Tag: Twitter

Photograph

So….the other day on Twitter my friend Jeff asked about the backstory of this picture:

It’s really not a great story, or at least, not to me. It was one of those things where everything aligned and fell into place perfectly to take what–to me–is one of the funniest pictures of me ever taken; one that I have been able to use on social media repeatedly, for any number of responses to any number of tweets and situations, because it works for so many different things: surprise, shock, horror (it’s actually saved as ‘the horror’ on all my computers and devices, so I can access it from anywhere), and on and on. It works for everything, seriously.

It’s also kind of amusing how much people on social media love this picture. One friend replied to it once with yes….whenever this picture shows up I know it’s a good tweet. I even think some people try to prompt me to use it, and when I don’t, will go as far as to tweet insert Greg’s shocked face picture here, and of course, I always oblige.

This picture comes from the years after Hurricane Katrina, if not the year immediately after. I think, this was from 2007 or 2008. The city was still recovering, but we were also getting some time and distance from the trauma. There were so few people in the city in that year–people returning all the time, new people moving in for the first time–that we all clung very tightly to the friends who were actually here. Going out on the weekends no longer seemed like an indulgence I might be getting to the point of aging out of; instead, it became a necessary ritual to go down to the Quarter gay bars and hang out with friends because we were all sharing the traumas and rollercoaster rides that New Orleans was after the disaster. It felt important to keep renewing those bonds every weekend. The day job was still operating at a shell of what it was before; but a lot of us were working out of the Frenchmen Street office and those of us who did, meeting up for Drag Bingo and tea dance on Sundays (we called it “going to gay church”) had become pretty much de rigeur. I didn’t care so much about Drag Bingo, so often drifted between friends at Lafitte’s and co-workers at Drag Bingo up the street at Oz (I never missed the napkin toss for “Love Is In The Air,” though).

And that is where this picture was taken; on some long -forgotten Sunday at Drag Bingo. I had literally just walked into Oz, having left Paul and some other friends at Lafitte’s to go check in with my work friends. As I recall, Josh, the Evil Mark, and some of the others had gathered at that corner of the square first floor bar, and Josh pulled out his camera and said, “let me take your picture, Greggy.” So I looked at him and smiled…

…and just as he was pressing the button on the camera, the Evil Mark showed yet again why I nicknamed him that by saying, “Why? He’ll just look old.”

I turned my head and that was the face I made–which is why I wasn’t looking directly at the camera. It can never be duplicated because it wasn’t posed; it was a candid, honest reaction to someone giving me a good burn from out of nowhere. I didn’t even see the picture until much later, because it was pre-iPhones and people still were using digital cameras. He posted it later that night on Facebook, tagged me with a vile slander (his caption was Greg just saw something, and it wasn’t true) which I corrected; but I also downloaded the picture because it made me laugh. I don’t remember when precisely I started using it as a reaction shot on Facebook or Twitter, but it always makes people laugh.

And I do like making people laugh, so here we are.

Every so often I stop posting it because I figure people are getting tired of it. It had been a hot minute since I’d used it–to the point where I didn’t even think to use it until someone (Jeff) mentioned it again the other day. What’s really funny is when people use it on ME, which has happened. The first time I probably made the same face, because it had never occurred to me that someone would do that and use it on ME. It still doesn’t happen often, but it always makes me laugh when it does. I do remember one day I was going to use a GIF to respond to a tweet and thought oh, you should post The Horror and so I did, amusing myself endlessly. I didn’t expect it to take on a life of its own and become kind of a social media “cult classic.”

I really should have used it for my author picture.

Human Nature

Wednesday!

I was tired yesterday. I slept okay Monday night, but not deeply and I did keep waking up so it was a restless night at best–and I sure as hell didn’t want to get up when the alarm went off yesterday morning. I was also behind at the day job when I got there, so had to play catch up a bit between clients. It was all good, but still a bit more stressful than I would prefer; I also kept thinking it was Monday all day which drove me a bit insane.

I also discovered that my insurance actually does not cover hearing aids for adults; I must have missed the part about having to be under eighteen when I looked it up. Which kind of sucks that in order to hear I have to pay for it out of my own pocket. The good news is I’ve made it this far without them, so I guess I can start trying to save up to pay for them somehow, or maybe I can get them financed or something. I’m not entirely sure, but it’s irritating. Our health care system has been fucked up since, well, the Reagan administration (quelle surprise; what modern day horror doesn’t date back to that bastard?), but the decline of the airline industry actually can be dated to Carter; he was the one who deregulated the airlines under the guise of increasing competition so fares would be more competitively priced. We see how well that worked out, haven’t we? American, United, Delta, Southwest and Jetblue are all that are left now from the glory days of air travel–Eastern, Pan Am, TWA, Continental, Northwest and many others having either folded or been taken over by another airline. Glad we have all these choices now, right? (Sorry, I was thinking about how the airline industry has declined over the course of my lifetime while at the airport the other day, and clearly it was still in my subconscious. I love Jimmy Carter, but this was a mistake.)

I slept better last night. I still woke up a couple of times but I feel very much more rested this morning than I did yesterday. I was tired when I got home from the office so immediately put the dishes away and started another load before the fatigue overtook me. I got caught upon Vanderpump Rules–more on that later–and when Paul got home from the gym we watched this week’s Ted Lasso, which was lovely and melancholy at the same time. (My God, how I love Jamie Tartt! Phil Dunster is killing it in the role this season, too. What an incredible character arc–and now we are seeing a lovely redemption for Nate, who disappointed me but we get to see our Nate again this season, which is so nice)

I did manage to work a little on the book yesterday, and it took me a little while to get reacclimated to the story and everything. I think I’ll be back on track with it again today and thru the rest of the week before I leave for Alabama on Saturday morning; and while the drive up there and back over the weekend will probably be tiring, I think I can see the end of the book coming. It might take me awhile to get there, but the end game is there and I need to really focus at some point to get it done. I may have to take a long weekend in mid-May to get there. Heavy heaving sigh. It’s always about time management for me, isn’t it, and being tired? How did I used to do this all the time? Oh yes, I was younger and hadn’t had COVID yet. *shakes fist at universe*

I need to stay away from Twitter more. I get so angry whenever I go there, and am always tempted to say something snarky or in kind to a troll–I don’t always succeed in deleting the tweet before hitting send, either–and while I am not worried about going viral or getting cancelled (if it happens, it happens, you know, and if I fuck up, I kind of deserve it), I am trying not to be that person. I don’t want to troll trolls on-line, nor do I want to get into tweet-fights with anyone. It’s all just a waste of time and energy that can be utilized better elsewhere (I do, however, reserve the right to troll anyone trolling a friend), and does no one any good. Twitter is the worst of us, really; originally intended for people to connect and interact with each other, it basically evolved into a place for people to complain. Oh, someone cut you off in traffic? Tweet angrily about it! You watched a show you didn’t enjoy? Tweet about it! And so on and so on. Twitter can be fun; I’ve certainly had fun there with friends and of course there’s always my “Greg meme” face, which can be used for surprise, shock, or horror (I actually have the picture saved on all devices for easy access and use as “the horror”); for some reason that always makes people laugh. It is a funny photo, and I will always be grateful that Josh Fegley snapped that shot so perfectly timed to get that expression on my face when the Evil Mark said, well, something evil while we were at Drag Bingo at Oz. I’ve tried repeating that photo without success; it was something in and of the moment, I guess.

Or I’m just older and my face sags so much I can’t replicate the expression. One or the other is the most likely, or probably both.

Heavy heaving sigh.

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

Spotlight

And here we are on Friday at long last. This week seemed to last forever, didn’t it? It did to me. I remember thinking with a groan on Tuesday night that it was only Tuesday somehow, and the same thought on Wednesday. But we did it, we made it, and it was marvelous in our eyes.

I somehow managed to get everything to my amazing accountant, who got my taxes done in record time–she is so worth every penny I pay her, seriously–so here’s hoping that I get my cash before the trip to Malice, how marvelous would that be? My financial situation is improving month to month, but the progress is always so much slower than I would prefer it to be, you know? There will be another big shift at the end of the year, too, when the loan I took against my retirement to pay off my car (figured it was better to pay myself interest than paying it to the bank) so that automatic deduction from my check will stop in either November or December, which will be splendid. I’ve already dramatically cut back on my book purchasing–certain authors and books are exempted, but I am trying not to buy more books until I’ve made some serious progress into my TBR pile, which is enormous. I think when the revision of this book is finished, I am going to take a month and simply work on short stories to recharge and recalibrate my brain, while getting some serious reading taken care of in the meantime. My gym membership will be taken off the inactive list in May as well, and I think I’ll probably start listening to audiobooks when I go the gym and take walks and so forth. Sure, it may take me longer to get it listened to than when I am in a car on a long highway drive, but there are also shorts. I have four shorts by Lisa Unger downloaded to my Audible app, and those will probably do the trick.

So, I went down a wormhole that started the other day and now I have a substack. Did I want one? I don’t really think so, but I’d seen that they’ve added something similar to Twitter, and I wanted to keep seeing a friend’s tweets (they were trying out the new Substack function), and one thing led to another and now I have a Substack page. I’m not really sure what it’s for, to be honest; I archived my newer blog to it and tried to archive the old one to it, but it didn’t work. I think I know how to do it now, but am also not terribly sure I need to move that over there as a back-up or not. I’d like to have it archived somewhere besides Livejournal, but it’s like twelve years of entries and what an enormous pass in the ass it would be to do it manually (which I will not be doing; I can’t even keep up with my computer files, for fuck’s sake, let alone downloading twelve years of almost daily entries, one by one. Just the thought chilled my blood, frankly. So, I have a substack now, not sure why or what it’s for or what I will use it for (maybe I’ll come up with a plan so that it promotes me, which this blog has never really done–it really is a wonder I have a career, seriously).

I slept really well last night. LSU’s women’s gymnastics team qualified for Nationals by winning their semi-final yesterday afternoon; the “Four on the Floor” are LSU, Florida, Utah, and Oklahoma. I would love it if they won, but I don’t know how good their chances are. Both Utah and Oklahoma were over 198 with their scores; LSU had slightly less than that. They also didn’t perform as well as they were capable of; the question is can they pull it all together this weekend and pull off the upset? LSU is also down one of their biggest stars as well as some of their other top athletes, and yet made the finals anyway. I suspect LSU is going to be a major power in the future (they’ve come close but have never quite gotten the brass ring), which is exciting for all of us down here in southeastern Louisiana. We watched the replay of the semi-finals last night after we both got home, and then I went to bed shortly thereafter. Today is work-at-home Friday, but I have a department meeting and a health fair (attendance required by our insurance) so I have to go into the office anyway for a little while anyway. I’ll run a couple of errands on my way home, and then may be in for the weekend, other than perhaps a grocery run on Sunday morning. This weekend’s primary focus is getting work done on the Scotty manuscript as well as other chores around the house, and maybe working on some odds and ends and getting those things quite caught up. It’s hard to believe that two weeks from today I will be waking up in Bethesda, Maryland, where I am attending Malice Domestic as an Agatha nominee (!!!!), which I still can’t believe. My peers have been very very lovely to me over the past year, which makes me incredibly grateful and is a little humbling at the same time. I don’t think I will win, but it’s still a big thrill and an honor; I certainly never thought I would ever be nominated for an Agatha Award.

And since I had done such a lovely job last weekend and during this past week of organizing and filing, I don’t have to spend a lot of time this weekend working on that. I am behind on the dishes, of course, and I need to go through the refrigerator again–and the floors need doing yet again–but I don’t think I have to spend as much time on chores this weekend as I usually do, and if I do spend some time on them, I will be that much closer to getting my house cleaned and under control at long last. I also need to make another sweep through the books again this weekend, and I do need to start working on clearing out the storage attic by bringing down a box of books and getting going (I may have to leave the house tomorrow, to drop off books at the library sale, if I am thorough) on that project. Financially, it makes more sense for me to clean out the attic and then start slowly emptying and cleaning out the storage unit–moving the stuff I want to keep out of it (my kids’ mystery series books and copies of my own books) and donating the rest to a library sale. Closing the storage unit will also be a financial boon for me, and bring me yet another step closer to solvency.

And on that note, I am going to get cleaned up and head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again tomorrow.

Lucky Star

Thursday morning and all is well in the Lost Apartment…at least so far.

It was cold here yesterday; not that bad, really, but after the humidity and the over-eighty degree temperatures we’ve had over the weekend, the sudden twenty or so degree drop was a shock to the system, let me tell you. I was cold all day at the office (it’s always freezing at the office, no matter what) and so had to wear a hat most of the day. One of the drawbacks to being hair-free on my scalp is you feel the cold a lot more on your head. But it more than makes up for that in cost savings in hair products and haircuts, as well as the time saved not needing to wash and dry it.

And that’s my TED talk on why bald is best.

It’s cold again this morning, but the high for the day is 78, so I am assuming this cold spell is ending.

I did manage to get some work done on the book yesterday, but I also spent a lot of the day remembering and still processing this week’s episode of Ted Lasso. It really is such a phenomenally well-written show, and I went down all kinds of Internet fan wormholes–the fans are quite devoted–about theories and predictions and so forth for the rest of the season. In fact, after I finishing writing yesterday I rewatched it; that’s how much I enjoyed it, and I wanted to catch things I may not have during the first viewing (I used to watch each episode of Schitt’s Creek twice as well; what can I say, I am obsessive), which I did. And it’s weird, even when you know what happens, you enjoy just as much, if not more, than you did the first time. It really is a remarkably well done show, on every level; but the cast is absolutely perfect. We also caught up on The Mandalorian and started the new season of Yellowjackets before diving into the new season of Outer Banks, which isn’t…grabbing me the way it used to? We’ll keep watching, but we aren’t as addicted as we used to be; I’m not sure why that is. But the show is starting to pick up some; the first few episodes weren’t as gripping or entertaining as the previous seasons. I will report back, as I imagine we’ll probably finish it off this weekend sometime.

We’ve not been super busy this week at work, which has been enormously helpful with my reentry into reality. I am all caught up on my day job duties, which is a lovely thing. I am getting back to work on the book after the interruption of the weekend, and while it hasn’t been as smooth a reentry as returning to the office was, it’s getting there. A strong push tonight and over the weekend and I can get this all turned in, if I’m lucky, no later than Monday; but it might take a bit longer. I need to get this one finished so I can turn around and get the Scotty done, and I also have another manuscript to edit. I want to start reading some more, as well. If all goes well, by the time I am home from Malice I should be all freed up to get back to work on some other things, and I am really looking forward to that. Part of my writing impatience during the process of revising drafts is because I want to get back to work on the next thing, and I also think my familiarity with my own work is part of the reason I am so critical of it, if that makes sense? I had that insight yesterday; of course by the time the book comes out I am so heartily sick of it and familiar with it that it seems trite and bad; I’ve been through it so many times I’ve lost the ability to be able to judge it fairly and impartially. Familiarity does breed contempt, whoever said that was absolutely one thousand percent correct. The trick is fooling your brain into forgetting that familiarity, and I have yet to succeed in that effort.

It’s also kind of nice not having to spend so much of my time dealing with emails, frankly.

And of course, there’s always the disaster area that is the house. It’s been nice having Paul home this week–I am going to have to get used to having him home in the evenings, and it’s also going to take me a while to get used to potentially making dinner at night again; it’s literally been months since I’ve had to make dinner regularly. I still need to figure out what I need to get at the grocery store, and we need to start eating healthier for both of our sakes. I have also last track of the month; I was actually thinking this morning that there was still another week to get through before April rolls around but April is actually this weekend, isn’t it? Heavy sigh. I mean, the first quarter of the year has already passed–but then again, New Year’s feels like it was about a thousand years ago. It’s been quite a 2023 for me thus far, but hey–I’m still here. The jury’s still out on whether or not that is a good thing…

But it’s been a decent week thus far, if a bit off–as weeks after events inevitably are, but I didn’t seem to resent giving up the authorly life for reality quite as much this time as I usually do, and I do think that’s a good thing. Maybe I am finally starting to meld the different compartments of my life into one rather than continuing to keep them segregated from each other and never the twain shall meet. Is it better to have all aspects of my life integrated into one? It’s so weird, because I started living different lives so very young in my life that it’s really all I know, and having such a clear demarcation line before between the “who I really am” life and “who I have to pretend to be to live in the world” life kind of carried over and spilled over into the rest of my life after I came out and tried to make my personal life all one world…but I somehow kept having different worlds. Day job versus writing; New Orleans non-writing friends versus writing friends; friends in New Orleans versus friends outside of New Orleans, and so on and so on and so on, that it’s kind of become my way of navigating my overall life, and I am not entirely sure now–at sixty-one going on sixty-two–how unhealthy that actually might be. It’s always worked for me, but just because something works doesn’t make it healthy, you know?

Tomorrow I get to sleep late and work at home, which is always a lovely and quite marvelous thing. I am really going to miss my work-at-home Fridays, when they are eventually and gradually eliminated (as we know they inevitably must be). I slept well again last night and yet again didn’t really want to get up this morning, but I don’t necessarily feel tired or even physically asleep (which isn’t a pleasant feeling, frankly) which I am taking as a win. I have been released from Twitter jail, but the whole experience didn’t exactly leave me with a desire to return there, to be honest. It really is a cesspool, and I am much quicker to anger–the subconscious grief–than I usually am (and I’ve always had a low boiling point to begin with), so avoiding that hellscape is probably also more healthy for me mentally.I really need to figure out how to curate it better so I don’t find myself getting angry (it isn’t irrational) at the monsters and trolls who love to hang out there and be the assholes they don’t have the courage to be in person. Even though I could do nothing but doomscroll yesterday. I did check out some trending hashtags about Ted Lasso, and I am very pleased to see that the Collin Hughes is closeted story-line enraged the homophobes, who are now accusing it of being “woke” and aren’t going to watch anymore. Rather than enraging me with the why can’t they ever just keep their mouths fucking shut and let us enjoy something instead I got smug and happy because homophobes shouldn’t be able to watch and love the joy that is Ted Lasso. You don’t get to be an asshole and find joy in the magic of this show, and if it’s taken you three seasons to figure out the show is “woke” (however the hell the rage-monsters define that now), you’re kind of stupid. The message of the show is kindness and helping others to be their best selves, really, and those connections are the most important. Where precisely does bigotry and hatred fit into that message, precisely? So, stop watching. It’ll still air and will always be available to stream, and oh, one last thing: The CEO of Apple is a gay man. Ted Lasso is an Apple TV show. Did you really think Apple would air a homophobic show? You really are too fucking stupid to live…and you shouldn’t be allowed to breed.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a happy March 30th, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again tomorrow.

Borderline

Wednesday and Pay the Bills Day again. Huzzah? Huzzah, I suppose. Dark is pushing against my windows again this morning, and yet again I didn’t want to leave my bed this morning. I’m not sure what that’s about, probably lingering tiredness from the weekend, most likely. But I had a good day yesterday. I got some work on the book done and it wasn’t like pulling teeth in the least, which is always a good sign, and I think the book is taking shape rather well. Huzzah!

Paul was home last night, which was wonderful and something I’ve missed, frankly. He even went to the gym for the first time in months! I’d forgotten how nice it was to have Paul and Scooter lying on the couch cuddling while we watched television (Scooter always sleeps in my lap for a little bit so I don’t feel neglected before moving to the couch; he even gives me a guilty look, like he’s saying “sorry but Daddy is more comfy” before he decamps)–and we watched Ted Lasso. I really love this show so much! It’s amazing how it’s funny and charming at the same time; and how much I’ve genuinely come to care for the characters; it’s end is going to be as heartbreaking as when Schitt’s Creek ended. If someone would have told me that one of my favorite characters in Season 3 would be Jamie “did you just call me pre-Madonna?” Tartt, I would have laughed my ass off. Like Schitt’s Creek, I think the reason this show resonates so deeply with its fanbase is because of the character growth, and no one (except Rupert) is an actual asshole. And (spoiler!) yes, I did think Colin might be gay before we actually found out for sure last night, and what an excellent episode it was–handling beautifully the issue of what it’s like to be gay and on a professional sports team in a mostly homophobic world. Anyone who’s ever played a sport and was closeted can absolutely relate to the moment when Isaac said something homophobic in the locker room and despite yourself, you involuntarily flinch slightly, shrivel a little bit, and then just take a deep breath and shake it off. It also made me even more excited to see the rest of the season and what they have in store for us.

Needless to say, I love this show and while I definitely hate the thought of it ending, I also want to see how it ends and watch it all again. (I may have to watch last night’s again, in case I missed things. I actually do generally watch every episode twice, so I can catch the things I overlooked while laughing or didn’t pay as much attention to the first time around. Obsessive? Just a bit. Some things never change, you know?)

Hilariously, I am now banned from posting on Twitter for up to a week for calling out a phony right-winger because I committed “hateful conduct” while J. K. Rowling is out there happily and gleefully being a homophobic TERF piece of shit multiple times a day. But at the same time, I’m kind of glad; Twitter is a cesspool and of course, since the needle-dicked South African racist homophobe emerald mine heir who thinks he’s a business genius took over. I need to figure out how to keep Twitter a space that makes me happy; I have a lot of friends who are on Twitter that I enjoy interacting with there, and ironically, the reason I even responded to the snowflake on the Wisconsin Supreme Court in the first place is because her un-American tweets somehow showed up on the hashtag thread for Ted Lasso I was reading this morning. But the fact that a Supreme Court justice at the state level’s intern went crying to Twitter about my replies about her lack of understanding of how the Constitution and the government work says everything I need to know about their hypocrisy and lies as well as exposing how much worse Twitter is now; people I’ve reported for straight up homophobia and transphobia do not “violate” their rules. They also put an adult content warning on my blog yesterday because it had a picture of the statue of David in it. Yes, Twitter agrees with Florida that Michelangelo’s David is pornographic; and that’s really all we need to know about Twitter, isn’t it?

I also don’t like that being there makes me angry. If I had a dollar for every response I started writing only to delete…yeah, Twitter is very unpleasant. A dark place that speaks to the darker impulses that lurk within all of us.

Today feels colder than it’s been in a while; probably because it rained yesterday. Yup, it’s only 58 degrees today, which is why it was so cold in the apartment (the air was on yesterday rather than the heat) this morning and why I really didn’t want to get out of bed, either. I am going to head straight home from work today, too; no errands that need to be run but certainly there are any number of chores that need doing. I just wish Scooter wouldn’t demand my lap the entire time I am writing so when I am finished and acquiesce, him purring and sleeping on me always puts me into a relaxed don’t want to get up and do anything mood, which is why the Lost Apartment continues to be a disgusting mess all day every day, which is seriously aggravating.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day. Constant Reader!

Goodbye Baby

Tuesday morning and all is quiet at this ungodly hour.

I’m up earlier than usual because I made the decision, whilst I was out of town, that the smart thing to do was get up when I actually wake up, rather than just continuing to lie in the bed awake. It’s comfortable, to be sure, and getting out from under my pile of blankets is never an easy thing to do….but it’s also wasteful of time and staying in bed doesn’t make getting up with the alarm any easier, nor does it make me less tired later in the day. All in all, it’s not going to kill me to get up earlier, so today is my first day trying it (not really, I woke up an hour earlier than necessary yesterday and just went ahead and got up then, so this is my second day of trying this to see how it all works for me). I had errands to run after work last night and I had to write a promotional piece for another blog for A Streetcar Named Murder–there really is no worse timing than having a book coming out as you are trying to meet the deadline on another.

It’s also weird because at the same time I have to try to remember things from Streetcar, which was finished months ago, and of course I’ve moved on to something new that I need to focus on. Heavy sigh. But I think the post I wrote last night is fun and interesting, and hopefully will spark some interest in the book. I’ve also been asked to sign at an event here in New Orleans in January–I want to say ALA, but I could be wrong–and I’ve also agreed to return to the dual Murder event weekend in Alabama yet again. I think this is the fourth time I’ve been invited? I love Margaret and Tammy, and I always have a lovely time at the event.

WE started watching that Hulu series about Chippendales last night, Welcome to Chippendales, starring Kumail Nanjiani as Steve Batterjee. I’ve watched a couple of documentaries about Chippendales and the resultant murder of one of the partners, but I’d forgotten about Dorothy Stratten’s connection to the club before she was murdered (someone really needs to do another series or movie about her life and death; Star 80 was good but…). It’s entertaining enough, and Chippendales also has something to do with the societal change in the sexualization and objectification of the male body that began in the 1970’s (along with the explosion of gay porn and Playgirl, followed by Calvin Klein ads in the 1980s), as well as the beauty standard for men. I recently (it may have been longer ago than what counts as recent, but time has lost all meaning to me now) commented to one of my younger gay male co-workers that “you used to be able to tell if someone was gay or not by how well built they were; if they clearly spent time on their bodies at the gym and ate right to improve the way they looked, they were gay because straight men didn’t give a shit.” Tribal tattoos also used to be a tell that a hot guy was gay. NOT ANYMORE. And the guys today–whatever their sexual orientation–have even more amazing bodies than we used to have back in the day; the definition and the focus on ab development and the absence of any body fat is far more pronounced amongst hot young men these days than it used to be. And they are everywhere. My Instagram and Twitter feeds are often filled with beautiful shots of incredibly handsome young men with unbelievable bodies; some of which I’ve sometimes shared here on the blog. I’ve also been seriously considering going to something else with the blog images, to be honest–I know some people would miss the sexy men images, but it also might be keeping other people away at the same time. I don’t know. But I started using pictures of hot men years ago because when the blog cross-posted to social media it would always show up as with a pale blue square box with a pencil in it, which I hated. When I talked about books, the book cover would come over, so I decided to use images of very hot men that essentially pop up somewhere on the Internet throughout the course of the day and it kind of became an ingrained habit, a default if you will, perhaps even a brand–I hate thinking of myself or anything I do as a writer as a ‘brand,’ and yes, I do recognize that my writing is a product for sale, but it’s not a pack of T-shirts or underwear or a pair of pants hanging on a sales rack. So, do I really want my ‘brand’ for my blog to be sexy shirtless men?

Probably a little late to worry about that now.

The Chippendales calendar–how many years did I buy that? I can remember being deathly afraid to take it to the cash register at the bookstore…but now that I am thinking about it, I don’t remember which bookstores I used to patronize in Fresno. Perhaps a Barnes and Noble at the mall? A Waldenbooks, maybe? But yes, I used to feel my face burning with embarrassment as I tried to nonchalantly buy a Chippendales calendar, all the while thinking the cashier knows I am gay because why else would I be buying this calendar? Now I laugh at the memory of the shame I used to feel. The cashier couldn’t have given two shits about what I was buying, and even if they did, who cares? I had always been attracted more to athletes than any other type of male; I always had a thing for muscles and worked out bodies. Why, I don’t know; whether I was simply wired that way for physical attraction, or if it’s because the first naked bodies of men that I saw were those of athletes in school. Junior high was the first time I ever had to change into gym clothes, shower and be around other naked boys, and I was never comfortable doing so. The locker room before and after gym in junior high was a nightmare, but once I was in high school and on sports teams…the boys I was attracted to were usually athletes. That never really changed over the years as I got older and grew more comfortable with my sexuality–what changed were the bodies. Whereas only athletes and dancers, gay men, and narcissistic straight men used to regularly go to the gym and work out their bodies to build muscle, gradually it became a thing for all men across the board, regardless of orientation. On the rare occasions when I go to the gym now, I see incredibly well-built and well-muscled young men all the time–and while thirty years ago I would have assumed they were gay or bisexual, now I can’t assume anything. I just marvel at the shift in societal attitudes towards men no longer in school who continue to exercise and work out–whether to be healthier or for something to show off and attract women, who knows?

But aesthetically, I appreciate them.

So, the quandary remains. Do I try to rebrand the blog by using other types of pictures, and if so, what kind should I start using? Would people miss the hot guys? Would more people be drawn to the blog rather than closing the browser window as soon as the hot guy loads?

Or do I just not worry about it–as I have never worried about people coming here to read the entries–and keep on as I have been? Decisions, decisions.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I will talk to you again tomorrow.

Running Through The Garden

Friday morning work-at-home blog!

I have data to enter and things to do today, Constant Reader. I’m leaving on Monday for Kentucky and will be gone for a week, so I have to seriously buckle down over the course of this weekend and get things done. It was cold here last night–in the thirties–and this morning the downstairs floor is cold beneath my feet, and the chilliest spot in the entire Lost Apartment is here at my desk. Heavy sigh. But that’s okay, I can deal with it. I have a load of laundry in the dryer, need to empty the dishwasher and refill it again–and of course the entire place from top to bottom is a complete disaster area. Hopefully I’ll be able to get the house under control as well as get all my work finished that I need to get finished not only today but over the entire weekend. Yesterday I was, not surprisingly, very tired when I got home from work. I did get some laundry folded and another load going, and yes, I loaded the dishwasher last night and stumbled around a bit in my tired state, but eventually Paul came home and we were able to watch the season finale of Half-Bad or The Bastard Son and the Devil Himself or whatever the hell you call it, which felt kind of anticlimactic, to be honest. I enjoyed the show, love the concept and the actors are very appealing–I am especially fond of Gabriel, the pansexual witch, to be honest–and we also watched a new episode of American Horror Story: NYC, which was kind of odd and weird, with a kind A Christmas Carol feel to it. I don’t know, it just seemed more like filler than anything else to me, and of course the AIDS allegory isn’t exactly subtle (why not just make it AIDS? The plague in the 1980s wasn’t horrible enough for a season of American Horror Story? Although AIDS in the first two decades would have been better suited for a season of American Crime Story….) but it is unsettling.

I’ve been doing, if you’ve been paying attention, the occasional Blatant Self-Promotional (BSP) entries for A Streetcar Named Murder, which has been kind of fun. I’m not sure what the next one will be–I’ve done the character, the store, and the neighborhood she lives in; I suppose the supporting cast should be next. I’ll figure it out at some point, I am sure; it’s not like the book drops until December 6th or anything–although I’ve been seeing pictures of already delivered copies on social media, which doesn’t make sense, but I’ve learned to not question things like that. It is what it is, and if people are already getting copies several weeks of release date, who am I to wonder the reasons why? Publishing is one of those businesses you never can completely figure out…because once you think you have a handle on something, it changes almost immediately.

I’m also looking forward to getting a handle on the current Scotty. I’ve been too tired from work this week to get as much done as I needed to get done, so this weekend is going to result in a big push. I have of course all the data to enter for my day job today, and I need to run some errands once I am finished for the day, but I remain hopeful that my energy won’t flag and I’ll be able to dive headfirst into the book this weekend without either having to force myself or for it to be like pulling teeth. As I have mentioned, the LSU game isn’t until the evening and it’s not really a big one; non-conference opponent, and of course I want them to win, but it’s Alabama-Birmingham (although I suppose completing the trifecta of beating Auburn, Alabama and UAB would make LSU state champions of Alabama again) and so there’s not the same urgency as there will be when we play Texas A&M the Saturday after Thanksgiving. What a wild, crazy and all-over-the-place college football season this has been…certainly nothing like I expected.

But I think the cold helped me sleep better last night than I have all week. I didn’t wake up super-early either; wide awake at seven, which is something I absolutely can handle, and feel very rested this morning. I did do one of those “oh you’re getting so old now” things this week–in which I turned my torso to do something here in the kitchen but did it at precisely the right angle to aggravate or irritate something, so now I am vaguely aware of some stiff soreness in my upper body. I can’t describe where exactly it’s located or how it feels, but it’s kind of like how when you have a respiratory thing going on and when you try to take a deep breath it feels tight? It’s kind of like that but not in my lungs, if that makes any sense. I’ll probably try to use the heating pad and the massage roller to work whatever the hell it is out before I leave on Monday morning.

I suppose the clock is ticking on Twitter, but I can’t really muster up enough energy to care much one way or the other. I use it, of course–I remember setting up the account because co-workers suggested that I should have one–and I go there periodically, primarily to waste time when I’m in line at the grocery store or the pharmacy or wherever; or when I am sitting in my easy chair at night with a purring cat in my lap while I am waiting for Paul to come home and I am watching Youtube videos on autoplay. Last night it kind of felt like high school graduation, as people were saying goodbye to everyone and it all had a touch of “signing the yearbook my senior year” to it all. I know a lot of people love Twitter, and I certainly had a lot of fun there over the years–primarily interacting with my friends and readers, mostly–but it’s also a horrific hell-scape with trolls lurking everywhere and nastiness for the sake of nastiness popping up every now and then. I find myself writing horrible responses to horrible people all the time before deleting them, and in some instances it’s too late–yes, you can delete tweets, of course, but that also seems kind of cowardly to me and besides, the Internet is indeed forever; I screen cap bad takes (aka “receipts”) all the time to save them just in case…and as I typed that even now I was thinking just in case? For what? In case I need to remind someone I don’t know of a bad take they had a few years ago? I have little to no desire to learn how to use a new social media service, so I am not migrating to another platform or any such nonsense; perhaps I will if and when the Twitter universe comes to a crashing halt. But while I’ll miss the interactions with my friends–and the opportunity to post that picture of me with the shocked look on my face everyone loves so much–I think I’ll somehow manage to survive.

And on that note, the dryer just stopped so I need to fold some laundry. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I will talk to you tomorrow.

Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around

Thursday and my last day in the office this week. Huzzah! Which means I do not have to get up at six tomorrow morning, which is lovely, and next week my work at home day is Monday, so I don’t have to be back in the office until Tuesday, which is kind of nice. I need to do a couple of errands tomorrow–brake tag and wash the car–but I am also kind of hoping against hope that I can make it to the gym tomorrow in the early evening as well. I hate that the first thing to go out the window whenever I am overwhelmed with work are the two things I enjoy most in life and are, really, things that are just for me: working out and writing.

I entered #shedeservedit for the Thriller Award for Best Children’s/Young Adult this week; I am not sure if there’s any point, really, but you cannot complain about queer books not making award shortlists if you don’t enter your own and encourage every other queer writer to do so as well. I am also entering it for the Edgars. Dream big, Gregalicious.

I have to admit I’ve not really been promoting #shedeservedit the way I should be, and I am not entirely sure why that is. Every step of the way of writing that book I was worried about whether I was the right person to tell that story or not…something I would have never even thought about ten years ago. I still don’t think I would have been the right person to tell the story had the main pov character been a girl; making it a guy, seeing everything that was going on in Liberty Center from a male teenager who is also on the football team, for me, made it more palatable–and it’s not just the story of the toxic masculinity and the rape culture permeating the town of Liberty Center: there’s a whole lot of just plain wrong going on in that town, and my main character, Alex, was affected and damaged by all of it, even as (sometimes) merely a witness to the shenanigans. Everything has a ripple effect, after all. But at the same time, the book has a content warning–which, I am ashamed to admit, never crossed my mind that it would need when I was writing it. How would a young woman who has experienced this, or knows someone who has, react to reading this story? That thought also kind of made me pull back a bit from the promotional stuff. Even with a content warning, is what happens in the book–even though it’s all already happened, and is seen only through flashbacks–going to be too difficult for a young woman (or a young man, for that matter) who has experienced something similar to read? The book has been out in the world now for over five months, it has a four and a half star rating on Amazon (I will not look at Goodreads, and no one can make me go to that barren hellscape for authors)…but at the same time there hasn’t been any pushback thus far on the book–which also doesn’t mean it won’t eventually happen, either.

But this week, I was scrolling through my Twitter feed (I honestly don’t know why I do this. Sometimes I have fun joking around with my friends there, and I’ve seen posts about books that I went on to read and enjoy, but for far too large a percentage of the time I have to step away from it in revulsion when I see how truly terrible so many people are willing to be behind the anonymity of a computer screen, a cartoon avatar, and a fake name…and how many more are unashamed to reveal their monstrous true selves with their actual names and images proudly on display for everyone to see) and I came across a piece from The Cut, which is a part of New York magazine and Vulture and I am not sure what all other websites and so forth are involved in that tangled mess of on-line and print publications. It purported to be about a high school teenager who “made a mistake” and “got canceled by his school.”

Ah, another story about the evils of cancel culture, I thought to myself, should I bother?

Reader, I bothered. And dear God in heaven, I am so sorry I did. If you want to read the nauseating swill for yourself, if it is still up, it can be found here: https://www.thecut.com/article/cancel-culture-high-school-teens.html. If you have high blood pressure, I would advise against it.

What makes the entire thing worse, in my opinion, is of course they assigned this piece to a woman. There’s a reason why men accused of sexual harassment or sexual assault will inevitably hire a female defense attorney–it subliminally communicates to the jury would a woman defend this person if he were a rapist? No woman would take on such a case! But when I was doing my research for #shedeservedit, one of the things I noted was how many women didn’t believe the girls, how many of their peers didn’t believe the girls, and that the nastiest and most vicious critics of the victims were other women/girls. I remember reading about Brock Turner’s mother, weeping and sobbing about how her son’s life was being ruined (implied: by that drunk slut!); the former girlfriend who wrote a character reference letter for him to the judge, and on and on. (I always wonder–as I did with Brock Turner–does he have any sisters or female first cousins? What do they think about this?)

Anyway, the author of this piece–whose sympathies are entirely with this boy whose only regret for sharing nude pictures of his girlfriend with his friends (when he was “drunk,” because I guess that makes it okay) is that he was shunned by his entire high school–misses the lede in this article so many times. She is so desperate to make us all feel bad for this kid for being made to feel the absolute least amount of consequence possible for his actions that she misses that the girls at this school felt so betrayed and dismissed by the system–which is supposed to protect them–that they took action on their own. That is the story here–what the students had to step up to do because THE ADULTS and the SCHOOL SYSTEM failed them.

But no, we get another “oh this poor boy”. (Who went to four proms and is leaving for college in the fall, where none of this will follow him.) By a woman writer who, per Wikipedia, has teenaged daughters of their own. How must THEY feel when reading their mother’s latest work?

Not even ten years ago the victims in Steubenville and Marysville were the ones shunned; not the guys who got them wasted and took advantage of them. (At least the Steubenville victim got some justice, as two of the boys were convicted; the poor girl in Marysville got nothing but slut-shamed and eventually she committed suicide.)

My original inspiration for writing this book honestly came back in the early 1990’s. Remember the Spur Posse at Lakewood High School? (No less an august literary figure than Joan Didion herself wrote about the Spur Posse, in her New Yorker piece “Trouble in Lakewood.”) I thought I had read about the Spur Posse in Rolling Stone–which, let’s face it, I was more likely to read at the time than the New Yorker–and was completely appalled…I sat down and started writing an idea for a book based on it, where the girls of the school, getting nowhere with the police and the school administration and so forth, become ‘avenging angels’ to publicly shame and embarrass the boys…and then they start dying. I wrote a couple of chapters, created some characters, and titled it When Stallions Die (stallions, obviously, a stand-in for Spur Posse); I always meant to swing back around to it at some point because it was an interesting idea (if you agree, you should read Lisa Lutz’ brilliant The Swallows from a few years’ back) and I still might–one never knows. But it was the Spur Posse situation that made me start thinking–long and hard–about sexual assault and sexual misconduct, victim-blaming and slut-shaming, and the weird need that some women have to protect men at any cost: “boys will be boys,” “any red-blooded American boy”…”locker room talk.”

And since I had been wanting to write a Kansas book, and had been playing around with a story for a small city in Kansas, its teens, and its high school football team, #shedeservedit kind of evolved from there.

I don’t know why I am so reluctant and/or nervous to promote the book. It was a deeply personal book for me to write (as was Bury Me in Shadows), and yes, I put a lot of my teenaged self into that book–not the surface Greg everyone saw and knew, but the interior Greg, the one who was so deeply miserable and unhappy and alone on the inside.

Wow, this rambled on for a lot longer than I expected it to! That article clearly pissed me off, did it not?

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines.

Maybe Someday

Well, we managed to survive Monday, did we not, Constant Reader?

Always a plus, don’t you think?

Yesterday morning I got up without much of a problem—but I really need to stop checking my Fitbit every morning to see how well I slept; it’s rather silly, actually, and doesn’t change whether I feel rested or not when I do get up. I went to the gym Sunday afternoon (why do I always forget how good it feels to stretch and work out?) and am hoping to have the energy to go for Leg Day after work tonight. This month—looking ahead—is going to be a bit on the crazy side: I have an on-line training for work; I’m doing a library event in the evening this coming Monday; my book drops officially next week; I’m doing an event with David Slayton (author of White Trash Warlock) with Murder by the Book on the 13th; and I am having a colonoscopy on the 21st. Woo-hoo! That’s me, living large everywhere I turn around. And then it’s Halloween, and then it’s November, and I am taking two trips: one to New York/Boston (for Crime Bake), and to visit my family for Thanksgiving (note to self: buy plane tickets and make arrangements for New York/Boston trip). After that, it’s pretty much just Christmas and New Year’s, and suddenly it’s Carnival again—not sure what it’s going to look like, to be completely honest, or how much I plan to be involved or participate with it. I will also be doing some traveling in the new year—New York again in January, Birmingham in February, Albuquerque for Left Coast, whenever that is—and here’s hoping the pandemic has calmed down and/or finally ended by then. PLEASE? Is it too much to ask?

There really is something to be said for doing things that were normal before the pandemic again. I do think going to the football game Saturday night, which I was so concerned about—and I wasn’t entirely comfortable around all those people—helped reset my brain a bit; I felt so much better about the world and life and everything in general when I woke up Sunday morning—after the first cup of coffee cleared some of the bleariness away—and Sunday night, after watching two more episodes of Midnight Mass (which is extraordinary, by the way; you should watch, Constant Reader—the writing and acting and production values are truly stellar—I had no problem going to bed and sleep. I did hit snooze a few times yesterday morning, as always—the alarm is set fifteen minutes ahead; which may seem kind of dumb to me at times (what good does it do you if you always remember its fifteen minutes fast?) but I do like to gradually wake up and acclimate a bit before I throw aside the covers and put on my morning pre-shower attire of LSU sweats, socks and house slippers. (Note to self: need a new pair of LSU moccasins to wear around the house)

I was also fairly productive yesterday, which was most pleasing to me. I did start getting sleepy and tired in the afternoon while at work, but powered through. I got a lot of emails taken care of, paid some bills, and spent a lot more time than I probably should have on Twitter being amused about the Facebook crash. (although I did find myself more than slightly amused at how often I would automatically start to go to the Facebook tab on my browser before thinking sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t let you do that right now)

Old habits die hard, and it does kind of bother me that it’s become so habitual for me to check Facebook. (We pause briefly now to look back and remember the days of MySpace, with a bit of nostalgic fondness)

Honestly.

But I am getting better organized, and working more efficiently these days than I have for, oh, say about the last two years, give or take? I am also—now that I no longer feel the need to spend all day Saturday glued to the television watching college football—going to start cleaning projects, weekend by weekend, until I have gradually cleaned the entire apartment. Ambitious plans, to be sure, but it’s not like I haven’t done it before. And included in this is cleaning out the crawlspace above the laundry room; there’s a lot of stuff up there that can probably be donated—boxes and boxes and boxes of books that I most likely will never look at again because they are in boxes in the crawlspace. The ultimate goal for me would be to not only clean out the crawlspace but clean out the storage unit—there’s room in there now, but there could be a lot more. (There’s also a chance that things in there got ruined during Ida as well—I know at some point since I rented the unit some water got in there somehow, because a couple of boxes had gotten wet and were thus ruined and needed to be thrown out.) I was also thinking about the whole “keeping my papers to have them archived somewhere”—which I really need to either do, or throw them in the garbage because they take up so much space—because what really is going to be interesting is the electronic files; those may not show the notes I’ve made on manuscripts themselves for edits and so forth, but you can trace the progression of the writing and rewriting through each different version of the story/book/file. (And of course, I am rolling my eyes at myself for thinking any future scholar of queer mysteries from this time period would be interested in me and my work. Ten years after I am dead, cremated and my ashes scattered in the various places I want them scattered, I won’t be remembered, and I am perfectly fine with that.) I mean, it’s interesting to me to look through because it triggers memories long dormant in a corner of my brain, but I honestly cannot imagine being the subject of anyone’s dissertation or thesis; unless someone wants to look at my stuff as a reference to gay white male life in New Orleans before and after Hurricane Katrina.

Ah, well.

I also realized I’ve been writing this for quite some time and haven’t mentioned Bury Me in Shadows yet, and I was going to try to talk about this book a bit every day as a bit of a tease to encourage people to buy it. It really is a wonder I have a career, isn’t it?

So, if you’ve stuck with this entry so far, let me promise you this: tomorrow I will talk about Bury Me in Shadows. You’ve been warned.

Until tomorrow, Constant Reader.

Take Me Home

Tuesday morning and it’s dark out there this morning. I really hated the world this morning when the alarm went off; I’ve gotten rather used to sleeping until past eight these last five mornings. But…at least this week it’s just today and tomorrow; next week it’s only Monday and Tuesday, and I believe it’s only two days a week until after the Labor Day holiday, which will be quite lovely.

And sixty inches ever closer, day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute. I’m really leaning in on turning sixty; in many ways it’s kind of cool to be getting to this landmark birthday. Mostly, it means I’m a survivor, I suppose; somehow I muddled through everything and made it this far–no small feat for a gay man of my generation; we lost quite a few of us back in the day, after all. In some ways, I think, part of my mentality about getting to this age has a lot to do with all the losses; I should celebrate this milestone birthday for all those like me who will never get to, who never made it to thirty or forty or even fifty. Of course, heavy thoughts for this morning, but I’ve been having a lot of heavy thoughts lately.

I didn’t get everything done yesterday that I wanted to get done; partly because I was doing a ZOOM event last night for the Anne Arundel County Library; a Sisters in Crime Chessie Chapter panel on diversity in crime fiction, with Paula Mays, Kristopher Zgorski, Sherry Harris, Cheryl Head, and moderated by Cathy Wiley. It was very fun and interesting–these types of panels always are–but, as always, I was drained and exhausted when we were finished; ZOOM or in person, it doesn’t seem to matter a whole lot as far as that goes…the anxiety over the event built up pretty much all day. I also babbled a lot; I tend to unspool once I start talking, partly because my mouth never can keep up with my head, but I don’t think I was horrible this time–at least, not completely. I did get my errands finished, though, and made a lot more progress on organization–always welcome–and I got those boxes out from under my desk, which was really quite lovely. So….progress was made, if not enough.

Yesterday also brought a bit of pleasant news that caught me completely off-guard; a reviewer tweeted a recommendation that people buy and read Bury Me in Shadows!

This is the tweet:

In what should be a surprise to no one, @scottynola‘s BURY ME IN SHADOWS is *fantastic.* Fans of Southern gothic, pre-order you some twisty, atmospheric goodness! AND included a buy link! How fucking fantastic was that? Pretty fucking fantastic.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried about how this book will be received, or the one after, #shedeservedit. Both are me taking on social problems through the lens of a crime story and a young gay protagonist; and it is very easy for someone like me–white male–to make a huge mistake and be unintentionally offensive. These concerns go much further than my usual ones, which are inevitably related to my ongoing Imposter Syndrome issues–the last thing I ever want to do is offend people are already marginalized in society (I never care if racist homophobic misogynists are offended by my work; I hope it not only offends them but forces them to take a long hard look at themselves–but they generally aren’t intelligent enough to be self-aware enough to self-reflect in the first place; as Kathy Griffin once said, they are aggressively stupid). I also am always worried (this is part of the Imposter Syndrome, in case you needed to be made aware of the differences) that I am not a good enough writer to tackle difficult subjects, and that I will end up coming across as preachy and ABC After-school Special-like…which is tedious and boring and horrible to read, frankly. (Even as a wet-behind-the-ears callow child I despised being preached to in such a heavy-handed manner.)

Sigh. It really never ends–the self-doubt–at least for me, anyway.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I will chat with you again tomorrow morning.