Category: reality TV

Double Vision

Well, 2024 was a shit show of a year, wasn’t it? Then again, haven’t they all been pretty bad since 2015 and the golden escalator? It was, however, also a year with a lot of clarity for one Gregalicious; when I woke up to certain realities about life in general and started centering my own self in my life. So, for personal growth I’d say it was a good year; as for everything else in the world, maybe not so much. I didn’t publish anything in 2024; one of the few years since I started writing professionally where I actually had nothing–not even a short story–on my publications list. I did no volunteer work anywhere for anyone, and I just focused on my own recovery, my own self-discovery, and my own investigation into who I am and why I am who I am. It was a year in which I continued looking back, something that began in 2023 when Mom died, and came to a lot of realizations about myself and my history–and made peace with a lot of things that used to make me angry to remember and think about. I can reflect on some of those things now and not get angry. This was also my first full year on my anti-anxiety medication and the loss of anxiety from my life (and everything that branched out from the anxiety) has made such an amazing difference. It’s nice not having my anxiety controlling everything I do, and it’s also very interesting to see how many automatic coping mechanisms I had put into place to manage the anxiety, or at least keep it sort of controlled–especially when it comes to driving.

This was the year I turned against the legacy media, and frankly, I’ve not missed it in the least. I was worried about the election, not going to lie about that, but I also thought it was incredibly shitty they all decided to go with the “Biden is too old” narrative Trump and Fox were pushing on everyone, reporting it breathlessly like it was actually news while completely ignoring the fact that his opponent was a sun-downing narcissistic piece of shit. There have been two different sets of reporting on politics since the 1990s: the lies and demagoguery of Fox News, followed by the legacy media’s reporting on the lies Fox told like they were absolute facts. The positive glee with which the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and MSNBC reported, rubbing their hands with excitement as they basically committed election interference for the Right yet again, shivving President Biden in the process; has anyone done a wellness check on that shit stain George Clooney yet? He’s managed to keep a low profile since he did Trump’s bidding for him. I do not miss legacy media, and hope they all circle the drain and fail. Maybe then, and only then, will we get the kind of media we deserve in this country and not the failing legacy media. The way they are slanting the Luigi Mangione story is also out-of-touch and offensive; why hasn’t the New York Times sent a reporter to a rust belt diner to see how those MAGA voters feel about Mangione? Oh, no, we don’t care about those viewpoints anymore. No, the legacy media thought they’d help MAGA return to power and then lead the resistance, like they thought they did in the first term. Newsflash: you didn’t.

Has there ever been a pundit class that believed the smoke they blew up their own asses like our current batch? Well, I am not watching them anymore. I follow some pundits on Youtube that I enjoy, but to be honest…I don’t feel like I’m missing anything, to tell you the truth, Constant Reader. I’ve always loved and cared about my country, even as I looked at it very clearly as more and more myths fell the older I got, but I also don’t feel like I need to follow the news everyday or participate in all of the partisan, pro-corporate, pro-rich let’s turn politics into a reality show bullshit. We deserve better.

As someone who witnessed Watergate and everything that followed, I bought into the mythology of journalistic integrity and the importance of truth; wasn’t that why his creators made Superman’s secret identity a journalist? I had planned on being a journalist myself when I went to college, and my intro class was all about integrity and honesty, which I also took as gospel for years, like a fool. Why did I ever think modern journalism had left the days of yellow journalism, of Hearst and Pulitzer, behind? My naive outlook, no doubt, and belief in American mythology. Journalistic integrity–which was beaten into our heads by every sitcom that decided to have one of the characters become a reporter for the school paper–was always for sale and never could be depended upon. So I happily bid adieu to thumb-on-the-scales journalism, and Constant Reader, I am never going back.

As for other things from 2024, let’s see. I fought with my health insurance company over a medication I need for seven months, thank you for that, bottom-feeding scum-sucking health insurance companies. This affected the rest of my care, and forced me to go even further into debt in the new year for medical treatments and so forth, and I am not entirely sure when exactly I will be able to recover from this financial distress. Yay for health insurance, and the entire health care industry. But at least it was straightened out, and the medication was approved through 2030. I also got some people at the insurance company in trouble. Too bad, so sad. Womp fucking womp, trash.

There was a lot of stress for me this past year, which was made even more interesting by the change in medications. My brain didn’t experience either stress or anxiety or even depression this year; my moods stayed fairly level all through the mess, but it definitely weighed on me subconsciously, just like delaying dealing with the holidays for a year didn’t really work the way I wanted other than pushing it back a year. Well done, dumb-shit. Ah, well.

What a strange, strange year it’s been.

And on that note, we’ll be hurtling into the abyss of 2025 at midnight. So, until tomorrow morning, I’m heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely lovely eve of the New Year, Constant Reader.

We’ve Got Tonight

Who needs tomorrow? Well, it’s Christmas tomorrow, Mr. Seger, so I’d say we could all use a little Christmas this year, couldn’t we?

So it’s Christmas Eve in the Lost Apartment, and Sparky and I are the only things stirring. Paul is sound asleep, and I am going to let him sleep as long as he wants. I am going to order our pizza around twelve, I think, and I am going to go to the gym in a little bit first, methinks. I am going to take today and tomorrow off from anything other than light chores (unless I get a wild hair) and just read and relax and watch things on television and cuddle with Sparky. I can’t think of a better way to spend this holiday, can you? Sparky seems to have that same secret superpower of inducing sleep in us by simply cuddling up and going to sleep on or near either of us that Scooter had. I took two short naps this past weekend, and I blame that entirely on having Sparky sleeping on me–I never take naps! When I got home from work, he’d been cuddling with Paul off and on all day, and he spent the evening going back and forth between us. We finished The Day of the Jackal yesterday night, which was really fun

I was correct about yesterday being an easy day at the office. We were on a skeleton crew, most of the managers and supervisors were out, and thus I was able to focus and get a lot of my work done. It was marvelous. I was able to leave early, and when I got home I even figured out what short story to write for this queer anthology I’ve been invited to participate in, and I’m working on this other one for another anthology I’ve agreed to write for. I am going to take some characters from another project and write a short story about them…I think it’ll work, and then I can just plug the short story into the longer manuscript, which seems rather genius to me. I mean, why not make your work work for you? I’m a firm believer in that–even if I always worry about recycling plots. This morning I am going to clean the kitchen, drink my coffee, and read for a bit. I am intending to have a very relaxing two days off. Maybe I’ll do some work, maybe I won’t. I did finish my Substack essay on the blatant and horrific racism in the original edition of The Hardy Boys adventure The Mark on the Door, too.

The public theater of the Luigi Mangione trial–which is going to be reported on breathlessly by a media completely out of touch with their audience and will probably last throughout 2025, serving as a distraction for the people who cannot with the news from Washington anymore; Romans had their circuses to entertain the populace and keep them from rising; we have our modern media. What’s even odder to me is the disconnect between Luigi’s followers and the vastly smaller amount of law-and-order proponents (mostly in the media, for the record) castigating and moralizing about “condoning murder.” I have never been a fan of scolds or people who primly climb into their saddle atop their moral high horse and lecture everyone else about their moral failings. For the record, I do not respond to being lectured or scolded or condescended to very well–especially by people I do not know on the Internet. I don’t owe you space, I don’t owe you a platform, and you do not know me well enough to talk to me like you’re my mother. She’s dead, for one thing, and I didn’t even let her talk to me like that. You think you matter more to me than my mother? Arrogant much? Maybe have all the seats before coming at me as a fucking straight white woman of a certain age? I blocked two people on Facebook yesterday–one a priggish morally superior straight white woman who came onto my page determined to make the stupid faggot aware of her moral superiority; the other a gay man I’ve never met who did the same. I do my usual test of moral superiority with other strangers that I always do: hmm, what do I think you were doing during the HIV/AIDS crisis when gay men were dying by the thousands? And is you’re so law-and-order, that means you were probably being horrible about ACT UP and all the other in-your-face activism that needed to be done back then, some of which broke laws, which means you folded your arms and scolded rather than actually doing anything while people are dying.

Kind of like you are defending health insurance companies. You cannot be morally superior if you are defending the death panels. To me, that means you’d be a German who turned away during the holocaust and pretended it wasn’t happening, even though you lived in a village near a death camp and could smell it.

Also, slavery was legal in this country until 1865. So you would have supported that? Jim Crow was also the law, Ms. Black-and-White-Binary, and so were the eradication of the natives of this land and the Japanese internment camps in the 1940s and I could go on and on and on. Your lack of nuance is very telling.

And for the record, I never said I condoned or condemned the murder; all I’ve ever said is that I understood the mentality behind it because I have been there myself. I don’t share my own horror stories about health insurance–because all these people do is fold their arms and wrinkle their brows (think Susan Collins) and scold anyway. It’s also amazing to me that people will barge into one of your posts when they do not know you, do not know your situation, do not know your history, to smugly inform you how morally superior they are to you. With that fucking profile picture, bitch? Right before Christmas? Literally, go fuck yourself with barbed wire, skanky bitch, and take the morally superior gay man with you. It’s very easy to judge people (I’m doing it right now) without knowing the full story, but I also shouldn’t have to explain why I feel the way I do in order for other people to consider my opinions valid–that’s dehumanizing, and if you came running up to me at a conference or in a public space and started screaming at me (which is basically what you are doing, dear Ms. Morality), I wouldn’t stand for it, and I will not stand for it on-fucking-line. 1

For me, this case fascinates me, and what is even more fascinating is how this is being reported. There’s definitely been a slant to the coverage of the case, and there has been since it first happened. It was very shocking–a CEO being mowed down like a dog in the street on his way to an investors’ meeting–and very daring, very well-planned. It was, very much, intended as a political assassination; a protest against our incredibly broken health insurance industry. The fact that it was the CEO of United Healthcare immediately raised my eyebrows; they aren’t my insurer, but I work in a clinic for the under or uninsured and believe me, I have never heard a single person with United Healthcare who actually liked their insurance carrier. It’s always horror stories, and believe me, I’ve witnessed some myself. United Healthcare is garbage, it’s expensive, it has high deductibles, and they refuse coverage over 30% of the time.2 Their clients have no recourse, either; none of us do when our health insurance companies deny coverage (a favorite of mine is the bait-and-switch; “we’ll cover all of this, no worries” only to find out later that “oh, no, you owe for this and this and this and this.” (That was my experience with my shoulder surgery last year.) I had a surgery that was, over all, about 95% completely covered by my insurance–but that 5% almost bankrupted me. So, miss me with your “sanctity of life” bullshit. Brian Thompson had no concerns about the sanctity of life of his clients, to the tune of billions of dollars of profit last year. I didn’t cry or feel bad when Reagan or Kissinger or Limbaugh died; I won’t feel bad when Anita Bryant or Maggie Gallagher or Donald Wildmon dies. The media also tried to paint Thompson as a “family man”–not that he was estranged from his wife and kids–and couldn’t find any on-line pictures of the family, which is kind of telling. Who doesn’t have at least one family picture on-line?

No one deserves to be murdered in cold blood, but our system is so corrupted and rotten to the core that most people feel helpless in the face of it–that’s the real story no one is reporting in this case, which is also very telling about the news media, how they report stories, and the narratives they try to shape–and feel like they need to step up for the good of everyone. (They were the ones who convicted the Menendez Brothers, after all.) Rather than think pieces and editorials about how “horrible it is that people are cheering for a murderer”–why isn’t anyone exploring or reporting or even considering why people are cheering for a murderer? Everyone was rooting for him before anyone knew what he looked like, and the fact that he turned out to be attractive? Made it a much harder sell for the media, so of course they ran with that–people only support him because he’s attractive, which again, is one-dimensional and offensive to the core. Ever since I walked away from legacy media last July, it’s so much easier to see the narratives and the spins they go for–both sides, really. MSNBC’s breathless reporting, along with their butt-buddy CNN, on the narrative from Fix and OANN and Trump that Biden was senile and dying ensured a Trump election, and I said it at the time and that’s why I walked away from it. The great irony that I agree with the right that it’s all “fake news” has not escaped me. They were right, but only half-right; they think Fox is honest, and they aren’t. The copaganda perp walk? How much money and how many resources did the NYPD waste on their “manhunt,” which accomplished nothing because he was caught by a tip called in? So, that was absolutely copaganda: see how seriously we are taking this, oligarchs? Keep approving our massive budgets which are a waste of money and time. Um, you didn’t fucking catch him, and it’s interesting that the NYPD will mobilize for a rich man’s murder and divert everything to catching the killer, while crimes go unsolved and uncared about on the daily in New York City.

We should be talking about about the health care insurance scandal in this country, and talking about how to fill loopholes and make insurers pay claims, rather than “you only support him because he’s hot.” I’m fucking sixty-three years old. Just because someone is hot doesn’t mean I either like them, support them, or want to fuck them (Zachary Levi? Mark Wahlberg? Nick Bosa?). So stop fucking condescending to me.

And don’t come on my social media scolding me. It won’t end well for you.

And on that note, I am going to get into the holiday spirit by going to my easy chair with Sparky and watching Auntie Mame, my favorite Christmas movie.

  1. The difference between me and so many people is I am exactly who I am on line. It’s not a persona. I don’t reveal everything because I only choose to share certain aspects of my life and who I am, and I don’t have to, either. I am not braver on line than I am in person; if anything, I tolerate more bullshit on line than I ever would in person. ↩︎
  2. How awful for me to empathize with all the people going bankrupt paying for health insurance coverage that doesn’t cover anything! How fucking dare me! That man’s life was sacred. ↩︎

Sweet Magnolia Blossom

Work at home Friday and was Mercury in retrograde yesterday? Is it still? My work laptop died yesterday morning when I tried signing into it after I got to work and it took most of the morning for me to get a new replacement one. So, I spent the morning without a computer–which meant outside of seeing my clients, I didn’t really have the ability to do much of anything. I finally got the new one around lunch time, but my day was already off and so was my energy, and since my routine had been disrupted, I had trouble getting back on track. Finally, I just made a list while I was eating lunch and that seemed to work, even though I still felt off all day. The replacement laptop (which is just temporary until they fix the old one) also had some issues with staying connected to my scanner, which was incredibly frustrating and resulted in my admin work taking far longer than it usually does, and I had a lot of documents to scan into patient files. The frustration was real, and I was exhausted when I got home. My brain was basically non-functional by the time I got home, and I actually fell sound asleep in my easy chair around nine-thirty. I didn’t get anything done once I was home–worn out from the endless frustration of the day–and didn’t even remember to charge my phone when I went to bed. I did manage to watch Real Housewives of Salt Lake City (which is lit this season and definitely my favorite of these shows at the moment), though, since that required little to no energy on my part. I hope to get a lot done today, both day job and Gregalicious wise; and we’re going to Costco later after I am done with work duties. (Need to make a list!)

But I slept very well last night, and woke up feeling pretty rested this morning, which is a good thing. The entire place is a disaster area, and I never managed to do anything about the dishes accumulating in the sink and now it’s of course out of control. Heavy heaving sigh. Even my desk is piled high with things that need to be put away. It feels chilly, and per the weather the high will only reach sixty degrees here today. I think I am going to walk to the gym tomorrow morning and get started back up with that again, and hopefully today will be a great clean and organize day for the house. Christmas is coming, and I am really not feeling it very much this year, to be honest, and haven’t for a few years. Paul and I decided to not do gifts again this year–we are divorcing ourselves from the capitalist holiday by refusing to spend much money observing it (we’re going to go see Babygirl in the theater on Christmas day), and I have to say I am gradually growing more radical and anti-capitalist by the day (so much for that you get conservative as you get older bullshit; I grew up as a conservative and my adult hood has been mostly about shedding that foul and utterly inhuman methodology. Profits over people, corporations are people but living breathing humans are not–I could go on and on talking about the class war in this country. I am a radicalized Paw Paw, I guess? I did have a client this week whose birth year was 2006–which was highly traumatizing, and would have been worse if I cared about being old. It was more of a shock to me that kids born after Katrina are eighteen (and older) now. Kids born the year of Katrina will be twenty next year. Twenty years, a third of my life, has passed since that time.

I am also looking forward to some good reading time. Both of my current reads (Winter Counts and White Too Long) are fascinating and well-written, and it’s quite easy to get caught up in the narrative. I’d love to finish both this weekend so I can move on to my next reads (leaning towards Alter Ego by Alex Segura or Missing White Woman by Kellye Garrett and The Exvangelicals for my non-fiction). I do want to get caught up on Donna Andrews’ two latest over the holidays, which are rapidly approaching. Soon it will be 2025 and even more insane chaos once the new “administration” is sworn in. The next four years are going to be bad, I think–signs point to yes–but I also survived the 80s and the 90s, so maybe I am a Cher/cockroach.

We started watching Black Doves the other night, and I really enjoyed the first episode. I love Ben Whishaw, and Sara Lancashire is a treasure. I am hoping we’ll be able to spend some more time with it over the course of the weekend. We also should go back to Slow Horses, which we never went back to for some reason; I think we got interrupted by something (a surgery? A funeral? Who knows?) and just never went back to it. I do also want to read the books by Mick Herron (got to love that last name), too. Ah yes, so many books to read. Heavy sigh. I have so many treasures in my TBR pile, as well as treasures from the distant past (I would love to read Anatomy of a Murder and A Summer Place and Summer of ’42 again, plus more of Margaret Millar, Daphne du Maurier, Charlotte Armstrong, and Dorothy B. Hughes) that I will probably never get through them all.

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I hope that I have a really productive one. I’ll be back either in the morning or later today, it’s a mystery!

Gorgeous retired Olympic and world champion ice dancer Guillaume Cizeron, who also is a model.

I Care

How is it only Wednesday? It feels like it should be at least Friday by now, doesn’t it?This has been the longest week, seriously. It’s cold again this morning–in the forties–and the rain has stopped. The bipolarity of winter in New Orleans is something I don’t think I’ll ever get used to, no matter how long I live here. I don’t feel tired this morning, but the cold does make me want to get back in bed again and burrow beneath the covers. I was all kinds of warm and comfortable under my blankets this morning when the alarm went off, and by the second beep Sparky was up, trying to get my attention to get up and feed him. I don’t feel worn out, but I don’t think I’ll make it through the afternoon without my energy flagging. Ah, well.

I even left work early yesterday for my podiatrist appointment, and the good news is the toe has healed perfectly and he was most pleased with not only how quickly it healed but how properly as well. His absolute delight when he looked at was very clear. (Apparently, I am some kind of medical marvel of healing; Paul heals pretty fast, too–how many people are discharged the same day they get a hip replaced?) But that’s a good thing, and there was some callus where he’d cut the nail and the scab had been, so he got rid of that with an exacto knife (it didn’t hurt at all) and then I was done and walking out to head home. I wasn’t even super-tired when I got home, but I worked for a while and that wore me out enough to finally put it all aside and relax for the rest of the evening. I hate that I am not catching up as quickly as I would like to, but that’s life, you know?

I also keep forgetting the Super Bowl is here in February, which will make getting around the city so much easier. Yay. And of course, there’s a massive facelift (or at least temporary patchwork) being done to New Orleans to get ready for it, so you never know what detours lie in your future.

I also watched Matt Baume’s documentary about Lance Loud, the gay son of the first reality TV show, An American Family, from the early 1970s on PBS. we didn’t watch it, but everyone was talking about it, and I remember hearing about the gay oldest son, and how the marriage ended in a divorce. I think my parents thought being filmed for a television show was exploitative and kind of gross? My mother certainly wasn’t one to get into reality shows–she even stopped watching soaps about twenty years ago. I was never really sure why, but Dad has told me over and over again about how deeply conservative she was (trust me, I knew but it still came as a surprise–I always thought it was Dad and she was just trying to make him happy. Ah, the things we are led to believe as children but never really give much thought to…Dad became more conservative because she was so conservative), so I have to assume the soap thing (I used to watch them with her when I was still in school) might have had something to do with that? I know my sister stopped watching them because they encouraged you to root for adulterers. My grandmother also used to watch them when I was a kid (I actually think she was the one who got me and my sister started on Dark Shadows), but also stopped. Anyway, it was an interesting documentary, and I learned a lot more about Lance Loud than I’d ever really known before, other than he was the gay son on that show.

The tale of Robin Hoody keeps getting more and more interesting the more information that comes out about him, and I keep being more and more amused at the way the country has almost completely united (see what I did there?) behind him. That really should tell everyone about the mood of the country, shouldn’t it? I keep being amused at how the story is being reported, and how much resources the NYPD expended on searching for this person while no one is even talking about the immigrant stabbed to death by racists on the same day in the same city, and certainly the NYPD isn’t making that a top priority. I’d love to see the price tag for justice for a health insurance executive, and why the NYPD and the media made this into such an insane priority. Yes, by all means, do tell me about how everyone is equal in the eyes of the law! And of course, the more information that comes out about both shooter and victim, the more noble the shooter sounds and the more awful the victim was. The media was certainly unprepared for the way people reacted, and the fact that the media so completely misread the mood of the country makes you wonder, again, just how shitty they are at their jobs; and the right-wing grifters attempt to frame this as a right-left issue blew up their faces…as some angry Americans slowly began to realize the media they consume manipulates them to make money, and people saw it as more of a class war kind of thing that apparently everyone has just been waiting for to happen.

And that’s what has the elites and their puppet media terrified. They cannot allow the country’s division to heal and anyone who is not an elite must be persuaded to fight a culture war when the real problem is and has always been the class war the billionaires have been waging against everyone else since Ronald Reagan was sworn into office in 1981. I also think a lot of the angry people are recognizing that they voted in the rule of an oligarchy and are not very happy about that, either. For the record, I don’t have any sympathy for those who voted for this and now have regrets. Too little, too late, too bad, so sad. You voted to make people suffer, and sadly, you’re also one of those. I can’t even begin to tell you how horrible those people were before the election, and how they absolutely refused to listen to anything anyone had to say.

And the newspaper coverage and most editorial commentary has shown how deeply out of touch they actually are from everyday citizens, and how they prop up the elites at every possible turn. Imagine if the media hadn’t gotten sucked into the cult of Trump in the 1980s and started turning him into a celebrity for no good reason. Seeing them trying to lead ‘the resistance’ after doing everything they could to reelect him (so much for that “liberal media bias,” right, Richard Nixon?) is not only craven, but disgusting and people are starting to see very clearly what our “news media” actually has become: completely incompetent and not good at their jobs. The news shouldn’t be a for-profit business, just like health care should not be.

And on that note, I am bundling up and heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader, and here’s hoping the rest of this week flies by.

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Tell Her No

Saturday morning in the Lost Apartment, and all is well–at least so far, at any rate. I slept super well last night, and Sparky even let me sleep later, which is not his norm. But when he decided enough was enough, enough was enough. Yesterday turned out to be a very needed day of rest after I finished working; I ran my errands and was drained by the time I got home. I did some chores and the laundry, before settling in for some reading as my brain began misfiring again and the tiredness from the week settled in when I walked back into the apartment lugging groceries around four thirty. I settled into my easy chair and read for the rest of the evening, finishing The Demon of Unrest and starting another new non-fiction read (White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity by Robert P. Jones; yes, I am studying the racist history of the country right now), and caught up on Real Housewives (SLC is lit this season, y’all) before going to bed.

Remember a few weeks ago how I finally talked about how sick and tired I was of every form of homophobia, and especially the passive-aggressive bullshit from so-called “friends” and “allies”? Yeah, got one of those comments on here. Fortunately, I have to approve comments (because I do get the occasional homophobic diatribe; I learned the lesson to approve comments with Livejournal over a decade ago), so you’ll never have to see it, but it’s always a jolt. My favorites are always the ones like this morning–couched in language that appeared friendly, but was actually insulting, demeaning, and invalidating me as a human being with lived (and learned) experience. I love when people think their own lived experience as a straight white man is more valid than my own–and their knowledge of my community and its history is vastly superior to mine, despite their never needing to know anything about it and I’ve studied it extensively over the last three decades, but then again–I’m just a faggot in need of a straight person to get my shit together.

It’s always lovely having that kind of shit drop into your inbox first thing in the morning, before you’ve finished your first cup of coffee. This is why I finally had enough a few weeks ago. I’m not putting up with this shit anymore. Sixty-three years of being excluded, made to feel less than, and putting up with all bullshit that comes with being a gay American man born in the second half of the twentieth century. It certainly got my blood pumping this morning, and made me wake up faster than my morning coffee. It’s almost as funny as the lead singer of the Village People claiming that “YMCA” isn’t a gay anthem. Oh, honey, all your songs are gay anthems, and no one needs your permission to say it. The gays made you, the gays made your songs, and the gays kept your songs alive long after their shelf-life had passed, but go ahead and kiss some mango ass, bitch. Don’t let me stop you, by any means.

And if “YMCA” isn’t a gay anthem, it’s only because the community ditched it after it started being played and danced to (by the way, the song is from 1979…) by mediocre, rhythm-less straight white people at sporting events and political rallies. It always amuses me to see your homophobic asses dancing (badly) to a song about cruising other men at the Y. Butt-fucking and blow-jobs, that’s what the song is about. Remember that the next time you decide to stand up and dance at your next sporting event, straight people. At least the MAGA dance to it works, since it looks like the dancer is giving out handjobs with both hands.

And yay, we get to experience another four years of this kind of shit. At least. I don’t know why my sex life–which is no one’s business but my own–bothers so many people; I certainly don’t hold other people’s sex lives against them. It’s also election day here in Louisiana–this is when we have the elections when someone or something didn’t pass outright in the general. I think it’s just amendments to the state constitution, which I am going to have to look up before I walk over and vote. I also suppose I should be grateful that I don’t get more homophobic abuse on here and on-line; which is one of the reasons I never check DM’s on social media and usually will just clear them out in one swoop without looking at them (words of advice: for this reason, direct messaging is literally the worst way to reach me, especially if you need an answer from me right away), but…as I said a few weeks ago, I am not taking it anymore.

This is why I am no longer attending conferences and conventions–this sort of thing, never knowing who you’re going to meet who is a homophobic piece of shit (and there are quite a few of them, spread out over all sub-genres–you know who you are). Until such time (ha ha ha ha) that these events stop allowing and condoning this kind of shit–or not caring that it happens–why would I support them with my money and my paid vacation time? I know, I know, visibility and all that–but I’ve been doing all that for almost fifteen years, and I am tired.

After all, I’ve not been back to Left Coast since that horrible woman was racist and homophobic to me.1

Heavy sigh. I think I am going to get another cup of coffee and will read for a bit. I do have to run errands today–wash the car, pick up the mail, a little bit of groceries–before coming home and getting back to work. I don’t really care about any of the football games today, so I may turn on the SEC title game, or I may not. I don’t really have an interest in who wins it, so why not read, clean, and work during the day rather than watching games? I’m going to barbecue a pork tenderloin later for dinner, which will be nice. It’s sunny outside, but it’s only 48 degrees outside, and the high for the day is fifty-nine. I’m also going to do a German lesson this morning, and try to get a grip on my inbox, and I am also going to try to finish a substack entry this weekend; I have sixteen started (seriously) and they aren’t going to write themselves. I need to get this editing job finished, and I need to get back to work on my Scotty book. I also had breakthroughs on several other books ideas, so I’d like to get some work done so as to lesson the Sisyphean tasks I always have before me.

  1. I can honestly say I never expected to hear the slur terms for biracial in casual conversation, let alone directed at me. Live and learn. And for the record, this is why racism is so insidious; no one is actually safe from it. That experience also made me wonder if sometimes when I am treated badly by service staff, it has to do with racism? Because they think I’m biracial? And for the record, my brain never jumps to bad treatment = homophobia; I just think the person is a dick. But now I have something else to wonder about. ↩︎

Nowhere to Run

Friday morning after the holiday, and were you able to get through it safely without killing a MAGA relative, Constant Reader? I have to admit it was kind of nice spending the day by myself. Sparky and I had a very nice time hanging out, and he spent a lot of time in a kitty puddle in my lap, with only the occasional change into Apex Predator Pounce and Attack mode. I wound up watching some research videos on Youtube, going down wormholes and putting me in mind of yet another project in the files, heaving heaving sigh. I also spent more time with Lavender House, which continues to be marvelous–another one I am reading so I can savor everything about it. It was actually kind of lovely, to tell you the truth; Sparky certainly was enjoying himself. The cold spell we were warned about for Thanksgiving arrived over night, actually; it’s only 49 degrees outside right now and I could tell when I get downstairs this morning. Brrr. It also explains how well I slept last night, and why I am up so early this morning, too. Not even seven, and I am already here slurping coffee and typing away. I feel very rested, too, and good, even. I want to get things done today, and I am going to make A List. I am going to spend some time this morning reading more of the book, and I have some other reading/editing to do, and maybe, if I am lucky I can even get some writing done, too. There’s some more cleaning that needs to be done, and the bed linens need to be laundered as it is Friday. I survived the holiday alone, and it was actually kind of nice. It was always Mom’s holiday, the one I would usually go to Kentucky for, and that’s part of the reason last year I had my surgery two days before the holiday–I figured being drugged up and recovering from a major surgery was the best way to get through missing her last year, and this year, I did get sad a couple of times but overall, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

I think I managed to cope with Thanksgiving very well these last two years.

There are some football games on today, but no one I really care too much about. I may put on the Egg Bowl this afternoon (Mississippi-Mississippi State) because it’s usually a wild game, but who knows? It depends on where I am at with everything I want to do today. I’ll probably not get everything done that I want to get done–that is the Way–but at least I get to be at home on this cold November morning. In fact, curling up with my book and my blanket in my easy chair sounds 100% like the best option for this morning.

I did manage to think through the revisions of another couple of stories last night, which was rather cool. My productive mind is still working, I am just not turning that work into actual writing production, which has always been an issue (I’ve never been able to keep up with my mental creativity) for me, but I am enjoying writing in my journal and thinking about my writing. I do love writing, and I hope I’ll be able to get back on the horse completely. I can’t remember the last time I did three thousand words in a day–but then I barely remember yesterday, so it could be as recent as a few weeks ago. I’ve also been avoiding the news a lot these last couple of days, which has also been lovely. I have become very cynical and jaded about a lot of things since the election, to be honest. I’m still a bit concerned about what exactly is going to happen now that Incompetent Evil has taken over the country, and what that means for my future–but I only have space to worry about mine and Paul’s. The rest of my life means my emotional work will focus entirely on Paul and I; and my writing is about to become a lot more important and get a lot more of my focus and energy going forward. It’s astonishing to me that I always let other people put their needs and wants and desires ahead of my own career. How stupid was that? I always say I don’t want to have regrets, but I do resent and regret that.

I did manage to get caught up on my two Housewives shows–Beverly Hills and Salt Lake City–which was incredibly fun. I try to figure out the appeal of these shows, and why I find them so compelling, almost constantly. I don’t consider them guilty pleasures–as my friend Laura says, “you shouldn’t feel guilty about anything that gives you pleasure”, which is pretty fucking true–so much as I wonder why I get so addicted to them, in much the same way as I would get addicted to daytime and prime time soaps when I was younger. There’s a parallel there somewhere, but I just haven’t managed to get my brain to figure that out so I can write about it. I might watch something tonight–movie or television series–but haven’t really decided yet.

And on that note, I am going to my chair with my book to get under a blanket and read for a while. Have a lovely Black Friday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later. No one is ever really for sure about anything, are they?

It Ain’t Me Babe

Ah, it’s Monday and I am up early, swilling coffee and getting ready to face down a very short, and most likely slow, week in the office. Paul is leaving tomorrow for a week, so tomorrow I’ll come home to a quiet, empty house. It’ll be weird, of course,1 but I am going to try to keep busy. I do have a lot of homework2 to get done this week, and hopefully Sparky won’t be near as needy as he always is when it’s just the two of us. Sparky has, at long last, starting sleeping in the bed with us, always in a kitty donut down by my feet, which is very relaxing. He’s been there the last several mornings when I wake up, which is nice. He’s also started cuddling and sleeping with Paul on the couch–like Scooter, Sparky takes turns with our laps when we’re watching television; unlike Scooter, Sparky starts with Paul for a while before curling up in mine for the rest of the evening. It only took just over a year, but we finally have the cuddle bug we wanted. He still only purrs when he’s riding my shoulders, draped around my neck–but he’s getting cuddlier, and there’s more head-butting by the day.

I had a very relaxing day yesterday, but didn’t get nearly as much done as I wanted to–like always. Still reeling from the power of The Reformatory3, I started reading Lavender House by Lev AC Rosen. I am absolutely loving it. I love the voice, I love the main character, I love the writing, and so I know I am going to really love this book–and once I get going, it will be unputdownable. Yay! And there’s two more in this series, too, which is very exciting–not to mention all his other works, in y/a and romance. Paul spent most of the day working upstairs, and leaving me on my own with Sparky for most of the day. I finished my entry on The Reformatory, and worked on some writing, mostly thinking and taking notes. I’m glad this is a short work week, and am looking forward to some lovely down time here by myself. I made progress on the apartment this past weekend, and will probably get some more progress made over this coming long weekend4.

I need to make a to-do list, and to get better organized, but I made progress. I have a manuscript to edit, some short stories to read and judge for Saints and Sinners, and my own writing to work on around here. Sparky will be needy the whole time, and I am going to watch the new season of Heartstopper, before diving into Sex and the City. I’ve also found some movies to watch over the weekend, too–or in the evenings when I get home from work tomorrow and Wednesday. I’ve also got my Housewives shows, and there’s always some cleaning to be done somewhere–not to mention more pruning of the books and the storage attic.

While I was driving around doing my errands Saturday I started listening to Orville Peck’s music on Spotify, and I love it! I have yet to hear a song of his that isn’t a bop, so I saved several of his albums to my library and am going to start listening to him more regularly in the car. I’ve always liked all kinds of genres of music; there just really hasn’t been any country outside of Dolly in a while that I’ve been interested in. I also kind of hate how country music has been taken over by the Right and MAGA–I’ve never forgiven country music for what it did to the Chicks, and they were RIGHT–so I try not to listen to much of the newer stuff. Country music used to be about outlaws and fighting the man holding down the working class, instead of being a bunch of appeasers and collaborators.

They’d shun and cancel Johnny Cash today for being woke. How fucking sad is that?

They must really hate Orville Peck for being openly gay–even though they really embraced Li’l Nas X when he was doing country music back in the day…until he came out and switched genres.

I don’t know what to think about what’s coming, but it’s pretty sad that the only thing standing between us and authoritarianism are the courts, Senate Republicans, and the administration’s utter incompetence. Paul and I have made up our minds to enjoy ourselves as much as possible between now and the transfer of power; who knows what’s coming after that? These are dark times indeed, and a lot of damage can be done by utter incompetence and a program of complete and utter unfettered cruelty. I think the biggest shock for me of the election is that self-absorption and unbridled hatred of anything not straight, white and cishet was actually embraced by the country.

Then again, this is a country that wasn’t able to legislate or vote slavery out of existence, and it took a war. The appeasement of slave-owning Americans from 1787 through 1865 will always be a stain on this nation’s history, and by not dealing with any of it, or systemic racial oppression, by not facing the truth in all its brutal ugliness, we’ve never been able to progress as a racially diverse nation or move on from it. (I always love when Americans take the moral high road when talking to or about other countries; like we have any room to talk about oppressing citizens and human rights violations? Bitch, please.)

Sigh. And on that note I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I may be back later. One never knows!

  1. I’ll never understand how someone can take up so much space, and how much bigger and emptier it seems when he isn’t there. ↩︎
  2. Writing and reading and editing, oh my! ↩︎
  3. Which might be one of my favorite novels of all time, period, regardless of genre. ↩︎
  4. I am planning on simply cleaning the bathrooms on Thursday morning, and having a very lazy day doing little to nothing other than reading and binge-watching television series; I’ll push myself the other three days. I can also do things at night this week once Paul departs tomorrow morning. ↩︎

Count Me In

Work at home Friday! I have to go have blood work done at noon, so I am going to do my errands then–get the mail, hit the grocery store, wash and clean out the car–before coming back home to finish my work-at-home duties for the day. It shouldn’t take long, methinks; Wednesday night I managed to do my errands and make groceries in under an hour after I got off work. I left the office that night just after five, and figured it would take me about two hours to do everything and get home. I walked into the apartment at six, which was pretty impressive efficiency. Well, I was impressed.

I was tired yesterday when I got off work, but had committed to the party so when I left the office, dragging and really just wanting to hang out in my chair with Sparky, I forced myself to get up and go get cleaned up and ready. I always dread these things, always, but inevitably always have a good time once I actually am there. I hate getting ready and getting there, in all honesty. I did some chores before I left the apartment, and Sparky got some sleepy time in my lap before I got ready. But sadly I was dragging a bit, and knew I wouldn’t last long once I got to the party. I haven’t left the house at night in the car to go anywhere in a very long time, and I did go to the Marigny the way I always used to (side note: while I often regret and miss our old office on Frenchmen Street, taking the way I always used to go to work made me very glad I no longer work on Frenchmen and have to deal with negotiating the CBD and the Quarter every evening to come home)–yeesh, what a horror it was driving–so much so that when I came home I went to Claiborne and got ont the highway. The party itself was really nice–the house, which used to be a Satanic temple, I think, was also very interesting. John Cameron Mitchell’s residence is the very top floor, and I am actually kind of curious about the house now, which is called the Temple1. (side note: I can’ believe how much the Marigny has changed in the years since we moved to the Elysian Fields office, but it’s been a very long time since I have driven to the other side of Elysian Fields and gone into the Marigny.) I saw some people I wanted to see, got to see the house, and of course didn’t take any pictures. I stayed for an hour, which is an accomplishment. The live music was amazing, and the food was terrific. I was driving so I didn’t have anything to drink, and came home to change into something comfortable and to relax (and watch The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City) before going to bed. I slept later this morning than I usually do, too, but feel pretty good and will be ready to dive into the work-at-home spice mines relatively soon. The apartment is also a terrible mess; the stacks of dirty dishes here in the kitchen, not to mention the general disarray of the entire apartment, needs to be worked on today.

I never did make a to-do list, either–which means I need to make one today, one for the weekend and one through Thanksgiving (Paul is leaving on Tuesday), and start crossing things off. I want to get more writing done this weekend–I want to finish that short story and start editing Scotty, maybe even finish another essay and perhaps even dive into some other writing, too. I also know it’s an ambitious plan for the weekend and I may just decide meh, let me vegetate in my easy chair with Sparky and blow off a day, as I so often do. That’s also fine, too.

More lighter fluid keeps getting squirted on the dumpster fire that is the country/world now, and I am veering between optimism and pessimism about the future–I often descend into gallows humor, as is my wont–as a method of dealing with the existential nightmare we are being unwillingly dragged into. I’m not sure what it says about me that I always deal with these sorts of things by laughing at them, even when they truly aren’t funny; but that’s what happens when you grow up gay in a homophobic society. Legacy media continues to swirl around the toilet bowl, capitulating in advance as their ratings and subscription rates continue to fall deservedly. Their corporate masters decided that it was better for their ratings to be Leaders of the Opposition to get those monster ratings they had during the first term again, so they betrayed their viewers by doing everything they could to throw the election to the Right, rubbing their monstrous little hands with glee while they watched their potential ratings and advertising revenue shoot up again. We’re the Resistance and we’re here for you! Alas, they severely overestimated their importance and the ignorance of their viewers/readers. We saw them betray us, again and again, playing a long game that wasn’t actually a game for many of their audience. When they shivved Biden this past summer, starting with that faux-liberal piece of shit George Clooney (who lives in fucking Italy) in his “I’m so much smarter than anyone else with progressive credentials” arrogance writing that disgusting editorial in the New Yuck Times and has been completely invisible since he accepted his thirty pieces of silver. (I laugh every time Apple TV tries to push his latest film on me. No thanks, never thought he was very talented or handsome, and still think he did his best work on The Facts of Life and Roseanne.) But Paul and I have our exit plan if it comes to that. I know, man plans and God laughs, but it makes me feel better.

I cannot believe the fall/winter holidays are upon us already. Madness! But it has been a year, hasn’t it? Heavy heaving sigh. I should go fold those clothes, so on that note, I am going to bring this to a close and get some more coffee, too. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and who knows if I’ll be back again before tomorrow morning? It’s a mystery!

  1. There are so many cool and interesting places in New Orleans! I’ve lived her for almost thirty years now and still find new to me cool spots all the time. ↩︎

She’s About a Mover

Thursday morning and I’ve almost made it completely through the week. Tonight I am going to that party, which is my first public event/party this is not part of some kind of conference weekend in I don’t know how long. It’s a lovely opportunity to dress up and meet some people that I should meet, or that I should probably already know.

And it’s at John Cameron Mitchell’s home, he bragged again.

Yesterday was a good day. I felt good and rested for most of the day, but after running my errands, I came home and kind of hit a wall. I worked on an essay a bit, and then went to give Sparky his cuddle time in my easy chair while I caught up on the news (and the new season of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, more on that later), but I was daydreaming about writing–what else I was going to say in the essay, what else to write in my short story, what to do with the Scotty book–so my creativity and my drive to write and be productive is coming back. That’s kind of cool, and I am really happy about it. Going to the party tonight meets not having time to do any chores–I have a sink full of dirty dishes, for example–means tomorrow during work-at-home times I’ll have to do chores, as well as going to have lab work done at Quest over my lunch break. I cannot believe Thanksgiving is looming on the horizon, either. Paul is leaving on Tuesday for a week, and so I’ll have those four days at home alone to just either be a vegetable, or get a lot of shit done. I am hoping for “getting a lot of shit done”, but we’ll see how it rolls and all plays out.

I also have emails I need to answer, but I’ll most likely let that slide until Friday morning, unless I can get some of them done between clients at the office today. I don’t think we’re going to be terribly busy–we were yesterday–and we won’t be terribly busy the two days I am in the clinic next week, either. So I should be able to roll into the holiday weekend fairly well rested already, so we’ll see how that long weekend turns out. I’m hoping to not have to leave the house much, if at all, and hibernating in the Lost Apartment while trying to finish reading The Reformatory and get some writing done, too. This looming weekend I am going to try to write and get some editing done. I’m also going to have to read some short stories for the short story contest I am judging for S&S, too. I’m just glad I’m not traveling for the holiday; those alone days will be much more productive and nice for me. Sparky will be needy since I’ll be the only one home here with him, so he’ll turn into my shadow and won’t let me out of his sight. I was reading an article about where your cat sleeps explaining how he feels about you yesterday–so apparently Sparky thinks I am both his mom (sleeping in my lap) and someone he needs to protect (either under the bed or at the foot of it). Sweet, isn’t it?

He really is a sweetheart, even if he goes on damaging rampages periodically. When I got home from work yesterday the Brita pitcher was on the kitchen floor and the rug was soaked (it’s drying on the banister outside), and some other things were down on the floor, too. I really do need to keep up with the chores in the kitchen so the counters remain cleared, so he can’t make a mess when he gets the Zoomies and runs around the apartment at high speed knocking everything off every surface he leaps and bounds off.

Sigh.

It’s also cold this morning–58 degrees. It’s nice–probably partly why I slept so well last night, and hopefully will again tonight. The high for the day is a whopping 64 (dead of winter, really), which is nice. I like when it cools down like this, even if I do get weary of it relatively quickly. It should be a relatively easy day at the office, and I am not going to make myself crazy rushing to come home and get ready/change for the party. I am definitely not making the VIP pre-party cocktail hour at six, so will instead shoot for arriving around seven-ish. I can wear my saddle shoes! I always love an opportunity to wear my saddle shoes. I will probably not drink anything, maybe a glass of wine, and probably won’t stay all that long–even with my anxiety under control, I’m not sure how walking into a social situation like this will play out, but maybe the meds will help me relax and be social and make small talk without breaking into a cold sweat with my stomach clenching and unclenching.

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines and venture out into the chill. Have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later; one never can be entirely sure with a Gregalicious.

You think the garden hose is symbolizing something? I wonder if Facebook will think this is suggestive.

All Day and All of the Night

Monday morning and back to the office today. I had a really nice lovely weekend, to be honest. The weather has changed here in New Orleans and has become what would pass for early fall everywhere else, but here? The lack of humidity and the bright sunshine, along with cool breezes, make all the difference. It’s nice being able to wear sleeves and pants outside of the house or work, you know? And I do sleep better. I just don’t like that it gets dark so early. That’s always felt kind of oppressive to me for some reason. but while I am certain it makes no sense in any logical or rational way, it does. I also can’t believe Thanksgiving is next week. Paul is going to visit his family this year, so I’ll be by myself–well I’ll have Sparky, and he will be needy. But it’s fine, don’t worry about me. Last Thanksgiving was the week of my biceps surgery, so this year will definitely be better than last. Thanksgiving was always Mom’s holiday, you know, which is why I scheduled the surgery when I did last year. This year will be the first time I really have to deal with that, but I’ll do fine. I can get things done around here that I usually can’t, and four lovely days off in a row? I have no excuse.

We watched Caddo Lake this weekend (we watched after LSU lost yet again), which was really well done and very interesting. Shot in location at actual Caddo Lake in western Louisiana, it’s staggeringly beautiful (Louisiana is so beautiful) and it was an interesting movie focusing on following two people while some strange things are going on around the lake. Dylan O’Brien (of TV’s Teen Wolf, aka the gayest show ever on television) is terrific as the male lead. It reminded me of the German television show Dark, which was one of the smartest shows I’ve ever streamed. To talk about anything else would be a spoiler, but I recommend it. It’s a slow burn, but it’s absolutely worth watching.

I also was able to spend some more time with The Reformatory, which brought a huge surprise twist over halfway through the book–always a pleasure when something unexpected happens–and the writing continues to enthrall. Tananarive Due is the real deal, y’all, and I need to read more of her work. I have no idea where this story is going, either, which is always fantastic. Yay! I should be able to finish the book this week, which is very cool. I’ve not picked out my next read, but I think it’s going to be potentially either Angie Kim, Amina Akhtar, Lori Roy, or Kellye Garrett. I also have the latest Celeste Ng and Ann Hood books on my shelves. I did do some more pruning this weekend, pulling out books for the library pile–hey, the authors have my money, even if I didn’t read the book–and I am also sending it out into the world to find a new reader, and a potential new fan for that author, so there is that. I need to get back to writing. I did do some yesterday, a very small bit, but I am taking that as I swing back into author mode. Continuing to put off writing is going to bite me in the ass one of these days, and so, reluctant as I am to get back on it, I am going to have to. This week I am going to edit what I have written on Scotty and work on some of the short stories on hand, and then I am going to dive into writing the book again. But I do feel like I’ve reset myself. I am continuing to limit social media and the news–which I am not getting from any legacy media company, may they all burn to the ground–for my own mental health. I feel pretty good this morning, but I also didn’t check the news except to see if the Saints won (they did), and I don’t think I am going to be doing that hardly at all anymore. The sad reality that we have to depend on Republicans (!!!) in the Senate to protect our democracy when they’ve spent the last thirty years trying to dismantle it is a bit much for me, and I’m no longer enjoying the vote-regrets as I used to–and even that was a grim smirk more than anything else. Sorry, folks, I know we’re all going to suffer, but my concerns are for the marginalized. The ability to imagine the worst possible outcomes isn’t a gift, it’s more of a curse…I always thought the most tragic figure in the Trojan War was Cassandra, driven mad by being able to see the future only to not be believed. I’ve always wanted to read that story from her perspective, as she was the most interesting character in the whole tragedy.

That’s me, always wanting the woman’s perspective–and willing to believe it, too1.

I also am not sure I completely believe the “vote regret” videos, either–although I think the lesson that should have been learned this time out is that voting matters and is too important to not be informed. I don’t think anyone really learned that lesson, and many will simply find a way to blame Democrats for their problems (it is their default) and keep voting (if we can vote) against their own interests. I don’t think I can trust any election results going forward, either–I’m not certain about this last one, and wasn’t that the entire point of 2020, to make us all not believe election results aren’t to be trusted. The entire plan behind all of this, I believe, came from Moscow; what better way to undermine a democracy than making the citizens not trust or believe our institutions? The legacy media is already tainted and cannot be trusted. I worry that people can’t see how dire things actually are right now in this country, and this is just the prelude; we’re not even to the opening credits of this horror show yet.

I’ve also not taken the time to talk about the grievous loss of Dorothy Allison after the election. It’s been lovely seeing everyone’s tributes to her, and how much she mattered to queer people. Paul and I knew Dorothy long before anyone knew who either one of us were; we met her the first spring we lived in New Orleans and volunteered for the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival, which was almost thirty years ago. Dorothy was many things to many people, but we just thought of her as a supportive friend who was always there for us whenever we needed her to be. She adored Paul, and the feeling was mutual. Dorothy called us the morning we evacuated for Katrina, told us to come stay with her for as long as we needed to, and was kind of bummed when we decided not to drive across the country. She checked in on Paul when he was hospitalized. We tried not to make any demands on her, because she was a bottomless well of kindness and consideration, and a lot of people leaned on her. I’ll miss her, terribly, and I know Paul will. I’m not going to write a lengthy tribute to her because I’ll leave that to the people who were closer and her family, but she will be missed. Part of her charm was her ability to flirt with anyone and everyone; I’ve not seen that mentioned yet. She even flirted with me and I’d flirt back, even though obviously it was just in good fun. I think her first words to me were “who is this tall, dark and handsome gay man? I might just have to take you home with me.”

I’ll miss you, Dorothy.

I also get to have some glamour this week. I’m going to the Tennessee Williams Festival gala this Thursday night, and it’s at the home of John Cameron Mitchell of Hedwig and the Angry Inch fame. (He was also terrific in The Sandman) I’ll have to go home and get cleaned up after work, and put on fancier clothes first, but how cool is that? I do sometimes have a glamorous life, don’t I? I never really think about that very much–it’s one of the many reasons I try not to complain about anything, ever; I kind of take that sort of thing for granted. This will also be my first experience going to an event of any sort since I started taking anxiety medication, so maybe I’ll be able to enjoy it more? I will report back on Friday morning, and perhaps I’ll even remember to take some pictures.

I also have decided to try harder to separate the blog from the Substack. The Substack posts are things I’ve spent more time on, thinking about and revising and editing; this stuff is always going to be what’s on my mind when I write it, unvarnished and unpolished; exactly as it comes to me, forgotten words and typos and incomplete sentences and all. Yesterday morning’s post actually gave me the opening to an essay I’ve been struggling to write since last summer, about masculinity and my outsider’s point of view from what society considers traditional–and the masculinity that I was raised to believe in was actually a perpetuation of toxic masculinity. I may mention something on here briefly, or a paragraph about it, but the crux of the conversation will eventually be posted on Substack. I’ve also been thinking about posting essays I’ve written for other places there, so people can access them if they so choose. I’d wanted to collect them into a book, but…I’m not a big enough name to sell copies of an essay collection when none of them were ever in places like the New York Times or The Atlantic or McSweeney’s–not good enough for those markets, alas. The “Words” entry on Substack, about some of the homophobia I’ve faced in the crime fiction community at conferences and within writers’ organizations, bled over into some entries here last week, as I burned some bridges (that were never there in the first place) and came back more into myself. Fasten your seatbelts, as someone else can be Mr. Nice Gay from now on.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. I have some errands to run after work and a delivery is coming tonight; and I have some chores to complete once I am home. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and stay tuned for more spicy content.

I can’t be the only person who has noticed that all underwear/bikini style models now have enormous bulges–all of them looking relatively the same–in every photo?
  1. Despite the fact that some homophobic white women, who have no other reason than my sexuality and politics to not like me, claimed “Greg doesn’t listen to women.” Yeah. that’s me, dismissive of, and always talking over, women. Then why do I have more woman friends than you do, bitch? ↩︎