Yesterday was a decent day. I didn’t get as much done as I would have liked, but I did get the first Pride newsletter out, as well as my review of Murder Takes a Vacation, as well as my future newsletters about James Bond and Vicky Barr. I had groceries delivered, did some chores, but only started my rereads of The Dark on the Other Side by Barbara Michaels and The Mystery of the Haunted Mine, but didn’t crack the spine on Summerhouse. I did feel a trifle tired mentally and physically, so basically just took it easy for the rest of the day. I slept well last night, which felt great, and I am curious to see what this week will bring.
I also remembered an old short story that I couldn’t get to work–the premise was just really “no one could ever be that fucking stupid”–but now? Now I have a much better idea for said premise, because it happens all the time. I am interested in pursuing that story, because the dynamic between the two main characters is something I did enjoy writing, but…like I said, the premise that led to their meeting was kind of too stupid to believe, but technology has advanced enough now that the ‘on-line accident’ is believable now.1
I watched television for most of the day. We finished both The Better Sister (superb, highly recommend) and Big Mouth, which is now over for good, and we’ll need to find something else to watch. We started something called Adults, but after two episodes I am not sold on it. I also had the LSU game on in the evening, while I finished some chores so the Lost Apartment wasn’t a complete disaster area this morning when I came down for coffee, toast, and cereal. (All I have to do is load the dishwasher and turn it on tonight and I’ll be all set.)
I am hoping to get back to writing fiction this week. I want to finish this one short story and then look at some submission calls I’ve bookmarked. I am kind of excited about writing again, and I really need to be getting back to it. As I said, the ideas and creativity are running rampant in my head, and I really need to get those muscles back into shape so I can get back to actually writing my ideas up. The will is there, of course, the question is whether or not my brain and typing fingers will cooperate.
I guess we’ll see.
Well, we get sent home from the office before I could post this; we don’t have water–and without water we can’t operate or see clients (not to mention the bathroom situation) so I get to work at home the rest of this low-energy day, so let’s see how it goes, shall we?
I’ll be back on the morrow….thanks as always for stopping by.
Italian ballerino Roberto Bolle
I do find it interesting that something that would have been so stupid of a mistake to make with technology eight years ago could easily happen today; isn’t that sort of thing supposed to become harder with more tech advances? One would think, at any rate, and it does make you wonder about these “tech geniuses”, doesn’t it? ↩︎
And we made it to Thursday, our last day in the office for the week and we survived! Huzzah!
We had a marvelous rain last night, a steady downpour that no doubt flooded neighborhoods and streets and ruined any number of cars. There was thunder, too, and it made an already tired Gregalicious even sleepier, so much so that rather than doing chores before bed, I just went to bed and slept. I slept great as long as the storm lasted, but once it was over I was restless and tossing and turning. Sigh. We’re also busy in clinic today, so I sense another evening of exhaustion. I made groceries on the way home yesterday, and was thus very tired when I got home. I made a pizza for dinner, and then Paul and I watched Sirens (didn’t care for it so stopped watching) and then moved on to the final season of Big Mouth, which is so wrong but so damned fucking funny; it’s about kids going through puberty and is hilarious. It’s animated, so that removes the ick factor it would have if it were live action. I also didn’t do chores last night, so tonight I’ll have to push through the exhaustion and get the kitchen under control for Remote Friday. Yippee!
Ooh, just heard thunder and it’s overcast outside–that should help me stay awake all day, right? But I am going to enjoy the rain as long as I can, since next week the Saharan dust will be here drying everything out. And it’s pouring out there now–I’m going to actually have to take an umbrella with me to the car. YIKES–and trying to keep my feet dry will be a challenge.
My mind is still not capable of producing fiction when it’s tired, alas; I tried to work on the prologue for the new Scotty book (and am finding my cards for the tarot reading each chapter serves as) but it was painful and didn’t get anywhere. Oddly enough, my mind can focus on writing non-fiction (hence the flurry of newsletters over the holiday weekend) and reading it, too. I hope to finish Laura Lippman’s new book this weekend as well as Moonraker, which also means writing about them for the newsletter as well. I also have some other things I need to get done this weekend. I have some errands to run tomorrow after work (including, sigh, more bloodwork) and preparing a pitch for Chlorine. Wish me luck!
I also met with my case manager/nurse from the drug company that produces the medication I’ll be dealing with for the rest of my life. I am actually really impressed by this service (I also have one for the infusion center, one from the specialist, and one from the hospital, which is a lot to keep track of; I’m also going to have to take some time to figure this all out and know what’s going on and where I am going), but it’s also making me realize just how serious this condition actually is, which is kind of scary in some ways, but…what can you do? Buckle down, accept it, and go forward. I am getting stronger every day; I can climb the steps without stopping or needing to balance with the railing, which is a good thing. The grocery store is no longer exhausting, simply tiring, which I can also live with happily, and while my skin is still ashy, the moisturizing does help but I am still, I guess, a little on the dehydrated side.
And on that note, I am off to the spice mines and to make a to-do list for the weekend. Have a lovely Thursday, and I’ll be back on the morrow.
Tuesday and back to normal around here. Yesterday was kind of nice, actually; I felt rested and was able to get a lot done at the office, and wasn’t exhausted when I got home after running errands. This was unusual, particularly because not only did I do things over the weekend I actually left the house and was social. I assumed that I would be, naturally, quite tired and exhausted–but it was actually kind of lovely. The weekend itself was lovely, and yesterday was really nice at work. I felt rested all day-to the point I was a bit worried I might not be able to sleep. But I did sleep, fairly well, and now that I am up at the hour I usually am, well, I’m thinking that maybe getting up this early every day isn’t necessary? Leaving the office at five instead of four thirty doesn’t really spare me much traffic grief on the way home, and staying in bed yesterday until seven didn’t stop the world from turning on its axis. If I didn’t have appointments this week and thus needed to make up time at the office, I might actually start getting up at seven to be there for eight thirty every morning from now on.
Last night was nice. I stopped on the way home to get the mail, which was very lovely. I got the Christmas cards I’d ordered, for which I already have the stamps, and I think I am going to get a jump on that this year and have them all ready to go and to drop into the mail in early December. I got home, finished the laundry I’d started in the morning, and then we started watching the new season of Big Mouth–I felt like I wanted to laugh rather than enjoy the high camp drama of Elité, so that’s what we did. The show is so wrong on so many levels, but so hilarious about the sex obsessions of raging hormones during puberty and dealing with those physical and emotional changes that I laugh out loud multiple times per episode. It was a lovely evening to spend with a cat donut in my lap.
I do love a kitten donut.
I also did some things yesterday that I’d been avoiding–avoidance is always a sign of depression for me, I’ll look at an email I need to answer and think ugh I’ll deal with it later or if I answer this then they’ll answer and I don’t want to deal with that, either and so…yeah, it’s always been a problem for me. But at least I recognize the problem, right? I always think that should count for something, whether it actually does or not. I feel like I’ve kind of come out of the funk I’ve been in for a long time? I feel like myself again for the first time in a long time, and that’s a good feeling, frankly. Maybe having to leave the house this past weekend and be social shocked my system back into place? I did spend a lot of Sunday reevaluating my life and my attitudes and so forth; and some harsh truths were also brought home to me at the wedding itself. I realized, among other things, that the people I work with, while no fewer than twelve years younger and as many as forty–well, I’ve kind of kept myself aloof from them for a number of years now. My mentality was, oh, you’re sixty and if you show any interest in them they’ll think you’re a creepy old gay–something I’ve never wanted to be seen as–and so I let them do their thing and I do my thing and while I am deeply fond of all of them, I don’t really mix with them outside of work and don’t really know much about their lives. When two of them showed up, they said “Oh, we were wondering if you’d come” and I replied, “If for no other reason than to prove I do exist outside of the office” and they both started laughing–because they’d made the same joke in the car on the way there. I also commented to one of them how much I love the way they dress when they aren’t at work; some of my co-workers have the most amazing sense of style, which I love to see (just like I’m thrilled to see young celebrities pushing the boundaries of male fashion and formal wear on red carpets besides the traditional, incredibly stuffy and tired tuxedo. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always loved a tuxedo, but the reason I never developed a sense of style and fashion is because I always found men’s clothes to be boring, and I try to liven it up a bit with things like shoes. But when I was younger, you could never get away with going different stylistically, and so I never bothered to care or try) and I made that very observation to one of them, who joked about how I always just wear jeans and work T-shirts every day…which I do because it’s easy and I don’t have to think about…which made me think about it and so this week I’ve been wearing the collared polos that have been collecting dust within the closet for years now–even tucking them into the pants rather than just letting the shirttails hang free.
And oddly, it does make me feel better about being in the office and more participatory in my life.
I also realized, as I watched my co-worker marry his partner, that I’ve only been to same-sex weddings over the last decade (I don’t go to a lot of weddings; I hate them for any number of reasons that will be a subject for another time). I got a little misty during the ceremony, which never happens, and realized it was because I was delightedly happy for my co-worker. Standing there in the beautiful but simply decorated back yard, I started thinking about Paul and me getting married, where we would have it and what that would be like, who would we invite and who would we not, and what it would look like and I think that played a little part to my being misty during the vows and ceremony?
Having dinner with my friend Ellen on Sunday night was also incredibly helpful. Sure, I interact with other writers in emails and social media, but there really is something lovely about a face to face conversation–with wine–and conversation about publishing and writing and so on and so forth. It kind of brushed away the cobwebs that have been in my brain since the last Bouchercon, and woke me up a bit about writing and procrastination and depression and so forth. Dealing with the anxiety is also tiring, but the strategies and coping mechanisms are working. (For example, I am always early; ridiculously early in some cases, because I get anxious about getting there and anxious about being late and work myself up into quite a state until I leave early and then wind up arriving at parties and events waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too early, which is awkward and embarrassing. So Saturday the wedding was 4 to 9; I didn’t summon a Lyft until 4. Sunday the reservation was for 6:45; I got there at 6:39 and walked around the block taking pictures and came back at 6:45; Ellen was early! That was a good laugh)
And ultimately, this week I feel better about myself, my life, and my career. Of course tomorrow I could slide back down into the Pit of Despair, but for today…I’m gonna roll with it. Have a great Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check back in with you again tomorrow.
I honestly believe that a lot of our problems in this country are a direct result of an attempt to enforce some national prudery standard that relentlessly tries to shame any and every one of us for the perfectly natural and normal human functions of our body. We are seeing this again in this modern age, as the Morality Police (who are all-too-frequently hiding some horrific skeletons in their own closets) try to get books banned, discussions about sex and sexuality and gender stifled and silenced, and entire segments of the population erased from public view and hidden away again because it makes them, well, uncomfortable.
Well, semi-automatic weapons, religion, and bigotry make me uncomfortable, but that doesn’t matter, apparently, as I am (to borrow a phrase from John Irving and The World According to Garp) a “sexual suspect.”
Ironically, I distinctly remember what television was like back when it was heavily censored and what was considered wholesome family entertainment was aired. It didn’t mean sex wasn’t talked about, it just meant that it had to be implication rather than outright said–which led to incredibly stupid phrases to stand in for sexual contact, or sexual intercourse, that were completely transparent and frankly, kind of stupid. That was the kind of television I grew up with, where everything was plastic and phony and created a false sense of what the country was really like (where, for example, are Mayberry’s Black people?), and some people watch those old shows and think, oh, what a better and simpler time we lived in then! We must get back to that world of innocence!
Which, of course, is complete and utter horseshit. Television of the 50s and 60s most certainly were not reflections of culture and society as a whole, no matter how much someone might want that to be the truth…it was not.
When I was a child, I hated the stupid, coy euphemisms screenwriters employed to mention sexual activity and escape the censors; “hanky-panky” is perhaps one of the worst. “Making love” is another one that puts my teeth on edge; “making whoopie” still another, and perhaps the worst offenderof all was ‘vo-dee-oh-doe’ from LaVerne & Shirley. Even when I was a kid that kind of “nudge-nudge wink-wink” kind of thing annoyed me; I can remember thinking, many times, “just say fuck, for Christ’s sake.” “Making love” is one that was really popular on soaps, and it’s always said tearfully; it also made me want to slap the speaker (and of course the movie Let’s Make Love really should be Let’s Fuck). The fact that we don’t have a common, easy to use word to substitute for fucking that delicate sensibilities won’t consider profane is part of the problem in this country, frankly. Oh, no! Sex is dirty, we can’t talk about that! We can’t come up with a non-offensive word for it because just thinking about sex upsets some people. God forbid we actually have a realistic, honest conversation about sex and sexuality. I hate to break it to you prudes, but sex is normal and healthy. The fact that our culture has tried so desperately to appease the prudes by turning sex and sexuality into something we’re just not supposed to talk about has put braces on our brains, and anchored fear and loathing to our sexuality; if our mightiest God in this country is Money, the second mightiest is SHAME. Having your body react to stimulation by getting aroused? SHAME ON YOU.
When I was growing up–and granted, things have gotten a little better since then–even masturbation was considered something shameful that no one would ever admit to; nothing like learning repression when you’re going through puberty. It was an insult to call someone a jack off; you mocked boys by talking about them jacking off…which was something I did pretty regularly, so even more SHAME. And when you take into consideration the fact that even as young and sheltered as I was, that I knew my sexuality–my physical and intellectual and emotional attraction to other men–was wrong and something else to be ashamed of; not only was I masturbating but I was thinking about men while I was doing it: DOUBLE WHAMMY.
It took me years to shake off that prudish conditioning, and it wasn’t until I stopped feeling shame about sex and my sexuality that I finally started to actually live my life, rather than having a life that just happened to me. Fear and shame had made me passive; afraid that being myself and living the kind of life I wanted to would cost me friends, family and employment; afraid that embracing having sex with other men (and exploring every element of what that meant) would lead to an infection that could kill me; afraid afraid afraid.
I often say that I refuse to live in fear, but that I am also sensible; I always am acutely aware of my surroundings and everyone around me–while that may have developed from being gay and knowing that made me a target, I think it’s prudent and smart to always be aware, regardless of who and what and where you are.
Given my prudish upbringing and conditioning, as well as the shame and fear I lived with for so long, it is kind of interesting that I started write erotica in my late thirties. Writing erotica for me was an education in many different ways. I learned a lot about myself while writing it, for one thing; for another, I taught myself how to write short stories by writing erotica (beginning, middle, end is never as apparent or obvious as in an erotic short story), and I was also able to work through a lot of my own issues with shame by writing erotica. The first erotica story I ever wrote, “The Wrestling Match,” was a liberating experience for me; I found myself blushing with embarrassment as I wrote it, which was an interesting (to me) phenomenon. Why was I so embarrassed to write about desire, lust, and sex?
Because years of conditioning to associate shame with desire and sexuality had taken firm root in my mind. It was an interesting experience–and the next time I wrote an erotic story, tit was an entirely different situation; there was no shame or embarrassment. Apparently, all it took was writing that first story to work through it…it was also interesting, because around that same time I was trying to get caught up with all the queer fiction and nonfiction I hadn’t known existed for such an extended period of time, and reading has always been how I learned about anything. I was reading Dorothy Allison’s essay collection Trash (which should be required reading, really), and Dorothy’s point that if we spoke honestly and openly about sex and sexuality (and other aspects of human life that for whatever reason we’ve been conditioned to think we can’t talk about) a lot of the stigma and shame most people feel would be eliminated. As long as your fantasies don’t involve hurting anyone or children–if everyone involved is able to give informed and full consent–there’s nothing to be ashamed of, really. But we’ve been conditioned in western civilization since Catholicism conquered the Roman Empire to consider anything of the body to be sinful and shameful; things of the mind and spirit are what we are supposed to focus on while denying the earthy sinfulness of our sexual desire. (This also goes for other bodily functions, like waste and gas) This is particularly true when it comes to kink. We’ve been conditioned in this country to think anything besides missionary position between a man and a woman is something so beyond that it must be shamed, and reacted to with revulsion. Why? As long as no one is being hurt and everyone is on board, I don’t care if you like being spanked, or lashed with cat o’nine tails; or if you like to wear leather and get a thrill from it. My own kinks primarily are focused around the domination/submission play of wrestling; I’ve written about that extensively enough to not feel the need to go into it again here (but check out my erotic pro wrestling novel, Going Down for the Count, available at any bookseller on-line!).
We don’t have honest conversations about sexuality and desire in this country. Writing an erotic short story was incredibly freeing for me; it broke the bonds of shame that indoctrination had built up in my brain. It may not be the case for everyone else, but it’s always interesting to me that people never question themselves when it comes to their own prudery, lusts and desires. (The way they depict it on the hilarious animated comedy series about puberty, Big Mouth, is particularly genius: the Shame Monster.) If you feel shame about your sexuality and your desires, shouldn’t you examine that? Where did it come from? Why do you feel this shame, and what is its root cause?
I do spend a lot of time gazing at my own navel and trying to figure out where all of my phobias and fears and so forth come from, so it’s always interesting to me when people don’t and seem to have no interest in self-examination. Maybe it’s just another form of my own narcissism and self-absorption; that could easily be the case. I sometimes wonder if the reason others don’t reflect on themselves and self-evaluate is because they are somehow more comfortable in their own skins than I am in mine. It’s certainly possible.
But the only way we can stop a lot of the bigotry and hatred in this country is to start being open and honest about sex, sexuality, and desire. To stop shaming people for being interested in sex, and exploring their fantasies and desires. Almost all of our prejudices are rooted in this fear of sex and sexuality; white supremacy is, in some ways, about protecting the “purity” of their blood and “womanhood” from the sexual predation of non-whites. (That was really what the trial in To Kill a Mockingbird was about; but interestingly enough Harper Lee, in illustrating Southern white bigotry through a rape trial, was also unintentionally sending a very strong message to her readers about class structures in the South; but that’s a subject for another time. White people really love that book….)
Banning books and discussion of sexuality and gender doesn’t make those things go away; instead, it just makes them even more enticing as forbidden, things that are dirty and we aren’t supposed to talk about.
Then again, if we are going to talk about these things, people also need to listen–and the ones who need it most? Never are the ones listening in the first place.
Work-at-home Friday morning and all is quiet in the Lost Apartment so far. There’s a load re-tumbling in the dryer and another in the washing machine waiting for the dryer to free up; the dishwasher needs to be emptied so I can refill it back up again. I have lots of work-at-home duties to get finished today as well as all kinds of other things I have to get done later when I am finished with work. Heavy heaving sigh, but that’s always the way, isn’t it? More to do than I have time to do it in. C’est la vie, y’all.
I was tired when I got home from work yesterday. I started the laundry and had intended to do the dishes as well–but Scooter had been alone for hours and needed attention, so I decided to get the laundry started and give him about twenty minutes of nap time in my lap–which is usually all he wants. I was rather surprised and nonplussed as I cycled through sportscaster conversations on Youtube about this college football season–including wrap-ups of last weekend’s game plus looking ahead to this weekend’s–and the next thing I knew hours had passed and I’d even started drifting in and out of naps. When he finally got up and went upstairs for either water or the litter box, I moved a load from the washer to the dryer and started another one before His Majesty returned, demanding my lap back. Paul came home a little later and we finished off Big Mouth as well as caught up on this week’s episodes of American Horror Story: NYC, which is now, finally, starting to go off the rails after wrapping up a storyline that was actually rather well-composed. I guess the rest of the season will be the usual Ryan Murphy shitshow.
I guess it was too much to hope that the gayest season ever of the show would turn out not to be a pitiful, poorly plotted and paced mess.
But the good news is I feel rested today, so there’s hope for a productive and effective day for me today. Huzzah!
Now, where was I? Oh yes, I’d started talking about A Streetcar Named Murder yesterday, didn’t I, in a blatant attempt at self-promotion hoping to encourage you to preorder my new book! I should probably bring it up every day until Pub Day, or should I simply plan out some promotional posts I can work on and post every few days? I am sure anyone who follows me on social media or reads this would gradually tire of reading about my new, exciting book which takes my career into a new, exciting direction, wouldn’t they? I know I eventually tire of the BSP of others–unless they are friends, in which case I wholeheartedly encourage them to promote the fuck out of themselves–which also governs sometimes how much of it I do. I got very self-conscious about it, which probably goes back to that horrible “don’t praise yourself” mentality I was raised with and have talked about before–and whether or not that is a good message for young people (stay humble), it’s not a great one for someone destined to go into a field that requires you to talk up yourself. Heavy sigh. The need to self-promote and the need to be humble are constantly at war inside my head, which is yet another example of why precisely Greg is not entirely sane.
But I am very proud of this book. It’s a departure in many ways for me, and while writing it was hellish–not the fault of the book or the publisher, simply the timing of its writing–I am very proud of it. I mean, given the hellish circumstances surrounding me when I was writing it, it’s not only a miracle it was written but a miracle there’s not a body count from that period. I think it’s a good book–it did occur to me last night dope, you wrote a book set in New Orleans during football season and didn’t mention the Saints once–and despite that blasphemy, it reads easily and well and it’s a nice little story. I think my main character is relatable and likable, and I think readers can identify with her. I wasn’t sure, but all the advance readers liked it (or said they did) and the prepublication trade reviews have all been positive, so I think I did a fairly good job on it. But more on that later. I think it makes more sense to simply write promotional entries where I talk about the book and inspirations and so forth and keep them separate from these daily “Life of Greg” entries.
And having made that decision I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again later.
Pay-the-Bills Day and it’s also post-election Wednesday. Do I dare look? Do I want to know if my fellow Americans decided, once again, that my rights aren’t as important as their wallets? I chose not to look last night as I couldn’t bear it. Was there ever a time when elections didn’t fill me with existential dread? I voted, of course–I have voted in every election since I was old enough to register, in 1980–but will also admit that sometimes I miss the smaller, less-publicized elections, and those are really just as important as the big national ones. I used to lecture people about not voting, until I realized I was a hypocrite who skipped minor local elections. Yes, Greg, voting for the School Board is important even if you don’t have children.
Sheesh.
I may not have children, but my tax dollars help pay for them to be educated, so I should care about the kind of education my tax dollars are providing, right?
I was tired yesterday. I ran out of steam in the afternoon, as always, and then drove home and walked to my polling place. I worked on the book a little–I was tired, like I said–and then collapsed into my easy chair to wait for Paul to come home. I woke up at five again this morning–I suspect it’s going to take me awhile to get used to the time change and getting to actually sleep through until the alarm at six–but adjustments are, while sometimes difficult, a part of life and my body’s inability to adapt as quickly as it used to is just yet another sign of my advancing age. I am feeling better about the book, to be honest–I think the revisions of this first half, while going a lot slower than I would ordinarily prefer, are coalescing and shaping the book into something quite enjoyable. I guess it’s normal for me to have self-doubt about everything while I am in the midst of a book and wondering why I continue to torture myself the way I do. I kind of do this during every book, don’t I? I wonder if I will ever get to the point where I don’t have crippling self-doubt and loathing of my own work while it’s in progress? No, not likely.
Know thyself.
Paul and I have been watching the new season of Big Mouth, the animated Netflix series about kids going through puberty, and it’s so good to laugh like that. We’ve loved the show and its irreverent and hilarious approach to something everyone can relate to–raging hormones, the transition from childhood to adulthood–and the first episode we watched last night, “Vagina Shame,” was absolutely scream-laugh funny, and accurate. I’ll probably write more in-depth about this show at some point, but it is really funny. If you don’t offend easily, you might want to check it out.
It’s also Pay-the-Bills day, and I have to say, it’s so lovely to actually have gotten a life-changing raise. I’m not wealthy now by any means, but I also no longer have to worry about paying the bills and buying groceries. It doesn’t mean carte blanche to spend money like it’s going out of style or anything, but it is nice to not have to think about “well, if I pay this much on that credit card I can then use it to buy groceries.” Ugh. One of my goals for this year is to pay down as much of this debt as I can (I know, I know, that’s been a goal for quite some time, but I am making progress. It’s just slower going than I would prefer, quite frankly).
And here’s hoping that my energy and my mood lasts through the entire day!
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Catch you tomorrow, Constant Reader!
Later today I am leaving on a jet plane. My bags aren’t packed and I’m not ready to go–but eventually this morning I will get to that place. I have already made my packing list, have checked in for the flight on-line, have ground transfers negotiated and hotels booked; appropriate credit cards are in my wallet and I will get cash at the airport ATM. I have some errands to run this morning as well–prescriptions to retrieve from the pharmacy, treating myself to Five Guys because it has been far far too long–and I don’t have to leave for the airport until the mid-afternoon. So I decided to let myself sleep a bit late, futz around the Lost Apartment for a bit, and try to get things together that need to be gotten together before I depart, abandoning Paul and Scooter for far longer than I would prefer.
But I am taking a trip!
It’s almost like the before times.
Almost.
But when I think about how marvelous it felt to be in Tiger Stadium earlier this year, how normal it all felt to be there on Game Day (despite seeing my Tigers lose in person for the very first time in eleven years, but it was going to happen sooner or later and hey, the streak lasted an entire decade), and how that “normal” experience actually translated into feeling better about this world in which we live in general. Airports (and airplanes) generally aren’t pleasant experiences for me in the best of times and circumstances; I have so many horrible memories of nightmarish experiences working for that airline that literally going through the automatic doors of an airport concourse makes my entire body seize up with tension–I can feel the knots forming in my neck, shoulders, and back. But…I am thinking today I may be too happy and excited to feel that tension–not to mention grateful to actually be able to travel again.
Paul had a meeting on Sunday afternoon (!) and so I was left to my own devices after the Saints game ended; I caught up on The Lost Symbol (better than I remember the book) and Foundation, which really picked up steam (I also realized they aren’t following the exact timeline from the book series, either–for example, the existence of the second Foundation isn’t revealed until Book Three, not during the first Seldon Crisis–so much is coming back to me as I watch!) after a slow first two episodes–the Emperor thing is also different than in the books, but I am enjoying this entire idea of a clone threesome who run the empire, in fact embodying it to the point they are simply addressed as Empire, and also loving Lee Pace in the rule of Day, the adult yet not old Emperor (Dawn, Day, Dusk are the three cloned emperors; Dusk eventually dies and is replaced by Day, who is replaced by the no longer a child or teen Dawn, and a new cloned baby because the new Dawn. It’s interesting, and they’ve added a lot of creative flourishes filling in the missing brushstrokes; as though the Azimov novels were merely an outline needing to be expanded.
But when I was finished with Foundation, I still had some time left before Paul would get home and I didn’t really want to start something entirely new-to-me (having to stop when he got home) and my headspace after the Saints game wasn’t really in a place where it should be for reading, so one of the suggestions on my streaming app was The Rocky Horror Picture Show…and yes, I have literally seen it well over two, if not three, hundred times already. I’ve never watched it on television because talking back to the television by yourself is kind of…not sane? Certainly not as fun as being in a movie theater full of people with props and people in costume and so forth. It was interesting to watch it by myself and completely sober…it’s really a crazy movie that makes little to no sense, really, but it’s message resonates very strongly still with me today…I suspect there’s an essay there. I also think there’s a short story or a scene from a book I need to write about viewing The Rocky Horror Picture Show for the first time; I remember being quite taken aback–if completely enamored–by it. I do know that I bought the soundtrack album the day after and still know it all by heart even now, all these years later…
And yes, I did find myself answering the movie back. There are some problematic things in it, of course–what movie from that period doesn’t have something problematic in it?–but at the time…and for quite some time afterward, the movie meant a lot to all of us misfits out here, the square pegs that couldn’t be pounded into a round hole no matter how hard society–or we–tried. In that theater that first night–and all the other theaters on so many other nights–for about an hour and a half I was able to escape the strictures and stresses of a world in which I–and people like me–didn’t belong. As years passed props and toys were slowly but surely banned–who would want to clean up that mess, seriously?–but the loss of water pistols to simulate rain, flying rolls of toilet paper, etc. always seemed to lessen the experience.
Then again, I would have hated to have been the one cleaning the theater at two in the morning for minimum wage, too. Definitely an essay there, for sure–which would have to include the problematic parts that haven’t aged well. But man, did Tim Curry ever commit to that part, and he definitely understood what the movie was.
Last night we watched some more Big Mouth, which is hilarious, although I am never entirely sure if it is actually funny, or if the laughs come from wow I can’t believe they went there shocks. (I’m actually surprised there’s not more right-wing outrage at the show, honestly; maybe there is and I am unaware, but this is precisely the kind of show they would go for–a comedy about junior high students going through puberty that is completely frank about sex and sexuality and masturbation and so forth? You’d think the American Family Association would be eating the outrage with a fucking spoon in both hands.)
And on that note, I should probably start getting it together around here this morning. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you tomorrow morning from New York!
The first Monday morning after Daylight Savings Time kicks in–or kicks out? I never can remember if we borrow an hour or return it–and it’s an exciting day ahead for one Gregalicious. (Isn’t every day an exciting day for one Gregalicious, really?) It is rather nice that it isn’t dark outside this morning for once, but at the same time it means it will be full dark when I leave the office every day now, which always feels oppressive for me. I think I am not a fan of the winter primarily because of the shortened days (the colder weather isn’t, despite my frequent harsh reactions to it, the worst thing; as long as there is no snow and ice I can live with it, frankly). I don’t like the darkness, never have; still feel uncomfortable in the dark, if I am not entirely afraid of the dark still.
The terrors of childhood are never truly outgrown, are they?
The Saints game was eminently disappointing–never fun to lose to Atlanta, especially the way the Saints did yesterday–but I did get the sense the team is getting there, starting to gel after losing the starting quarterback, Jameis Winston–so I don’t think the rest of the season is going to be a total wash. We may not make the play-offs this year (!!!) but you know, it’s the beginning of a new era for the Saints, the post-Drew Brees era, and there’s no telling what that’s going to be like. LSU is also going to be getting a new coaching staff for next season…and again, no telling where LSU is going to end up next year either.
I wound up getting a lot more organized yesterday than I was before this weekend, which is lovely. I got folders put away, counter surfaces and inboxes are emptied for the most part, and I am traveling tomorrow. I am going to New York for a few days and then Boston for the weekend; as I have already mentioned, this is my first non-family related travel since the pandemic started, and after everything I’ve seen on-line about airports and flights being disrupted by people who think rules don’t apply to them (a personal pet peeve of mine; the rules apply to everyone else why have rules in the first place?), but at least I have a non-stop flight so the chances of misconnections and lost luggage and all of those other things that make traveling an utter nightmare have been lowered substantially.
We started watching the new season of Big Mouth last night on Netflix–this show is so funny and honest and out-and-out blunt about puberty (clearly, it couldn’t be live action) and burgeoning sexuality (and masturbation) that it still amazes me that it gets made; it would have never aired on basic cable or the original networks. I feel rested after this weekend–perhaps it’s the extra hour and my body hasn’t adjusted yet–more rested than I’ve felt in a very long time. I didn’t get as much accomplished this weekend as I would have ultimately preferred, but that’s life and beyond my control. It’s not easy to either write or edit when traveling, but I am going to give it the old college try and see what I can done while on the road. Obviously, that is something I need to get better about going forward.
But I feel good, am excited about the trip, and just have to get through today. My flight tomorrow is later in the day, so I don’t have to deal with any of the crazed “last minute” packing and so forth; I can leisurely check the weather in both places, figure out what I need to pack, make a list (the crazed list-maker never stops, apparently), and then carefully pack so as to be certain that nothing is left behind (a bigger and bigger fear the older I get, sadly) and then get up tomorrow and slowly get ready for the departure. I have an errand I must run tomorrow before heading for the airport, and there are some things around the house I need to get done before finally heading on my way out. It’s going to be weird traveling again–I did fly up to Kentucky earlier this year, but that now seems like it was an eternity ago–but I will have my phone and a book; I am taking These Toxic Things by Rachel Howzell Hall, Invisible City by Julia Dahl, Jar of Hearts by Jennifer Hillier, and a Donna Andrews with me (not sure which Andrews; I am several books behind and desperately need to get caught up on them), which definitely should take care of my reading at the airport, on the trains, and on the planes. It will also help me fall asleep at night as well in strange hotels–I never sleep well in hotels, not sure what that’s about, but it has everything to do with it not being my own bed because I experience this everywhere–and I am looking forward to engaging with these books; it’s been a while since I’ve read a book through.
I reread Stephen King’s short story “One for the Road” from Night Shift yesterday, which, like “Jerusalem’s Lot,” is about the town from ‘salem’s Lot; this story clearly takes place after the events of the novel, so the two stories are book-ends for it–the former story being set over a hundred years in the past and explains how the town became basically cursed; the other being here we are a few years later when the town has become abandoned again. I’ve always wanted King to write a sequel to this book–it’s actually one of the few that kind of cries out for a sequel, as opposed to The Talisman and The Shining, which are the books he wrote sequels to; I know I read somewhere that he had the idea already of how to open such a sequel, and in all honesty it really whetted my appetite to read it. (‘salem’s Lot will always be one of my favorite Kings, if not my absolute favorite)
And on that note I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I will check with you later.
Christmas draws ever closer; but it doesn’t seem quite real. No holidays have actually seemed real this year, and this is going to continue, methinks, deep into 2021. No Carnival parades, no in-person literary events all spring (Saints and Sinners, Tennessee Williams Festival, Edgars, probably no Malice Domestic or Left Coast Crime) and even summer is questionable. Heavy heaving sigh.
Yesterday was lovely. The Saints hung on to beat the hated Falcons in Atlanta, which was nice, and I spent some time with The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. I’m not as in to it as I would have hoped, but I suspect once the story kicks into gear that will change. It’s exceptionally well written–I can see why it won so many awards, and LeCarre is held in such high esteem–and of course, there’s that whole disconnect with the Cold War. Can you believe there are people in their early thirties now who have no memory of the Cold War? The USSR officially collapsed and began breaking up, and the Berlin Wall came done, about thirty years ago. There are, for that matter, kids in high school who weren’t born yet when 9/11 happened; tweens are too young to remember Hurricane Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans directly after. That’s kind of staggering, in many ways, to imagine that seminal life-changing paradigm shifting events occurred so long ago that the young of today aren’t old enough to remember. I, of course, don’t remember the JFK assassination–I was only two when it happened–so I myself was too young for some seminal, life-changing, paradigm shifting moments myself.
We finished the new season of Big Mouth last night–it’s so funny and filthy and brutally honest about the awful age when you go through puberty (it’s a wonder more people aren’t horribly scarred)–and we also caught the finale of Murder on Middle Beach, which ended without a resolution. I looked at Paul–the episode pretty much closed with the documentarian winning his Freedom of Information lawsuit to gain access to the ten year old police files about his mother’s murder–and said, “Um, I think they finished the documentary too soon–what did they find out?” This was annoying in some ways–but I also didn’t expect the series to solve the murder, either. It was like an incredibly unsatisfying crime novel–a murder divides a family, the kids grow up and try to solve their mother’s murder which has aversely affected their lives, only to have the book close without resolution?
Not nearly as disappointing an end as The Undoing, frankly–we’ll go a long time before we see another series that ends so badly and disappointingly as that.
But now we have to find something new to watch, heavy sigh.
I didn’t write this weekend nearly as much as I should have, but I reread all my notes from the entire writing process, and reread the final fourteen chapters, so I have an idea where I need to go and what I need to do from now on, so that’s a win, methinks. I also went over the copy edits on an essay, and got that finished. I also went to the gym yesterday, which was lovely. My body seems to be adjusting to exercising again–and it’s starting to respond to it. My muscles are getting firm again, and starting to get bigger again. I suspect this is going to wind up being yet another repeat of every other time I’ve gotten into the swing of working out my entire life–I am never going to feel sufficiently lean, will always think I’m carrying too much fat weight, etc etc etc ad nauseum ad finitum, and I am preparing myself for that particular neuroses. Plus, I am sixty–time to let go of the extreme vanity and the need for reassurance from other people.
I’ve also had some second thoughts about Bury Me in Shadows, but they are quite literally the same ones I’ve had almost this entire time since I started writing the damned thing. I spent most of the weekend in the weeds on this book–rereading chapters, rereading notes, looking at things I’ve deleted, trying to figure out if I am doing a good job telling this story or if I’m being too lecturing in places…I don’t think I can remember the last time I’s second guessed and doubted myself as much on a book as I have with this one. But that’s, I hope, a good thing? We shall see. I can’t wait to see the final cover.
And on that note, it is back to the spice mines with me. Have a lovely Monday.
Sunday morning and a lot to get done today. I was horribly lazy yesterday; I wound up doing very little other than reading–I finished The Bad Seed and then moved on to The Spy Who Came In From the Cold (I’ve never read John LeCarre, and am trying to get better read in my. genre’s classics, both titles and authors) and got some chores done, but other than that–not a goddamned thing. So today I I have to play catch up as well as go to the gym and somehow pay some attention to the Saints game, which is at noon. (I’ll most likely do some things around here, go to the gym around elevenish, and then come home and do things while the game is on.) The LSU game went about the way I expected it to last night–55-17 final score–so congratulations to Alabama’s players and coaching staff; I can’t imagine there’s a better team in the country this season, so it’ll be fun watching y’all go all the way again. LSU has to play Florida next weekend, which will most likely be another horror show like yesterday’s, but at least at that point the season will be over.
This football season is yet another gift the year 2020 has given me. Thanks, 2020, thank you.
It feels cold again this morning in the Lost Apartment–I have my space heater on and a cap on my bald scalp–but it doesn’t look so bad outside, really. Lots of clouds hiding the sky and the sun, but this week is supposed to be warmer than last, so I think I’ll be able to hang this week after last week’s cold spell.
Once I finish this I am going to make a to-do list for this week–I really need to make a point of doing that every Sunday, so I have a roadmap for my week–and also so that things won’t slip through the cracks and be forgotten. This has been a really bad year for me to try to remember everything I have to get done–I keep forgetting things, which isn’t good–so I am trying to be ever so much better about this. The whole year I’ve felt like I’ve been in this weird state of limbo, just drifting and trying to get by, keep dog-paddling and keeping my head above water, and it’s not been easy. (It’s not really been an easy year for most people, I suspect.)
Last night as we binged Big Mouth after the LSU game, I was trying to remember the highlights of the year–the good things that happened that I am grateful for, and realized that, sadly, most of the things I was thinking of was television or movies I’d watched, or books I’d read and greatly enjoyed. I had a pretty good year at the beginning of the year in selling short stories–I sold quite a few this year, continuing a trend from last year, to the point where I keep forgetting story sales I made, which is so weird–but also means that in 2021 I am going to have some stories appear in anthologies or publications, which is terribly cool. I know I stretched myself as a writer–hell, I wrote a Sherlock Holmes story this year, and created a Sherlockian world in 1916 New Orleans–and while there were anthologies and things I tried (and failed) to submit to, I have some terrific stories now that are in some state of writing that could turn out to be something interesting. I am looking forward to spending some more time with both “The Sound of Snow Falling” and “The Rosary of Broken Promises”–and there are any number of others I’d love to dive back into. The problem being, of course, that I have limited writing time, and for the rest of this month I have to focus on finishing the one book and then the first two months of 2021 finishing the other. I’m not really sure what I want to spend the rest of 2021 doing; I know I am co-editing the Minneapolis Bouchercon anthology and that’s going to take a chunk of time to read all those submissions and make decisions and then edit them all, but let’s face it, it’s also not my first time at the anthology rodeo. I want to try to write another Scotty at some point in 2021, and I know I also have Chlorine to work on, but…I guess we’ll just have to see how the year pans out.
I know I want to pull another short story collection together, too, and of course there’s the novellas…
I also polished off a journal last night, so I get to start a new one this morning, which is kind of fun. I’ve been blasting through journals at a pretty good pace since I started using them again, and while I cannot say that they’ve been enormously helpful in keeping my act together and keeping me on track with any of the writing I’ve been doing, they’ve been wonderful for me to jot notes and ideas in, and I’ve been doing much better about going back into them and rereading them and getting the unpolished jewels out of them. I have a really nice one that has a magnetic clasp that I got at Garden District Books, and then got a pack of three the last time I went to Costco, so I am certainly set for journals for the year.
I’ve also got to get the copy edits on my essay finished.
I also spent some time yesterday slowly but surely pruning the books. I’ve done a great job of pruning them already, so much so that there’s slim pickings for getting rid of things I will most likely never read–I always stop myself and have to think, long and hard, about whether I should get rid of an unread book–but I also need to keep making room for more–because at some point I’ll start buying books again. Not sure when that will be financially feasible–right now, books are filed in the “luxury item” column, especially when I already have so many on hand that I’ve not read–but I have quite a list of books that I want to get when I can.
There are never enough books, frankly.
And on that note, I need some more coffee as well as fold some laundry. Have a great Sunday, Constant Reader!
Queer and Loathing in America 