these days, not sure what that’s all about.)

I also was looking through books yesterday after I finished the Koryta to decide what to read next, and I was having trouble deciding; mainly because I have so many damned fine books to read in the TBR stack. I also ordered two more books yesterday morning–poems by Mary Oliver, recommended by the fabulous Carol Rosenfeld (me trying to learn more about poetry and start appreciating it) and the newest Scott Carson (which is a pseudonym for Michael Koryta). I think I am going to read The Pallbearer’s Club by Paul Tremblay (I’m a huge fan) while also embarking on a reread of Thomas Tryon’s The Other, which was probably one of the most influential books I read when I was a kid. I am still reading Rival Queens as my current non-fiction, and I am thinking that The King’s Assassin, the basis for the incredible new Starz series Mary and George (which you should be watching) and again, a period of history I’ve always been fascinated by, and watching the show has given me an idea about how I could approach another project that’s been in the files for almost two decades.

Today I intend to write and read and clean and organize for most the day, although I am sure once Paul gets up we’ll start streaming The Gentlemen again. I have some blog entries I also want to finish writing, and of course, there’s all kinds of writing that I need to get done today as well. I’ve been really scattered with my writing this year, and part of it has been an inability to focus on just one project with my usual laser-like focus, and that’s why I’ve not been able to get anything much done this year. This morning I feel more awake and focused than I have in a long time, which is great. Once I finish this and my review of The Cypress House I’ll get cleaned up, read for a bit, and pick up around here before focusing in on what I want to get written today. Being organized helps, and if I could simply manage to stay organized rather than just letting things pile up everywhere, I wouldn’t have to do as much cleaning and straightening and organizing as I always do on the weekends.

The Lefty Awards were presented last night in Seattle at Left Coast Crime, and I was very delighted to see the results this morning–Tracy Clark, Best Novel, Hide; Nina Simon, Best Debut, Mother-Daughter Murder Club; Naomi Hirohara, Best Historical, Evergreen; and Best Humorous, Wendall Thomas, Cheap Trills. I don’t know Nina, but the other three winners are friends, which is delightful, and I couldn’t be happier for Naomi, Tracy, and Wendall–who was on that Humor panel I had to step in to moderate at Bouchercon in San Diego last year, and was wonderful. Kudos to all winners and nominees!

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a great Sunday, Constant Reader, and I will chat with you again later!

The hunky Alan Ritchson, starring in Prime’s Reacher, did an interview recently calling out evangelicals and Trump supporters, who got all in their feelings and have decided not to watch the show anymore. Sounds like ‘cancel culture’ to me. How woke!

Lonely Teardrops

Well, good morning, Constant Reader, and I do hope everything is going well for you on this lovely Saturday. I slept deeply and well (and a little late), and feel pretty good this sunny morning. My primary priority for this weekend is to get my taxes finished and to my accountant (we’ve already filed an extension because I couldn’t get my shit together last weekend), do some writing and cleaning and run some errands, and relax as much as I can. Last night after getting everything done that needed doing, I ordered us a pizza for U Pizza (formerly Slice) on St. Charles Avenue, and we watched some more documentaries about child abuse reform schools for “troubled” teens, The Program. It’s very chilling to see how these kids were treated both in these schools and in those camps (Hell Camp), and I imagine we are also going to have to, at some point, watch the documentary about conversion therapy camps, too. Watching these has given me an idea for another Kansas book (I already had the idea, but this was excellent research for it), which made me think about some other things about my writing: what inspires it, and what issues do I take on in my work? I think part of the issues I am having with really getting back into the writing (where I’m writing three thousand words or more every day) is because I am not addressing issues I am passionate about, things I write about and learn more about and should be more concerned about.

And now that uneducated white supremacists are now in power in Louisiana, I’m going to have a lot of issues here to take up. So far, Governor Landry is unchecked in his attempts to turn Louisiana into an authoritarian state, and I doubt very seriously any Louisiana politician is going to oppose his horrific agenda for Louisiana–he’s actually worse than Jindal ever dared to be, and he was a monster who left the state in shambles. It’s kind of scary knowing our governor is someone who wouldn’t agree to be Klanmaster because the position wasn’t racist and homophobic enough for him. As much as I love New Orleans, retiring out of state is beginning to look like the best option.

Sigh. But there won’t be anywhere safe for us if we don’t win the November elections.

I did manage to finish two pending blog entries yesterday on top of the daily entry, and so that made me feel a bit better. I’ll probably spend some time this weekend cleaning out the drafts–getting rid of the duplicate ones, or trying to combine them all into one and getting rid of the others. I’d love to finish my Saltburn essay, too, but that may not be in the cards this weekend, either. I’m going to go run errands later this morning, and I also have some more cleaning and filing and organizing to do around here as well. Like always. But I really do feel like I made some great progress on all of this lately, but the floors need to be done, and the rugs need to be reorganized. I also want to spend some time with Michael Koryta’s The Cypress House, which I should be able to finish reading this morning…which will lead to me having to pick out something else to read next. I do have some good choices–piles and piles of great potential reads–and I did go through them a bit last night while making some choices. I should also read some more short stories while I am at it; the Short Story Project has definitely dropped off, and I’d also like to revise one of my in-progress stories this weekend, too, but we’ll see how that goes.

I’ve also been doing some casual research for The Summer of Lost Boys, which I am hoping to start and finish by the end of the year. All I am doing is listening to the Top 100 hits of the year for (so far) 1973 and 1974, and that in and of itself is bringing back memories. I do think this is going to be a really good book and I’m getting kind of amped to write it. I know immersing myself into the history of current events as well as popular culture in those years will trigger my memories, not all of them good, of course, but definitely its helping me to remember what it was like to be a tween in those years, going through puberty and truly realizing how different I was from everyone else I knew as well as getting ghosted, bullied and mocked for being different, which I didn’t really understand other than knowing the truth–that the horrible things they were saying was right, and that made it even more shameful and awful. The only thing that kept me going sometimes was dreaming of being a writer and reading books, escaping from an existence I neither asked for nor wanted.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. I’ll be back later without a doubt, and so hang in there until I wind up posting again. May your Saturday be marvelous, and thanks for stopping by yet again this morning!

Summer Breeze

Summers used to be different when I was a kid, or that’s how it seems now when I look back over the decades to those fuzzy and foggy and out of focus memories of my childhood. Of course, my memories are also my impressions, and I am not sure how those were formed. But back when I was a kid, I have this memory of people going away for summer vacations, and sometimes the really lucky ones went away for the entire summer. All that was required for this was a stay-at-home Mom and Dad who had enough money to rent a summer home to send them off to, joining them on his own vacation. Or maybe I am just remembering it from what I read in books during those years, and our own summer excursions to Alabama (I still would be willing to swear my sister and I spent the entire summer down there, even though I know we didn’t). But beach houses and books about teenagers coming of age while spending the summer at a vacation house on an island or near the beach was a popular subject for writers to explore. I can only think of three of them off the top of my head: Summer of ’42, Last Summer, and A Summer Place. I think I read them all over the course of a single summer, and maybe that’s why my brain defaults to thinking that way about summer breaks and vacations.

I don’t remember why I remembered Last Summer recently. It was written by Evan Hunter, and I also read its sequel, Come Winter, and I remembered both books as being rather dark, with a vague memory of their endings. But I wanted to read it again–I also remembered that John-Boy Walton himself, Richard Thomas, played the male lead in the film of Last Summer when he was a young actor, years before being cast on The Waltons. I’d be curious to see the film again, too.

We spent last summer, when I was just sixteen, on an island mistakenly called Greensward, its shores only thinly vegetated with beach grass and plum, its single forest destroyed by fire more than twenty years before. There were perhaps fifty summer homes on the island, most of them gray and clustered safely on the bay side, the remainder strung out along the island’s flanks and on the point jutting insanely into the Atlantic.

It was there the sea was wildest. It was there that we first met Sandy.

She was standing close by the shoreline as David and I came up the beach behind her, spume exploding on her left, pebbles rolling and tossing in a muddy backwash, a tall girl wearing a white bikini, her hair the color of the dunes, a pale gold that fell loose and long about her face. Her head was studiously bent. Hands on hips, lefs wide-spread, she stood tense and silent, studying something in the sand at her feet. It was a very hot day. The sky over the ocean seemed stretched too tight. An invisible sun seared the naked beach, turning everything intensely white, the bursting waves dissolving into foam, the glaring sky, the endless stretch of sand, the girl standing motionless, her pale hair only faintly stirring. We approached on her left, walking between her and the ocean, turning for a look at her face, her small breasts in the scanty bra top, the gentle curve of her hips above the white bikini pants, the long line of her legs.

The thing lying at her feet in the sand was a sea gull.

Last Summer is what would probably be considered y/a fiction today, despite being written by a highly respected author of both crime fiction (as Ed McBain) and literary fiction, as Evan Hunter. It’s also from that strange period of time that followed the end of the second World War, as the American economy boomed and both the working and middle class were better off than they had ever been before. Matt Baume, a delightful queer culture historian (his book about queer representation in film and television, Hi Honey I’m Homo, is currently a Lambda finalist, deservingly), made an excellent point on his video essay on Rebel Without a Cause, which pointed out the rise of teenage consumers–kids with lots of time on their hands due to the shift in the economy because they didn’t have to have jobs like they did before the war (only upper middle class and rich kids didn’t have to before the war) and the rise of home-ownership in addition to educational opportunities and suburban culture. Adults became quite alarmed at what this new breed of teenagers were up to, even more so than the usual tired worrying about the kids that has never gone away. Many of them were disaffected, and what they were allowed to watch and/or read became even more restricted. Many of them discovered the joys of alcohol and marijuana in greater degrees than ever before, which led to even more rebellion and concern. Parents went after comic books and magazines as corrupting influences–rather than recognizing their own failures as parents, which also gave rise to the modern mentality of uncontrollable children who needed to be protected from pernicious influences. There was, for example, a significant difference from “youth” movies like Rebel Without a Cause and Frankie/Annette in Beach Blanket Bingo. Check out his video here!

Last Summer reads very much as being about its time. “Serious” books about teenagers, many with dark themes, were in demand around this time–and they read very differently to modern readers. This book is about three friends spending the summer on an island somewhere off the Eastern seaboard, but few clues are given to its actual location, or the seaside town where the ferry operates from. The two boys, David and Peter (Peter is the first person voice of the story, remembering back to last summer) meet a girl named Sandy at the beach, and the first part of the book, about them nursing the gull back to health and trying to teach it tricks, bonds them more closely together. We don’t get very in depth about either David or Peter, Peter’s voice is calm and nonchalant, which lulls the reader into a sense of complacency. You begin to wonder where it’s going, but the boys are also becoming more and more aware of Sandy–and her body. Their closeness dances very close to crossing lines several times–she takes off her bikini top more than you’d think a teenaged girl in that time period would–but Sandy eventually bores of the gull and grows more and more annoyed by it until she kills it, and once the boys know, they destroy the gull’s body, which is very odd but telling.

And then they meet Rhoda, a shy girl with some issues of her own, and they kind of adopt her into their group the same way they adopted the seagull, and that’s when the creepy tension turns the book from being about bored teens into a horror. What they do to Rhoda is even more horrific now than it was when the book was originally published in the late 1960’s, and that blasé mentality about their assault on Rhoda–in which Sandy participates, making the horror even worse somehow–reveals them to be sociopaths, which makes the rest of the book make so much more sense, and even more chilling than it was originally.

There’s also some casual homophobia in the book–a gay couple on the island are mostly referred to as “the fags”, a horrible reminder of how prevalent that casual use of such slurs were in this country at the time.

I did enjoy the revisit, and it gave me some things to ponder and think about–and it’s still sticks in my head a week or so after finishing, so that’s a testament to Mr. Hunter.

The All American Boy

I was a bit productive last night after work. I got off later than usual–after five–and we’d been busy all day as well, which was lovely. We’ve not seen that many people in a day in quite some time, and I’d forgotten what that felt like. I chose to take the highway home again after work, and it wasn’t terrible, to be honest. Yes, the ramp to 90/Westbank was backed up as always, and so was the twin spans over the river, but it was better than driving through the city and dealing with all the idiots and stupidity–which I was definitely not in the mood for. I came home, hung out with Sparky for a while, and then started working. I finished a load of laundry and started another. I emptied the dishwasher and refilled it. I cleaned off my desk and filed stuff (I really need to get the overall organization in this corner revamped, revised, and made more efficient and less clutter-prone). I have a meeting this morning on-line, after which I will do my work-at-home duties and do some writing. I was going to run some errands later, but I think they can keep until tomorrow, as I’d rather be around here all day and get things done. It’s a good plan, at any rate. We’ll see how well I obey those dictates.

I also slept well before Sparky decided it was time for me to get up and feed him. I went back to bed, and then of course that started his passive/aggressive ways of getting me up. I do like having a cat alarm–I’d missed that in our cat-free months last year. Sparky still has a lot of extra energy, but I like that about him, and I like that he has his own way of being affectionate. Such a completely different kind of cat personality than Scooter, but all cats are different and getting to know them is part of the joy of having one.

Mmmm, my coffee is quite marvelous tasting this morning.

I was checking my blog drafts page and was stunned to see how many drafts of entries I’ve started and not completed; several books, movies, and topics I wanted to write about, and of course, I need to either finish them or abandon and delete them. Some were kind of similar and started months (years) apart, so I need to get that figured out, and I really should finish writing about the things I started writing about. It was also startling to see that now my blog has become like everything else I write about–drafts and ideas and notes that aren’t completed. Heavy heaving sigh. In the olden days of live journal, I never did this; I always finished every entry I started (probably because I didn’t know whether you could save unfinished drafts there; I discovered the feature when I moved it over here). As a completionist, you can imagine how much this gets under my skin. I’m trying not to let it bother me, but it’s not working so far.

Sigh.

It’s been a weird week, really. I lost my respect for some people–looking at you, Dwayne Johnson, but I always preferred John Cena anyway, and turns out he’s an actual ally–and my concerns and worries about the decline in freedom for everyone (except straight white cisgender men) and the establishment of the 4th Reich in this country, depending on how the election turns out this fall. All of us who tried to warn you back in 2016 (and earlier, in my case) were 100% right about everything, so by all means don’t listen to us again now. I don’t understand the nihilistic mentality of voting third party to “teach us a lesson about progressive purity”–but it’s usually people too young to understand (and they don’t want to understand) how everything works. The irony that they think the Constitution and the system will protect them from a right-wing autocracy is so misinformed to the point of willful ignorance shows me, at any rate, why they shouldn’t be taken seriously or listened to. Back in 2016 I worked with two young cisgender white girls who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Hillary because “she didn’t leave her husband for cheating on her” and “she’s corrupt and gross.” How does your loss of reproductive freedom feel, you willfully ignorant bitches? Thank God you proved your feminist and progressive purity! I, for one, will never forgive anyone who refused to see the danger we were facing in 2016, and I especially will never forgive people who mocked me for my concerns. Hope you need an abortion this year, bitches.

There’s been a lot of talk over the last decade or so about the art v. the artist; the first time I think I heard about this was the issue of H. P. Lovecraft’s deeply rooted racism in the speculative fiction community. I’ve not read much Lovecraft, if any, and that was something I felt I was missing in my education in speculative fiction, and probably why I never really have thought of myself as a specfic writer–I’d never read Lovecraft, and hadn’t reread or revisited Poe since high school. I still intend to at some point–thank you, Project Gutenberg, so I didn’t have to pay for them–but that will certainly effect my opinions whenever I can bring myself to read some of the stories. I used to read things all the time when I was growing up and throughout my adult life that don’t hold up now on rereads that went right past me on the first read because that was how things were in society and the culture at the time. I loved Gone with the Wind, both book and film, for decades before I began to realize how incredibly problematic both were. I keep meaning to go back and read it again now, but I don’t know that I can handle the idyllic portrait it paints of the old South, the war, and Reconstruction. (By the way, you know those white lady Trumpers? They are in this book as the ladies of Atlanta, and saintly Melanie was the worst of them…although a retelling as a Real Housewives of Reconstruction would be interesting. I know a Black writer retold the story from the perspective of a biracial half-sister of Scarlett’s, which I’ve always wanted to read.) Even Margaret Mitchell herself has some issues with the movie’s depiction of Tara because, in her words, it was a “working farm.”

The reason I am bringing this up is because the Chatelaine of Castle TERF showed her flat ass again this week. I did read the Harry Potter series and I did see all the movies, and I did enjoy them, even if I never had any desire to revisit them. The longer the series went on, the worse the books got, in my opinion, longer and more convoluted the stories got and she often never wrapped up anything; there were a lot of subplot false starts that looked promising that she abandoned. There was veiled anti-Semitism and fatphobia in the books that I marked as I read them as well as in the movies–straight from her hard drive. There were no queer people in her books until she retconned Dumbledore long after the fact–something all queer people should have been so fucking grateful for that we (in her mind) should have fallen on our knees in front of her and kissed the hems of her skirts for all eternity. She is the perfect example of how money corrupts weak minds. This week her TERFdom showed itself in announcing she would never accept apologies from Emma Watson and Daniel Radcliffe for daring not to agree with her hateful stance against transpeople, that she veils in worries about bathroom/changing room rapes…which basically comes from her assumption that all men want to do is rape women, to the point they’ll pretend they have gender dysmorphia merely to gain access to women only spaces for ease of rape/sexual assault. That’s kind of anti-male misogyny on top of the transphobia. All men are rapists, transwomen are actually men, and therefore all transwomen are rapists…and her wealth, like Elon Musk’s, have convinced her somehow that she is special and therefore her opinions have more value and weight than anyone else’s. Seriously TERF Queen, I am so sorry you had the entire world at your feet and your dark and twisted soul made you Housemaster of Slytherin and Voldermort’s mistress. I take a lot of pleasure in knowing how miserable your money and success have made you…and that you’ve decided the message of your Harry Potter series–everyone is equal, no one is better than anyone else and love is the key–was as phony as she is.

So, yes, it’s hard for me to enjoy art when I know the artist is a horrible person. And I don’t have to consume or pay for their art, just as I wouldn’t expect people who don’t like my values and beliefs to buy and consume mine.

Whew! I think I better get going on my day–this turned out longer than intended! Have a great Friday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later. Stranger things have happened on a Friday!

Primrose Lane

Every day’s a holiday on Primrose Lane…

Well, good morning, Constant Reader! I am currently fighting Sparky for space on my desk. Seeing him sprawled across my desk this morning has made me realize just how big he’s getting. YIKES. I feel rested this morning–another good night’s sleep, which was very welcome–and pretty good overall. I wrote last night when I got home, and it felt good. I didn’t read my book last night at all, much to my own regret, but Paul got home shortly after I moved over to the easy chair and we finished Young Royals, which we enjoyed (even if we got annoyed with certain characters at various times) before going to bed relatively early. This week is going to be busy at work, so I am trying to steel myself for facing the next few days. I hope to stay on the writing roll I started last night, and get some progress made before the weekend. I also need to finish my taxes, sigh; an odious chore to be sure, but there’s nothing more patriotic than paying your taxes. I SAID WHAT I SAID.

It was also a little surreal this morning to wake up to a Facebook tag for Banned Books Week here in New Orleans for September–and to see the reason I was tagged was because someone is going to be reading MY work. That was startling, to say the least, but kind of cool. No one ever seemed to care about the fact that I was banned–particularly when it was happening–and I eventually got tired of telling the story and hoping someone else would be as outraged about the entire experience as I was. (NARRATOR VOICE: No one ever was, outside of the ACLU of Virginia.) I overheard someone saying after a panel I was on, where it came up, sometime in the late aughts, “I am so tired of him telling that story over and over again” and so I stopped talking about it much, even on here. Now that I am remembering that bitch (cis white woman, of course, and probably from fucking Metairie), I should have tapped her on the shoulder and said, “Imagine having to live it, bitch.”

That thought–about that woman, and being banned and no one caring (not even my local newspaper covered the story, at least not that I can recall; on the other hand, maybe they did and I just never saw it)–led me around a circular driveway to another point, the one that I’ve thought a lot about lately: why do I always have such a chip on my shoulder when it comes to writing? I think it has to do with primarily my own issues, really; I just assumed people weren’t treating me like a serious person and were dismissive of me because I did work out and stay in shape; something I didn’t quite understand–why shouldn’t writers take care of themselves? It also has to do with the horrific experience I had in college with my first writing teacher–you’ll never be a published writer so you need to find another dream (I was reminded of this lately because I was asked if someone could use the introduction to the ebook of Murder in the Rue Dauphine as a blog entry for a writing site, and that introduction is where I tell that story. Sidebar: I had also forgotten completely that I’d done a new introduction to the reissue, which will fit nicely into my essay collection). So I always felt that not only was I fighting all the odds against being a published writer but I had to also additionally prove that I wasn’t a lunkhead gym bunny.

Maybe this was all in my head? It’s entirely possible–generalized anxiety disorder could have easily put that all into my mind. Sigh.

This decade has been interesting for me. The world is on fire, of course, and has been for quite some time; but my little corner of the world has been very different. Granted, there was a pandemic and all of those things, but my longevity in this business–which is really my stubborn refusal to ever give up–seems to be starting to pay dividends of a sort, I guess? The “academy”, whatever that may be, may still not take me or my work seriously, but longevity eventually begins to work in your favor; i.e. “you’ve lasted this long, so there must be something to your work.” And you know what? I’ll take it. Really, probably thinking that way about five or ten years ago would have irritated me and got my back up a bit; now I don’t care so much about the things that seemed to matter so much to me back in the early days. Ultimately, none of it mattered. I have had an enviable career, once I divorce myself from it and view it from an outside perspective. Well over forty novels, fifty short stories, and I’ve edited over twenty anthologies. I’ve lost count of the award nominations, and don’t care enough to go back and try to count them all. I’ve gotten some pretty great reviews, and I have a readership, or following, or whatever you want to call it.

I really have nothing to complain about.

And on that rather introspective note, I am heading into the spice mines. May your Tuesday be terrific, and I may check in with you again later.

Tallahassee Lassie

Ah, Saturday morning after another good night’s sleep. I managed to sleep late again–Alarm Sparky hasn’t worked the last two days; he waited until almost eight this morning to demand breakfast and to try eating my Fitbit again; he tries to chew my Fitbit fairly regularly throughout the day. (He has also peeled off my Breath-Rite nose strip both yesterday and this morning–try sleeping through that sometime!) But he’s a sweet boy and I love him. He’s bonded again with Paul over the last couple of weeks and has adjusted to having him around again, which is nice. Settling back into normalcy (or what passes for it) around here now, and trying to get some things done today–preferably this morning, to be honest. I have to get everything done that I need to get done today before seven, which is when the NCAA regional championships for gymnastics airs with LSU trying to make it to national semi-finals. I do have a lot to do today–I really was tired last night when I finished work at home duties, and couldn’t really do much of anything other than finishing the laundry. Paul and I watched more of Ripley, which we are both enjoying and the production values are just so extraordinary; almost every shot is beautiful, and the black-and-white photography is brilliant; I don’t think I’ve seen such stunning visuals in a black-and-white film since Sweet Smell of Success.

I also managed to finish reading Last Summer last night, and there will be more about that later. It’s a very dark and mesmerizing tale; told in a voice that speaks to being a teenager but it gradually becomes very dark. I enjoyed reading it a bit, wondered about its casual homophobia (normal in books when this was punished, yet still startling to encounter; it was so common when I was growing up that I never really noticed the presence of actual queer characters and actual casual homophobia). I did remember the way it ended, and I think I do remember reading the sequel Come Winter. I’ll probably dissect more at some point, and give it a review reflective of the time period in which it was originally published and filmed.

We also watched the first episode of Mary and George, which is so much fun! Julianne Moore is clearly enjoying herself playing Mary, who dragged herself up from the lower classes and has ambitions for not only herself but for her son, the beautiful George, and Lord, is he beautiful. Nicholas Galitzine looks much prettier as a brunette than as a blond; being a blond doesn’t work as well as dark hair. Not sure which is his actually hair color, but those blue eyes certainly pop a lot more with darker hair. It’s way fun, and very very queer; historians are very quick to erase James I’s sexuality and desires for men from the pages of books–you literally need a photo of him buggering someone to convince homophobic historians; history is full of bisexuals, especially among royalty. The seventeenth century has always one of my favorite historical periods, too, and one I’ve always wanted to write about. I guess I should stop being such a coward and try to write something historical since I’ve always wanted to; but Imposter Syndrome always intrudes whenever I start thinking seriously about it. Maybe someday…but the show has the best line about sexuality and gender I’ve ever heard: “A body is just a body.”

Overall, I could easily be upset with myself for not writing last night, but I am not going to do that to myself anymore. I needed the rest, clearly, as I must have been tired. Today I have to run to make groceries, do some writing, and get some other things done. I am going to be cook out today–it’s bright and sunny out there, which is great–and I am hoping to get some cleaning and organizing done around here as well. I do need to empty the dishwasher, and I am a bit hungry this morning. I am going to spend about an hour reading Michael Koryta’s The Cypress House while I drink my coffee and my mind wakes up, and then I have to dig in and get to work for the day.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, I may be back later, and hang in there, okay?

Teen Beat

Ah, being a teenager. A lot of people look back on their teen years through rose-colored glasses, always smiling wistfully about the ‘best times’ of their lives. This always makes me reel back from the screen; it’s unfathomable to me that people miss being in high school. I made the best of high school, as I always try to make the best of every situation I find myself in, willingly or no; but you do eventually reach the point where you are so sick of the bullshit and the bullies and the assholes that it can’t end soon enough. I managed to make the best of high school all the way up until the second semester of my senior year, when I just reached the breaking point and just didn’t fucking care anymore–about my classmates, the other kids, the teachers, everything. I kept making the best of Kansas for another year or so–and when my parents were transferred while I was in college to California, I didn’t even think twice about deciding to leave Kansas in my rear view mirror.(I’ve also never been back since that snowy February night when I boarded Amtrak and headed west, either, other than in my fiction.) So, you’re probably wondering why I write about Kansas; why I dig into all those unpleasant memories and the horrible way I used to feel every day. In some ways, I suppose, it’s therapeutic; dealing with the memories and processing them now that I’m older, more centered and stable, and no longer hate myself. But…those are the important memories for writing about teenagers, which I do fairly regularly.

It’s always important to process your traumas by writing about them, I suppose.

It’s work-at-home Friday and Gregalicious slept a little late this morning. I was very tired last night–even fell asleep in my easy chair around ten, woke up just before eleven, and then proceeded home. I was too tired after work to get much done around here, or to do any writing, so I will definitely have to make up for that today and this weekend, once the work duties are done. I also have to get to the gym this morning to get back to the working out. After the Festivals and Paul got sick, my hands were a bit full and working out after being pronounced healed just wasn’t possible. Now I have to get back into it, adding a couple of back and chest exercises into the mix, and even having an official Leg Day work out, so as I get my strength and stamina back I can start using heavier weights and gradually get myself back to the point where I can workout the way I used to, before all the injuries and depression and so forth all kicked me off the gym wagon; hopefully by the summer I’ll be able to get myself back into some semblance of good physical condition again.

I suspect the tired thing will never go away.

We started watching Ripley last night around the Fayetteville Regional for NCAA Gymnastics, which LSU won while not having their best night, and I have to say I am enjoying it thus far. It’s a slow burn, but it’s incredibly stylish, and the black-and-white cinematography is terrific. The shots are amazing, and Andrew Scott manages to give Tom an air of menace, a kind of emotional flatness Matt Damon couldn’t have pulled off in the Minghella film version. I think part of the reason for the steady slow burn of the plot is because there’s not a lot of material…the book is actually very short (Highsmith was never wordy and rarely wasted time on back story), and my sense is that Scott’s Tom is much more like Highsmith’s ideation than the Minghella film. With all the comparisons made of Saltburn to Ripley, I’ve been thinking about the book and the Minghella film again, and this Netflix version seems like the Ripley Hitchcock would have made, which makes it more interesting to me. At first I was a little bummed not to see the Amalfi Coast in color; Italy is so beautiful, after all, but the black and white gives it a more pristine and polished look that is beautiful in an entirely different way. I’m looking forward to watching the rest of the show to see how it flows and develops–as well as comparing it to the book, the Matt Damon film, and Saltburn. It actually has made me rather happy that I haven’t finished my essay on Saltburn yet.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines for the day. Have a lovely Friday, and I may check in again later.

Tragedy

Thursday morning last day in the office for the week blog post, and I am pretty pleased, overall, with how the week turned out. It was hard to get back on the horse after the drama of the weekend, and recovering from that was a thing. One of the things about being older is you do really have to be more selective about what you spend your energy on…and I wished I’d realized that “saving my energy for things that matter” was probably a lifestyle choice I should have made when I was in my forties, at the latest.

It’s very weird how my body has adjusted now to getting up early. I used to be fine early in the week and gradually grew more tired as the week went on, until Thursday morning when I got up I was so groggy I could barely focus on anything. Now, I am tired and groggy early in the week and as the week goes on, I sleep better and wake up more easily later in the week. I feel a bit stiff this morning, but that’s all right. My coffee is tasting good and hitting the spot, and I just have to get through today before my work-at-home day tomorrow. We have a department meeting tomorrow morning at nine, but I can sleep a bit later and head downtown for that–and then run some errands on the way home. I was a bit fatigued last night, but managed to get almost two thousand words down before my brain fizzled out, after which we finished watching Apples Never Fall (enormously disappointing final episode) and got caught up on Will Trent, which we really are enjoying more than I thought we would. Not sure why I thought we wouldn’t like it, but I was wrong and glad we finally started watching. Tonight LSU competes in the regional gymnastics championships with a very good shot at making it all the way to the national finals. GEAUX TIGERS!

I finished listening to Cowboy Carter in the car on the way home from work yesterday, and I really enjoyed it. There’s not a bad song on the record, really, and some serious jams. And yes, it is a country album no matter what the racists in that genre want to believe. Oh no, a BLACK woman recorded one of the best country albums of the century! Cue white outrage! Seriously, people, if you’re not aware that ALL modern American music comes from jazz and blues (two forms of music created by Black people) then have all the fucking seats, trashbag. Country is more blues than jazz, and the lines definitely get blurred sometime, but face it: every song on Cowboy Carter could be a hit single. Every. Last. One. Of. Them. When was the last time any country artist could say the same? Shania Twain at the turn of the century, maybe? The fragility of white people, and their constant need to be the victims, is so fucking tired already. Get over yourselves, seriously. I can’t imagine living life with braces on my brain, can you?

And this morning when I synced my phone with the car, surprise! Spotify started automatically playing the new Pet Shop Boys album, Dancing Star, and it’s also a banger so far. I love me some Pet Shop Boys, and their music never seems dated, old or tired. Can’t wait to get back in the car to go home tonight so I can listen to some more of it. The Pet Shop Boys always take me back to when I was younger and basically living in gay bars on the weekends; they were kind of the soundtrack of my gay adulthood, really…and listening to their music from any year always puts me into the mindset where I want to work on “Never Kiss a Stranger,” which may actually be a novel and not a novella; that could the reason why I can never finish the story is because it could easily be longer. Maybe what I should do is just work on it and see where it goes and how long it lasts.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines so I can get this last day of work in the office for the week over and done with. I may be back later and I may not; one never knows. But have a lovely Friday Eve, everyone.

Don’t You Know

Monday morning and it’s back to the office with me. The weekend was a bit of a bust; I did get some things done but zero writing. I missed the deadline for the anthology I was trying to write a story for, but despite a good start yesterday fatigue set in fairly early and I wound up spending most of the day in my chair, Sparky in my lap, while we continued watching Will Trent, which we are both enjoying. Today is also April Fool’s Day (does the apostrophe go before or after the s? I can never remember if it’s fool or fools), which is a kids’ thing, really. I don’t feel exhausted this morning, but I do feel like I could have certainly slept for longer.

This week I have to get back on track after last week was essentially a big loss for me, alas. I did get some things done last week, but it was derailed and then the weekend was also a complete loss. It was incredibly poor timing, of course, but sometimes life does happen–and it’s been happening to me a lot since January 2023 (really, you can even go back as far as the summer of 2022, when I got COVID), which kind of sucks. But that’s what life is, really; one long series of traumas with pleasant interruptions in between until you die. Well, that sure sounded pessimistic, didn’t it? It’s very easy to get caught up in the negative side of life and focus merely on that while not paying attention to the good things that go on in your life, especially when you keep getting derailed. (The anxiety side of my brain is trying really hard to send me into a depressive spiral here, but I am successfully holding it off this morning…so far.)

So, this is going to have to count as my reentry into my life after the festivals since last week was simply a holding pattern; Paul and I even talked about that last night between episodes of the show. Last week was simply a lost week during which I was able to get some things done on and around everything else that was going on. But it’s also a new month today, so I am going to try to get everything together this week and get my life back together. I’ll be going to visit Dad the first week or so of May, which will also be an interruption, but despite the lengthy drive there and back (I’m meeting him in Alabama first for the First Sunday in May, and then we’re driving north) I am kind of looking forward to it. I’ve got lots of books and stories to listen to on Audible (yay!) and of course, I always get inspired whenever I go to Alabama (or through Alabama). I do think I have my writing for the year figured out as well; I am going to finish the current one, finish everything I have unfinished on hand, and then I am going to write an entirely new project; and I know what the next two new ones are going to be. I do want to revise the story I didn’t finish and turn in for the anthology yesterday; it needs a strong rewrite, and I can also throw it into my short story collection, which will also then be finished and ready to go.

Progress, and getting back into a good headspace, is always a plus.

I did read some more of Last Summer yesterday, and that sense of foreboding just continues to grow with every page. I am enjoying the ride, and I know the book ends with tragedy; I do remember how this one and its sequel end, but I am still not entirely sure whether I am remembering the ending of the book from reading it before or from having seen the movie, which I also don’t remember much about, so can’t swear to having seen it. And also now that I am in the second half of the book closing in on the ending, I also see what Hunter had done with the two parts and it’s masterful yet chilling at the same time. It’s definitely a novel for adults, but it has teen protagonists; so is it young adult fiction? I am hoping to get it finished this week so I can move on to the Michael Koryta.

And on that note, I am bringing this to a close. Happy Monday and April Fool’s Day, Constant Reader, and have a lovely day.

Here Comes Peter Cottontail

Easter, which really should be the highest holy day of Christianity–but it’s not. That would be Christmas, which again–really doesn’t make sense. But at least the date of Jesus’ birth is fixed–as opposed to how the day of his death floats.

I overslept again this morning and I suspect my exhaustion–which carried me through yesterday as well–has everything to do with the situation on Friday. Yes, I know I am being vague, but I also never am sure about crossing a privacy line for someone else. Essentially, I lost the entire day, and let’s just say that I am glad I am on anxiety medication because my mind would have exploded this past week, probably. But it was exhausting and draining, both emotionally and physically, and that all kind of caught up with me yesterday. I did get some things done–laundry and I did run an errand–but was completely worn out yesterday and had excessive fatigue. I feel better this morning than I did yesterday, but I also have a lot to do today and hope that I can manage somehow. I feel motivated today, which I didn’t have the energy for yesterday, and as soon as I finish this I am going to get cleaned up and finish cleaning the kitchen and dive into my day.

Sounds good, anyway.

It’s also a very bright and cheery day out there–it’s been cold since around the festivals–and I am hoping to cook out today, too. We spent most of the day relaxing with the television on. I did read some of Last Summer, too, which I am really getting into, and I think my next read will be an old Michael Koryta, The Cypress House. He really is one of my favorite writers, and I need to read more of his backlist as well as get caught up on recent releases. I pruned the books a very little yesterday, and we did watch some great stuff yesterday. We watched Quiet on Set Friday night, which was grim and creepy and horrifying, and then yesterday we watched Thanksgiving and moved onto Will Trent, which we’d been meaning to get around to but kept forgetting–it’s quite good. Thanksgiving was another holiday slasher movie, kind of clever and didn’t take itself too seriously (always a plus in a slasher movie) and I enjoyed–but it didn’t say anything new or do anything wildly clever or original. Quiet on Set, on the other hand, was deeply disturbing–which brings me to another point about the falsity of the right and it’s anti-queer lies about grooming and pedophilia. Every day I see pieces posted on social media about another male (sometimes with a female accomplice) convicted of raping and/or sexually abusing children…and getting off with thirty days in prison, or three months, or suspended sentences.

Where is all the outrage about THAT? Judges and juries giving light sentences for raping children? That’s how I know the right is all smoke and mirrors when it comes to these issues. They chose to attack a small minority and accuse them of not being safe around children, but where is there concern about all these religious figures, church leaders, your counselors, and COPS who are getting away with destroying children? Watching Quiet on Set made me aware just how hypocritical they are. If they really cared about children and keeping them safe, they’d go after actual people who, you know, commit the crimes and the disgusting sentences they get for said crimes. It’s hard to take any country seriously who doesn’t punish actual perpetrators of crimes against children, but instead accuses innocent parties while looking the other way when the criminals don’t fit their narrative.

I’m tired of liars using children as a bait-and-switch to come for queer people.

Sigh. It’s easy to get frustrated and fearful these days with the world in the state it is currently in; I take no pleasure in seeing my predictions about the rise of modern American fascism, made in the early 1990s, coming true in my twilight years. You see, I recognized the rhetoric of the right, and how they were using queer people as scapegoats for everything, in the decade as the same language and dialogues that Germans used on Jews and queers in the 1930’s, and I also saw, with the rise of Fox News, the further decline of the American system and way of life. We’ve never really achieved, as a country, the democratic utopia the founders strove for–but it seems like a significant portion of the country no longer sees patriotism as country over party anymore. The Divine Right of Republicans to run the country was part of the unholy marriage of conservatives and evangelicals that Reagan fostered as a Machiavellian scheme to retain power. The right has been smearing the left as communists since the fall of the Tsar in 1917–it’s still a slur they sneer today (communist, commies, socialists) while painting themselves, quite offensively, as the real patriotic Americans.

Sometimes I think I am thinking overly optimistic and that more and more Americans are beginning to see the tin god as precisely that; a golden calf they worship despite their Holy Book’s continued warnings about false gods, false witness, and liars.

And for the record, I have always believed that faith in religion should be shown by works, not words. Anyone can say they are a Christian and they love Jesus–it’s their behavior and what they do that truly matters.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a happy Easter, Constant Reader, and I may be back later.