Tuesday morning and I slept well again. It’s kind of amazing what a change to my day getting up a mere ten minutes later can make. Yesterday morning I had to swing by the Cat Practice to get his Royal Sparkiness food when they opened at eight. I wound up getting to the office around eight fifteen, and I felt alert and awake all day. Was it a one-time thing perhaps? Well, sleeping ten minutes later again this morning and planning on leaving the house for the office a bit later so I don’t have to rush may make a difference for today too, so we are experimenting with leaving later and staying at the office later and seeing if that also makes a difference today as well. After work, I swung by uptown to pick up the mail, which included my first foray into poetry reading, Mary Oliver’s Why I Wake Early, a recommendation from Carol Rosenfeld, which I am looking forward to delving into. I also got my Frances and Richard Lockridge short story collection from Crippen and Landru, and the new Scott Carson (Michael Koryta) Lost Man’s Lane, which should be quite fun.
Last night we watched more of The Gentlemen and Star Wars: The Bad Batch, which is kind of fun and very well done. We should finish The Gentlemen tonight, and perhaps move on to our next show to watch.
I can’t say that I was sorry to see that the homophobic right-wing bitch Beverly LaHaye passed away. Well, I am sorry that it took so long for that horrific piece of shit to die–more proof that evil never dies, like Mitch McConnell. I really hope she suffered, and that it was incredibly painful, so she was released from the pain only to have the pearly gates slammed in her fucking face and the hell-slide opened up below her feet sending her to join her true Lord and Master Satan in the lake of eternal fire. She founded the Concerned Women for America, by the way, which was the right-wing predecessors of Moms4Liberty and the vicious hateful pieces of trash who were horrified that I dared to speak to high school students about chasing their dreams. I hope it was a slow metatastic cancer that sapped her energy, her will, and made every waking moment a misery.
She deserved worse, frankly.
Yes I am petty–and proud of it.
And no, I have no sympathy for those who might be mourning her. She was a horrible person, and when you’ve harmed that many people–when it the purpose of your life to spread hatred and bigotry using Christ’s name (the ultimate in bearing false witness) you don’t get to expect people not to celebrate your passing. In fact, you should probably rethink your life if you think people will pop open champagne when they hear you’ve finally deservedly died and gone to hell.
I did write yesterday, about three thousand or so (probably more), which felt good. The book is still sucking incredibly, I might add, so I think I need to think about it some more and where it’s going. I also started working on a short story, “The Last To See Him Alive,” which I think is a great title and it’s working….so far. We’ll see how it goes today, though, won’t we? But I think working on the book first and then moving on to work on a short story may be the way for me to balance my creativity needs while getting everything done that needs to be done, or that I want to get done.
Speaking of poetry–did I mention here that I wanted to start reading it, and understanding it? Probably, since my memory is a sieve. Anyway, I have The Complete Poetry of Edgar Allan Poe on my desk, and the other day I opened it, just for the hell of it, to any page and it opened to his poem, “Tamerlane,” and I realized I’d gotten a short story title from it:
Kind solace in a dying hour!
And that’s where the title for “Solace in a Dying Hour” came from, so thank you, Mr.Poe and your poetry. I’ve also got story titles out of Shakespeare before, too, and I am glad I am going to start reading poetry and studying it. I’ve always felt like that was definitely a missing element in my education.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later, one never can be entirely sure, can one?
The Ides of April and Tax Day, huzzah. I’ve filed for an extension for mine because I just couldn’t deal with it before, which is kind of childish and more than a little immature; the key word here is avoidance. But I plan to get it all finished this week, God willing and the creek don’t rise. I am going into the office a little later than I usually do, because I have to swing by the Cat Practice to get Sparky’s food on the way to the office. It’s an Admin Day, so not a big deal for me to not be there as early as usual.
I feel rested and good this morning, which is a very pleasant change and surprise. I did go to bed a little early last night, but I spent most of the day writing in my journal, watching documentaries, and later on in the evening we watched more episodes of The Gentlemen. I also finally looked up the name of the star, Theo James, because it was bothering me that I recognized him and couldn’t place him. I am liking it a lot more than I would have thought, frankly; not being a big fan of producer/showrunner Guy Ritchie, but it’s actually quite fun. I also went down some rabbit holes of research yesterday, which is always a lot of fun for me. I also started reading Paul Tremblay’s The Pallbearer’s Club, which I had a little trouble getting into at first, but I remembered having this issue with A Head Full of Ghosts, too–like the latter, he’s playing with form and style and point of view in the former, which is a bit hard to get used to it, so it’s slow going (for me) at first, but as always, there’s such depth and compassion in his writing it’s easy to see why his career has taken off. I’ll try to read some more of it when I get home from work tonight, after I do the day’s writing. I am definitely planning on writing every day now, even if it’s just a little something. I made lots of notes yesterday in my journal, too, which was very cool.
I decided yesterday, when watching a lengthy documentary of LSU football highlights (I was doing this around chores, listening to the documentary while Sparky and Paul slept on the couch) that one of the problems I’ve been facing with writing lately, something I’ve talked about on here a lot, is how I’ve not really been able to focus all of my creative energies on anything that I am writing, but have any number of things in-progress that my mind keeps attention-deficiting between, skittering around between projects and ideas without really landing effectively on anything for long enough to get very far. Yesterday I decided, as I grabbed the journal and hit play on the documentary that I was going to free-form take notes and scribble out ideas as they came to me, regardless of what they were about or for, even if they were entirely new project notes. I did a lot of scribbling, and most of it focused on one project, which really needs to get done by the end of the year, as well as some others I was a bit surprised still were there and fresh in my mind. I also know now that if I rewrite at least three of these short stories drafts that I have on hand, that collection will be complete.
I also found the voice for a new project idea I’ve had in the front of my mind for a while, primarily because we watched those ‘troubled teen cure’ documentaries at the end of the previous week. I had an idea for one set in Kansas, based on a foster home where the kids went to my high school. I didn’t think much of it when I was in high school–other than how much harder those kids had it than the rest of us–and sometime in the years since high school I thought, I could write a crime novel around that story even though it would entirely be fictional and the real place was simply a starting point for my fictionalization. The title came to me this weekend–The Crooked Y–and so that’s definitely moving up the list of “what to write next.”
As you can tell, writing is becoming more important to me and it feels good for my mind to be creating again, even in this current ADHD way, which is so much better than the dry well experience I’ve been having since…well, since Mom died, really. 2023 was a lot of personal trauma; and relentless from January on, which makes it not surprising, I suppose, that my brain has been fallow for so long.
And on that note, I am going to start getting ready to head into the spice mines for the day. Have a great Monday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later.
Ah, the joys of a work-at-home Friday. I do sincerely hope they never take this away, because I will surely miss it. I was able to take Paul and Tug to meet the Cat Practice so he can get to know them, get his nails trimmed (he was quite shocked to try to climb my leg and not be able to hook into the fabric with those talons) and get a cat leukemia vaccination. They fell madly in love with him as he definitely turned the “I’m so adorable aren’t I?” kitten magic on for them, and they also confirmed our suspicions: he’s going to be a big cat; he’s already gotten much longer in the short time we’ve had him, and his legs are long and his paws are pretty big. He had no problem with the nail trim as it was occurring, making me think we might even be able to do it ourselves (Skittle would have never stood for it, and Scooter wasn’t a fan, either, and I was always worried that we’d hurt them by accident), and then it was back home and back to data entry and quality assurance and condom packing, woo-hoo! But while I was doing all of these things I had music on and was able to get chores done while taking breaks to get up and away from the work every now and again. We also went to Costco after my work was completed for the day–or the working hours ended, at any rate–which was nice. I don’t know why Costco is such a pleasant experience for me almost every time we go there, but it is–I also love how they organize the stuff in your carts for maximum efficiency and space usage; I try to load the cart in the same way. I also realized that there’s no need for me to have the back seat set up; why not put the seats down all the time and just have that big space in the back for loading groceries and so forth? It certainly doesn’t affect me driving in any way, and why not? Usually loading everything into the back doesn’t work and is an unsuccessful game of Jenga; but with the seats down it was not a problem at all.
It only took me six years to figure this out, of course.
Tonight is the LSU-Alabama game, which is generally an enormous anxiety trigger for me. The weird wiring of my brain makes me commit fully as a fan to the point sometimes where the games are emotionally exhausting and draining for me, and since even before the pandemic I’ve been trying to dial that back. There’s such a thing as too vested, and I don’t enjoy those emotional rollercoasters. I do enjoy the thrills and excitement of watching games, and I do take pleasure in being a sports fan–but I don’t want to be a sore loser or go to a dark place if the game doesn’t go well. It’s a game. I love my LSU Tigers and it’s always delightful and a lot of fun when they win–but if they have a bad year or don’t win or whatever, it doesn’t impact my life in any way, shape or form. That seems to be working for the most part–I’ve had a few moments this season that were setbacks to the healthy mental progress I’ve made, but it certainly made a huge difference in how I watched and enjoyed the game last year…which LSU actually won. It was a great game, and even if LSU doesn’t win, I don’t mind as long as it’s a good game and they play well. I have no idea how good any team is this year; even invincible Georgia has had a few shaky moments of vulnerability this year. As the second half of the season rolls on, conference races and play-off berths will be earned as well as trophies and awards.
I was going to run some errands today, but I had a delivery scheduled last night and the lazy incompetent delivery driver (for the record, I always overtip) couldn’t be bothered to contact me by text, as instructed, so my order was returned. I found out this morning it will go out again for delivery today, with no idea or concept or when or what kind of window we were looking at. Their on-line customer service was completely useless, I might add, so now I get to hang around the house all day waiting, which is incredibly frustrating.
I need to make groceries, I wanted to swing by Petco to get some more toys for Tug (and also price kitten foods and special treats), and I also need to go to Lowe’s. I need air filters for the apartment, I need to get a wagon to help bring groceries in when I am recovering from surgery, and I also want to get an easy to assemble set of blinds for the center window here in the workspace. Facebook Memories reminded me yesterday of how long ago it was when my beloved shade crepe myrtles trees were brutalized and destroyed, forcing me to put up an LSU blanket over the window to block the sun. I am too embarrassed to admit how long this blanket has been in my window instead of blinds, but that’s going to finally come to an end this weekend. We’ll see how it goes, and if it’s not a horrible disaster I’ll go ahead and get blinds for the other two windows so they all match. Look at me, taking charge of a situation for once instead of being engulfed in ennui and just letting it continue to slide!
Progress indeed!
We told the Cat Practice Tug’s name is Sparky, even though I keep calling him Tug (and sometimes Boot, like he’s Scooter), and so I decided yesterday that since there’s really no point in continuing the pretense that I am anything other than a Crazy Cat Lady, he’s getting a Crazy Cat Lady Name: Touglas MacSparquer, hence both Tug and Sparky are his names. It also pays tribute to my maternal Scottish line, so it also kind of honors my mom and no, I won’t be telling Dad that.
Since my plans for the day were altered irrevocably by the shitty delivery service, I hope to spend the rest of the day doing things while the games are playing in the living room, and thinking about the next book I am going to write. I have some emails to answer and yes, it’s fine, I can keep my phone handy and check it periodically to see the status of the delivery. This, by the way, is what boomers mean when they talk about how service in the country has declined. But it’s fine, really–I prefer to go to the West Bank on Sundays anyway, and this way I can actually take inventory and make a proper list. My frustrations over the change in plans for the day is fine; I can get stuff done around here and maybe even do some cleaning and writing.
And I can spend some time this morning with Lou Berney’s Dark Ride, which I started reading the other day at my appointment. Huzzah for that, and we’ll just get shit done around here today. That’s a good plan, and one I can live with….and truth be told I didn’t really want to go to the West Bank this morning, so here we are.
Have a great Saturday, Constant Reader, and I will no doubt be back later with some more blatant self-promotional posts.
Sunday morning and all is well in the Lost Apartment. Yesterday was kind of nice. I slept well again on Friday night, woke up at five, six and seven like every morning with no alarm, and then finally got up around seven thirty to get ready for the day, which was nice. I decided that it made the most sense to run my errands in the morning before the brutal heat of the afternoon; I needed to mail a letter and pick up the mail, as well as drop off Scooter’s leftover food at the Cat Practice and make groceries–and I needed cleaning supplies, so that was crucial to the day; an errand that had to be run. It was brutally hot, but I managed it all. I bought a lot of cleaning supplies, and spent most of the afternoon yesterday cleaning. I did the stairs, the floors in the bedroom, and finally emptied and cleaned out Scooter’s litter box. I was avoiding it because I was afraid doing it would make me sad, but ironically it was just a chore…but writing about it just now made me start to tear up a bit. Sigh. He was such a dear cat. (I also looked at the adoptable cats on the SPCA’s website. I really really want to get this twelve year old ginger boy that no one’s going to want because he’s old..but we’re old. Is it fair to get a baby cat that might outlive either or both of us? Well, that certainly cheered me up a bit. Christ.)
I also did the baseboards and the CD stand…which is something we’re going to have to discuss. We don’t even have a CD player anymore, and yes, it’s terrible to have paid for all that music only to lose it now all these years later but…I haven’t listened to a CD in years. My car has a CD player–maybe I can move some into the car and listen to them instead of the phone? We have all these great gay deejay dance mix CD’s–we used to buy them all the time, the little store across from the Pub used to sell them, and Tower Records–when it existed still–also sold dance remix CDs; I think I got the Debbie Harry dance mix CD single for “I Want That Man” at Tower Records. Anyway, years and years ago Paul had this wooden CD stand custom built. It’s a lovely piece of furniture, and perhaps it can be repurposed for something else–but the CDs are grimy and I cleaned them with a lick and a promise; but…do we really need to hold on to all those CDs? (The stand needs to be repainted white, too–years of nicotine have turned it precancerous–but that will have to wait until the weather calms the fuck down.
But I feel good about the apartment, really. Having the walls finally finished has awakened a nesting instinct in me that’s been dormant for quite some time. As I was finishing the stairs and looking around, I actually thought I wouldn’t mind having someone come by the house now even though it’s still not up to my standard (my work space will never stay tamed, alas), which is something I’ve not even considered in years. It felt good wiping down the walls and baseboards, picking up all that nasty dust and getting rid of it. I also bought a dust mop at the store yesterday (as one of my cleaning purchases) so I can run it over the walls more regularly to keep the dust from accumulating and turning into grime or cobwebs. It’s still very much a work in progress, of course, but I am feeling good about the homestead, and probably am about to do another brutal purge of the books.
I read some short stories yesterday as well–more of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents anthology stories, of course–and I am getting such an education in short stories, as well as having some powerful insights (well, to me anyway; remember, I go through life completely oblivious to everything) about my own stories, what I find myself afraid to do and how limiting my own fears about my abilities and my talents and my creativity have proven to be. One of the stories I read yesterday, “Getting Rid of George” by Robert Arthur, was about a movie star whose carefully hidden past suddenly comes back with a vengeance just as she is about to marry the love of her life and start her own production company with him, making herself quite rich in the process, and it hit me: one of the stories I am struggling with writing right now is about a wealthy gay man and his boy toy looking for a fabled ‘fountain of youth’ in a fictional Latin American country. I’ve had the idea for decades–since visiting the Mayan ruins in the Yucatan and thinking I should write a story about these ruins (and yes, well aware that I have to be incredibly careful and respectful of the Mayan culture and their descendants)…and this is the story set in a foreign locale I was going to try to write for the Malice anthology. I need to recognize self-destructive thinking when it presents myself; and whenever I think you can’t write this for whatever reason my reaction shouldn’t be to shy away from it but to dive into it headfirst and commit to it. (This is also one of those stories that I thought I had already written a draft of; but it is not to be found anywhere, nothing other than pieces of aborted openings–it may have been lost in the Great Data Disaster of 2018….but I just realized where it probably was and THAT’S WHERE IT WAS! Victory!)
And really, one of the two main characters in my story “Don’t Look Down” was a retired former boy band star. So, that was certainly outside my expertise, was it not?
I really enjoyed the Robert Arthur story; Arthur was also the creator of, and wrote, eleven of the first twelve Three Investigators mystery series, which makes him always special to me. He worked for Hitchcock on the literary side of the brand (Hitchcock became a brand like before we thought of creatives in terms of brands and branding and brand marketing), and also “helped” (i.e. “ghost edited”) most of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents anthologies. Arthur was a great writer, “Getting Rid of George” certainly is evidence of his talents, and it’s a shame he isn’t better known or regarded; but the great tragedy of juvenile books is that they rarely survive the test of time–they inevitably are forgotten, as are their authors, unless they win a Newbery medal or something, like Johnny Tremain, but I suspect even that tired old war horse of American revolutionary propaganda isn’t read nearly as much today as it was when I was a kid. There are few–Lois Duncan being one–crime writers for juveniles or young adults to be named Grand Masters by Mystery Writers of America; Arthur certainly deserved to at least be considered, as the creator of the Three Investigators and as a rather successful writer of crime short stories.
I read another story in My Favorites in Suspense, “Island of Fear” by William Sambrot, which I really enjoyed and thought was quite excellent. An Englishman looking for antiques and local art in the Greek islands spots a small island with a massive wall built along its shoreline, and wants to stop there as it is remote and doesn’t, per the captain, get many outside visitors. This is a “be careful what you wish for” tale; because he convinces the captain to let him off on the island, where he spots a gorgeous sculpture through a break in the wall, so exquisite he has to have it and meet whoever the people are who live in the land inside the wall. The island natives are quiet and don’t talk much–not his usual experience with Greeks–and finally convinces a young man to row him around the island to an opening in the walls so he can go ashore, meet the owners, and buy the statue. As I said, it’s a “be careful what you wish for” story, and the ending is quite satisfying as the last few paragraphs make sense of the “mystery” of the island. It may well have been my favorite of the stories thus far in the anthology (at least of the new-to-me material; remember the book opened with “The Birds” by Daphne du Maurier, which quite set the tone for the rest of the stories.
I also read a story from Stories That Scared Even Me, “Two Spinsters”, which falls into the category of “the unfortunate traveler,” which several stories in both anthologies fall into. It’s not bad, the main character being a police detective who gets lost on unknown backroads and can’t find the town he’s looking for, and is eventually forced to seek refuge at a strange house with two identical, if silent, spinsters–and there’s a lot more going on in that strange house than the weary traveler suspects at first. This story was written by E. Phillips Oppenheim, yet another writer I’ve never heard of or his work before. Oppenheim, however, was quite the big deal in his time; he wrote and published over a hundred novels and even more short stories; John Buchan (a Golden Age crime writer not as well known today as perhaps he should be) called him his primary inspiration when launching his own career in 1913.
Interestingly enough, the next story up in Stories That Scared Even Me is by Robert Arthur. There are only three stories left in My Favorites in Suspense, and the book closes with a short novel, The Blank Wall by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding, a classic from that post-war era that I’ve always wanted to read (it was common in those days to close a short story collection by including a short novel, and most crime novels in those days were rather short). I’ll probably finish reading those short stories today, but really need to get back to reading novels–maybe I’ll read a bit more into The Hunt by Kelly J. Ford, which is fantastic; taking so long to finish should not be seen as an indictment of Ford’s work. The book is fantastic and she is one of the great new voices in queer crime fiction–and I’ll be doing a crime panel with her later today for Outwrite DC.
I slept really well last night–it’s lovely having Paul home, really–and so today I hope to get some reading and writing done. I am about to adjourn to my chair to finish this Hitchcock anthology, and then I am going to work on getting some writing done while cleaning up the kitchen and my workspace. I feel very well rested this morning–I could have easily slept much later–so hopefully it will be a great day of getting things done.
Or not. Since Paul’s home now we can finish watching Gotham Knights, Hijack, and back to other shows we’re watching, and of course Paul needs to watch Season Two of Heartstopper, which means I can finally talk about it. I may check in with you again later, Constant Reader, and if not, I certainly will do so tomorrow.
Saturday morning in the Lost Apartment and it’s a somber bit of a morning here. I’m still sad and a little in shock that Scooter declined so quickly, but in retrospect I am glad it was fast and he didn’t suffer for long. Skittle’s slow decline into death lasted months, which was terrible and heart-wrenching and soul-shattering. I decided that I am going to take the weekend off–no social media, no emails, no nothing. I am going to, of course, write blog posts–I will always try to write blog posts–but I am going to clean and organize and read and think and watch movies and television shows and so forth. This hasn’t exactly been my favorite year so far–how can a year in which you lose your mom and cat in less than half a year be a favorite of any kind–but it’s not been an entirely bad year, either. My life has always gifted me lovely wonderful things while at the same time gut-punching me with something awful; the other night when I realized i was caught up and/or ahead of most everything, I also thought which means something bad is going to happen–which is terrible, but I am always waiting for the other shoe to drop, especially when good things happen to me.
I got some more Alfred Hitchcock Presents anthologies in the mail yesterday (Stories That Scared Even Me, Stories for Late at Night, and Stories Not for the Nervous), and I think it’s time to dial back on buying them, at least until I start getting most of them read. But to take my mind off my sadness I think I need to read a novel, so after I get the kitchen cleaned and organized a little better, I think I’ll probably curl up with Beware the Woman by Megan Abbott at long last, and spend the weekend with her. I think spending a nice, relaxing weekend is just what the doctor ordered, and you know, it’s long past time I did a really thorough clean of this place, and it shows. The condition of the apartment has deteriorated (primarily due to my laziness coupled with a general exhaustion I’ve felt the last few years) to the point that I hope there’s no afterlife; because if my mom can look down from heaven and see how slovenly I’ve kept house for so long…yeah, she’d be haunting me for sure. Several years ago I did finally realize that I am super-hard on my housekeeping skills because Mom was über clean; her house was always spotless and everything was where it went. Messes never lasted for more than five minutes in my mother’s house. She’d finish cooking and there wouldn’t be any mess left behind; something I’ve only managed a few times throughout my life…and yet it always felt marvelous when I was able to pull that off.
I also just realized/remembered that our anniversary is this coming week; the 20th, to be exact, will mark twenty-eight years of the Greg-Paul relationship. Twenty-eight years. I never dreamed that I’d ever find someone compatible to me, let alone have a relationship that would last almost three decades (if we can survive another two, we’ll make it to thirty), but I suppose I can do an “ode to Paul” on our anniversary, so I’ll table this talk for now. I do need to get him a gift; and I know exactly what to get him; I just have to remember to order it today so it may arrive in time…if it doesn’t, no big deal. We’ve both become rather lackadaisical about anniversaries, birthdays, and holidays at this point. They just are, and being together and still happy is the real gift.
Yesterday after I got home from the Cat Practice, I watched a true crime documentary that was interesting from a domestic suspense perspective; it was one of those “I didn’t know I was married to a predator” stories that I’ve always kind of wanted to do from a gay male perspective; lots of things to unpack, discuss, and talk about there. After the documentary, I put on the final game of the College World Series so I could watch LSU win it all yet again–mostly for background noise, really, while I waited for Paul to get home. After that, I was scrolling through Prime looking for something light and funny to take me out of myself, and wound up watching The Beverly Hillbillies, which is silly and fun and funny–still funny–but was so hated by critics and reviewers, despite resonating with viewers and being a Top Ten hit show its entire run. I never understood it myself, and remembered watching when I was a kid. My memories of the show airing weren’t strong, and so it was easy for me to go along with the mentality that it was low humor and tacky and clichéd and bad. I started watching reruns at some point as an adult, and was startled to see how misunderstood the show was; I may have to write about it sometime because it struck me as a particularly biting social satire on American culture and society. And it’s still funny; and the Clampetts are never the butt of the joke; the joke is always on the “city folk.” (Even while grieving, I still think about writing.)
I also listened to The Drowning Tree while doing my data entry; it’s really quite marvelous. But then Paul called with the news from the Cat Practice and that was that for the day. I’ll have to use some paid-time-off to make up for the afternoon hours I lost to handling the Scooter situation.
And on that note, I think I am going to go ahead and head into the relaxation zone rather than the usual spice-mines. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and if you have a pet, give them a big hug for me.
I think the thing I love the most about the cover of A Streetcar Named Murder is that the cat looking back over his shoulder with the bitch please look on his face was modeled on Scooter.
I’ve been putting my cat into books for a while now. Our Skittle was Paige’s cat, and I know I gave Taylor a cat in the Scotty books, but I don’t remember if it was Skittle or Scooter (and I need to find that out).
I never thought of myself as a cat person, to be honest. I think this was primarily because I never spent time with cats when I was a kid; I had a dog growing up and most people I knew also had dogs. If they had cats, well, the cats were aloof and uninterested for the most part, but every once in a while I’d be at a friend’s place who had a cat and their cat just fell in love with me for some reason–I’ve always attracted people’s pets, which is cool because by and large I do love animals–but it never occurred to me to get a cat. Paul also had dogs growing up, so he always kind of wanted us to get a dog. Much as I love dogs and much as they love me, though, I don’t have the time or the patience to have one, so I always nixed the idea of a pet. But that first winter we lived in the carriage house we had a mouse–and of course wanted to be rid of it. “It’s an old house in an old neighborhood,” our neighbors and landlady advised, “and the best way to get rid of a mouse is to get a cat.”
A cat?
But the mouse was freaking out Paul–I wasn’t thrilled to have one, but could manage a cold-war of tolerance with one if need be–and so we decided to go ahead and get a cat. It was Christmas Eve, I remember that, and we headed down to the SPCA in the Bywater. We looked at one, who seemed interesting–orange and big–but when the girl opened his cage he hissed at us all and clawed her hand. (I know now that he was probably terrified, hence the reaction, but what did I know about cats? All I saw was a mean one, and if it would claw the hand of a caretaker, I didn’t know how well he’d adapt to our house and our lives…) But there was a kitten in a nearby cage who kept sticking his paws out and chirping at Paul to get his attention, and once Paul started paying attention to him, he was purring and rubbing against the bars trying to get to us. The girl took him out of the cage and he started purring even louder. He was purring so loudly they couldn’t hear his heartbeat. We decided to take him, named him Nicky, paid the small fee and brought him home. I walked over to Walgreens to buy litter, food, a litter box, and a carrier, and thus we had our first cat. We never called him Nicky–the only person who ever did was our landlady–but he was amazing. Very loving, but at the same time a good hunter who could jump really high to take a bug out of the air, and of course he was beautiful, just beautiful. During the evacuation for Katrina Paul and the cat stayed at his mom’s–and his mom was the one who started calling him Skittle, because he “skittered around playing chasing things.) We had Skittle for almost seven years when he got the cancer, and it spread very quickly. The day we had to put him to rest was one of the hardest days of our lives–Paul was so depressed he barely got out of bed the entire weekend–and the apartment felt empty and lonely without our cat. The illness and the decision had been so hard on both of us to make that I kind of didn’t want to get another pet because I never wanted to go through that pain again, and Paul felt the same.
We lasted less than a week.
I went to the Cat Practice to pick up Skittle’s ashes on a Thursday after work. While I was waiting–I always have to wait whenever I am there–I always go around and look at the cats they have looking for forever homes (while I always hate having to leave without bringing them all home, it’s also kind of sad if there aren’t any there). In a cage behind the front desk was an orange boy, and according to the label on his cage his name was Texas and he was two years old. I walked over, and he was so friendly and loving–purring and rubbing against my hand–that I seriously thought I should bring you home with me, sweet boy,
That evening, we were watching something on television that wasn’t terribly involving–I was scrolling through the iPad and Paul dozed off on the couch. Suddenly Paul sat up with a gasp and said,”Oh my God!” and insisted he’d woken up and seen a mouse sitting on the lip of our garbage can. I saw nothing–and I’d looked over when Paul sat up, but not specifically at the can, so I could have missed it–but I also didn’t hear anything. (I will also confess to not hearing well–I’ve always been hard of hearing, and now that I am getting older it’s getting worse, so me not hearing anything isn’t as conclusive as it might be coming from someone else.) I just assumed he dreamed it, but he was insistent, and equally insistent we had to get another cat. I mentioned seeing Texas that afternoon, suggested Paul go see him in the morning on his way to work, and if he wanted him, to go ahead and get him, and I would swing by to pick him up after I got off work.
Needless to say, not only did I go pick him up after work, Paul went with me. We got him home, he immediately hid under the coffee table, so we decided to let him acclimate. It literally took about fifteen minutes before he came out from under the table, climbed up onto Paul’s chest and started purring. His coat was a little rough, but within two days he was soft as silk. Paul loves nothing more than to cuddle with the cat–Skittle tolerated it for a while before escaping–and we picked the absolute right cat: Scooter loves to cuddle and wants nothing more than a warm lap or body to curl up and sleep on. He will literally come and howl at me while I am working on my computer because he wants me to morph into a cat bed in my chair.
So, of course I gave Valerie a cat, named it Scooter, and made him a sweet orange boy, like ours. When they were designing the cover, I did tell them the cat was actually MY cat, and they asked me for a photo to give to the artist!
I am delighted that Scooter will live forever on the cover of my book.
I slept for ten hours last night and woke up still exhausted this morning–bleary-eyed and bone-tired. It makes me a bit nervous, as the last time I was able to sleep so much, or do deeply, only to still be tired, was when I was sick this last time, and whatever that was, I sure as hell don’t want to see it return again. I just feel what we used to say down south–“bone tired”. (Hmm, that’s not a bad title.) So, while I have things to do today–we need to swing by the Cat Practice to get Scooter another bag of food, for one, and I definitely need to do some writing and cleaning and organizing around here, if I have the energy–and in a worst case scenario, I can always simply curl up with some books or short stories. I did manage to do some reorganizing/rearranging of the books last night–out Netflix app on the Apple TV is all fucked up; I’m probably going to have to delete and download it again, which is an enormous pain in the ass. Our wireless was also running ridiculously slow the last few days, so I rebooted the cable box and the wireless router yesterday, which signed me out of everything fucking thing and I just was too tired to deal with that shit last night. We wound up watching an incredibly bad gay movie on Amazon Prime–I won’t name it out of respect for the effort, time and money that went into it, plus I don’t like dumping on gay creators–during which both Paul and I dozed off here and there, before it was over and I finally retired to bed. I was also too tired last night to focus on doing any reading–which was definitely a lost opportunity, and one that I deeply regret. I’d like to finish reading Scott Heim’s Mysterious Skin this weekend; it’s really quite wonderful, and I’d like to move on to his We Disappear once I finish it. I’ve also got a lot of short stories to read–not the least of which is W. Somerset Maugham’s “The Letter,” and I simply love that it’s the source material for one of my favorite Bette Davis movies, of the same name–and there’s another one, by Mark Twain, about an incident that happened at the court of Charles VI in France (I stumbled on this story somehow; the true story it’s based on is detailed in Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror, which is starting to seem like a really great inspiration for me, almost Biblical in its inspiration). Plus I have, as I noticed last night as I reorganized the books, The Collected Stories of Flannery O’Connor and the latest Lawrence Block anthology–Mr. Block does some seriously excellent anthologies, for the record–and so there’s all kinds of good reading on hand should I have the mental acuity to focus on some reading today.
It’s also not a bad idea to read the stories I am currently readying for submission by the end of the month. Perhaps I should spend the day in my easy chair with print outs of stories and perhaps spend some time with some of my favorite short story writers. It’s also not a bad idea to revisit Bury Me in Shadows, which I have decided to completely overhaul–the problem is the main character’s age, but because I envisioned it originally as being about a teenager, I was stubbornly clinging to that idea, and it actually works better if I advance his age to having just graduated Pre-Law from college and readying to attend law school in the fall; this having a free place to live in the summer and a paying job that is relatively easy makes more sense for the character to agree to what he’s doing; plus it eliminates the entire what is his mother thinking in letting him do this? It will also require me to do some other tweaking (not that kind of tweaking, those days are long in my past, thank you very much), but I also think it’ll be stronger and a better story for it.
Which is always a plus.
I would like to do some work this weekend on other stories that are currently hanging in stasis right now, not the least of which is my pandemic story, “The Flagellants.” I’m not certain why that story is nagging at me; I don’t know what it’s going to be or how its going to end; so I guess it’s one of those stories that will reveal itself to me as I write it, which is madness, really.
Recently someone–I think Gabino Iglesias? I could be wrong–tweeted asking writers to stop talking about how much they hate writing, and his tweets really resonated with me. I don’t hate writing, but it would be easy to assume that I do from reading what I post, tweet and blog about writing. I do love writing; I love everything about it, even the frustrations and irritations–which I usually have to express to get out of my system. Publishing is an entire different subject than writing; I reserve the right to always be able to bitch about the publishing industry and its quirks and utter seeming ridiculousness whenever I please, along with the right to complain about being frustrated with the writing process at any time. But I want to make it very clear that I love writing and that’s why I do it. I love writing what I write, even though I am well aware (and if I wasn’t, have been told enough times by my heterosexual colleagues) that there’s not really any money in writing gay crime stories. But I like writing gay crime stories; I like writing gay characters, and I also feel like the full potential for gay crime stories has yet to be tapped. But I’ve dabbled with heterosexual narratives in my short stories, and if I am ever going to write a novel about straight people–or centering the straight point of view–the short stories are an excellent way to practice.
And…every new story I finish writing puts me that much closer to a second collection of stories, which is very exciting to me. I was originally calling the second collection Once a Tiger and Other Stories, but I am thinking about changing it to This Town and Other Stories, primarily because “This Town” is a better story than “Once a Tiger” and secondly, I like the symbolism of “this town” referring to New Orleans–even though that’s not what the Go-Go’s were referring to in their song of the same title, which was the inspiration for my story. (My original collection began as Annunciation Shotgun and Other Stories before metamorphosing into Survivor’s Guilt and Other Stories.)
I also started writing a blog entry about my love of The Three Investigators, which will probably go up at some point over this weekend; depends, I suppose, on when I finish it. And there’s a shit ton of emails that need my attention in my inbox as well; but I just can’t face that yet today. Maybe later on, after I get some things done, I can spend some time answering emails (as drafts to send on Monday) as well as writing some that I need to send.
But I just heard the dryer stop, which means I need to go fold some clothes and add another load to the dryer, and my coffee cup is also empty and in dire need of refilling; my stomach is growling as well, so it’s probably time for me to push away from the desk, get more coffee, fold some clothes and then have some Honey-nut Cheerios–which has been my pandemic breakfast of choice these days.
It also looks like a beautiful day outside. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader!
Well, it’s certainly Saturday morning. I woke up around eight, yet remained a lag-a-bed until around nine-ish, and you know what? Not sorry, not sorry in the least. I clearly needed to rest more–the work week seems to take more out of me these days than it used to, thank you, aging process–and now that I’m awake and swilling coffee, I feel more rested and relaxed than I did for most of the week. I still intend to write a lot this weekend, as well as get some serious cleaning done around here, and perhaps this is the time for me to finish reading Jamie Mason’s superb The Hidden Things, which is really fucking fantastic. She reminds me, in voice, style, and plotting, a lot of the great Patricia Highsmith. As I get deeper into the book and the stylish complexity of the plot becomes deeper and more tangled than I could have ever imagined when I read page one, I despair of the things that keep me from having more time to read so I can finish this exquisite gem of a novel. I am perhaps just over half-finished–which should give you an indication of how tired I’ve been lately; it’s taking me a really long time to finish this book–certainly longer than it should, given it’s consistent high quality.
The Anthony nomination this week (I still can’t believe it, to be honest) effectively derailed my entire week–but only because I allowed myself to bask in the glow of the enormous pat in the back from my colleagues, as well as the flood of congratulatory messages, posts, comments, and tweets. But now we’re in the afterglow stage of having to come back to earth and reality and get my life back together and on track yet again, particularly when it comes to writing. I really couldn’t afford to lose the days of writing I lost this week through my self-indulgence, and yet I did lose them. Chapter Eleven of the WIP has been a bitch to write; I started this past week and got about halfway through, and now have to go back to finish it and see if I can get on some kind of roll with writing it. I am going to try something; I am going to try finishing that chapter today and then move on to some short stories that have been languishing in my files for a while. Last night–or more properly, sometime yesterday–I finally figured out how to fix my story “And The Walls Came Down”; it’s a shift in the plot which will require some extreme changing. I also want to revise “This Thing of Darkness” one more time, and I’d like to get some done on my lengthy short story that is turning into a novella, “Never Kiss a Stranger.”
We watched Widows last night, which was good, but could have been better. The acting was topnotch, as were the relationships between the women–but the plot was so complicated and twisted I wasn’t sure I was actually following it and knew what was going on for most of the movie; that could also be entirely my fault. But Viola Davis is one of the finest actresses of our time, and I would watch her in anything, to be honest; her performances are always complex, nuanced, and brilliant.
We also need to catch up on Fosse/Verdon, which I can’t recommend highly enough, and we have yet to start season two of Killing Eve, which I am also excited about watching; although I am very worried about sophomore slump; season one was so brilliant and fantastic that I have concerns that the second season won’t pass muster.
Today I have to go by the Cat Practice to get another bag of Scooter’s expensive food (no, his Majesty is NOT spoiled, thank you very much), and then have to swing uptown to get the mail and make some groceries (not many, thank you Baby Jesus) before returning home, where I plan to spend the rest of the afternoon writing and cleaning (and probably doing some preparatory cooking for next week, as well). I may get the car washed as well; it’s looking pretty dirty, and the Uptown Car Wash does a lovely job; or perhaps I can put it off until next week, what with the three day weekend and all.
Yes, there’s a three day weekend lurking on the horizon, which is exciting. Huzzah! I am obviously thinking I’ll be able to either get a lot done over its course, or get a lot of rest, or some combination of the two, which would also be incredibly lovely.
I also have to start pulling together an article for Sisters in Crime for my diversity column. I have some ideas for it, and I know who I want to speak to for it, but at the same time I’ve not been able to come up with an over-all hook for it. Maybe some brainstorming over the course of this particular weekend will do the trick for me.
And on that note, Constant Reader, it’s back to the spice mines. Have a lovely Saturday!
Queer and Loathing in America 