And now it’s Christmas. I woke up this chilly morning to a barrage of well wishes in my inbox; thanks, companies who have my email address; I appreciate your concerns about my holiday and how it is going to go. It’s cold this morning, but the sky is blue and the sun is shining and there are no clouds to be seen anywhere in the sky; it was also cold yesterday but much more dreary outside. This morning appears to be one of those mornings where it feels colder inside than it does outside.
I was a slug yesterday, admittedly so. I just didn’t have the energy or the inspiration or the drive to do a whole lot of anything all day–i feared this would be the case, and was proven, rather early on, to be correct. I spent the morning finishing reading The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson, and yes, this was magnificent research for Chlorine, but at the same time is was a fascinating journey into what it was like to be gay in the entertainment industry in the post-war period, and needless to say, it was a fascinating read. And while it was completely impossible to feel deep sympathy for Henry Willson–he did terrible things, and used his power to force beautiful young men with Hollywood aspirations and dreams into having sex with him, among many other terrible things; and although it was also the era when beautiful young women also had to have sex with producers, directors and studio executives to get ahead, that doesn’t lessen, or in any way mitigate, what he was doing to those young men. Willson was gay but was also homophobic, and serves as an interesting case study into the mentality that drives and draws gay men into sociopolitical conservatism–and the cognitive dissonance that must exist in order to embrace a self-loathing world view. Willson was a friend of Roy Cohn, probably the most horrible gay man to ever exist in this country, but that friendship really came as no surprise. Reading the book was a fascinating, if horrifying, reminder that it wasn’t all that long ago that the closet was the only option and going to a club or being involved with another man or even going to a private party, was putting everything in your life–career, family, whatever–in jeopardy.
And needless to say, I have a lot of great ideas now to work into Chlorine; I’d say this book was probably the single most important resource I’ve come across in my research for the book–more so than even Tab Hunter’s memoir or the biographies of Rock Hudson and Montgomery Clift; yesterday afternoon as I digested what I’d read, plot twists and story kept coming to me–scenes, character development–and I am, as always, looking forward to that day in the now not so distant future when I’ll be able to write this book…although I am also thinking reading a biography of Anthony Perkins also might not be such a bad idea.
We finished watching Tiny Pretty Things yesterday, and I have to say it was quite delightful fun–but the dialogue! OMG, the dialogue was sometimes so jarringly bad it took me right out of the show. I don’t blame the cast at all–some of the dialogue was so fucking bad not even Streep or Lange or DeNiro or Pacino could have made it work–but everything else about the show was marvelous. It was well plotted and planned very well; apparently there are two novels set in that ballet school, and the first season ended with an amazing cliff-hanger as well to set up the second season, even if the crime from the first was still unresolved–at least, thus far. I’ve always thought ballet was the perfect setting for noir–the sacrifices it requires, the commitment necessary, and the willingness and desire to push your body through incredible pain to achieve great beauty…it’s amazing to me. Do I wish I had some ballet training? Kind of, although I don’t think as a child I would have had the drive to push myself through the pain…but you also never know. I’ve always been able to commit fully to things I’m interested in or enjoy; the question would be whether or not I would have enjoyed it enough to commit to it. Hard to say, really.
I do know if and when I start writing about ballet, I’ll need to immerse myself in it. I do think the young men who commit so fully to dance–particular in our culture and society, which still sees such things as “unmanly” and “gay”–are fascinating, and most books about ballet–shows, etc–inevitably default to the female point of view and perspective; no one has, to the best of my knowledge, ever really delved into the world of ballet from that masculine perspective.
We also watched the second episode of The Stand, which isn’t really generating a lot of buzz as it airs; which is kind of curious to me. Someone mentioned it on Twitter last night, something along the lines of “How bad must this version of The Stand be if there’s no on-line discussion of how hot Alexander Skarsgard is in it?” I hadn’t really thought about it–I’m kind of enjoying the non-linear story-telling technique they are using, even if it does kind of lesson the impact of the apocalyptic end of the world from the flu story King told in the first part of the book–which is one of my favorite parts of the book, honestly. (I do love the book, even if it’s been years since I reread it–it used to be one of my comfort reads) There were some responses to the tweet about how bad the show is, and I don’t know that I would go that far–I’m enjoying it thus far, even if the non-linear story-telling is kind of jarring–but the lack of conversation about the show is pretty telling, I guess.
I didn’t do any physical writing or editing yesterday, but I did spend some time thinking about it, and i hadn’t planned on doing any writing or anything today, either, what with it being holidays and all (remember, I suspected this would happen yesterday morning), but that’s okay, really–not going to beat myself up over it too terribly; it is what it is–and today I will most likely try to get some of this mess cleaned up; my office area is a disgrace as always, and I have paper and folders and books stacked everywhere. And we are definitely watching Wonder Woman 1984 today.
And that, Constant Reader, is as good a segue as any into my return to the spice mines. Have a lovely holiday, everyone/
And it is Christmas Eve for those who celebrate–and even for those actually don’t, really; it’s rather inescapable in the United States. I generally don’t make a big deal out of Christmas anymore. Decorating is out because the decorations aren’t safe from Scooter, who is sweet but dumb enough to chew through an electrical wire for lights and will try to climb/pull down/destroy the tree. We don’t buy gifts for each other anymore because neither of us is wanting or in need of anything that is an affordable gift, and we generally just buy what we want or need whenever we can. So, for us, it’s more of a “don’t have to go to work” thing, and we generally just lay around and relax on Christmas, and this year’s plan includes watching Wonder Woman 1984 on HBO MAX.
I went to the gym yesterday evening, and I have to say, while I always have to make myself go and even after I am there, I still have to make myself resist the urge the lighten the weights so it’s not so hard, and not to skip machines and exercises…it always feels amazing after I get home and get cleaned up. I also noticed yesterday that my moobs are turning back into pecs. The veins in my arms are becoming more visible–if not prominent quite yet–and I noticed that my backside is getting firmer. (I notice this primarily when I sit down on the wooden floor of the aerobics room to stretch…it’s not as comfortable as it used to be, when everything was squishier.) I don’t really have a set goal at the moment for my working out or the development of my body; right now, I am still primarily focused on getting to the gym three times a week and pushing through the exercising…but it is always lovely to notice progress. Once the routine is more secured and there’s less concern for me about skipping, maybe then I’ll figure out a physical goal, but for now, I am enjoying the feeling of exercise and it’s effects on my body. I’ve always had a contentious relationship with my body, to be honest, and I am actually kind of enjoying getting reacquainted with my muscles and my body and reevaluating it. I don’t know that I’ve actually achieved any wisdom in my sixty years on this planet, but I feel like I am not nearly as hyper-critical of my body as I was when I was younger. I think in February is when I am going to change my workouts to body parts rather than the full body workout I’ve been doing.
Last night we started watching Tiny Pretty Things, the ballet school series on Netflix–I’ve always been fascinated by ballet, and have always wanted to write a gay noir set in a ballet company–and while it gives in to tropes from time to time–the villainess among the students is a bitchy blonde girl from a wealthy family, for one–and of course, the ‘girl from nowhere’ who comes to the school as a student with a stunning amount of raw talent that shakes up the power dynamics of the school; periodically I would say, “this is Showgirls only in ballet”. There’s a gay kid, who is having sex with his ostensibly straight male roommate; there’s a kid whose father died in the Middle East (whether Iraq or Afghanistan isn’t made clear) who of course has to share a room with the French kid who’s also a Muslim; Lauren Holly chews every piece of scenery she gets near as Monique DuBois, who runs the school (it also took me a while to realize it was her, because she doesn’t look much like she used to; I’d see her full face and think yes that’s her and then they would show her in profile and I wouldn’t be so sure anymore); and of course there’s all the competition and backstabbing one would expect from a ballet school/company. Most of the cast came from the world of ballet–there’s really no way to fake the bodies or the dancing–and it’s always a joy to watch them rehearse, practice, warm up, and actually dance. There’s also a central mystery; the prima ballerina at the school is in a coma, having fallen off the roof–or was she pushed? Nova Ren Suma’s The Walls Around Us is an excellent novel about the cutthroat world of a ballet school–it was an Edgar finalist the year I was a judge for young adult crime novels, and I’ve never forgotten it. I’ve been wanting to write a ballet noir since the early 1990’s, and Megan Abbott’s next novel The Turnout, is a ballet noir I cannot wait to get my hands on. I still might write one–while Megan’s book will probably be the definitive ballet novel, mine would be about a gay dancer (of course), so I think I could get away with writing about the same subject.
So many things to write, so little time.
I’d actually planned on sleeping in this morning, but I woke up just before seven and went ahead and got up. I figured I could drink some coffee while cleaning and organizing my office space, and then later, when my mind is more awake and focused and clear, I’ll dive into Bury Me in Shadows. I’d like to get through this last chapters–I still have to write one more chapter, the end–so I can get to work on my story for the MWA anthology deadline. I’m also going to try to finish reading The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson, and I also have a couple of secret projects I need to start thinking about. I also have an advance copy of the new Alison Gaylin novel, The Collective, that I cannot wait to start reading.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Christmas Eve, Constant Reader!
And now it is Christmas Eve Eve, my half-day before vacation, and all is right in the world. It’s also payday, aka Pay the Bills Day, so I will be forced to spend a small, but no less significant, part of my day paying the bills and figuring out the grocery budget for the next two weeks. Huzzah? But I am endlessly grateful to still be employed in these troubling times, and I think people are reading more these days–I have certainly seen a lovely uptick in my last two royalty statements.
Yesterday was actually kind of pleasant. The mood roller-coaster known as one Gregalicious has been on the upswing this week, which has been very lovely. I’ve actually been getting positive reaffirmation about my writing and my work, and believe you me, that is rare enough that it makes me very happy when it does happen. (I also have a tendency to brush it off or disbelieve it, and that is something I intend to change going forward. I may be almost sixty, but I can still change my spots!) So, I’ve been on a bit of an emotional high this week, and it’s been absolutely lovely. I didn’t sleep great last night and am thus groggy Greggy this morning, but am hopeful that cappuccinos will kick me into gear. And…it’s only half-a-day. I am going to swing by the post office and possibly get some groceries as well on my way home from the office….and I intend to get to the gym today as well.
We finished off season one of The Hardy Boys last night and yes, it held up through the end, even if the finale went a bit off the rails there at the end. The primary appeal of the show is the kids, and the majority of the show hangs entirely on the young actors playing Frank and Joe, and fortunately, both have the talent and charisma to pull it off. They are both likable, respectably talented, and the cast playing their ‘gang’–Callie, Biff, Chet, and Phil–are also equally charismatic. I think Aunt Trudy might be having a lesbian affair with Jesse, Biff’s cop mom, but it was more implied than anything else, and they could wind up just being very good friends. I feel like the show really captured the spirit of the books, despite the changes made structurally to the foundation of the series, and it is far far better than the late 1970’s Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys Mystery Hour. The characters have inevitably always been portrayed on screen as very two-dimensional–as they come across in the revised texts of the books–and in this, they are more fully rounded and developed. They’re still good kids, but in this they seem much more realistic–and they don’t mind bending the rules to get the results they need for their investigation. It appears as though dad Fenton will be taking over as chief of police in the second season, which is an interesting twist on the “our dad is a famous private eye” take of the books, and I’m looking forward to a second season.
We also watched the second to last episode of Hulu’s A Teacher, and it remains a hate-watch, as the student, now in college, and the teacher he had an affair with deal with the damage wrought by their affair, not only on themselves but on everyone they care about. It was almost painful to watch–clearly, both need a lot of therapy–but we’ve come along this far, so I guess we’ll hang on to the bitter end, which will be the season/series finale.
Okay, I didn’t finish this before work this morning–I was a groggy Greggy, as I said–and now I am home. I picked up the mail, picked up my library book, and swung by the grocery store. I am now home and on vacation, and it’s quite lovely, isn’t it? I am fluffing the laundry in the dryer, and once it’s finished, folded, and carried upstairs, I am going to head to the gym, after which I will come home, do some odds and ends around here, and then sit in my easy chair and work on the book. I am on chapter nineteen of twenty-five right now (twenty five actually needs to be written) after which I will let it sit for a few days and then go over one last time before turning it in. I need to get my story for the MWA anthology finished, too–that deadline is January 15th–and I have any number of other odds and ends that need tidying up and tying off during this lovely vacation time. Despite all the time off, I am going to desperately try not to take a lazy day–where I do nothing, not even read–more than once (probably Christmas Day) because I really need to get this book finished. But college football is over; LSU isn’t going to a bowl game and as far as I am concerned, I couldn’t care less about the championship play-offs or anything; I’m pulling for Alabama, of course, but not sure that I care enough to watch.
And the dryer just clicked off, and so I am off to fold the clothes. Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader.
And suddenly, it’s Christmas Eve Eve Eve. Huzzah? Huzzah.
Yesterday was quite a day. A roller-coaster, as it were; up and down and then loop-de-loop and up and down again. It wore me the fuck out, let me tell you–it was deeply unpleasant at times, and then at others, it was quite marvelous. But the ultimate end of the day was overwhelmingly positive, and that’s always a good thing. The low light of the day was thinking I’d lost the revision of Chapter 18 I did over the weekend–I thought I’d renamed the file (I include the date finished in the file name) and it was nowhere to be found. At one point I was close to tears, thinking about the work I was going to have to completely redo and I almost had one of those patented writer emotional breakdowns we all experience periodically. They are always unpleasant–make no mistake about that–but they are also incredibly cathartic. Deadlines are incredibly stressful, after all, and sometimes that emotional release–like a steam valve that lets off pressure periodically–and weirdly enough, it actually calms me down and centers me.
I have never claimed to be emotionally stable.
I went to the gym after work yesterday, which was nice–I didn’t even have to make myself go, which was even nicer–and then I came home, emotionally and physically exhausted. Paul was working and since I had to go to bed early, we didn’t watch the season finale of The Hardy Boys; hopefully that will be tonight. Instead, I sat in my easy chair and read some more of The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson, and I have to say, it’s so well written and involving you can’t help but get absorbed into the tale. We’ve now reached the 1950’s, McCarthyism, and the red/lavender scares of the 1950’s (I did not know that pinko, which was used against suspected Communist sympathizers, originated as now just a Communist slur, but a gay Communist slur; it makes sense, of course….and now I want to write a book called Pinko). I really do want to write my four book historical noir series–not just because the stories themselves are so appealing, but because it will force me to do research into gay history of the twentieth century, and I will learn ever so much more about what it was like to be gay before, during, and after Stonewall in the US.
Paul and I have decided we will spend Christmas watching movies–naturally, Wonder Woman 1984 on HBO MAX is the main feature of the day we are looking forward to seeing–and that will be kind of nice. After my half-day tomorrow I am on vacation until New Year’s Eve, and even then I am working that day at home–more of the Cynical 70’s Film Festival, no doubt–so after I come home from work tomorrow (and must go to the gym as well) I don’t have to go back to the office until January 4th, which is a lovely break and should be enough time for me to have a few goof off days (like Christmas) and writing days and cleaning days as well. I may spend Christmas Eve doing just that–moving the rugs, moving the tables and bookcases and so forth–and getting a nice deep clean on the Lost Apartment. There’s also going to be a Costco day in there somewhere as well–Paul has really fallen in love with Costco, and I’ve sort of created a monster in taking him there; but he also pays for everything when we go, so definitely MY KIND OF MONSTER–and I am thinking I may make a Genius Bar appointment so I can figure out what the hell is the problem with this fucking Air and its storage issues….or I may see if I can do it on-line with an Apple tech first.
I mean, why leave the house and go to Metairie if I don’t have to?
I may even see if I can get the old desktop to work again. We shall see how that goes; I think there are things I can delete off its hard drive to free up space. I really hate working on the Air, to be honest, and am seriously thinking I need to get another desktop computer…obviously, I am very reluctant to spend the money on another Mac if it’s going to be rendered completely useless by a future OS update. But a new computer is another tax write-off, and that’s nothing to be sneezed at, I suppose.
And the Dark Lord continues to come around. Paul says he has started hanging out with Tiger next door, but when he hears us coming he comes springing down the sidewalk and bounces behind us all the way to the door. He will only eat from one spot–I’ve tried a dish, I’ve put the food in other places, but no, if it’s not in front of the bottom step he won’t notice or touch it. He also scampers away whenever I try to get close–right under the house, which is rather conveniently close for an easy escape–but Paul said he let Paul touch him and pet his head yesterday, so there’s progress. Paul is the Cat Whisperer….if anyone can get the Dark Lord to bond, it’s Paul.
And on that note it is back to the spice mines with me. Have a lovely Christmas Eve Eve Eve, everyone, and I’ll check in with you all again tomorrow morning.
And here we are, the Monday morning of Christmas week, and I am looking forward to getting hrough this week so I can get back to vacation time. Woo-hoo! I also only have to work a half-day on Christmas Eve Eve (the 23rd) which is even more lovely, huzzah!
I’ve come across yet another call for submissions that sounds interesting, and I may even have something on hand that works for it with a revision and a tweak. Needless to say, I always find these things terribly exciting–at least in the moment–and I’ve really been doing quite well with short stories lately, or at least in the last few years, so why the hell not? I was already planning on revising this story for my next short story collection, so the worst thing that could happen is it gets turned down and I put it in the collection anyway. Huzzah!
Apparently, it is an impossibility for the Saints and LSU to win on the same weekend during this insane 2020 football season; the Saints lost by three to the Chiefs yesterday–and pretty much played like shit for most of the game, in all honesty. That doesn’t say much for the one-loss Chiefs, honestly, and it was terribly sad to see Clyde Edwards-Hilaire, from last year’s LSU championship team, get injured during the game. (It was, as I had said before, terribly conflicting for me to watch former LSU stars playing against the Saints) Can the Saints rebound from two consecutive losses? Perhaps, but I find myself not terribly vested in this football season, and now that LSU’ s is over, I couldn’t care less about the college football play-offs or the national championship this year, and doubt that I will even watch the games, other than Alabama-Notre Dame–hoping it will be another colossal blowout. ROLL TIDE!
I am now revising the final act of Bury Me in Shadows, and its going to require an awful lot of work, methinks and fears. But that’s okay; some of these chapters can be pared down and combined into one–which is going to be the case with chapters 19 and 20, quite frankly–which is a good thing because I need to add a new chapter at the end of the book anyway, which would have made it overlong unless I start cutting. This revision is going to wind up at 100, methinks, which gives me some leeway for trimming down at least up to 20, if necessary. I don’t think it will be necessary, quite frankly, but stranger things have happened–and I have a tendency to forget I’ve already written something and will put the same thing in a later chapter. I reread Chapter 19 last night, and that is exactly the case with this book–there’s a lengthy section in Chapter 19 that was already written about in Chapter 16 or 17; but I know I’ve already written this scene and I also know that I’ve already written it better than it appears in this particular chapter. So, this could be the proper place for a lot of cutting and pasting and rewriting–and I think I know how to do it already, so tonight after the gym I will tear into it with a relish.
We continue watching The Hardy Boys, and will probably get to the season finale tonight. We are greatly enjoying the show, haters be damned, and it is so much better than the cheesy 1970’s adaptation with Parker Stevenson and Shaun Cassidy it’s not even funny. For one thing, this cast–even the younger kids–are much better actors, and it’s much better written, whether the purists want to think so or not. All the changes that were made from the original book series work perfectly in the show, and they also manage to capture the spirit of the books much better than any direct adaptation that was slavishly devoted to the books could possibly be–not to mention how dated that would make the series. The finale is tonight, and I might give the CW reinterpretation of Nancy Drew next.
It certainly can’t be any worse than The Flight Attendant.
And on that note, tis back to the spice mines with me…also, is it just me, or does today’s Christmas hunk bear a striking resemblance to Pete Buttigieg? Okay, maybe it’s slight, but I see it.
As Constant Reader may or may not know, the Lost Apartment–hell, the entire house–is a haven for stray cats. We feed them and take care of them, so does our landlady, and so does our neighbor on the first floor on the other side of the house—and Jeremy in the carriage house does too. I think the largest the herd has ever been is five cats, but I could be wrong. We’ve been down to two–Simba and Tiger (who has the most seniority)–for quite a while now, and there’s a tuxedo cat that pokes around sometimes, but runs whenever you try to get close to her, but this past week a new cat has shown up, and has taken up residence beneath the house: a a tiny black kitten we’ve not really named yet, but have taken to calling the Dark Lord, because he’s completely invisible once the sun goes down. He doesn’t let us get close–he’ll come out to look at us, but scampers away whenever we try to pet him or get him to come near. We’ve started feeding him, as we feed the others, and Paul will eventually make sure that he becomes friendly, so we can catch him and get him to the vet. I don’t think he’s old enough to be fixed now, anyway. He can’t be more than a month or two old.
I always wonder where these strays come from, you know? Tiger was clearly always feral, but Simba is much too friendly to not have been someone’s cat. And a kitten? Where did the kitten come from?
Ah, the mysteries of being the Crazy Cat Couple of the Lower Garden District.
LSU defeated Mississippi yesterday 53-48 in what wound up being a completely insane game in Tiger Stadium; one in which they managed to go up early in the third quarter 37-21, only to fall behind 48-40 with about eight minutes left in the game. True freshman quarterback Max Johnson (who is 2-0 as a starter) managed to connect up with true freshman Kayshon Boutte (you cannot get a more Louisiana name than that, seriously) on two impressive scoring drives, sandwiched around an impressive defensive stand, to pull ahead with less than two minutes left in the game to go up 53-48; the defense held again, forcing a fumble to end the game with less than a minute to go to escape having the first losing season since 1999 and give Tiger fans–so beleaguered this season–a lot of hope for the future. That team that finished strong after the pasting by Alabama was mostly freshmen and sophomores….and in these last two games there were guys playing I’d never heard of before. Our back-ups pulled off an upset of Florida (which gave Alabama all they could handle in the SEC title game) and then Mississippi (the LSU-Mississippi games are always exciting; for some reason Ole Miss–it is an old rivalry game–always seems to play their best against LSU and the Tigers inevitably have to rally to win the game in the end. Paul’s and my first game ever in Tiger Stadium was the Mississippi game in 2010, which the Tigers needed a last minute score in to win); so pardon us for thinking perhaps next year will be a good one and the year after that a great one–which is the LSU way, really. It was very exciting, and I’ll be honest, I thought we were done for when the Rebels went up 48-40 and our defense looked very tired–very very tired–but in a downpour the Tigers pulled it off and thus made my day.
I also managed to unlock the puzzle of Chapter Eighteen and got it finished, and by doing so I realized I perfectly set up the final act of the book–which will make these other chapters more challenging, but that’s okay because I still have plenty of time to get this all finished and ready to go on schedule, which is very exciting.
I also read very far into The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson, and I have to say, gay Hollywood history is very interesting, and that particular period, post-war into the 1950’s, is also extremely interesting. I actually kind of wish I was more knowledgeable about the period, or had studied it in greater detail. I’ve already written a short story based in that dangerous era for gay men, “The Weight of a Feather”, which is included in Survivor’s Guilt and Other Stories, and of course, Chlorine is set in that time period. I actually have several historical gay noirs planned–Obscenity, Indecency, and Muscles–that will take place during different periods of twentieth century gay history–the 1970’s, the 1990’s, and the early aughts–which will reflect the changing moods and dangers of being gay during various decades, and how different life was for gay men in each decade. It’s an interesting concept, and one I hope readers will embrace.
Plus, the research will be endlessly fascinating.
The Saints play the Chiefs today, and apparently Drew Brees will be playing again. This presents a dilemma for me, clearly; I love the Saints, but the Chiefs have several of my favorite former LSU players on their roster (Tyrann Mathieu and Clyde Edwards-Helaire, to name two) and it’s hard for me not to want to see them do well. Perhaps the best way to handle this is to not watch at all. I don’t know. I have to write Chapter Nineteen today, and am trying to decide if I should go to the gym today, or wait until tomorrow. I overslept this morning–an hour, didn’t get up till nine–and I also only have to get through the next three days at the office before the holidays AND my brief between Christmas and New Year’s vacation–I hope to not only get this book finished by then but have the time to work on my MWA anthology submission and reread and plan the final version of #shedeservedit.
Then again, I’ll also probably be horrifically lazy a lot during that time–it happens.
And on that note, more coffee for me before the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader.
Well good morning, Constant Reader, and I hope your Saturday is off to a lovely start. I actually missed blogging yesterday–I had started the entry, but wasn’t able to finish before I had to start my work-at-home start time, and by the time I was finished for the day, it was time for the gym, and somehow I never got back here to finish. Deepest apologies, Constant Reader.
It’s chilly this morning in the Lost Apartment, but the sun is bright and shining and it looks absolutely beautiful outside this morning, which is kind of cool. I don’t have to leave the house all weekend other than the gym tomorrow, which is lovely, and I’m hoping to get some good work on the book done today. The last two days I was low energy and unable to think about getting much done, let alone do anything, so today I really need to press my nose to the grindstone and push myself to get back on track. Chapter Eighteen is proving a very tough nut to crack, but I am very pleased with the book (for a change) and am looking very forward to getting back into the groove with it.
LSU’s final game of the football season is today, against Mississippi (I refuse to call them ole miss anymore) and this can go either one of two ways: the Tigers can show up ready to play, for each other, Coach O, and the fanbase; or they can be cocky and overconfident after the Florida win, and get punched in the mouth. I’ll be watching, laptop in my lap, under my electric blanket (honestly, last night I honestly felt that human evolution, progress and civilization all culminated in the invention of the electric blanket), and hoping for the best. It’s a rivalry game called the Magnolia Bowl, and Mississippi hasn’t beaten LSU since 2015, so you know they’re hungry under their new coach, Lane Kiffin. LSU loses and they have their first losing season since 1999; win and they finish 5-5 in a crazy season.
But whatever happens, nothing can take away that win over Florida and ruining their season last weekend, which I am just petty enough to really enjoy.
We finished watching The Flight Attendant Thursday night, and the final episode was perhaps the best one of the entire run; as I have mentioned before, Kaley Cuoco is quite charismatic and likable, like Jennifer Aniston, and even though her character is primarily not very likable, she always is, and that’s an important quality for an actress…although I am rather curious about their flight schedules, because unless things have changed, I don’t think flight crews would work Rome flights as well as Bangkok. There was also a really convoluted secondary subplot that apparently only existed as a reason for one of the other flight attendants to have a gun which he needed to have, in the season finale (it was an incredible length to go to avoid the appearance of contrivance, actually; one almost has to respect the authorial commitment to it), but all the main story was properly wrapped up by the end of the finale, and there was even an opening left for a continuation of the show–also not probable, but it was kind of a nice bow tied up on the final package.
And of course, last night was the conclusion of The Mandalorian. No spoilers, but it was a pretty epic way to end the series, and I am really looking forward to The Book of Boba Fett. I think the series is now officially over–they certainly tied everything up neatly and concluded the story of the Child and Mando–and that pleases me if it is the case; the show was absolutely perfect, and as someone said on Twitter last night, “The best Star Wars movie is The Mandalorian” and I cannot disagree with that sentiment.
It’s hard to believe Christmas, frankly is next week; but this entire year has been a weird one, time has seemed to drag more than any other time, while at the same time it’s almost a relief to have made it this far. 2020 was a deeply unpleasant year, but there were some bright spots. I see everyone doing their “best of 2020” lists and I frankly can’t remember what I’ve watched and what I’ve read, other than I enjoyed almost every bit of it. I had long dry spells where I didn’t write anything, and long spells where all I wrote was the first 500 to 1000 or so words of short story before being stopped dead in my tracks. I still need to get this book revision finished so I can finish my story for the MWA anthology submissions deadline. This final part of the book is the hard part, so I suppose it’s not a surprise that it’s kind of kicking my ass.
This week was a double-feature for the Cynical 70’s Film Festival, beginning with The French Connection, an Oscar winning film (including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Actor for Gene Hackman) which doesn’t, I’m afraid, play well through a modern lens. I can see why the film was so impactful and impressive back in 1971, but now it plays like a lesser episode of NYPD Blue or Hill Street Blues. It was a gritty, dirty, almost documentary-like movie about a drug investigation, based on a book about a real drug bust–with the cops’ names changed to protect them. Gene Hackman is terrific as Popeye Doyle; Roy Schieder is equally good as his partner..but all I could think as I watched was, “well, that’s a violation of their civil rights” or “ah, nothing like glorifying police brutality” or “well, that entire scene was a fairly accurate depiction of racial profiling.” Popeye is an unashamed racist; the n-word pops up every now and then, and of course ethnic slurs abound–Little Italy is referred to as “Dagotown”, there’s some anti-Semitism, and of course, the French are referred to as “frogs”–but it does also have some great moments: the chase scene involving Popeye trying to catch a fugitive on an elevated train was pretty impressively shot and edited. Hackman is terrific in the role, even if Popeye is the kind of cop who would think nothing of killing a suspect in his custody….The French Connection ultimately is a pro-police violence film that tries to justify the behavior of cops who violate civil rights and are violent and abusive as necessary, and that, to me, is problematic. As far as awards go, among the films it beat out for the Oscar are The Last Picture Show (which is one of my favorite movies of all time), Fiddler on the Roof (the kind of big-budget, lavish musical that would have won the Oscar a few years earlier), Nicholas and Alexandra (another big budget extravaganza I started watching but quickly got bored with–and would have been a shoe-in for Best Picture in the 1980’s) and of course, Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange.
Second up was the 1974 film version of Ian Fleming’s Live and Let Die, which was the eighth Bond film and the second novel in the series. It’s also one of the few Bond films I ever saw in the theater, and was my first Bond film. It was Roger Moore’s first outing as Bond, and it was also when the tone and tenor of the Bond films switched, IMHO–I’d have go back and watch the Connery ones again to be certain. But while Connery occasional got off the clever quip or one-liner, the films were very serious and almost grim; Moore had more of a comic sense of the character and with him in the role, the character became more cartoonish and the films more outlandish (Moonraker was completely absurd) and there are many moments in Live and Let Die where, if you think about them too long, don’t make sense: how did he know to bring a deck of tarot cards with him in which all the cards were “The Lovers,” and where did he get that deck in the first fucking place? (And this doesn’t even take into consideration the fact that he basically manipulated Solitaire’s belief in the cards to get her into bed–which is rape because she was deceived into giving consent, PROBLEMATIC) There are any number of these contrivances in the plot of the film; but at the same time Live and Let Die also gave cinema it’s first Black Bond Girl, Rosie Carver (played by Gloria Hendry) and Bond’s first interracial romance, as well as the series’ first Black villains. The movie isn’t nearly as racist as the book–but it’s not exactly an achievement the Bond series should be proud of, either. But it gave the under-appreciated Yaphet Kotto a good role as Prime Minister Kananga, and introduced Jane Seymour to the world. I think I may need to read the book again–I should revisit the original Bond series, really–but one thing about Live and Let Die I do appreciate is that parts of it were filmed in New Orleans and along Bayou Des Allemandes; Louisiana looks beautiful, as does the Quarter–and this is one of those early influences on my youthful mind where I first felt the pull of New Orleans and Louisiana.
But it also boasts one of the best Bond theme songs, by Paul McCartney (or rather, Wings); it was the first time a pop band was selected to do the theme song, and it was the first Bond theme to be nominated for an Oscar for Best Song.
Yesterday I got my copy of The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson: The Pretty Boys and Dirty Deals of Henry Willson by Robert Hofler in the mail yesterday, which is the final piece (or one of the final pieces) of Chlorine background research I need to get started on the outline/plotting. My main character is a pretty boy with not much discernible talent who has a Henry Willson-like agent, whom he shares with the murder victim; I have to say the entire story of Willson, his pretty boy clients and their sexuality, endlessly fascinates me, and I am really excited to be writing a period piece gay Hollywood noir–well, eventually, at any rate. I started dipping into the book some last night and am enjoying it thoroughly. I also got a copy of Lawrence Block’s anthology From Sea to Shining Sea, which is crime stories inspired by ‘great American paintings’, and am really looking forward to digging into that. I also got a copy of Night Terrors: The Ghost Stories of E. F. Benson, because you can never have enough ghost stories around to read.
And on that note, I have some laundry to fold, a dishwasher to unload, and writing to do–so if you will excuse me for a moment, Constant Reader, I am going to head back into the spice mines.
A gazillion years ago I edited a queer Christmas anthology, Upon A Midnight Clear. Back when I was new to the business and wanted to change the world (oh, how I miss that youthful naivete and optimism–even though I was in my early forties), one of the things I had noticed–in my limited experience and knowledge of all things publishing, including the queer side of things–that there weren’t many Christmas stories from a queer perspective or with a gay man as the center of the story. (A major exception to this was Jim Grimsley’s beautiful novel Comfort and Joy, which is still one of my favorite gay novels; he also published a short story excerpted from the book that was published in one of the Men on Men anthologies–the story was also called “Comfort and Joy”. When I signed the contract for the Christmas anthology, you can best be sure I immediately emailed Jim and asked for reprint rights, which he very graciously granted.) So I decided to combat this by doing a Christmas-themed anthology for gay men, by and about and for gay men. I later found out that there had been a previous one (edited by Lawrence Schimel, if I am remembering correctly), and there have been some books and stories and novellas since then.
As is my wont, I tend to forget about Upon a Midnight Clear–it was, after all, pre-Katrina and pre-Incident–but every once in a while I remember it and think about it….and it’s usually because I opened the introduction by quoting Bette Davis as Margo in All About Eve: “I detest cheap sentimentality”–it’s a favorite quote of mine, and it pops into my head all the time, and I used it in this instance to express how annoyingly sappy most fiction–be it short stories, novels, television shows, or films–can be when it centers Christmas. It was a labor of love in some ways–for me especially, trying to reinvent my own feelings about the season–and it might be time for me (or preferably, someone else) to take another run at another gay Christmas anthology; Upon a Midnight Clear has been out of print since 2007, and while i know there have been others in the years since, I kind of would love to do another one…or perhaps one of Christmas noir.
Ooooh, I really like the sound of that.
I made some good progress on Chapter 18 yesterday, and fully intend to finally wrap that chapter up tonight and perhaps begin Chapter 19. It’s very cold again this morning in the Lost Apartment, but I have solved that issue–someone suggested to me on Facebook (I believe it was Carolyn Haines) that I buy electric blankets, and it was literally one of those moments when you think duh, how fucking stupid am I, really? In my own defense, I’ve never owned an electric blanket and we never had any when i was growing up, so I have no experience with them and it probably would have never occurred to me to get one. I ordered two from Macy’s, they arrived last week, and Paul and I broke them out last night while we were watching The Hardy Boys (which I am really enjoying much more than I ever thought I would), and yes, game changer. I am sitting at my desk right now wearing sweats, a ski cap (purple and gold LSU of course) and my electric blanket is covering my lap and it is MARVELOUS, just as it was last night.
And Scooter was absolutely in heaven last night with the electric blankets.
Today I am working from home and slept amazingly well last night; I also stayed up longer than I had intended to, which also had something to do with it. I had some writing to complete for a website–due yesterday-but the materials I needed to write about never arrived so yesterday I spent some time coming up with a work around, which I think wound up working splendidly. The writing I did yesterday also went swimmingly well; I believe my main character is really taking shape and so is the story, and I am very excited about getting this book out there for everyone to read. I am nervous about it, of course, just like always; but I am taking some risks with this book and I am pushing myself creatively. The more I work on this book, though, the further away another Scotty book seems. I had an interesting conversation on Twitter the other day (other week? who the hell knows? Time literally has no meaning anymore) about private eye novels, and I expressed that while there are certainly still good ones being written, the subgenre feels a little on the stale side to me these days; and I also confessed that this could have everything to do with my already having written fifteen of them. The stand alones I started writing and publishing in 2009 (or 2010; see earlier comment about time having no meaning) gave me enough of a break from writing the private eye novels so that I always came back to them feeling fresh and invigorated, much as how alternating between Chanse (serious) and Scotty (more silly) used to help me stay fresh with both series. I feel like Royal Street Reveillon was probably the best Scotty I’ve written in a long time; I was very pleased with how the book turned out, and from time to time I think well, that one turned out so well that might be a good place to stop–and then I remember I left Scotty’s personal story on a cliffhanger, and I probably need to get that wrapped up at some point. But once I finish these two contracted novels, I want to work on Chlorine, and there’s another paranormal New Orleans novel bouncing around in my head–Voices in an Empty Room–but I might be able to put that aside to work on another Scotty–although I have to admit there’s also a Colin stand alone bouncing around inside my head as well.
But then maybe my brain is just overloaded at the moment.
And on that note, tis back to the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader!
“Was this an accident, or did you do it on purpose?”
I opened my eyes to see my mother standing at the foot of my hospital bed, her heart-shaped face unreadable as always. The strap of her Louis Vuitton limited edition purse was hooked into the crook of her left arm. Her right hand was fidgeting, meaning she was craving one of the rare cigarettes she allowed herself from time to time. Her dove gray skirt suit, complete with matching jacket over a coral silk blouse, looked more rumpled than usual. Her shoulder length bob, recently touched up as there were no discernible gray roots in her rigid part, was also a bit disheveled. She wasn’t tall, just a few inches over five feet, and always wore low heels, because she preferred being underestimated. Regular yoga and Pilates classes kept her figure slim. She never wore a lot of make-up, just highlights here and there to make her cheekbones seem more prominent or to make her eyes pop. Looking at her, one who didn’t know better would never guess she was one of the top criminal attorneys in the country or that her criminal law classes at the University of Chicago were in high demand.
I could tell she was unnerved because she’d allowed her Alabama accent to creep slightly back into her speech. She’d worked long and hard to rid herself of that accent when she was in law school, because she said no one took her seriously when she spoke or else thought she was stupid once they’d heard it. The only times she used it now was when she wanted someone to feel superior to her, or she’d been drinking, or she was upset.
It worked like a charm getting her out of speeding tickets.
I hadn’t been asleep, nor had I been awake either, hovering in that weird in-between state where it seemed like I’d been living for the last three or four days.
“It wasn’t on purpose.” I managed to croak the words out. My throat was still raw and sore from having my stomach pumped. My lips were dry and chapped, and my eyes still burned from the aftermath of the insane drug-and-alcohol binge I’d gone on in the aftermath of the break-up with fucking Tradd Chisholm. “It was an accident.” I shifted in the hospital bed, trying to sit up more, the IV swinging wildly. The memory of that last and final fight with Tradd flashed through my head.
Why are you so fucking needy? He’d screamed at me. I can’t fucking breathe!
Fucking Tradd, anyway. Why did I let him get under my skin the way I had?
Why had I let him isolate me from my friends?
Why, why, why.
He wasn’t worth this, that’s for sure.
She moved to the chair beside my bed, her heels clacking on the linoleum floor. She sat down smoothly—she always moved fluidly, which led one of her ex-husbands to spit at her on his way out the door, “Maybe if you take that baseball bat you’ve got shoved up your ass you can be a wife to the next poor bastard who marries you.”
She peered at me with her big, emotionless gray eyes. “Given your history, you understand why I had to insist they put you on a seventy-two-hour hold, once they called me?”
I closed my eyes.
My history.
I’d slit my wrists at fifteen, tired of the non-stop bullying at St. Sebastian’s, the elite prep school that she said would set me up for the rest of my life. The therapist she sent me to afterwards claimed it was more of a cry for attention than anything else, and I’d had to agree with that assessment. After all, I hadn’t gone up the arm following the vein with the Exacto knife, after all, but had cut across instead—which meant the wounds would clot long before death. I’d taken a couple of her Xanax, thinking it would make the razor slicing my skin hurt less.
That was why I passed out in the bath water, not from loss of blood.
My therapist had also made me understand why she couldn’t forget or let it go.
“Put yourself in her shoes, Jake,” Dr. Mendelssohn said, making sure she was earning her two hundred and fifty dollars per hour. “Imagine coming home from a long day in court, exhausted, and finding your only child unconscious in a bathtub full of bloody water, a razor blade on the bath mat. That’s an image she’s not likely to ever forget. No parent would.”
“Yes, Mom, I understand.” I replied mechanically, keeping my eyes closed. My throat ached still, and I had a headache. The doctor said it would take a day or so before I started feeling physically better. It had already been twenty-four hours. Forty-eight more to go before I could go home to my cute little apartment on Napoleon Street.
Not that I wanted to go back there.
The memories of the fight and Tradd storming out were still too fresh, the place would seem empty without him there. Had we ever been happy together? I wasn’t sure. We must have been at some point. There must be good memories, too— I just couldn’t remember them at the moment.
“I’m not responsible for your feelings!” he’d screamed at me. “You’re too possessive! You won’t let me breathe! I can’t take it anymore!” And finally, the finishing touch: “You’re just not worth all this drama.”
The door slammed behind him.
I’d stood there, shaking, grabbed my phone before remembering there wasn’t anyone for me to call. Tradd hadn’t liked my friends and I’d chosen him over them. Our friends were his friends.
Without him, I was alone.
So, I’d gone into my little kitchenette, my hands shaking as I reached for the bottle of Grey Goose in the cabinet over the stove. I poured myself a glass, added some ice and started drinking. I don’t remember heading to the Quarter, whether I took a Lyft or the streetcar or called a cab or how I got there. All that mattered was that I did get there.
I do remember deciding after a couple of glasses that the easiest way to feel better was a lot of drugs and a lot of sex with strangers. Most of those days between Thursday night and Sunday morning were a blur.
At some point I must have run into a dealer I knew and started snorting.
So. Many. Blanks.
The last thing I remembered was being on the dance floor at Oz, my shirt off and my heart racing and the sweat pouring out of my body, the little packet of crystal meth I’d just scored from someone—the last of I don’t know how many—clutched in my hand as I moved to the endless thump of the music, some total stranger dancing close behind me, grinding on me, dry-humping me on the dance floor. I remember dipping my apartment key into the baggie and inhaling up both nostrils.
According to the doctor who’d spoken to me when I came to in the emergency room, I’d collapsed on the dance floor around five in the morning on Sunday. The ambulance arrived at Oz around five thirty and brought me to University Medical Center. They’d pumped my stomach, given me something to counteract the meth, stuck an IV in my arm, and called my mother.
And once she told them about the suicide attempt when I was fifteen, they agreed I should be watched for seventy-two hours.
And now, here she was.
“I won’t ask why you didn’t call me.” She said, sounding tired. She probably was—she was consulting on a case in Los Angeles and so she must have taken a red-eye flight in. “I know I’ve not been the best mother, Jake, and maybe it’s my fault you’re so messed up. Maybe I shouldn’t have been a mother. God knows I can’t make a marriage last. Which reminds me, I’ve kicked Brock out and asked for a divorce—” Brock was only ten years older than me and a tennis instructor. I hadn’t thought it would last, but he was gorgeous and had a great body and was nice enough, if not particularly smart. I didn’t blame her for marrying someone for great sex after three failed marriages. “—but I’ve done my best, the best I knew how to do.” Her right hand was twitching again. I was tempted to tell her to just go have the damned cigarette. “And I know I’ve not been around much because of my career but…” She shook her head. “Your father says you don’t talk to him either.”
My parents divorced when I was so young, I couldn’t remember them being married. He’d remarried, lived out in the Chicago suburbs with his second wife and their three kids. Very 50’s family sitcom existence. Cecily, my stepmother, tried to always make me feel welcome and a part of their family, which only made it all the more obvious I was out of place in the suburbs.
“So, I guess we failed you as parents. Maybe you shut me out because you think I’m not there for you, have never been there for you. But I am your mother and I wish you’d call me when you’re in trouble.” Her voice shook on the last words, the accent softening the r’s and drawing out the vowels in a slight drawl, but she took a moment to compose herself and I watched her turn back into the high-powered, highly sought after criminal defense attorney that rarely lost a case and eager young students wanted to learn from. “I took the liberty of stopping by your apartment on the way here.” She hesitated. “You tore up all the pictures of Tradd and burned in them in the sink. And since he’s not here, I guess it’s safe to assume that’s what this was all about.”
“I don’t—I don’t want to talk about Tradd.” I closed my eyes. I just felt numb but was afraid if I talked about him, thought about it, the pain would come back.
“All right.” She leaned forward in the chair. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to—I’m not going to make you.” She got up out of the chair and walked over to the window, looking out through the blinds at the traffic on Tulane Avenue. “I’ve already talked to the dean, and they’ve agreed to withdraw you from this semester, even though it’s so late, given the circumstances. I think you need to get out of New Orleans for a while.”
“Mom—”
“Don’t argue with me, Jake.” She began tapping her foot. “I’ve also spoken to your landlord and have paid the rent through September, so you can keep the place and come back here to go to school again this fall. But you need to get away from New Orleans for awhile. I don’t think this is the healthiest environment for you to be in while—while you’re this fragile.”
After the suicide attempt, she’d threatened to put me into a psychiatric facility. We compromised on Dr. Mendelssohn. “I’m not going to a treatment center.”
“Dr. Benoit said you were inhaling the drugs, so while it’s still possible that you’re addicted, at least you aren’t injecting.”
Thank heaven for small miracles, right?
“I’m not addicted to anything, Mom.”
“I’ll take your word for it.” She hesitated. “But admitting you have a problem is the first step—”
I cut her off. “What I did was stupid, but it was also out of character.” I sat up further in the bed, wincing as my head throbbed. “I smoke a little weed here and there, and yeah, I get drunk sometimes, and every once in a great while maybe I’ll do something else—” Honesty, but not total honesty, was called for, if it would keep me out of rehab.
Always tell the truth, just not the whole truth.
“—but I don’t need to do anything. Even the thought of drinking again makes me nauseous.”
“That’ll pass.” She was still looking out the window. She turned back to look at me, her arms crossed. “You can’t come home to Chicago because I’m consulting on a case in Los Angeles and will be gone most of the summer. I don’t imagine you want to stay with your father—”
“No!”
“—and there really are few other options.” She cracked a smile. “I never thought I would say this, but I know the perfect solution, and it actually solves two problems. You remember when I called you about your grandmother’s stroke?”
I gaped at her.
She couldn’t be serious.
Her mother, who refused to answer to anything but Miss Sarah or Mrs. Donelson, had suffered a massive stroke back during Carnival. She hadn’t been expected to live, but somehow had grimly held onto life in a hospital in Birmingham. Mom had stopped taking me with her on the annual duty trips down to Alabama to visit her mother when I was about eight, so I barely remembered Miss Sarah. Mom always refused to talk about her mother—or any of her childhood out in the rural countryside, really—and her younger brother, Dewey, who lived in Birmingham with his wife and kids, never did, either. He and his family sometimes visited us in Chicago, and he seemed like a good guy, his wife nice. Their kids were a little spoiled—he was an investment banker—but no more so than my half-siblings out in their Mayberry-like suburb.
“You’re going to send me to Alabama?” I stared at her. “For the summer?”
“She’s getting out of the hospital,” she replied calmly. “She wants to die at home, and Dewey and I are arranging for nurses to come in—one during the day and one at night, twelve-hour shifts. But those nurses are going to need to take breaks sometimes, and we can’t trust that Donovan kid to spell them.”
“What Donovan kid?”
“I’ve told you about Kelly Donovan.” She furrowed her brow.
I racked my brain. “No, you haven’t.”
“Of course I did, you just weren’t paying attention.” The like always was implied. She let out an exasperated breath. “His mother was a distant cousin, I’m not sure how we’re related, to be honest, nor do I care, but his mother died last summer and Miss Sarah took him in. He’s some big deal athlete, has a scholarship to play football at Troy this fall. But he isn’t close family, and while I certainly couldn’t stop her from taking him in, I don’t trust him alone in the house with her and the nurses.” She waved a hand. “It’s bad enough he’s had the run of the place since she went into the hospital, but Dewey—” Her face twisted, and she sighed. “He’s been there the whole time, and Dewey thinks we can’t very well kick him out—I really didn’t like him staying there alone in the house while she was in the hospital—because he has nowhere to go, and Dewey certainly can’t move there to stay while we wait for her to…” she stopped herself, and had the decency to blush a little.
“Wait for her to die?”
“Well, yes.” She blew out another breath. “I don’t know why it’s always so hard to talk honestly about family things. Yes, while we wait for her to die. The doctors don’t know how much longer she’ll last. She could last for months, weeks, years—or she could die tomorrow. I know I’d feel better if you were there in the house. Not just because of this—” she gestured around the room, and I could feel my own face turning red, “—but to know a family member is there in the house with her. She can’t really get out of bed—you don’t have to worry about any of that personal hygiene things, that’s what we’re paying the nurses for—and she’s able to talk very little. And you won’t have to spend much time with her, except to give the nurses a break to have dinner or a cigarette or to stretch their legs or something.” She sat back down in the chair. “And don’t say you’ll be bored. There’s a satellite dish, so there’s wifi and a big screen television Dewey bought her, and—” Her eyes gleamed. “—and since she’s dying, we might as well get a jump on things that’ll need to be done once she’s gone. You start clearing out the place. No one has ever thrown a damned thing away. The attic…the attic looks like something from one of those awful shows about hoarders. Lord, that place is a mess, filled with old furniture and boxes of things. Maybe some of that garbage is worth something, can be sold or donated somewhere it can do some good.”
“That sounds like a lot of fun.”
“At least you haven’t lost what you think is your sense of humor.” She tilted her head and her eyes narrowed. “But if you’d rather spend the summer at a facility—”
“No, no, of course not.” My heart was sinking. A summer in rural Alabama, awful as it sounded, was still better than a summer being watched in a rehab center and group therapy and all the rest—made all the worse by knowing you don’t belong there in the first place. Sure, I’d done something incredibly stupid but the only person I’d harmed was myself.
And getting away—even to Alabama—didn’t sound like such a bad idea. Maybe by the time I came back in August I’d be over for Tradd for good.
The numbness was fading. Thinking about him caused a pang.
“And of course, I’ll pay you for the work,” she went on. “You’ll have your credit cards, of course, and I’ll up the weekly deposit into your bank account from five hundred to a thousand. Does that sound fair?”
I nodded.
“And you can also keep an eye on those archaeologists.”
“Archaeologists?” I stared at her. “What are you talking about?”
“You really don’t listen to me when I talk, do you?” She shook her head. “Some archaeologist from the University of Alabama—Dr. Brady, I think—has been after us for years to allow him to excavate the ruins. Miss Sarah of course would have none of it, but after she had the stroke Dewey gave him permission. You probably won’t ever encounter them—they’re using the old road to the ruins, they’ve cleared it all out—but Miss Sarah doesn’t know they’re there and you aren’t going to tell her. Kelly has been warned about telling her—I am not as squeamish as Dewey about throwing him out. If she gets upset or angry—” She cleared her throat. “There’s no need to tell her anything that’s going to finish her off. And she’s just mean enough to live on and cause trouble for both me and Dewey.”
“But if she’s bedridden—”
“I know my mother.” Her voice became cold and steely. “She may be bedridden, but there’s all kinds of things—damage—she can still cause trouble as long as she’s still breathing. I think Dewey should have told them to clear out once she decided to come home to die, frankly, but he’s the son and he has the power of attorney and so what I think doesn’t matter.” Her voice was bitter. “I’m just the daughter.”
“What are they looking for at the ruins? The lost boys?”
Mom may not talk much about her childhood, but she had told me stories about the family history over the years. The Blackwoods had been among the original settlers of Corinth County when Alabama was still a territory and not a state. The legend of the lost boys was one of the stories she’d told me, while also letting me know that it was most likely an apocryphal story, a romantic fairy tale that was actually fairly common throughout the old Confederate states. Before the Civil War, the Blackwood plantation had apparently been one of the largest plantations in that area of the state, and the Blackwoods had also been one of the largest slave-owning families in Alabama. When the war broke out, the patriarch and his two oldest sons had set off to fight in the war in Virginia, leaving his wife and the two younger sons behind. The father had died at Gettysburg, the oldest son at another one of those late-war battles in Virginia that led to the surrender at Appomattox. When the second son returned to the plantation, he found only the ruins of a burned house. The slaves, his mother, and two younger brothers were all gone. “The story was that a Yankee soldier—maybe a deserter—had robbed the place, killed the family, and burned the house down.” She had shrugged. “But that story—you hear it everywhere. It’s not even original. Hell, even Margaret Mitchell used it in Gone with the Wind.”
No trace of the missing Mrs. Blackwood or her two younger sons had ever been found. The surviving son married one of the county girls and lost most of the property; but the family fortune was slowly built back up by one of his sons, who built a huge Victorian house closer to the county road than the old plantation house. But the later descendants weren’t so good with managing the money and so the big house had slowly started falling into ruin and Miss Sarah’s father had been a simple farmer. The woods had grown back up, and the ruins were about a twenty-minute walk from the newer house, hidden from sight by the towering pines.
One of my few memories of visiting Alabama as a child included a trip back to the ruins of the old house. I can still remember the columns on the porch and the chimneys at either end covered with moss—but not enough to hide where the fire had burned them black.
Mom had been very careful to always remind me not to take pride in the fact my ancestors owned slaves. “Slavery was disgusting, Jake, and the root of every racial problem we still have in this country was built on that foundation of slavery. We shouldn’t forget the history, but we also shouldn’t take pride in the fact our ancestors owned people they treated like cattle and were traitors. The heritage is hate, never forget that.”
I never had.
“I should hope not, since he has an excellent reputation as a scholar.” she said with a look of distaste. “Apparently, he told Dewey the ruins of Blackwood Hall are one of the few antebellum plantation sites in the state that haven’t been excavated, so this Dr. Brady—don’t worry, I did a thorough background check on him once Dewey told me about all of this—is more interested in finding how they lived and documenting the history than in any of the romantic family legends.” A faint smile crossed her lips, and she arched one of her perfectly sculpted eyebrows. “Believe it or not, the Blackwoods of Corinth County haven’t exactly been the subject of a lot of historical research. But Corinth County is just a backwater and I seriously doubt he’ll find anything of major significance there.” She reached out and covered my hand with hers. “Is there anything you need that I haven’t already taken care of?”
I closed my eyes. “No, Mom, as always—you’ve thought of everything.”
Look everyone! We made it to Wednesday and Christmas is next week!
#madness.
I’m groggy this morning (as well as being Greggy) and am hoping the cappuccino will kick up the energy soon. It’s my last day at the office this week, and while I slept fairly well, I didn’t want to get up when the alarm went off–and am looking forward to sleeping a little later tomorrow. I have to get through this day at the office so I can head for the gym this evening, and then collapse into my easy chair where I will write for a while until it’s time to either watch something on television or read.
Revising Chapter Eighteen is much harder than I had anticipated; most of what I had written is unusable, and so I am basically starting from scratch with it. I made some progress yesterday, but still have a ways to go, and am worried that the rest of the book will also need so much work–but that’s me being paranoid as the deadline date approaches steadily. But I am very pleased with the cover–which I shared yesterday–and the final polish will go a long way toward getting the manuscript to match the mood of the cover, which actually does precisely capture the mood I am going for–spooky, Gothic, rural–and I’ve been worried (my primary worry) has been that I am not capturing the mood I was going for.
Then again, I always am worried about what I am writing.
So, the high today is 58; it’s currently 53 and there’s also rain in the forecast for today. Hurray. The entire sky is gray right now–the sun is coming up, but the sky is covered in frothy clouds–so there’s this whole weird spooky element to the morning already. It doesn’t exactly make me want to jump in the shower and go outside this morning, you know? But it is what it is, and at some point you just have to get it together and go, you know? But that doesn’t mean I have to like it. As you probably already know unless you’re new here, I am not a fan of cold weather–and by that I mean anytime the mercury drops below sixty degrees. I like sweater weather; I do not like jacket weather. But at least the cold weather days are few here–much fewer than in most parts of the country–but that doesn’t mean I have to like them. Rather, I just endure.
We watched the new episode of A Teacher last night, and you may very well ask why we are continuing to watch a show we so clearly don’t like. Primarily, it’s because the episodes are short, and when we have a few minutes in the evening to watch something, well, a show that’s less than thirty minutes per episode fits the bill. I’m not even sure what the entire point of this show is, to be honest. The older woman/teacher last night was let out of jail on probation (I’m not sure why she even went to jail in the first place, as they made it clear from the beginning he was over eighteen–and while it’s morally questionable and she certainly should have been fired, I don’t really see how their affair was actually a crime), and she clearly learned nothing–she’s bitter and resentful that her life has been ruined, and has been ruined for the foreseeable future–so again, I am not sure what the point is here? The show runs trigger warnings both before and after every episode, about grooming and seeking help if you feel you’re being groomed–but that isn’t what they are depicting in the show, which is very confusing to us as we watch…you keep making these statements that grooming is bad and teens get groomed by predators…but then what you’re showing is supposedly a little more nuanced than that, so I don’t get it. It’s like the producers and writers are like, “we want to show the complications of such a relationship, and how there’s so much gray involved when the adult is in her early twenties and the student is eighteen, but we don’t want to be criticized so we are going to try to defuse it by stating before and after every episode that what we are showing is actually bad and if you need help, here’s where to find it.”
It’s just…odd–or at least it seems odd to me. Your mileage might vary.
Basically, I neither understand the teacher nor the student or their motivations or why they are behaving the way they are, so it’s hard for me to understand them or have empathy for either of them. Again, others might feel differently, but the show just isn’t working for me. So why do we keep watching? Because the episodes are short, and everything else we are watching is about an hour per….and sometimes it’s fun to watch something you don’t really like; we watched many many seasons of Pretty Little Liars before we finally gave up on the show. (Interestingly enough, Pretty Little Liars also featured a romance between a high school student and a teacher, with the genders reversed; they became one of the primary “super-couples” of the show and there were no trigger warnings given.) And in fairness, we often were rooting for A.
And on that note, it’s time to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader, and may your holidays be filled with cheer.
Queer and Loathing in America 