I did not want to get up this morning. PT was particularly exhausting yesterday after work, and I also made groceries right after. By the time I got into the apartment and had the car unloaded, I…don’t really remember much of the rest of the evening, other than I sat in my chair and watched documentaries about the Eastern Roman Empire on Youtube for most of the rest of the night before I retired to bed early. I feel very rested this morning but still a bit tired, and also like I am running a bit on accessory. I know once the fog in my mind clears I’ll be ready to get this show on the road, but right now all my body wants to do is go back to bed and climb back into the blanket cocoon. Today is going to bounce around between 48 and 55 degrees, with the potential for wind and rain all day. Sounds like the kind of day when you’re very grateful to get back into the house after work, doesn’t it? It’s hard to believe it’s only Tuesday.
I know I will be very grateful to go back to bed tonight and go back to sleep. Clearly, I need more coffee.
I ordered a toy for Sparky that comes on a stretchy string and you hang from the doorframe, and he’s been playing with it almost incessantly since I hung it up. Given he bored very quickly of every other toy we’ve gotten him, I now know the answer: a hanging toy. He’s been trying to get the mouse ever since we came downstairs, and he spent hours jumping at it last night (which was cute; he also finally got it down at one point and dragged it into the living room to show me, and then took it upstairs to show Paul; who brought it back down and rehung it for more hours of kitty entertainment). He was also cuddly last night when he wore himself out, and he was cuddly this morning in bed. Could it be all he needed was a hanging toy? He’s also getting so big! He still likes to ride on my shoulders, draped around my neck–I have to let him up there every time I get home from work, and then I have to walk him over to the dangling ceiling fan cords–and wants to go up there every morning, and he rides up there as I walk down the stairs, chirping happily. He still doesn’t meow; like I said, he still just chirps, or some variation of the chirp–he draws it out into a whine sometimes, but that’s really it for cat noises from him so far.
Ah, now the caffeine is starting to jumpstart my engine and I am beginning to feel more awake, more alive, more ready to face this Tuesday before Mardi Gras. Parades begin again tomorrow, and run every day from there till Fat Tuesday. I have to leave work earlier every night the rest of this week, so I can get home before they close the streets and (hopefully) find a place to park within a mile of the house. I did take Monday off, so once I am finished here Thursday I don’t have to go anywhere other than to PT Friday morning and one final grocery run before the car is parked for four days. (Oh, I take that back; I do have PT on Lundi Gras in the morning–hopefully I’ll be able to park coming home from that excursion) and then I only have a three day work-week next week, which will make for a nice break. I hope to get stuff done on all those days at home; I will probably skip Wednesday night parades, go to Muses on Thursday, do the Friday night parades and Iris and Tucks on Saturday before skipping all of Sunday and going out for Orpheus Monday night.
I also felt a little off yesterday, and this morning realized I hadn’t taken my medications yesterday, which is never a good thing. It does make a difference–the absence of a new does of blood pressure and acid reflux and anti-anxiety meds is always noticeable the first time I forget, and extremely noticeable if I miss two consecutive days. I do feel calmer today than I did yesterday, and I was anxious a few times (should have been the tip-off, really) and snapped at other drivers a few times while driving around town. I also grew irritated and impatient with the woman in front of me at the grocery store, who seemed to think the smart way to unload her entire cart onto the belt was one item at a time per hand while trying to decide how she wanted them bagged, I suppose; she was arranging things on the belt and then digging through everything to find the next item to go on the belt properly. It was a very slow process and had I been on my meds yesterday I wouldn’t have been annoyed or irritated–because I would have thought ah, she has anxiety or is OCD or somehow isn’t wired right either rather than letting my own faulty wiring default to impatience. (As I started writing that example is when I realized her brain probably isn’t wired right, either–which I would have thought instead of impatiently scrolling through my phone and resisting the urge to say something snarky. Meds make a difference, seriously.)
And on that note, I am getting another cup of coffee and heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later–you never know.
Americans have always been fascinated by rich people.
We all want to be rich, after all; as someone once said, “The United States is a nation of temporarily distressed millionaires.” So, in lieu of actually being rich, we obsess about them. The rich used to be celebrities for no other reason than being rich. It’s always been interesting to me that in our so-called “classless” society (which was part of the point; no class privilege, everyone is the same in the eyes of the law) we obsess about the rich, we want to know everything about them, and we lap up gossip about them like a kitten with a bowl of cream. I am constantly amazed whenever I watch something or read something set in Great Britain, because that whole “royalty and nobility” thing is just so stupid and ludicrous (and indefensible) on its face that I don’t understand why Americans get so into it; the fascination with the not-very-interesting House of Windsor, for one. We fought not just one but two wars to rid ourselves of royalty and nobility…yet we can’t get enough of the British royals, or the so-called American aristocracy. (Generic we there, I could give a rat’s ass about the horse-faced inbred Windsors and their insane wealth, quite frankly.)
I wanted to be rich when I was a kid; I spent a lot of time in my youth fantasizing about being rich and famous and escaping my humdrum, everyday existence and becoming a celebrity of sorts with no idea of how to do so. I was intrigued by the rich and celebrities; I used to read People and Us regularly, always looked at the headlines on the tabloids at the grocery store, and used to always prefer watching movies and television programs about the rich. (Dynasty, anyone?) I loved trashy novels about obscenely wealthy (and inevitably perverted) society types and celebrities–Valley of the Dolls has always been a favorite of mine, along with all the others from that time period–Judith Krantz, Harold Robbins, Jackie Collins, Sidney Sheldon and all the knock-offs. I was a strange child, with all kinds of things going on in my head and so many voices talking to me and my attention definitely had an extraordinary deficit; I always referred to it as the “buzzing.” The only time I could ever truly focus my brain was either reading a book or watching something on television–and even as a child, I often read while I was watching television. (Which is why I read so much, even though that buzzing isn’t there anymore and hasn’t been for decades.)
As I get older and start revisiting my past (its traumas along with its joys) I begin to remember things, little clues and observations that stuck in my head as a lesson and remained there long after the actual inciting incident was long forgotten. I’ve always had a mild loathing for Truman Capote, for example, which really needs to be unpacked. Capote was everywhere when I was a child; there was endless talk shows littering the television schedules those days–Dick Cavett, Merv Griffin, Mike Douglas, John Davidson, and on and on and on–and Capote was always a popular guest on these shows. I wasn’t really sure what he did or who he was, but he was someone famous and he was on television a lot. I saw him in the atrocious film Murder by Death, and I know I knew/had heard that he was a homosexual, a gay; and I also knew I was a gay. It terrified me that I was destined to end up as another Capote–affected high-pitched speech and mannerisms, foppish clothing that just screamed gay at anyone looking; Capote made no bones about who or what he was and refused to hide anything…yet he gained a kind of celebrity and fame and success in that incredibly homophobic time period, and no one had a problem with putting him front and center on television during the day time.
But this isn’t about my own self-loathing as evidenced by my decades of feeling repulsed by Truman Capote; that I will save for when I finish watching Capote v. the Swans.
“Carissimo!” she cried. “You’re just what I’m looking for. A lunch date. The duchess stood me up.”
“Black or white?” I said.
“White,” she said, reversing my direction on the sidewalk.
White is Wallis Windsor, whereas the Black Duchess is what her friends called Perla Apfeldorf, the Brazilian wife of a notoriously racist South African diamond industrialist. As for the lady who knew the distinction, she was indeed a lady–Lady Ina Coolbirth, an American married to a British chemicals tycoon and a lot of woman in every way. Tall, taller than most men, Ina was a big breezy peppy broad, born and raised on a ranch in Montana.
“This is the second time she’s canceled,” Ina Coolbirth continued. “She says she has hives. Or the duke has hives. One or the other.Anyway, I’ve still got a table at Côte Basque. So, shall we? Because I do so need someone to talk to, really. And, thank God, Jonesy, it can be you.”
I do want to be clear that once I started reading Capote, he quickly became a writer whom I admired very much; I don’t think I’ve ever read anything he’s written that didn’t take my breath away with its style and sentence construction and poetry. He truly was a master stylist, and perhaps with a greater output he might have become one of the established masters of American literature, required reading for aspiring writers and students of American literature. In Cold Blood is a masterpiece I go back to again and again; I prefer his novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s to the film without question; and I was blown away by his debut novel, Other Voices Other Rooms, which was one of those books that made me think my childhood, and my being from Alabama, might be worth mining for my work.
I read “La Côte Basque 1965” years ago, and didn’t really remember it very much other than remembering I didn’t care for it very much. I was aware of the scandal that followed its publication and that all of Capote’s carefully cultivated rich society women friends felt betrayed by it and turned on him, which sent him into a decline from which he never recovered, before dying himself. I’ve always seen Capote as an example of wasted talents. Anyway, I read the story but not being familiar with his social set, I didn’t recognize any of the people gossiped about in the story or who the woman he was lunching with represented (Slim Keith, for the record), and so it kind of bored me; it was a short story about someone having lunch and gossiping about people the reader had no way of knowing who they were or anything about. I assumed this was because the story was an excerpt from the novel, and the novel itself would establish who all these women were and their relationships with each other. But I did know it was all thinly veiled gossip about his friends, and they never forgave him for it. (I also didn’t recognize “Ann Hopkins” in the story as Ann Woodward; I hadn’t known until the television series that he was involved in her story. I primarily knew about her from reading The Two Mrs. Grenvilles and articles in Vanity Fair, and I actually thought, when reading that book, that it was based on the Reynolds tobacco heir murder that Robert Wilder based his book Written on the Wind on; it wasn’t until later that I learned about the Woodward incident) so I thought, well, it was an entertaining if confusing read.
It was kind of like listening to two strangers talk in a Starbucks and gossip about people you don’t know; entertaining but nothing serious, not really a story of any kind, and I didn’t at the time see how it would all fit into a novel as a chapter in the first place. What purpose to the overall story did this nasty gossip play? Why was it necessary for Ina to share these stories at this particular lunch (and don’t get me started on White Duchess and Black Duchess)? Were these people she was talking about important to the book as a whole? It was hard for me to tell, and I put it away, thinking at the time probably a good thing he never finished the book.
Watching the show about fallout from the story’s publication, I decided to read the story again.
And I still question why Esquire chose to publish it, as well as why Capote thought this chapter was the one to send them. Capote was a genius, of course, and after In Cold Blood was one of the biggest names in American literature (he truly invented the true crime genre); of course they are going to publish whatever he sent them, no matter how bad it was. It wasn’t promoted as a story, after all, it was a novel excerpt.
What I’ve not been able to figure out from any of this is why he thought he could publish this without any fallout from his “swans.” I guess it went to the grave with Capote, who clearly didn’t–and I don’t think ever did–understand why they were so upset with him, which just astonishes me. (Someone once thought I based a character on her–I didn’t–and was very angry with me. I didn’t care, because I neither cared about the person nor her concerns, but I know how careful you have to be as a writer with these sorts of things.)
I wish I could say I liked it better on the reread. I did not. It’s still the same mess it was when I originally read over twenty years ago. It’s just a rich woman being bitchy to her gay friend she feels free to be bitchy about her friends with, and when you have no context (even knowing this time who the actual people were, and yes, he barely disguised them) about the women being discussed or anything about them…it’s just boring, gossip about people you don’t know and you don’t know enough to care about, so it’s just a bitchy little boring lunch. I don’t know what could come before that or after, as an author myself; had I been the fiction editor at Esquire I would have been pissed that was what he sent in, and I would have definitely taken a red pencil to it before I would have published it–and Esquire? Why did Esquire, a men’s lifestyle magazine, publish this when the right place would have been Vogue or Vanity Fair or even The New Yorker. None of it made sense then, none of it makes sense to me now; and if this is the best example we have of Answered Prayers, maybe it’s not such a bad thing that the manuscript–if it ever existed–disappeared.
Sorry, Truman, you were a great writer but this one was a swing-and-a-miss.
Monday morning has rolled around again and no, I didn’t want to get out of the comfortably warm cocoon of blankets yet again today. It was a nice, relaxing weekend. I didn’t go out to see any parades yesterday because I felt exhausted on Saturday and while i felt much better yesterday than I had, I thought it best to stay inside and rest for the day rather than push myself by going to stand on or around the corner for a few hours. This weekend is the big final push (I have to leave work early both Wednesday and Thursday), and I decided it was wisest to take Lundi Gras (Monday) off; Orpheus is that night and there’s no way I’d ever be able to find a place to park anywhere near the house. I do have PT that morning, so I’ll go to that and run some errands before heading back home and parking the car for another two days.
It actually turned out to be the best choice I could have made for the day because a friend called that I hadn’t spoken to in nearly two years (a myriad of reasons, mostly due to health concerns and my own insane rollercoaster life) and had I been out at the corner, i would have missed the call. It was a lovely conversation, and I realized once again how much I’ve missed, not only her, but so many others of my friends. I have always had the misfortune to have the majority of my writer friends not live anywhere near me, so it’s not like I can meet someone for a drink or lunch or anything at any time we so please. This has always been fine with me, but every once in a while it gets a bit lonely, so the few local friends I have are very precious to me. It was absolutely delightful to hear from her, and we were on the phone for nearly an hour, which was marvelous. (I’d been watching the Philip Seymour Hoffman Capote at long last when she called, which was really quite good and Hoffman deserved his Oscar, I think.) So yes, I kind of went down a Truman Capote wormhole yesterday. I am thinking Other Voices Other Rooms needs a reread, and maybe even a dip back into his short stories wouldn’t be a bad thing to do. My former antipathy for Mr. Capote (still processing it) has now turned to fascination; who was he behind that mask, that persona, he developed to hide behind? It’s also been years since I saw the film of In Cold Blood, too; it might be worth another look, too. This newfound obsession with Capote is multi-layered, too; it might take more than one lengthy post once I work my way through the way I’ve always reacted to Capote’s public face. (The self-loathing is coming from inside the house!) But after the call and after the film, I pretty much spent the rest of the night scribbling in my journal while watching an endless stream of Youtube videos, just to see what the algorithm thought I’d be interested in (Constant Reader, I was not interested in most of them, but I wound up watching a series of short histories of Eleanor of Aquitaine, one of my favorite historical women of all time.).
I didn’t write as much as I would have liked this weekend, either, but it’s also Carnival. Very little gets done during Carnival as I am too busy juggling and planning around parades to have much energy left to devote to writing. I did write some really good notes in my journal, though, which was fun; I always forget how much fun it is to freeform scribble in my journal and see where my subconscious mind takes me. It never matters if anything ever comes of it; it’s just playing around with words and ideas and names and form. I’ve been joking with myself that I should write a memoir called I Wouldn’t Normally Do This Kind of Thing, which is a terrific title for something like that (shout out to the Pet Shop Boys, because almost every song title is unabashedly clever and brutally honest and would make for a great title for essays or something), but as I always say, my memories lie to me all the time–which can be a problem when writing a memoir. Maybe personal essays would be a better idea than an actual memoir…and really, has my life been interesting enough for a memoir, anyway?
But I suppose that’s always in the eye of the beholder. I don’t think my life is anything special, or even unusual other than I am out of pace with traditional society with my sexuality and my chosen profession…but then other people will be amazed at some story of my past that I tell (usually after a few drinks) and I guess I never really think of me or anything that happens to me as anything other than normal and I always think everyone else has the same sort of things go on in their lives so it’s nothing out of the ordinary. But I have met a lot of important people and important writers. Larry Kramer used to call me periodically at Lambda Book Report to yell at me, but that was just Larry–he always seemed to be angry about something, but was actually also a really nice man (your mileage might vary, of course, but he also always made me laugh). Barbara Grier also used to call me about once a month to yell and swear at me, but I found her terrifically amusing and I could listen to her all day (and Barbara loved nothing more than a captive audience). There were only a few people in the business, actually, who were terrible to me when I worked there; I always seemed to have the ability to listen to everyone politely and was always pleasant and never argued with anyone….but there were a few I’d rather run over with my car and then back over them again rather than ever deal with them under any circumstance for any reason.
You know who you are, trash.
But I survived the first weekend of Carnival, and I am now thinking I want to watch the other Capote film, the one with Toby Jones–and maybe even revisit Murder by Death, which was another one of those after-church matinee movies Mom used to take my sister and I to. I just need to get through today at the office, and then I need to do my errands and go to PT before settling into my easy chair for the evening. I may go back to Lina Chern’s Play the Fool, which I am really enjoying, or my reread of Edna Ferber’s Saratoga Trunk, or Rival Queens, or even some short stories. I have some of Capote’s, and that might be interesting to reread. My friend who called yesterday afternoon recommended pairing Other Voices Other Rooms with To Kill a Mockingbird, which is a book I have issues with (more on that later at some point), but reading them as parallels to each other; the same childhood from different points of view in the same small Alabama town; it’s been a hot minute since I read the Capote novel but I did love it when I did. I don’t think I still have a copy of it, though.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. It’s a windy, gray wet day in New Orleans, and so I don’t think I’ll have a lot of issues sleeping tonight, either. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and you never know–I may be back later. Stranger things have indeed happened!
Wednesday pay-the-bills day, and I am a bit groggy this morning, but that’s okay, really. I slept well and didn’t want to get up, and there’s nothing wrong with that (why I’ve always felt like not wanting to get out of bed in the morning makes me a lazy slug is something else I clearly need to work on). But the weekend draws nigh, which is always a lovely thing, and of course…parades. Yes, the parades start this weekend, with three on Friday night, six (!!!) on Saturday, and another three on Sunday. It’s also supposed to rain all weekend, so I don’t know how much time I will actually spend out at the corner this weekend risking getting sick and/or tired. I was also very tired last night, to the point that I really didn’t do much of anything once I got home from work yesterday afternoon. I didn’t do any chores, I didn’t run any errands, and I didn’t get the mail.
I did work on the story more and it’s starting to take a better shape than the mess that it originally was. I’m not certain why it’s taking me so long to get this draft finished, but I am instead going to think of it in terms of your writing muscles are as rusty as your actual muscles and so yes, they need to be used a bit more so I can get back into the swing of using those muscles every day. I really should think about writing now as writing therapy; the same mindset as my physical therapy. I am slowly but surely getting back into the spirit of writing after a deeply traumatic year, and the more I do it, the stronger and more lithe those muscles will get–and the less warm-up they will need. Having so many of the conflicting voices in my head stilled at long last also helps me with the focus and stuff; the problem is the lack of use and working out the kinks and the doubts. I think the story is going to make better sense and be much stronger than it was going to originally be in this draft version, and I did think about it a lot last night, too. I have always had a powerful imagination, and so last night I was using it to imagine what it would feel like out in the Manchac Swamp on a night in early October–and the kinds of risks college students will take that older people probably wouldn’t. If it weren’t for the parades–and maybe after the season is over I can do this–I should drive out to the swamp and check it out; there are a lot of places around New Orleans and in Louisiana in general that I really should go visit and experience.
Time, and exhaustion, is always such an issue. I do remember driving somewhere–I’m not sure where or why–that required me to cross the lake to Slidell on my way; I was writing something that required me to take a look at that far reach of New Orleans east that heads out to the bridge over the Rigolets, and so I detoured on my way to get a good look. (I also used that visit to base a scene in Royal Street Reveillon on as well; two for the price of one!) I’ve also noticed that, now that I have take up my proverbial quill again, my process of writing is a little different than it used to be; again, rusty out of use muscles might have something to do with it, but it could also be a change, who knows? My process has evolved and changed so much since Ye Olden Days when I first starting treating writing as a job and a vocation as opposed to a dream. (It’s also why I hate process questions, mine is rarely ever the same, especially when it comes to writing short stories.) I do like this story and like where it’s going; I really like the idea of my four unsuspecting, slightly drunk and high college students out visiting a supposedly haunted location in the Manchac Swamp (putting some of those New Orleans-area history wormholes I’ve gone down since the pandemic started) and I think it could be a terrific (if macabre) little story. And it’s something I am actually writing, not something I’m just thinking about. The story will probably always be special to me for being the first thing I wrote and finished after the surgery.
I’ve also been watching, with no small amount of amusement, as the right wing anger cancellation machine (you know, the thing they bitch about from the left while doing themselves because they are nothing if not the biggest hypocritical pieces of shit in recent American and world history) has decided to come for Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. I have enjoyed so many cruel laughs at their expense over the last few months! Why stop there? Why not come for Beyonce, too? They never learn, do they? Their refusal to look at factual history–even factual recent history–showed itself when Ron DeSantis chose to follow the Southern Baptist playbook and come for Disney to bolster his dead-before-it-started presidential campaign? The Mouse isundefeated, and remains undefeated. Taylor Swift is the biggest pop culture star in the world right now whose fans absolutely worship her–and her fans are of all ages, and they protect her from scavenging low-life scum whenever and wherever someone tries to come for her. The irony that this romance is actually the culmination of every Taylor Swift longing teenaged love songs–she’s dating the star football player AT LAST–does not Fox or Newsmax in their quest to humble Taylor Swift, who is laughing at them as she sits on her piles of gold and the love and admiration of millions around the globe. I wouldn’t call myself a Swiftie1–I do like her music, and listen to it occasionally, but it’s not my go-to–but I do admire her as an artist, a businesswoman, and a person. She stands up for the underprivileged, she supports queer people and queer rights, and above all else she fights misogyny (which a lot of the right-wing hate is predicated upon) whenever she encounters it, calls it out, and is not afraid to go to court to fight it, either. The way she outsmarted the douche who bought her original masters deserves a five minute standing ovation.
I may not know a lot about Ms. Swift, but I do know better than to fuck with her or activate her fans. And frankly, the profas (if the the left is antifa, then it stands to reason that their position makes the right profa, right?) are soooo stupid and blindly wrapped up in their cult of Golden Calf worship that their rage makes me like her all the more. I listened to her Red album in the car on my way home from the office yesterday and it’s still a banger (“Red” is my favorite Swift song, don’t @ me), and I’ll probably be listening to more of her music in the coming days as well. I also love that the derangement extends to rooting against the Kansas City Chiefs in the upcoming Super Bowl–which means they have to root for San Francisco.
(laughs evilly in gay.)
And on that note, I need to head into the spice mines and start paying the bills. Have a lovely Wednesday and you never know–I may pop in again later.
Although I did start writing an essay during the pandemic that I called “A Sixty-Year Old Swiftie.” ↩︎
Ah, Monday morning back to work blog today. I have to leave early as I have a PT appointment at four today, but that’s okay. I also have to run errands, and I will already be uptown, which is terrific. (Mail and make a little groceries, for those who are unsure what I mean by errands.) I’m usually in a good mood when I finish PT (it’s the endorphins), so hopefully that will make running the errands in the cold a little easier. It should get up to the sixties by the time I leave the office today. Parades begin next weekend (not this coming one, but the next) and I am not even remotely in the slightest prepared to deal with all the aggravation, exhaustion and fun that comes from living inside the box1, as we call it here. While it does mean having easy access to parades and catching throws, it also makes navigating every day life incredibly difficult.
Sigh.
I feel very rested this morning, after a weekend spent feeling tired most of the time. I managed to do very little this weekend other than rest and cleaning and chores. Maybe the strength PT on Friday wore me out far more than I had originally suspected; after all, it’s the first taxing kind of exercise I’ve done in over a year. (I also have to leave work a little early today as well for a session later this afternoon.) I didn’t get much done this weekend, sadly, but I consider progress on the house to be progress of a kind at any rate. I also started reading Lina Chern’s Play the Fool, which I am enjoying; the voice is quite original and delightful. We also watched another episode of Lupin last night, which is also quite good.
I was struggling there for a moment to remember what precisely I did yesterday while Paul took calls and worked upstairs; I just remembered that I spent most of the day finishing the original BBC series of Brideshead Revisited. I can see why the show was so popular back when it originally aired and why it own so many Emmys–Americans have always thought British productions of anything to be vastly superior to anything produced here–and it did remind me a lot of Downtown Abbey, which also led me to wonder why Americans are so fascinated by the British upper class. I know I certainly used to be, but my lack of knowledge regarding Brideshead seemed like a missing cultural touchstone for me, and now that I’ve seen it–yes, I can see how influential it was. There would be no Downton without Brideshead, but the original is far less soapy than the later show….and of course, Upstairs Downstairs was truly the original Downton, a soapy show about a wealthy family’s ups and downs as well as their servants. I don’t imagine the occasional thoughts I would have while watching–deep criticisms of the class system and the disproportionate division of wealth in British society of the time; how it would have sucked to have been one of their servants–would have occurred to me had I watched when I was younger. I also felt that there was more to the relationship between Charles and Sebastian than mere friendship; which is another thing it has in common with Saltburn; an ambiguous love relationship between two men. I was also rather disappointed that Sebastian disappeared from the show about halfway through so it could focus on Charles and Julia, which I felt was giving Sebastian, whom the show really centered at first, very short shrift indeed. I will go ahead and read the book–my education in Evelyn Waugh was sorely neglected–but I feel that watching the series has given me enough grounding to explore Saltburn again through that experience.
It’s chilly again this morning but nothing terribly unbearable, thank the Lord. I do feel rather good this morning, and hope I can ride that feeling through the work day, into PT and making groceries again after work tonight. This is an actual full work week, of which there have been few for quite some time for me, so we’ll see how I feel when Friday rolls around again, shall we?
It’s been an interesting and slightly uneven January so far, bit of an up and down month, in all honesty. Life is always a rollercoaster, isn’t it? Ups and downs and never certain when the next curve or sudden drop is coming, all at great speeds that sometimes never give you a chance to catch your breath. There’s nothing life can give us that we can’t handle, as Scotty always says, it’s how you handle it that matters. I’ve always found that emotional responses or reactions are often counterproductive and exhausting, and if you can somehow switch the emotional component down or off or mute it so you can engage your logical brain and figure out how to handle it and what you need to do next to start the getting through it process might not be the absolute healthiest way to handle anything, but it has always worked for me and is why people always think I am so good in a crisis–I am very good at ignoring the macro while focusing on the micro. The problem with that, of course, is that you never go back and process the feelings and emotions; they’ve been securely buried for the moment and inevitably, that results in me thinking oh I don’t need to process that after all!
When in fact I really do need to.
That’s been happening a lot for me since the concurrent COVID pandemic/shutdown coupled with me turning sixty and eventually losing my mom. I’ve been thinking about things from my past a lot more than I ever allowed myself to, identifying the lessons I’ve taken from bad experiences and how I turned that into I don’t ever want to feel like this again s so I will never do that again which may not have been exactly healthy. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten over that sense of not belonging anywhere when I was a kid, which was partly being a gay kid (I didn’t know that specifically, but I also knew I was different from the other kids) as well as having some chemical issues in my brain (ADHD, anxiety, etc.), added to the sense of not belonging because I was from Alabama and living in Chicago. New Orleans was, in fact, the first place I’ve ever felt like I belonged, and that’s part of the reason I love it here so much. There wasn’t any single one thing to blame; I always thought it was this or that or the other, but rather the combination of everything that made my childhood so incredibly difficult for me (and pretty much my life until about thirty-three or so).
I think the real reason–I was asked this on the young adult panel this weekend–I write about teenagers is I am still trying to make sense of my own experiences. I also think that my past is also filled with very rich material for my writing. I learned that with both Bury Me in Shadows and #shedeservedit–writing about things that I have had trouble understanding in my own life fictionally has not only made my work better but also has helped me process things in a healthier way than I ever have before.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader.
“The box” means inside the parade route for Carnival; the box being formed by Canal, Napoleon, St. Charles and Tchoupitoulas. Once parades have started you cannot cross any of those streets, and yes, I live just inside the box on the St. Charles side of the rectangle. ↩︎
Friday morning and I am up way early for PT this morning. It feels warmer this morning–it’s in the fifties–but it’s not cold in the Lost Apartment, which is nice. I haven’t slept well now for about two nights running. My sleeping pills are missing–I couldn’t find them last night–which means they were probably left out on a counter and Sparky the Demon thought “toy!” and now I have to really spend some time trying to find them. I’ll make it through today relatively okay, I suppose, since it’s a work at home day, but after PT I have a couple of errands and after that I’ll be home for the day. I did chores last night when I got home, so the kitchen isn’t messy this morning and once I get back. here, it’ll be relatively easy to get the downstairs back under control and launch into the weekend. I have events all day tomorrow on ZOOM for the Bold Strokes Book-a-thon, too. Paul didn’t get home until after I went to bed last night, so I spent most of the evening (after doing some cleaning, which was wise and I am very grateful that I didn’t blow it off) playing with Sparky and watching some television. I watched the new episode of Percy Jackson and the Olympians, which I enjoyed, and then watched some documentaries on Youtube about history–mostly Byzantine, with some French and Austrian thrown in for good measure before going to bed relatively early. I did rest–my body feels very relaxed–but my mind never really shut off completely or for long.
The Lefty and Edgar nominations came out this week, and I have so many friends nominated on either or both lists! It’s always such a pleasure to see friends nominated for awards. It’s also a great opportunity to pick out some more great books to add to the list. I am also delighted to see Rob Osler nominated for Best Short Story (a queer nominee with a queer story!) and there’s another queer story nominated for the Lillian Jackson Braun Award, a book I actually blurbed: The Body in the Back Garden by Mark Waddell from Crooked Lane, so yay for a gay cozy being nominated! It always does my heart good to see queer writers being recognized by the mainstream, which is the kind of progress we’ve been wanting to see for decades. The categories for both the Leftys and the Edgars are stacked this year, which just goes to show how deep the bench actually is in crime fiction–and so many great books that weren’t nominated for either.
I blurbed several books this past year that are coming out now, so I want to go back and reread those so I can blog about them–not only Mark’s book but the new Rob Osler, Cirque du Slay and the new Margot Douaihy, Blessed Water. I also haven’t started reading another book quite yet–I was dragging too hard every night when I got home, really, to do any reading or engage my brain as much as I would like.
I think I may need to read out of my genre next, perhaps some horror? Paul Tremblay? Elizabeth Hand? I have so many great books in my pile, which is a delightful problem to complain about, but the struggle is real. How do I decide what to read when there are so many great books waiting for me to escape into? Maybe I should try to read just the books currently nominated for awards? Heavy sigh. Decisions, decisions.
It looks like we are having yet another hard freeze this evening, so hurray for not leaving the house for the rest of the day once I get home this morning. Sheesh.
And on that note, I am going to get cleaned up and head to PT. Have a great Friday, Constant Reader!
Wednesday morning in the Lost Apartment, where it is a staggering 39 degrees outside. Brrr! But I slept pretty well (even if I didn’t want to get up), and my mind is slowly but surely coming back to life. Yesterday wasn’t a bad day at all, but I was out of sorts and off-track for pretty much the entire day, because my routine was disrupted when I got to work and so…yeah. I did run my errands on the way home from work last night and got home to a needy Sparky, so I had to spend some time playing with him and then transformed my lap into a cat bed for a little while. Tomorrow morning I have to get up super-early for PT–which I am not looking forward to, and of course there’s a department meeting on Friday morning, that I think I’ll go into the office for despite it being my at-home day and having the ability to call in for it. I have some on-line events Saturday for the January Bold Strokes bookathon, which I should post more about, and then the rest of the weekend is mine.
I did some more research into a story I am writing last night, and yes, I actually started writing the story. I’m writing about Julia Brown, the “witch” of Manchac Swamp who worked as the healer in a small town inside the swamp and along the lake shore, which was only accessible by railroad. Frenier was a small community, and it was completely destroyed by the 1915 hurricane; all that is left of it is the cemetery and it’s only accessible by boat now. I’ve always wanted to write about the 1915 hurricane since I first learned of it–it came up when I was down a rabbit-hole about the Filipino settlements on Lake Borgne, which were also destroyed in the 1915 hurricane, which led me to reading about Frenier, and the so-called curse of Aunt Julia Brown. (I do wish I’d known about all this before I wrote a Sherlock story set in 1916; no mention of the previous year’s destruction in that story is odd but maybe unnecessary; it didn’t impact the plot of the story at all, but…if I set another Sherlock story in that same time period I need to address that elephant in the room.)
I also went down another research wormhole last night, too–inspired by Mary & George–about George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham and his close relationship not only with James I but with his son, Charles I…although the relationship between Villiers and Charles I wasn’t quite the same kind of erotic friendship as Villiers enjoyed with the senior Stuart. Buckingham was also one of the real historical figures that appeared in Dumas’ The Three Musketeers, which I still want to retell one day from the point of view of Milady deWinter. It’s such a fascinating period, really, and the clothes! MonDieu, the clothes! I’ve always been fascinated by Cardinal Richelieu, and really need to get over my fear of writing about a historical period and just buckle down and write that damned book, don’t I? Sigh. I also need to get back to both Chlorine and Muscles, too.
Heavy heaving sigh.
But I am also starting to feel like I am settling back into my normal, every day life, and I feel better than I have in years. That cloudy feeling in my brain seems to be gone, and I am adapting to getting back up early in the morning without much hassle; I suspect the sleeping pills are working their magic and sending me into a deep healthy sleep every night, which pays off in being both awake and lucid in the morning. I’ve also got some blog entries to finish writing–my thoughts on Saltburn, because I know everyone is just waiting to hear what I have to say about it, and some analysis of the most recent chapter of the graphic novel Heartstopper, both of which are destined to be queer cultural artifacts.
And I hope to finish reading Tara Laskowski’s The Weekend Retreat before the weekend, too. I should have spent some time with it last night, but it was after six when I got home and by the time I was finished with putting stuff away and quality Sparky time and writing, it was later and so I just went down the Villiers wormhole. I also watched the final episode of season 2 of War of the Worlds, and am officially tapping out now. Not only was the shark jumped, the story became preposterous. I thought it might be a bit more interesting and intriguing once I realized the direction they were going in, but no. I also forgot part one of the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City was airing last night, so I’ll be catching up on that tonight after reading. I get to go straight home from the office tonight, so fingers crossed that I’ll get some good reading time in before I shut my mind off and dig into some reality television.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader, and who knows? I may be back later.
Monday morning and back to the office blog. I have my final PT for dexterity today, before I take a couple of weeks off before starting the strength PT, which will be the final step of getting recovered from the surgery. It seems like it’s been forever, but the truth is I injured the arm initially almost a year ago–so I have been dealing with this for almost a year, and it will be well over a year by the time I finally get through the recovery. It’s taking me a moment to get used to not wearing a brace, frankly–but god DAMN I am so glad to not have to wear that fucking thing anymore. The weather is supposed to be horrific today–heavy winds and flooding rains–which I am not terribly excited about, in all honesty, since I’ll be out and around in it. But I slept really well last night, and am feeling awake and good this morning so far, so we’ll see how the rest of the day goes, shall we?
I read more of Tara Laskowski’s The Weekend Retreat yesterday morning over my coffee, and it is truly addictive and mesmerizing. I am having the best time reading it, and shouldn’t have an issue spending about an hour or so with it again today. I also did some more filing and organizing and cleaning yesterday, as well as made dinner and some other things for the week. There’s another load of dishes that needs doing tonight when I get home from work and PT and everything else, but if I manage to stay caught up on these things, maybe the three day weekend won’t be as disrupted by needing to clean. I’ve narrowed down the stories I have on hand for the possible anthology submissions, so they’ll require reviewing again in addition to revising and editing. I watched some more War of the Worlds, which is interesting, and then I watched a bit of the Golden Globes before I went to bed–you can tell how much I cared about them by the fact that I couldn’t tell you who won any of them, really. I used to care about awards shows, but I don’t anymore. There are rarely any surprises, and there are so many of them now…by the time the Oscars roll around, it’s relatively easy to figure out who’s going to win most everything.
I can’t believe it’s already Carnival, too (but am loving that it’s also king cake season). Parades will be starting in a few weeks, and the Australian Open, and the figure skating championships, and the Festivals are on deck…Lord. I do get tired just thinking about it, in all honesty. But at least the brace is gone. It’s taking some getting used to–not having it on–and periodically I’ll experience some new sensation in the arm, but that’s also the nerves getting used to not having the brace support anymore. Thank God for the new meds, because I’d be a ball of anxiety by now otherwise.
I also saw the previews for a new show I am rather excited about–Mary & George, which is about George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, and his ambitious mother, who essentially groomed her handsome son to charm and seduce King James I (he of the King James Version of the Bible, no less), who preferred the company of men and had male favorites at his court. I’ve been meaning to track down a copy of Antonia Fraser’s biography of him, just to see how she handles the questionable sexuality of England’s first Stuart king, or if she erases or elides it. There were several queer kings of England–Richard I, Edward II, James I, Queen Anne–and I’ve also seen things questioning the sexuality of William III, too. (James was also the son of Mary Queen of Scots.) I can’t think of as many French kings that were queer; of the top of my head I can only think of Henri III and Louis XIV’s brother Phillippe duc d’Orléans, Monsieur. It’s also early and I’m not caffeinated enough, frankly, to face the day or put any more thought into gay French royalty. Anyway, one of the guys from Red White and Royal Blue (Nicholas Galitzine) is playing George Villiers, the handsomest man of his age, and if you remember your Three Musketeers, the British minister who was in love with Anne of Austria, Queen of France.
George got around, apparently.
The seventeenth is also one of my favorite centuries.
And on that note, I should head into the spice mines. We’re going to have some bad weather today–potential hail and tornadoes–as well as heavy rains. Hopefully I’ll be able to get to PT this afternoon and then home safely. Have a great Monday, CR, and I may see you again later.
And here we are on the third day of the new year, and I am starting to feel more like me again, which is great. I did get tired yesterday afternoon at work (getting up at five for physical therapy truly sucks), but not as bad as I was last week–last week was horrifying, how tired I felt; literally like I needed a jump start or something. It’s also pay-the-bills day, and it has rained all night, which has made it a little warmer outside than it has been. The rain is supposed to let up by noonish, but the colder snap seems to be over for a little while, at least.
Yesterday when I got home I wasn’t super-exhausted, and I did some chores. I finished the laundry I’d started on New Year’s, and also did a load of dishes. I finished reading Glory Be by Danielle Arsenault (more on that later), but Paul was working upstairs once he got home, so I just sat in my chair and watched some documentaries on Youtube. Nothing interesting or new, just some more folklore and legends of the South on the “Dixie After Dark” channel–and all the stories are of murder and ghosts and vengeance and brutality…the South the Lost Cause folks don’t like to mention because it isn’t genteel enough to fit their narrative of a “lost civilization now gone with the wind”, and these stories kind of show up the lies that false narrative creates–like Aunt Jenny, whose husband was strung up in front of her and her children by the Home Guard, and made her sons swear on his corpse that they wouldn’t rest until the men who hanged their father (who opposed the war–Southerners opposed the war?) were all dead. And she got her revenge too, and used the skull of the captain to drink water from for the rest of her life. Learning the history of northwest Alabama in greater detail over the last few years has opened my eyes to a lot of things–and given tons more ideas for things to write.
Which is exactly what I need, right? More things to write?
But overall, it was a nice, relaxing evening and I can’t get over how awake and alive and like a Gregalicious I feel this morning. It’s been a hot minute, you know, and I’m glad to see my decision to not be a slug as much as I would like in the new year is already working out for me. I see my surgeon on Saturday and hopefully can say goodbye to this goddamned brace once and for all. I did also work on the book a bit last night, which also felt good to be getting back into that groove again. I can head straight home from work after my time in the office today, and hopefully will be able to do some writing in addition to cleaning and organizing. I cleared out a shelf in the cabinets last night, and am going to use it for some things I store in the bottom cabinet (espresso machine, milk frother, coffee grinder) which will open up some more room on that side of the kitchen.
I’m not sure what I am going to read next, but the TBR pile is chock full of great books by terrific writers, so I won’t be disappointed by anything I choose. I was thinking about revisiting Larry Kramer’s Faggots, thinking that it might be interesting to revisit it now with the perspective of being in my sixties and looking back at those wild and crazy 1970’s in Manhattan and on Fire Island…but if I am going to do that, I also need to revisit its flip side, Andrew Holleran’s Dancer from the Dance, which I’ve also not read in decades. Or I could just read another mystery. So many choices, so many options.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back later, most likely.
Good morning and happy New Year’s Eve eve. It’s cold again in New Orleans this morning–a mere forty-one degrees–which will make today’s errands a challenge, or at least something I will want to get over with quickly. Mail, prescription, and groceries will be dealt with as quickly as possible so I can get back into the warmth of the apartment.
Yesterday I actually felt like myself for the first time since the surgery, which was an absolutely lovely thing. I slept a ridiculously long time Thursday night, and felt like I’d caught up on my sleep adequately. I woke up at seven this morning, laid around in bed for another quarter of an hour before rising and digging into coffee and breakfast pastries. I did do a lot of straightening and catching up on household chores yesterday after my work-at-home duties were completed. I started watching the Cotton Bowl last night, but Paul came downstairs at half-time, and we watched this week’s Monarch: Legacy of Monsters (Paul slept) and Reacher. I also started reading Glory Be by Danielle Arsenault yesterday and I am enjoying it so far. I am probably going to have bowl games on after I get home from the errands while I continue to read and do some clean-up around here.
I was also pretty pleased to check the final score of the Cotton Bowl to see that Missouri–who only lost to LSU and Georgia this year–had rallied to defeat Ohio State 14-3. GO MIZZOU!
Tomorrow is the last day of 2023, and there’s no telling what 2024 will bring. It’s an election year (groan)–which of course means my rights as an American are up for a vote again–and also means that it could be just as horrible as 2016 and 2020. But I am going to go into 2024 with my head up and my Wonder Woman bracelets on to deflect any and all negativity that comes my way. I want to have a good year this year, and I do believe if I keep focusing on positivity, and keeping a positive mindset, that I can have a positive outcome for the year. Overall, 2023 was difficult personally but excellent professionally; the excellent professional developments, both at my day job and as a writer, made dealing with the grief somewhat easier on me emotionally. I’m sure the new and proper medications are working their magic within the brain synapses that don’t fire properly, which has had a lot to do with my feeling more centered these last few weeks, and sleeping so well. I do have a lot of PT to get through yet–we haven’t even started trying to strengthen the left biceps again, and that’s going to be harder and more painful than the dexterity PY, but I am also hoping to ride that into going back to the gym regularly. Paul and I are also committed to eating better in the new year, which means more ground chicken and turkey and less red meat; and more fat-free products than not, including my creamer. (I also have a recipe for making my own, which would be healthier since less chemicals, but I also don’t know how long that will be good after making, either.) I’ve started making turkey sandwiches to take for lunch at the office this past week, and I am going to try to keep that going. I do have some unhealthy fare still that will need to be consumed, which I plan to start easing out throughout January.
I also feel pretty good this morning. I got some great books for research this week–a bio of 90’s porn star Joey Stefano, Creole: The History and Legacy of Louisiana’s Free People of Color, edited by Sybil Klein1, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism by Kevin M. Kruse, and some fiction as well–Hayley Scrivenor’s Dirt Town and Penny Mickelbury’s Two Wings to Fly Away, and having spent a lot of yesterday pruning and rearranging the books–I still need to work on the laundry room–I am very excited to start digging into my TBR pile. I think I am getting more books today, too–I think some stuff arrived yesterday at the post office–and I am looking forward to delving into those as well. I was also looking through the research books I’ve acquired over the years with book projects in mind, and there’s a lot. I also spent some time brainstorming free-form last night, and of course, came up with great titles for books or stories and some more ideas for both. Heavy sigh–the last thing I need is more ideas, really.
And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. I have those errands to run and some more clean-up around the house that needs to be done, and I do want to spend some time writing and catching up on emails. Have a terrific Saturday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later, you never know.
Despite being published by LSU Press, one always has to read anything about Louisiana history carefully, because so much of it is rumor, legend and made up. But the free people of color before the war have always interested me, and I want to know more about them. ↩︎
