Tag: Tampa

Muscles

Ah, the gay obsession with muscular bodies. It goes way back into the past; the Greeks always showed men in their art to illustrate perfection—gods and heroes—as muscular and lean and physically proportioned. The emergence of gay artists during the Renaissance sparked a revival of an ideal male form since they took most of their inspiration from the classical art of ancient Greece and Rome (which essentially plagiarized almost everything of Greek culture). Leonardo and Michelangelo and other great artists, regardless of sexual orientation, always somehow got away with depicting nudes etc in art by using Biblical or other mythological sources; the influence of queer artists can be seen in every cathedral in Europe—look for the nudes. (I’ve always loved that Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel with hot male nudes depicting Bible scenes.)

And of course, Michelangelo’s David set a standard for male physical beauty for centuries.

I often wonder how much cultural and societal influences impact our own tastes. I’ve often mentioned how I don’t have a type; people always assumed I did, but I never have. I appreciate men I find beautiful, of course, but just because I find aesthetic beauty in someone has never meant I wanted to fuck them. I’ve always been attracted to all different types. My attraction to bears, for example, I know comes from a childhood obsession with professional wrestlers (which will be addressed in another entry, about the evolution of professional wrestlers’ bodies). Anyway, if we are perpetually bombarded images and told this is what is attractive, do we change our tastes?

I’m not going to lie: I have always liked muscles—but they aren’t necessary; no one has to have a perfectly sculpted body with high vascularity for me to find that person attractive. Perfect male physiques have become so ubiquitous now, with OnlyFans and reels and videos and TikToks and so forth; I think it’s great these young men have find a way to make money from their looks, and more power to them…but the more I see those perfect bodies the more humdrum and alike they all start to look, like The Stepford Hunks (which would also make a good title for a satirical story or novel sometime).

And muscles serve mainly as visuals for fucking, anyway.

The year I turned thirty-three was really the pivotal time, a turning point, in my life.

I was thirty-three and still single, and the only gay relationships I’d had at that point weren’t really relationships; they were, actually, borderline abusive and only served to convince me all the more that I was destined to be alone and miserable–that maybe I was actually better off alone. It was time to make changes…the only thing I had control over was myself–I couldn’t make my job better, I couldn’t improve my finances, and if I was weird-looking in the face, I couldn’t do anything about that either. I was losing my hair and I basically thought you’re too old to find a partner now, so you’re just going to be alone for the rest of your life, so make the most of it.

The first thing I looked at was my physical self. I wasn’t in shape and hadn’t been since I stop cheerleading in college. That was something I could change (I also identified several other areas in which I could change–including my attitude, and started working on those), and so I decided I was going to live healthier. I was getting older (laughable now) and I knew the longer I waited, the harder it would be to change my physical self (as I am finding out now for sure). I had joined gyms before but had never stuck with it more than a week or so, paying them for a membership I didn’t use for at least a year before I could quit–which was also a bad financial decision.

So, rather than joining a gym, I decided to be smarter. I got out the Abs of Steel tape I’d bought and never used (it was still shrink-wrapped) and told myself, okay, if you do this workout three times a week and do push-ups with it, and can do that every week until New Year’s, then I will go ahead and invest in joining a gym again. Any exercise was better than none, three times a week was better than two, twice better than once, and once better than none at all. I wrote that in sharpie on a note card and taped it to my bathroom mirror so I had to see it every time I went in there. I changed the way I ate (simplifying my diet to “nothing with three or more grams of fat per serving”, started drinking skim milk, using fat-free everything and eating more salads and vegetables and turkey sandwiches. I had dropped from 210 pounds in August to 170–and the change was not only dramatic (forty pounds is a lot to lose in slightly less than four months) physically but also emotionally.

And so, I joined a gym.

It was a new, gay gym in Tampa at the time, Metroflex, and it was convenient because it was on my way to work. I could take the work uniform with me, workout, shower, change and head to work. It was very convenient, and I worked out three days a week: Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. My trainer, whose name I forget now, was really good and thorough–he explained things, which was something I’d never ever, not even when I was an athlete back in high school, really understood about working out. And…I started getting into the weeds by reading diet and exercise books.

One thing I did notice, though, as I was losing weight was how differently people treated me. I’d never really paid much attention to it before, other than the way guys in bars would avert their eyes when ours met–which I just took to mean as blech gross why are you even here–and it was hard to get a bartender’s attention. I stayed out of bars when I was doing that first diet-and-exercise change that fall, and when I went back I stopped drinking alcohol, sticking to water but eventually going back to Bud Lite, but once I started going again after the weight loss…I never had to wait for a drink because as soon as I walked up to the bar, the bartender was right there. People smiled at me a lot more. I got treated treated better in restaurants and stores by the staff–even passengers at the airport were friendlier and nicer than they used to be.

I found that to be very interesting from a sociological point of view; a little experiment in human behavior, if you will. Other things started happening, too, all of which was very much a boost to my fragile ego.

And thought about writing an essay called Looks Don’t Matter and Other Lies.

I also liked the attention. I liked being flirted with and bought drinks in gay bars. I loved being treated better, but at the same time I had to be careful. I have some obsessive tendencies–part of the faulty brain wiring–and my tendency to judge myself very harshly was a dangerous combination that led to some really unhealthy habits with food and eating–I often will skip eating without a second thought, and often when I travel I forget to eat, and get sick. I also don’t see myself in the mirror the way I actually look; body dysmorphia. I always worried I was overweight, and I also wanted to get bigger–you see how those two positions are diametrically opposed to each other–but it was all a part of the whole parcel of self-examination and evaluation with the intent to make positive change.

But as my life began to change and improve with my new approach to life (I was also writing again), I attributed a lot of it to the changes wrought by my exercise devotion. I was so much happier, had so much more energy, and felt better overall. I also met and fell in love with my life partner…and realized several things: I did not want to work in the heterosexual world anymore nor did I want to spend a lot of time in it; and the best thing for me to do, the thing that made the most sense, was to become a personal trainer to help other people reset their lives and take a holistic approach to working out—mind, body, spirit—that would be more effective, and also I could charge enough per hour being a trainer that I could do it part time and spend the rest of the day writing.

I was a good trainer, too.

So, that’s what I did. I also started writing a fitness column for the local gay paper, and for other national glossies. It wasn’t the kind of writing I wanted to be doing, but getting a clip file was important for writers starting out back then, and I stayed committed to my own workouts, even after I stopped working as a trainer.

I can also happily say that since I left the travel agency here in New Orleans in 1997, I’ve never worked in a hetero business ever again.

Injuries and getting older have messed up my working out since about 2011, but I am hoping that once I get past this rehab of my arm I will be able to do regular, harder workouts again and get back into better shape.

 

Macho Man

Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Macho macho man…I’ve got to be a macho man….

Sadly, this entry isn’t really about Macho Man Randy Savage, but I did meet him once, and yes, I always did think he was sexy; that body, the wild hair, the voice–the skill in the ring, and that amazing ass…yes, I was a fan of his. How I met him was when I worked at the airport–a lot of pro wrestlers lived across the bay from Tampa in either St. Petersburg or Clearwater or any of the communities on the peninsula, which means they had to fly in and out of the airport. One night I was covering Baggage Service, and was doing the fun thing of sending messages through the system about whatever bags were misdirected to us, or were simply late arrivals that needed delivering. I was by myself and merrily typing away at my keyboard when I heard the door open and before I looked up heard that unmistakable voice asking if a flight had arrived. Startled and wide-eyed, I gave him the information, and I could see he knew I recognized him–he scribbled his name on a ticket envelope, I babbled out that I was a fan, and he was very kind, friendly and gracious…which is why what eventually became of him was very sad to me. We never know what demons people are battling inside, do we?

The word macho is Spanish, and el macho or la machismo are Spanish terms that bled over into, and was appropriated by, American English, and it’s something, in all honesty, I’ve never cared for; it isn’t Spanish for toxic masculinity, but it might as well be. I first became aware of the term in the 1970s, which was also the time when the women’s movement was getting underway and feminism became a thing. Suddenly, all the things that were “manly” were under review (some straight white men certainly felt they were under attack instead; words matter); and the established protocols of what was and wasn’t ‘manly’ began to be reexamined and frankly, found wanting. Macho, or toxic masculinity, also wasn’t good for men either; they are trapped in a gender role that is kind of outdated but at the same time they may not fit into comfortably, either. The strong, silent type–remember that? That was the definition of manly; no emotions, no feelings, the provider and protector of the nuclear family…which begs the question, isn’t that emotionally crippling in some ways?

And where do gay men fit into this?

I sometimes think queer equality also threatened the role of the ‘macho’ male in our society and culture; straight men were supposed to be so deadly dull in real life, in the way they dressed and played and wore their hair and did all their manly things in that John Wayne/Gary Cooper mold…but gay men? Gay men could dress to accentuate their positives and look good. They cared about their hair and how they presented themselves to the world. There were some professions or sports that weren’t considered ‘manly’ enough–despite the fact that those things might actually demand more from the male body than other sports–football is manly because it’s violent and involves hitting other men with great force; while figure skating and ballet are not manly because it requires beauty of movement, and being graceful: men aren’t supposed to be grateful.

And that freedom to be ourselves was something to be envied by men trapped by conditioning, both socially and culturally, to be unemotionless drones with no way to express themselves other than through violence and anger.

I’ve always theorized that homophobia is subconsciously rooted in envy (of course, most people immediately zero in on ‘rejecting their own attraction to men’, which is also probably accurate in some cases). The stereotyped gay man has a lot more sex with a lot more different partners than straight men (not always the case, of course) and the idea of gay sex clubs (bathhouses, backroom bars, that sort of thing) where someone can go and have their fill of anonymous sex as long as they are capable and willing drives straight men crazy because most of them don’t have anything like that in their lives. Gay men were free from responsibility, from being what society sees as manly, and didn’t have to have kids or any of the other responsibilities that weigh down straight men and keep them, sometimes, from chasing dreams and living their life the way they want to; to paraphrase, ‘forced into a life of quiet desperation with no way out.’

I always found it amusing that the Village People, who had their moment in the sun during the disco years, always recorded gay-flavored songs cheerfully that were also dance hits that infiltrated the pop charts and the straight dance clubs, songs alluding to the gay world simmering just below the surface of American culture at that time.. They wore outfits that featured male images that gays saw as sexy icons of masculinity–the Native American, the cop, the sailor, the biker–and had hit songs that hinted about the pleasures of gay life. Some members of the band were gay, and the Village in their name referenced one of the more famous gayborhoods in the county, Greenwich Village in Manhattan.

Come on. I lived in Kansas during the heyday of the Village People–they were already out of fashion by the time we moved to California; but even I knew what their songs meant and what their costumes meant.

And the songs? Please. “Macho Man” was about hyper-masculinity, which was a gay fetish; “In the Navy”–well, everyone has always considered the Navy, going back to the British Empire, as a hotbed of homosexual activity (what with them being at sea for months at a time only in the company of other men; “YMCA” was about all the endless possibilities for.gay sex at the Y–also a notorious cruising spot for gays; “San Francisco” was of course the motherland for gays; and so on). I have always found all the straight people at sporting events, dancing and singing along to “YMCA” hilarious–because they don’t know they are singing and dancing to a song about the availability of gay sex there. I also found The Traitor dancing to “Macho Man’ at campaign rallies hilarious because of how much more stupid he looked because he and no one around him had any idea of what that song was about.

Straight people can be so clueless sometimes–but it’s always good to have the occasional hearty gay laugh at their expense, isn’t it?

I Wanna Dance with Somebody

Only when I’m dancing do I feel this free…

I love to dance.

Really, how was there ever any doubt about my sexuality?

Well, there probably wasn’t, but I still live with the illusion that people didn’t know. It makes me happy, okay? Allow me my delusions, thank you.

I think the first time I ever danced was at a school dance when I was a sophomore. I don’t remember what the dance was for, but that was it. A friend of mine asked me to dance, and I replied, “I don’t know how” (which was true), and she laughed at me, saying, “all you have to do is move” and showed me a basic back and forth step with swinging arms that was pretty simple. “Just stay on the beat,” she advised, and I found myself losing myself on the dance floor, getting into the music, and improvising…and for the first time in my life got compliments for something. This happened again when we moved to Kansas and at my first dance there–girls couldn’t believe what a good dancer I was, and they all wanted to dance with me.

Granted, most guys were not fun to dance with, usually doing some kind of weird shuffling kind of movement that was always off-beat and looked almost painful to do. But I basically figured out the trick–moving your hips and shoulders on different beats of the music instead of together. And the more I did it, the more I loved it. Guys were also not supposed to enjoy dancing, as it wasn’t ‘manly’ or something; I don’t know, there was a lot of idiotic bullshit like that for boys when I was one. My love of dancing continued on through my twenties–there weren’t any really good clubs for dancing, gay or straight, back then–and it really wasn’t until I moved to Tampa and started going to a gay bar in Ybor City called Tracks that I really found my place in the community.

Oh, not right away. I would dance when I’d go out, but not much; I was very self-conscious, and dancing made me sweat–a lot. My hair (what was left anyway) would plaster to my scalp with sweat, my socks and shirt would be soaked through, and I really really believed I was unattractive. But when I was out on the dance floor, I didn’t really care about how I looked or if anyone was looking at me or anything other than the driving beat and cutting loose on the dance floor. I never felt tired or sore the next morning either–I always felt good after dancing all night…

….and then I lost weight and discovered the gay bars in New Orleans.

I also discovered Ecstasy, but that’s probably best handled at a different time.

Oh, how I loved coming to New Orleans to dance the night away! That was the one thing I always hated, everywhere else that I lived or visited; the night always ended with last call, sometime after midnight and always no later than three. In New Orleans, the evening ended when you were too tired and sweaty and exhausted to dance any more. I used to go dancing at least three nights per week when I lived in Tampa (Friday, Saturday, Sunday), which also continued in New Orleans. I also spent a lot of evenings in gay neighborhood bars while in Tampa–didn’t really do much of that after moving here.

There’s something about being in an altered state (of whatever kind) out on the dance floor in a sea of shirtless gay men, all dancing and having a great time, while killer music plays through the speakers, the constant thumping of the bass getting into your nervous system. There would also be a light show during the dancing, and mist sprayed down into the crowd (in the older days before I lived here, I used to think they put poppers in the mist because you could smell it…although now I’m not sure that wasn’t just from how many people were using them on the dance floor), whistles and bells and there was always some older gay hippie, shirtless with long gray hair, shaking a tambourine out there. Everyone was friendly on the dance floor, smiling and grinning and flirting and grind-dancing, and the loud music just got into your soul, making it an almost out of body experience.

I always hated that the mixes you heard in clubs were so hard to find in record shops.

And the divas we sang along to–Deborah Cox and Madonna and Celine Dion and Martha Wash and Whitney Houston and Mariah Cary, among many nameless others–I was always lip syncing when I danced, really doing drag without the make-up and costumes and wigs–music I could just get lost in for hours. On the dance floor, everything was okay and everything was going to be better and this insular all-gay world was a place where I was at peace, where I was happy, and where nothing could ever bother me.

I miss dancing, but I also am older and can’t stay up late enough to go out dancing, let alone dance for even a few hours. But dancing has always been an integral part of my gay identity, even if I don’t do it anymore. I still listen to the music I can find on Spotify or Youtube, and believe me, there’s nothing like blasting gay dance music for cleaning the house. I used to have deejays make me tapes for my aerobics classes–and the attendees always loved the music.

Are gay bars still community hubs? I honestly don’t know–but all the young gay men I work with go out to clubs, so I guess so. Maybe not as integral as when going to one actually put you at risk of being arrested, but still important.

Take a Chance On Me

Ah, Murder in the Rue Dauphine.

It’s always weird for me to talk about my writing and my books and so forth on here; I always worry that I am either contradicting and/or repeating myself. When you’re as self-obsessed as I am, that can be a problem; talking about myself is probably my favorite thing to do–on here, at least. And I feel like I’ve told the story of where Chanse came from and how the series developed from the very beginning many, many times.

It was when I was living in Houston that I rediscovered crime fiction, and the old love was even deeper once it was rediscovered. This was the period when I read most of the Perry Mason novels, discovered Paretsky and Grafton and Muller, and decided to give Travis McGee and John D. MacDonald another try. (I had read The Dreadful Lemon Sky when I was a teenager, but I hadn’t liked it; I was more into the classic detective mystery, with lots of suspects and a denouement with everyone gathered in a drawing room as the identity of the killer was unveiled–the McGee series was definitely not that. But MacDonald had written a superb introduction to Stephen King’s first short story collection, Night Shift, and I had always wanted to give him another chance–pun fully intended.) I devoured the McGee series this time around; and I really admired the character and how fully rounded and developed he was (I should give the series a reread; I’d be curious to see how they hold up now)…and armed with all these new private eye novels and Perry Mason puzzles, so I started coming up with my own version. Even the name was a shout out to McGee. My character was also tall with sandy/dirty blond hair, a former college football player, and he lived in Houston, with an office downtown and a secretary named Clara. The title of the first book was going to be The Body in the Bayou, and I started basing the case on the tragic Joan Robinson Hill case, immortalized in Tommy Thompson’s Blood and Money (the premise of the story was that the character representing Joan’s father hires Chanse after Joan’s death to find dirt on John–and then John is murdered; fictionalized, of course.) I wrote about six or seven really bad chapters long hand before giving up. I didn’t know how to write a novel then nor did I understand the concept of rewrites and revisions and drafts. (My ignorance was truly astounding.) The hurdle I couldn’t clear was typing. I was a terrible typist. I’d had a job in California working for an insurance brokerage that was computerized, and had a word processing program that I used to write short stories on; it made such an incredible difference that I knew I would have a much better shot at actually making my dreams come true if I only had a word processor…

In 1991, after I moved to Tampa, I managed to get a word processor, and that was what I wrote my first two and a half young adult novels on–the original drafts of Sara, Sorceress, and Sleeping Angel–and used it happily for several years until it finally died on me. But by then, I was living with Paul and had swung back around to wanting to write adult crime fiction again, and I wanted to write the Chanse character that I’d already created…so I picked back up on The Body in the Bayou, moved it from Houston to New Orleans, got rid of the office and the secretary, and made Chanse gay. I kept the title, but threw away the story; I wanted it to be a gay story, too. I don’t really remember the plot, but it had to do with the murder of a beautiful boy-toy for a wealthy closeted gay man in New Orleans…and Chanse knew the boy-toy from his days working as an escort before he landed the rich man, I wrote about six or seven chapters of this before we moved to New Orleans….and I realized I’d have to throw it all out again because it was all wrong; I’d made the classic mistake so many writers make when writing about New Orleans: writing about it having never lived here, I only had tourist experiences–which are vastly and dramatically different from the actually “living here” experiences. So, once again, I threw it all out and started over, this time calling it Tricks instead of The Body in the Bayou.

The title morphed again to the less saleable Faggots Die after the first draft; and I remember talking to Felice Picano–he was coming into town for the Tennessee Williams Festival, and I picked him up at the airport. As we drove back into the city from Kenner, we talked about my book and the series, and he nixed the new title as well as the old one. “No one, ” he wisely said, “will pick up a book called Faggots Die, and Tricks sounds like a pornographic memoir of your sex life.” Felice was actually the one who suggested I mimic titles for the series from a classic writer…and we were throwing titles around in the car when I said, “You know, the streets in the Quarter are technically rues–Rue Bourbon, Rue Royale, Rue Dumaine–and the murder happens on Dauphine. Maybe Murder in the Rue Dauphine?”

“That’s perfect,” Felice said, and then we played with Poe titles the rest of the way into the city–incidentally, one of them was The Purloined Rentboy, which became my short story “The Affair of the Purloined Rentboy”, so never throw anything away.

And thus was Murder in the Rue Dauphine titled; and the plan for the series titles was also devised–the branding was changed by the publisher, but I can honestly say my first book was titled by Felice Picano.

Murder in the Rue Dauhoine has had three covers in its 21 years of existence. This center one is the current.

Never come to New Orleans in the summer. It’s hot. It’s humid. It’s sticky. It’s damp. It’s hot. Air conditioners blow on high. Ceiling fans rotate. Nothing helps. The air is thick as syrup. Sweat becomes a given. No antiperspirant works. Aerosols, sticks, powders, and creams all fail. The thick air just hangs there, brooding. The sun shows no mercy. The vegetation grows out of control. Everything’s wet. The build­ings perspire. Even a simple task becomes a chore. Taking the garbage out becomes an ordeal. The heat makes the garbage rot faster. The city starts to smell sour. The locals try to mask the smell of sweat with more perfume. Hair spray sales go up. Women turn their hair into lacquered helmets that start to sag after an hour or so.

Even the flies get lazy.

My sinuses were giving me fits as I left the airport and headed into the city. It was only 7 o’clock in the morning but already hotter than hell. The air was thick. I reached for the box of tissue under my seat and blew my nose. The pressure in my ears popped. Blessed relief.

As I drove alongside the runways I could see a Transco Airlines 737 taxiing into takeoff position. I saluted as I drove past, thinking it might be the flight that my current lover was working. Paul looked good in the uniform. It takes a great body to look sexy in polyester. He does.

He’d be gone for four days on this trip. I was at loose ends. I’d wrapped up a security job for Crown Enterprises the previous Wednesday. The big check that I’d banked guaranteed I wouldn’t have to worry about money for a while. I like when money’s not a concern.

And so began a series that lasted for seven titles and about twelve years or so; I don’t remember what year the last book in the series was published. I never expected anyone would publish it; it was intended to be a “practice novel” so I would get used to rejections and learn. It was also the first manuscript I ever wrote that went through multiple drafts before I thought it was finished enough to send out on query. It was supposed to be an exercise in learning humility and getting experience with the business while I wrote the book I did expect to get an agent with and sell–which was what I’d always called “the Kansas book” for over a decade at this point. (It eventually morphed into #shedeservedit.) But you never really learn what you’re supposed to when you’re stubborn, thin-skinned, and used to being demeaned and talked over and not taken seriously, for any number of reasons. I sent the manuscript to three agents: two sent me lovely but form rejections, which was disappointed but not surprising. I took this well, put the manuscripts away to send to three more once the final rejection came.

It came on a Friday, if I recall correctly. I went to pick-up the mail and my manuscript was there. Not a surprise, of course, but still a little disappointing. I went out to my car and opened the package…and paper-clipped to the title page of the rubber-band bound manuscript was a torn piece of used paper, with a note in ink reading I find this manuscript and characters neither interesting or compelling with the agent’s initials at the bottom.

It was like being slapped in the face.

By the time I got home I was in a raging fury. I was literally shaking with rage when I came inside. How fucking unprofessional, I thought as I sat down at my computer to check my emails, trying to decide how I would enact my vengeance on this rude piece of shit.1 There was an email there from the editor I was working with on an anthology which had taken my first-ever fiction short story and thus would be my first publication. I had never read the signature line–mainly because I was so excited for my first fiction sale (NARRATOR VOICE: it was porn). This day, he concluded his email with Please send us more work. We definitely want to see more from you and as my ego preened, slightly soothed from the insulting agent note from earlier in the day2, I also looked down at the signature line and realized I was communicating with the senior editor at Alyson Books! I immediately wrote him back a very short note: I’ve written a novel with a gay private eye set in New Orleans, would you be interested in that? and before I could talk myself out of it, hit send.

He wrote back immediately and said please send it to me ASAP!

I put the same manuscript back in a new envelope, and drove back to the postal service to get it in the mail before I changed my mind, and breathed a sigh of relief once I got back to the car–and immediately forgot all about it.

Six weeks later I came home to a phone message from the editor. I called him back, he made me an offer, and my career leapt forward much faster than I expected…and it started a roll of good luck and “being in the right place at the right time” that has kept me publishing almost non-stop since Murder in the Rue Dauphine was released in 2002.

It sold really well, got mostly favorable reviews, and scored me my first Lambda Literary Award nomination.

Not bad for a manuscript and characters who were neither interesting or compelling, right?3

It also took me a long time to realize–or rationalize–that the note wasn’t meant for me. (I was most offended that I wasn’t even worthy of an actual form rejection letter; that was the truly insulting part for me.) I realized when telling this story on a panel somewhere, that the note was probably meant for an intern or a secretary or an assistant, who just shoved the whole thing in an envelope to do the rejection and through some wild Lucy-and-Ethel office shenanigans, it went out without the rejection letter and with the note intended for internal eyes only…and made me wonder, how different would my career and life be had that fuck-up not happened?

We’ll never know, I guess.

  1. Not really proud of this reaction, but I did get the last laugh. ↩︎
  2. Said agent died a few years later. I may have smiled and said good, a la Bette Davis vis a vis Joan Crawford’s death. ↩︎
  3. I may be more forgiving about a lot of things these days, but I will always be petty about that hateful agent. ↩︎

Queen of New Orleans

I am always delighted when people think I capture New Orleans perfectly in my work.

I love New Orleans, and while I, along with everyone else who lives here, reserve the right to be irritated, exasperated, and annoyed with the city–God help you if you talk shit about the city if you don’t live here (“bitch, you live in Metairie”) in front of people who do.

Trust me, it won’t end well.

I fell in love with New Orleans officially when I came here to visit for my thirty-third birthday, which was a lot of fun and probably one of the best birthday weekends of my life, if not the best one pre-Paul (we had yet to meet at that time). I do sometimes wonder when I think back to visiting, and then living, in New Orleans in the 1990’s, if there’s nostalgia involved in my memories. That New Orleans no longer exists; the flood waters from the levee failure after Hurricane Katrina ended that time with a very firm line of demarcation so that everything was thus defined ever after as before and after. There were also the post-flood years in which the city was being rebuilt and rescaled and rethought and repopulated, but it’s never been the same as it was before the flood and it never will go back to that. There was a definite sense before that New Orleans was stuck in time and nothing was going to change anything–something drastic was needed to solve all the problems. It was thought at the time that the one positive was that maybe New Orleans would rise from the ashes like the mythological phoenix; a hard reboot that could fix everything.

It didn’t. Some of the old problems remained, some of them were eliminated, and new ones arose. The streets still collapse into potholes and constantly need repair; the sidewalks still tilt and get broken up by ground subsidence and live oak tree roots. There’s always something for the locals to complain about when it comes to life and living here in New Orleans. When Paul and I first moved here all those years ago, we had no idea what we were in for–but the nice thing was it was the first place I’d ever lived where I felt like I chose it; Mom and Dad chose where I lived for most of my life. I chose Tampa over Houston, but it wasn’t from an overwhelming decision that I desperately wanted to live in Florida (I didn’t; I moved for my job). But New Orleans–New Orleans was the first place I ever visited that I wanted to live. It’s really the only place I’ve ever wanted to live, or had an opinion about, or actually felt anything for; I am a New Orleanian, and a Louisianan by extension.

It’s really beautiful here, and I thought so when we moved into this crumbling neighborhood in a decaying city whose best days looked to be past already. In the daylight the city’s scars and wounds and damage is clear; but in the night, with shadows dancing and the light limited, it was still so gorgeous it can steal your breath away–and great apartments were enormous, high-ceilinged, hardwood floored, and cheap.

1996 was a whole different world; Bill Clinton was about to be reelected, gay sex was still a crime, and “don’t ask don’t tell” didn’t solve anything; it just made the realities of being a queer in military service even more difficult. There was still the remains of the Camp Street on-ramp to the Crescent City Connection on the neutral ground on the other side of Martin Luther King Drive; the Coliseum Theater was still there–closed and shuttered, but still existing, and there was this incredibly beautiful old house that was a ruined, crumbling wreck that looked haunted and absolutely fascinated me; I wish I’d taken pictures of it. (It has obviously been renovated.) Paul and I moved into the Lower Garden District right before it’s renaissance and gentrification. We lived on the Square; the park was just outside our front door and down the walk and across the street. Coliseum Square was dark at night then; all the streetlights in the park were either shot out or burned out, and the fountains were dry and rusted. The beautiful, graceful live oaks were there, of course, resting some of their heavy branches on the grass. All the big gorgeous houses around the park were derelict and run down, gorgeous ruins waiting for a buyer with money and a love for old houses. A gay couple bought one of them and spent the next year renovating it; it’s still a stunningly beautiful house. One by one those old houses were bought up and remade–and now Jennifer Coolidge lives in a house fronting the park (she sometimes comes to our corner at St. Charles for parades during Carnival).

I always think of Scotty as kind of a gay personification of New Orleans; the two are always entwined in my brain. Uninhibited, unashamed, unabashed, and always up for a good time–you could say that easily about them both. It’s really funny that back when I created him I didn’t think there was enough story in him to be a series–and here we are, on the eve of the ninth being released. Obviously, people responded to him in the way that I wanted them to; they’ve embraced his weirdness and eccentricity, and that of New Orleans as well. I couldn’t create a character like Scotty who lived anywhere else; anywhere else he wouldn’t work, would be judged harshly and looked down on by people for his hedonistic attempts to suck all the juice out of life as he can.

And I’ll probably still be writing him when I die–which, hopefully, won’t be for a long time yet.

It’s a Heartache

Thursday morning, and my first night spent alone here has passed. It’s so eerie and quiet around here without Paul and Scooter. It’s also weird having that big old bed to myself–Paul is rarely, if ever, not home; I’m the one who’s always traveling–and of course, the apartment always grows exponentially in size somehow when it’s just me in the house. Go figure, right? But I hope to get some things done around the house–I can, for example, spend an entire day upstairs on the weekend cleaning, using Paul’s computer to work on and I can stream stuff through the television upstairs while I clean and organize and try to get it into some semblance of order. I can also work on the downstairs every night and over the weekend, etc. I always plan to get a lot done and I inevitably end up not getting a lot done, which is part of my perpetuation of me being incompetent and lazy and so on; make so many plans there’s no way in hell you can complete them all even if you’re super motivated and driven, and thus can castigate myself once again as a lazy loser.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

So, I am planning on making the best of being a temporary widow. I am not going to be a slug, and I don’t have Scooter’s demands for a lap to sleep in to blame it on, either. SO THERE ARE NO EXCUSES. I doubt very seriously that Paul will come home to an apartment so sparkling clean and organized he’ll think he’s in the wrong house, but I can certainly make it all look better at any rate. I may even move furniture. I know, madness, right?

Stranger things have happened. And will again!

I was mostly productive last night; I decided to not really do a whole lot of anything much more than chores. I did several loads of laundry and several loads of dishes, picked things up, reorganized a bit and wiped things down–one would almost think I was on a very strict and tight deadline or something. I had a few pleasant down moments, because when doing laundry and loads of dishes sometimes you have to wait–and there’s not the time to start watching something or writing something, so it’s short little videos on Youtube time, and avoiding wormholes there is sometimes difficult, but it wasn’t last night. I spent some time moving and organizing computer files, and frankly, it was a nice and easy relaxing evening. I got things done, didn’t get sidetracked, and made a great start on the thorough cleaning the apartment needs. I am probably going to spend the weekend mostly working on the upstairs, because we are having work done on the downstairs; when I got home last night there was an enormous ladder and some other tools and things in the living room; and the work on repairing the walls had begun. I have no idea how long that is going to take, but obviously, there isn’t much point to doing a lot of work in the living room while that is happening. And…being forced to focus on the kitchen, laundry room, attic, and upstairs isn’t a bad thing at all. I can always take plug a flash drive into Paul’s computer and write while I am up there working, too.

The theory here is staying busy will keep me from feeling lonely or missing Paul and Scooter. (We really need to get a cat as soon as he gets back, seriously.) Hopefully tonight when I get home from work (and running errands) I can work on the book and do some more cleaning and/or organizing. I may even try to repair that wobbly drawer myself. The file cabinet itself needs a serious purge, as do some of the file boxes I have accumulated around the apartment in my tragic paper hoarding need. As I was looking around at the books last night and thinking about the next serious pruning, I kept coming across books where I would think at first oh, that can go, I’ll never read that again but as I reached for it remembered, oh yes, you wanted to read that because its hardboiled crime fiction set in Los Angeles in the same period as Chlorine is set, and there was a really horrific scene where a gay man is abused by the cops, and that could be helpful in getting into the mindset of how MY queer characters would view the LAPD in that period and so I moved on to the next book on the shelf. It was literally funny how almost every book in my apartment, on my shelves or yes, in the stacks on the floor, I could remember a distinct reason for wanting to read the book and in many cases, it involved writing something; whether a short story, a novel, or an essay about themes or characters or whatever within the book, there was some writing-related reason I wanted to read that book for the first time, or in some cases, like The Lords of Discipline or The Last Picture Show, for maybe the fiftieth time because I wanted to revisit it and see how I felt about it now, at this point in my life as a reader.

I’ve been trying to remember my influences, the cultural moments that resonated or impacted me in some way that changed the way I write because my perspectives had also changed. I recently acquired a copy of a juvenile mystery I remember reading, either from the library or from buying a copy at the Scholastic Book Fair, which I lived for when I was a kid, because I wanted to read it again–and already, just from seeing the image of the original cover and reading the description, I can still remember details from a book I read over fifty years ago; and those were the mysteries I read before I found the series mystery books for kids; once I started with the series, that was all I read…before moving onto novels for adults, which I read voraciously. I’ve talked about and written about books that I loved reading when I was a kid or a teenager, books that made an impression on me in some way and that I remember very fondly, like The Thorn Birds or Green Darkness or The Other Side of Midnight, and sometimes I wish I had the time to go back and revisit those books–but there is so little time and those books are all so long. Everything back then seemed to be incredibly long–The Winds of War, everything by James Michener, Captains and the Kings, Rich Man Poor Man, and even Dress Gray, the West Point murder mystery I always wanted to reread back to back with The Lords of Discipline. Genre fiction–mysteries, romance, scifi–were shorter books as a general rule. Even Harold Robbins wrote some door-stoppers of novels, like The Carpetbaggers and A Stone for Danny Fisher. Irving Wallace churned out incredibly lengthy books that ultimately really were thrillers at their beating heart; Irving Stone mastered the historical biography; and Irwin Shaw also wrote novels the size of leviathans.

And somehow I managed to read them all.

I am not the voracious reader I was when I was younger and had more energy and somehow more time (no cell phone or Internet, more like), and I also read a lot faster than I do now. Heavy sigh. But today is the last day in the office of the week for me, and the last time this week I have to get up this early–I did wake up several times during the night, but I feel rested this morning, if a little spacy–and that’s very nice.

And on that final note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, everyone, and I’ll check in with you again later.

Southern Nights

Home alone. Look at that, I’ve not even been home for an hour and already I am sitting at the computer, writing a blog entry to document my first night sans Paul and pet in over twenty years. I got home from the office, emptied the dishwasher and reloaded it, did some laundry (one load in the dryer now, the other in the washer) and cleared off the kitchen counters, wiped down said counters, and then plopped my butt down at my desk, and here we are. I may work on the book a bit; I may not. I haven’t decided, but I think tonight, other than chores (which are mindless), I may just chill and relax and not use my brain very much and let it rest. I wasn’t terribly tired when I got home from work, either; I woke up before the alarm this morning and didn’t stay in bed–a miracle in and of itself–and had a pretty good day at the office. So, I may clean up computer files and do some organizing of my back-ups and files and things; I may just float around the apartment absently picking things up and wiping things down as I think about the fourth chapter of the WIP which is the one I am currently revising, and what precisely I want to do with the fifth chapter and where the story weaves itself next. It’s nice to simply sit and think sometimes, or to think while you do chores that don’t require much attention so your mind can wander while you do them. There’s a lot of clutter and mess in the Lost Apartment, and I’m kind of tired of it.

Everywhere I look there’s dust and clutter. This shall not stand!

This book that I’m currently writing again–because I actually started writing it sometime last year–is something I’ve had the kernel of the idea for now for quite some time. I’ve been wanting to write a straight-up gay noir novel now for I don’t know how long. I’ve had this particular idea longer than I have had the idea for Chlorine, for those of you who are anxiously awaiting that book to happen, and that’s kind of why I want to get this done. Chlorine will be a much bigger challenge than this one, and so I want to write this one as a kind of warm-up. It’s set in a city based on Tampa but isn’t Tampa, and I don’t know why that is but it feels right, like it belongs there for some reason. I haven’t been there in a very long time and the last time I was actually in Tampa (the day of the fateful Bouchercon Target run with my friend Wendy) I didn’t recognize anything and was completely lost–and I used to know that part of the city like the back of my hand. So the city I am writing about is Tampa, but as I knew it in the 1990’s, so it’s not Tampa. (There’s another noir I want to write that would be set in the same city but in 1992–and that one is going to be waaaay too much fun to write! But that’s a few years away–and both noirs are connected to each other.) The working title is Muscles, and Muscles is the name of a gym in my fictional city, that is managed by a has-been former pro wrestler in his later forties (injuries ended his career) who also happens to be gay. The gym is owned by a local criminal operation and money is laundered through it, while the main character is the public face of the gym. A very hot and sexy younger man who is fluid sexually and a bit of a sociopath (and yes, I realize I am playing into the trope of the evil bisexual, but you’ll just have to trust me) who is involved with the crime boss’ daughter and has used the main character to get ahead in the past has now done something–but the main character doesn’t know what it is–that has put his life in danger, and the main character has to decide whether he wants to try to help this stupid kid who’s in over his head but is also a user, or let the chips fall as they may while trying to stay out of it as much as he can…but of course, he can’t. It is soooo much fun to write, Constant Reader, and I’ve been very excited about working on it and the work I am doing on it. I am, of course, having constant doubts about things, but that’s what other drafts are for and I won’t be signing a contract for this until it’s in good enough shape to only need a vigorous and anal-retentive copy edit.

Today was also miserably hot again, but either I’ve gotten used to it or my entire body and soul have been numbed by it. It never gets to be over a hundred here; it was always rare before. Nineties, yes. Feels like over a hundred? Of course. But for the actual temperature to be over a hundred, and the feels like being in the hundred and teens? Mary Mother of God, no one asked for this. But I endured it today without much of a problem, and it was nice to just come straight home from work for the first time this week. My copy of the new Donna Andrews (Birder, She Wrote, which may just be one of the best titles of all time) arrived at the postal service today, so I’ll probably swing by there on the way home from work tomorrow and I’ll stop at a market so hopefully I won’t have to leave the house for the rest of the weekend, which would be oh so lovely.

I am probably being overly ambitious about what all I want to get done around here while Paul is away, but that’s always been my modus operandi, and that will also probably never change. What I can change is feeling like a loser for not getting everything on the list done. That’s self-defeating, which is also my modus operandi, and I need to do that a lot less going forward. I think part of the reason I am high achieving when it comes to productivity is because I always try to do more than any human being is capable of doing, but even getting half or part of it done is an accomplishment. I was looking at something the other day, I don’t quite remember what, but it was stats for this blog for some reason–which isn’t something I care enough about to actively seek out–but I was looking for my tags because I wanted to see if I had ever written about my book Dark Tide (I had) and at some point the list of how many posts I’ve done since moving the blog here whenever the hell that was, and was stunned to see it was in excess of two thousand? I think I moved the blog here in 2015, which was roughly eight years or so ago. So if I write one entry per day every day for eight years, that alone is 2920 entries. There have been days I’ve missed, of course, but there have also been days with more than one entry, and sometimes more than two when I am feeling especially bloggy (I just made up that word, you’re welcome), and assuming that every one is about 500 words (an underestimate, I’d bet), it comes out to…one million four hundred and sixty thousand words.

Holy fuckballs, seriously. And I never count the blog as writing for daily totals or anything.

Yikes?

And I think that’s a good place for me to cut this off. The loads in the dryer and the dishwasher are complete, so time to reload the dryer and dishwasher and fold some clothes.

Try not to let your envy consume you, Constant Reader.

The Wurlitzer Prize (I Don’t Want to Get Over You)

And here we are on yet another Pay-the-Bills Wednesday. Paul is leaving today, and won’t be back until a week from Saturday. I also don’t have Scooter for cuddles and company. Will I go mad living under conditions of absolute reality? Even larks and katydids are believed by some to dream.

Yesterday was a much better day than I’ve had in quite some time, all things considered. I slept incredibly well, so didn’t start off my day either sleepy or groggy or tired, which is always a plus. The work day was relatively low-key; we were slow in the morning but busy in the afternoon, and frankly, I prefer it that way; busy in the morning inevitably means tired in the afternoon, and if we’re so it’s agony. But over all, a good day at the office and an auspicious beginning to the month of August. (I also didn’t note that it was the anniversary of both of our moves to New Orleans; first in 1996, then again on August 1 2001 when we moved back home from That Horrible Year Away.)

I ran errands on my way home–mail, prescriptions, groceries–and then came home to a sink full of dirty dishes which needed attention, so I took care of that as well as another load of laundry, and then sat my ample buttocks into my desk chair and banged out the revision of Chapter 3 I’d been stuck on for a little less than a week (not so much stuck as tired and didn’t want to bother with it, in brutal honesty) and got it finished and under control before moving onto Chapter Four. I also worked on “Whim of the Wind” for a little while, and also did some more research into the history of the city I am fictionalizing for the WIP, which I continue to fail to discuss. Perhaps this weekend? Perhaps. I kind of want to see if I can get past Chapter 4 before I talk about the book publicly, but that’s nothing more than my own superstitions, which is pretty stupid. As a general rule I don’t believe in things like jinxes and curses and so forth, but I do believe you can actually speak things into existence sometimes. The only takeaway I got from Psych 101 in college was the concept of visualization; that picturing something in your mind can make it happen–but not like winning the powerball or anything like that, but more along the lines of why you always spill something full when you’re carrying it no matter how careful you are…because your mind cannot picture a negative–you can’t see yourself not spilling it; so when you think about not spilling it, you will because you see yourself in your mind actually spilling it. (It’s like how you cannot prove a negative–you can rarely prove you aren’t something; but it is incredibly easy to prove you are. I use this example: someone drinks a lot. They don’t think they have a problem, they don’t wake up in the morning feeling like death warmed over twice and wanting another drink. But once someone says, “You have a drinking problem”, you can’t prove that you don’t. You can say you aren’t, but that’s denial. You can stop drinking for a time period—but if you start drinking again, well, there, you see, you were in recovery and then relapsed! You cannot win, so why bother trying?) It is much harder to prove something isn’t true than it is proving something is. Guilt is the same way–how do you convince the cops, who are convinced you are, that you aren’t?

I will say this about the WIP–it’s more hardboiled and noir than what I usually write, I am having a lot of fun with it, and it’s been a long time since I wrote anything set in Florida, if I ever have? Dark Tide started as a Florida panhandle novel, but I moved it to the Alabama coast; “Cold Beer No Flies” was a panhandle story, too. But this is me fictionalizing Tampa–come to think of it, my main character in The Orion Mask lived in a fictional Tampa I am using again for this one–and I’ve not set foot in Tampa, other than flying in and out for Bouchercon in St. Petersburg, since I moved away in December 1995 to once again reboot and restart my life.

I was tired after all my errands yesterday–the thermostat in my car let me know it was 101 when I left the office yesterday; it is insane for it to be that hot, even in New Orleans. It’s exhausting dealing with this insane summer heat this year. But I did get some writing done yesterday, which was a good thing, and of course Paul finished packing. Heavy heaving sigh. Ah, well, I have Superman and Lois to catch up on, and My Adventures with Superman, and so many old classic films to watch, so I shouldn’t have any trouble keeping myself entertained so I don’t feel lonely or bored. And of course I could be writing, which is always difficult in August…I also think about how about eighteen years ago I was finishing (finally) Mardi Gras Mambo at long last in that last, fateful August before Katrina. It really was a completely different world all those years ago; maybe I ‘ll go back and read those old Livejournal entries from August of 2005, so I can remember the world before once again. I also have a lot of reading to get caught up on, as well. I have some errands to run this evening on the way home from work, and then I am going to be inside for the night. We did watch another episode of Gotham Knights last night–very intense, as the season finale moves closer–but now I have to wait for Paul to come home to finish. Heavy heaving sigh.

But perhaps I’ll use all this solitude productively. One never knows, and on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again tomorrow.

Calfskin Smack

Tuesday and we made it through Monday. I didn’t sleep great for some reason on Sunday night–restless and kept waking up–so I was dragging yesterday, as could be expected. I wasn’t mentally tired, but physically? Yeah, not great. I was also hungry all morning despite having had cereal, a banana, and peanut butter toast. Go figure. Then again, I also ate earlier than usual on Sunday, so that could have had a lot to do with the hunger issue. I am glad that I have finally identified that feeling as hunger, though. It’s very rare when I experience it, so am very glad to know what it actually is for those moments when I do have that dull empty stomach ache. The irony that I didn’t think it was hunger because hunger pains usually went away after a moment or two, so I thought it was something else. I guess my body has changed yet again.

I did start revising the first four chapters of the next book I am going to write. It was a bit slow going, primarily because I don’t think I’ve got the voice completely down again–I decided that it was silly not to reread the chapters again before working on the rewrite; that could be why it was slow going and hard for me to slip back into my character’s voice again. There’s a cynical, world-weariness to him that you’d think would be super easy for me to slip into again, but the difficulty with the revision stuff made me realize I don’t really know much about my character and his history/back story either, so I need to work on that a bit more before I can really dig into the story the way I really want to, so that’s something, right? But I took a break from it, folded clothes and washed dishes, and then came back to it and slid right into his head and his voice, knowing exactly where I was and who I was writing about and what was going on. It felt good, and while I only did about 800 words or so today in total gain (there was also subtraction going on), it felt really good and it also put me into a good mood. I do love writing–at least this part of it, before I’ve cursed myself out for not seeing this plot hole or for forgetting this subplot and never resolving it, when I am stuck in the middle and it feels like everything I am writing is just filler; you know, the emotional rollercoaster of a journey I undertake with every new book I write.

Yeah, this is the part I like.

We also watched the new episode of Last Call, which is a book I still need to read. It’s such an eerie and creepy story–one which American Horror Story: NYC essentially “ripped from the headlines” for a significant portion of its plot–but I mused about how I hadn’t heard anything about this case, despite being gay and out at the time. I was living in Tampa, and reading the local queer paper and I also used to subscribe to both Out and The Advocate because once I was out I was all about being gay in every aspect of my life, and what better way to learn about being gay than reading, which is what I always did? But I never read anything about these murders that I recall. I am definitely going to have to read this book, and there are a few other gay books I want to read this summer–but there are sooooo many great new crime novels dropping by amazing authors too! Bouchercon is also looming on the horizon. I am getting invited to meals and meetings, and of course there are my panels. I don’t know who all is going because it always seemed so far away that there was plenty of time to check in with everyone, but it’s like getting closer and closer by the day.

The lackadaisical almost malaise I’ve been staggering under for quite some time now seems to have lifted, or at least for a temporary lull, at any rate. This year hasn’t been an easy one, and neither was the last. Everyone seems to be struggling with more things than usual these days, so I am not really comfortable complaining or whining or even just commenting on what a shitty period the last few years have been. I’m glad Mom is no longer suffering or struggling, but I hate that the side effect of that is Dad’s unhappiness. I’m glad Scooter left us pretty quickly and painlessly with a minimum of suffering–when I got home from the office yesterday Paul had picked up his cremated remains, so had a moment of deep sadness and misery when I got home from work yesterday. It was nice to share the sadness, though, with Paul; I try not to be sad in front of him because I think it makes him feel worse–also because it’s even harder for me to see him sad, but we should share our griefs and burdens more because it does help not to do it alone. As I mentioned, it felt good to start digging into the new book last night, even if it was just revising and strengthening what was already there. I haven’t started reading the new Kelly Ford, but will probably do that today. I actually was sitting in my easy chair feeling sad last night and missing Scooter, when I snapped myself out of it and got up off my ass and did some things. I made myself write, and when I got stuck, instead of giving up I did some chores to shake things loose in my head and wrote some more. I slept better last night than I did the night before–still woke up a few times, but still was a much less restless night than Sunday night was–and am feeling pretty rested, if not completely awake, this morning, which is also nice. I am hoping to make it through the week without getting run down and/or exhausted. I got two books yesterday–the new Eryk Pruitt, Something Bad Wrong, and a reprint of a Scholastic Book Club mystery I really enjoyed as a kid, The Mystery of the Pirate’s Ghost by Elizabeth Honess, which should be fun revisiting. I am still considering writing middle grade mysteries, and so I am trying to reread some of my favorites as well as some of the more modern offerings.

And on that note, I think I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again tomorrow.

Summerhead

I’ve lost track of how many days in a row New Orleans has been under a heat advisory, but I’m beginning to think we’ve never not been in one. It’s always hot here in the summer time, and I can remember walking to Walgreens years ago and being completely drenched in sweat by the time I got home. When I taught aerobics in the summer time I showered three or four times a day (any wonder I developed psoriasis? Although it makes for an amusing question, I don’t believe that any more than I believe the moon landing was faked; I should probably find out what causes psoriasis at some point), and the city always swelters in the summer time. The summer heat here is unlike anywhere I’ve ever lived before; Tampa and Houston had a very similar type climate to New Orleans, but both of those cities somehow seemed to not ever get as brutally hot as it does here.

I’ve started looking at adoptable cats in the area, and as usual, I want them all. If I had a house as big as my parents’, I’d probably have at least four or five cats. I do love cats (even if I came to it late in life), and I really do want to write Daughters of Bast someday. I don’t know if that’s a story I can actually write and tell–since in order for it to work, the main character would need to be a descendant from a High Priestess of Bast, which means she wouldn’t be (at least not entirely) white. I know the “#ownvoices” movement has seemed to have lost some traction (concerns about who writes what is now taking–rightfully–a backseat to concerns about book bannings), but even if publishing has stopped being concerned that non-marginalized voices are writing about marginalized characters, the lesson was learned at least by me. And while Daughters of Bast is a great concept and idea (in my opinion), I’m not sure I have the right to write that story, but I do not see how I can without venturing into problematic territory. I will write something based in or around Egypt at some point though; Egypt has fascinated for far too long a period of my life (as long as I can remember I’ve been fascinated by ancient Egypt, the pharaohs, the pyramids, and their culture) for me to never write about it….but then again, I’ve not written anything historical, have I? A short story here and there?

Yesterday was actually kind of lovely. I’d cry here and there, of course, when I’d have a reminder–sitting in my chair alone watching Youtube, I started to call for him to come sleep in my lap before remembering was one of those moments–and of course, it feels weird going to bed without him curling up inside my arm. I keep picking up things–toys he’d played with a couple of times before abandoning, water dish, plastic container of cat food–which make me sad, but it’s gradually grew into more of a resigned sadness by the end of the day rather than the emotional kick in the gut. We got caught up on Hijack, with Idris Elba on Apple Plus, which is really quite good; started watching Last Call on HBO, based on the Edgar Award winning true crime about a serial killer praying on gay men in New York; and then moved on to Fake Profile on Netflix, which is, as all Spanish language crime melodramas are, fricking fantastic. We’ll probably finish Fake Profile today, but am not sure what else. We also finished season one of Platonic yesterday, which was also terrific.

I did spend some time reading Megan Abbott’s Beware the Woman; I only read the first chapter but its hallmark Abbott; the voice, especially, is just as haunting as always and I always marvel at how lyrically she puts sentences together. Her writing style is so evocative; it’s amazing to me how she can create an entire image in your head with a clever turn of phrase. It’s a kind of writerly witchcraft not many authors have, and while I am sure it has a lot to do with her education (she’s incredibly intelligent) and her own influences, she is just kind of a genius, really. I plan to spend some more time with it this morning, once I get some things cleaned up around here–the kitchen is a mess, and as always, dishes dishes dishes and filing filing filing. But I did do some clean-up around here yesterday and I also successfully pruned the books down. I got rid of some of the empty boxes that have piled up around here, and so progress was made on the messy, slovenly hovel I call the Lost Apartment. I slept pretty well last night, too. I also spent some time brainstorming loosely in my journal for the next book I’m going to write. (I also just realized I’ve been listening for Scooter to come downstairs and demand his breakfast; I suppose that’s going to be a lengthy wait this morning…)

I’m not really sure what I am going to do today other than some clean-up and some reading and maybe some more brainstorming. I need to write Dad, among other important tasks, and there’s still some loose ends hanging around I need to get tied up at some point. There’s always something…but at least I am starting to feel creative again, which is always a plus. I was really feeling depleted there for a while, you know? I am also making Swedish meatballs for dinner. It’s been a hot minute since I’ve cooked–I’ve really fallen down on the job as far as that is concerned–and I also have doctors’ appointments on Wednesday so my week is going to be broken up into two parts around that.

And on that note, I think I will repair to my easy chair with Beware the Woman. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again tomorrow.