It's settled

Three years of tap and modern jazz were an adequate clue.

Five years of homosexual relations with the same man probably didn't leave much room for error.

But I think that standing in front of my closet for a full forty-five seconds, trying to decide which pair of flip-flops went best with my khaki shorts and white T-shirt before I walked down three flights of stairs to meet M. in our foyer and hand off my part of the rent check, probably eviscerated any lingering doubts as to whether or not I am, in a word, gay.

M. and I are off to LA in the morning for a five-day tour. If I don't make it into In Touch Weekly, I'm considering the whole trip a bust.

My Body, Myself; or, The Dangers Inherent in Maintaining a Publicly Accessible Web Log

Tonight I had my annual physical exam.

In summary:

1. Deaf ear crazy head thing: allergies. Plus maybe a little ear wax. Or Lyme's disease. OK, he threw me a bone with that last one, but I'll know after my bloodwork gets back on Friday. He told me to go to an ENT doctor, but I'm scared of their scary long metal ear wax tools.

2. No prostate exam. I even laid off the coffee this morning to make sure I didn't have any emergencies which might result in providing him with an unsanitary finger-stick experience, and in the process developed a severely severe caffeine-withdrawal headache. This leaves me with lingering doubts as to whether my frequent urination might be due to an enlarged prostate, as my friend RJ suggested in passing two months ago. It also reminds me that I am an 80 year old man who thinks about enlarged prostates too much, in addition to being an 8o year old pervert who can devote an entire paragraph to complaining about a missed prostate exam.

2.5. Speaking of which, it has been suggested that I up my daily Fiber Con intake to 4 pills. So, strike that and make it an 85 year old man.

3. As usual, I freaked out when he asked me if I was engaging in any risky sexual behaviors, and proceeded to spend my usual five minutes defending and explaining and rationalizing the absence of safety mechanisms in my monogamous 5-year relationship. As usual, his eyes glazed over as he watched the clock and once again kicked himself for asking me this question.

4. I weigh almost what I did in highschool. It can't possibly last. I bought my thyroid a dozen roses on the way home.

5. I asked M. if our (shared) doctor gives him the completely thoroughly complete genital exam he gives me, and M. says no, he doesn't think so. My penis waffles between demanding an explanation and looking at its pleasing reflection in the mirror.

Yes, yes, very funny, class..."penis waffles"...now heads on the table and quiet down.

In a nutshell: someone with my personality and predilection for developing whatever illness I happen to have heard about most recently has no business working in a hospital, or with old people, or sick people, or people in general, or in a pharmacy, or anywhere near Metamucil. Or deer ticks. Or a television set.

Did I mention the part about the highschool weight thing? Can anyone say "skinniest girl in the mental institution"?

Men on a mission

As a gay man with expensive taste who has finally been granted some of the golden keys of heteronormativity, I'm ashamed that it has taken me this long to be able to say it, but as of yesterday at 4pm, M. and I are finally registered.

At one place, anyways.

And even then, only partially, because what started out as an afternoon of giddy gift-choosing excitement with two fresh-faced young grooms-to-be quickly turned into a spectacle of chaos and gluttony by two weary- and bleary-eyed zombies plagued by broken scanner-guns and missing SKUs and vacant salesmen.

Registering for wedding gifts is a little bit like those shows where they would give the ten-year old kid 5 minutes to fill his shopping cart in the toy store, and he would always spend the first four minutes searching for the big-ticket items like the dirt bikes and the computers, but once things got down to the wire, he would just start frantically tossing anything he could find into the cart, like sixty hula hoops or a five-foot stuffed pink dog.

After we'd tagged and bagged the Kitchen-Aid mixer and the Le Creuset casserole, it became less about what we really needed and more about what we thought we should need, or even could need, or what might possibly fill the bottomless and empty soul of our kitchen. Thankfully, after standing in front of the knife collection with Vacant Salesman Number Three for ten minutes, unable to decide on just how many different lengths of paring and carving and cleaving knives we actually might need, it dawned on us that we don't even know how to pare or carve or cleave, so we decided to just settle on the basics.

Like a santoku knife. And an asparagus collander. And a silicone spoonula.

And finally...mixed emotions.

Valerie Cherish, RIP: They didn't wanna see that. But I did. And I miss you already.

Ty-Ty and Co., Welcome Back. And keep ya eyes on this badunk-adunk-dunk.

A Very Important Lesson I Learned This Evening in Yoga

I suffer from chronic back-shoulder-and-neck cramps, originating in large part from my Internal Angst and Tension, and responsible in large part for my decision to practice yoga. Because I never know when my back, shoulder or neck muscles will Act Up, I find myself constantly checking them out by flexing and stretching and compressing and pinching them, just to make sure that they are still okay. This evening, I was in the midst of a perfectly enjoyable yoga session, happy to be back after a week-and-a-half-long hiatus, preparing for my second Sphinx pose, when the voice in my head suggested that I give my neck a good tweak…you know, just to make sure. So I listened. And tweaked. And was immediately rewarded with a sharp and glaring pain down the right side of my neck which disturbed my remaining yoga practice and continues to haunt me right up to this very moment, as I sit here typing in my shorts amidst a flurry of flaking dead skin resulting from my decision to bite the bullet and go SPF-less during my Last Beach Trip of the Summer.

The moral of the story is that maybe, sometimes, our biggest problems are the ones that we create ourselves. There is enough heartache and pain and misery in the world without the additional heartache and misery and pain we self-inflict. Maybe we owe it to ourselves, and our necks, to just concentrate on living and not worry so much on What Atrocities Might Befall Us, or The Terrible Thing That We Are Certain is Just Around the Corner. Because maybe if we expect bad things to happen to us, they’ll be so scared to disappoint us that they’ll go ahead and happen. Worse still, maybe we’ll make them happen, just to get it over with and face the inevitable.

So the next time we are happily minding our own business and aligning our chakras and otherwise going about our lives, and we hear that little voice that tells us we’d better screw things up before they get screwed up without us, let us all try a new tactic, which I like to call “Fuck Off, Little Voice.”

Eat, EAT

I'm pleased to announce that, in addition to a (hypothetically) clean place to rest their heads, our wedding guests will also now have delicious food to eat.

M., my mother and I met with one caterer on Sunday – having decided to scrap the second one, since they were a)overpriced, b)not our favorite people to deal with and c)decommended by our inn following a bar mitzvah with not enough food and a broken chocolate fountain – and, well, we loved her. And her food. Or at least the description of her food, as we only tasted her cupcakes and one Grilled Chicken, Toasted Almond and Tarragon Salad in Cucumber Cup, but let’s just say it’s the most deliciously described wedding food ever. Every good bride knows when to keep her cards to her chest, so we’ll leave the menu description at that. Now all we need is a photographer. And a DJ. And a florist. And a flautist. And rings. And a cake. Oops, sorry guyz, Bride Moment LOL!!!

The other highlight of the weekend was my mother, who is officially my new hero, the wind beneath my wings, my what-have-you. Seriously, she has become not only a Grade-A Mother of the Bride, but a champion of gay rights and the dissemination of gay-oriented literature as well.

As in, she has a growing library of newspaper clippings and articles pertaining to gays, gay marriage, gay this, gay that. Which she leaves out on the counter for my father to (not) read.

As in, she wrote to the author of one editorial on gay marriage, thanking him for writing such a level-headed and sensitive piece, and he wrote back to her. With advice on how to deal with my father.

As in, she is holding onto a Boston Globe Magazine cover story on gay genetics, just in case one of my siblings needs help explaining Us to the grandkids.

As in, she is now telling everyone about her Gay Engaged Son, and is reaping the rewards by having fifty percent of her friends and in-laws come out of the closet with their own gay children. Come to find out, I now have two gay cousins on my father’s side – the most recently discovered of whom is living in Raleigh, disowned by my Cuckoo-for-Cocoa-Puffs aunt. It won’t be long before my mother is twirling her baton at the front of the Country Club Moms With Gay Sons (CoCluMoWiGS) contingent at the Pride parade.

And she's making menu suggestions, and asking where we'll find a justice of the peace, and figuring out whether my father could drive his boat there and sleep on it as an incentive to attend.

The lowlight is that my father is still remaining silent about the whole thing. Although, my mom told me that when they went to church on Saturday afternoon, she saw a guy who was clearly going to stand up at the end of Mass and talk about his anti-gay marriage petition, and she rolled her eyes and shared this premonition with my dad, who asked (rhetorically) what business it was of this guy’s, and said that maybe he’d stand up and yell back at him. Of course, being good Boston Irish Catholics, they skipped out right after Communion, but still…the idea that my dad was even considering taking a stand for me is comforting and relieving and hope-inducing. Maybe this will be the turning point for him – it’s one thing to criticize or disagree with your own son, but when a stranger starts doing it, watch out for Papa Groomzilla. And no, we did not go fishing. Thank You, Hurricane Ophelia.

Here are some more pictures of Our Inn. Lactose-Intolerant, Poo-Shy or Otherwise Gastrointestinally-Compromised Acquaintances may be dismayed to find themselves staying in The Lodge, which has summer-camp charm aplenty but shared bathrooms afew, but they can rest assured that their equally colonically-challenged Hosts will be feeling their pain…from the safe and secure vantage point of our luxury private apartment on the other side of the hedges.


Cute!


Darling!


Precious!


Sweet!


But if you know me, you're probably not sleeping here!


Or here!


'Cause you're booked at The Lodge!


Obligatory self photo.

Oh and also

This may be old news - in fact, I'm sure it is, but let's pretend otherwise - but did you know that being gay is still a billable medical diagnosis?

I'm sitting here filling out my Medicare billing application, and there it is - "302.0: Ego-dystonic homosexuality" - right above pedo- and zoophilia, but below the personality disorders. It is further followed by diagnoses like anorexia, encopresis (pants pooping), "misery and unhappiness disorder," Alzheimer's and deaf mutism, all of which are pretty tame, leading me to believe that the further down the list you fall, the less fucked up you are.

Except that would make being gay worse than fucking dogs or children - pipe down, editorializers - or, for that matter, flashing your business to strangers, stuttering, or being mildly mentally retarded. OK, so those last two are arguably less punishable than being queer, but still...

I guess my point is that I should be entitled to better mental health insurance, or at least more time off, or a free iPod Nano.

Rescue Me

I was on the 4 train tonight, headed from work to therapy, when a man stumbled onto the train. He was completely disheveled, hair all over the place, speaking to himself, all herky-jerky....and wearing a full suit, with button-down collar and tie. (In the exact same tone, I might add, as my own, hypothetical wedding suit.) His shirt was untucked, cuffs ripped and hanging haphazardly outside his jacket sleeves, stains strewn about here and there, and he was wearing white athletic socks - - but still, other than the clear external signs of insanity and dispossession, he could just as easily have been coming home from a hard day at the office as anywhere else. Or, at the very least, from a huge bender after a hard day at the office.

And I thought to myself, Is this what happens to us in this city? One day we're headed to work, or on our lunch break, or training it home, and *BAM* we snap, lose it, can't take the crowds and the noise and the mayhem and the stink and the heat anymore, and spend the rest of our lives lost and stumbling around the transit system in our jelly-crusted, beer-stained work clothes?

No sooner had he lurched himself off the train at 59th Street, when a three piece tribal drum orchestra parked themselves directly next to my seat and proceeded to hammer their music past the thick five o'clock shadow of my brain and into the very core of my own tenuous sanity, and it was all I could do not to follow my new friend into the depths of the New York City underground playground for the urbanly challenged.

To boat or not to boat

So M. and I are taking the train up to Massachusetts on Friday night for our meet-the-caterers weekend. We're not going out to Provincetown until Sunday, which leaves us with a full Saturday to lounge around the pool, or poke around the cute antique shops in my parents' town, or stare at the ceiling.

Except when I was on the phone with my mother last night, we had no sooner established the fact that we had no plans to speak of on Saturday, when she was already suggesting that M. and I could go out on the boat with my father - who, by the way, she has taken to referring simply, and somewhat acidly, as "him". This plan, to be sure, would fulfill certain prophecies (see third paragraph from the bottom here), but it also leaves me feeling, as usual, somewhat morally quandaried.

As in, my father still can't talk about the wedding, or have it talked about in his presence, which is hypothetically somewhat understandable if not excusable, but which makes me feel like I shouldn't go on pretending like life is otherwise normal and participating in normal (or really not normal, but rather new and strange and very recent) father-son-boyfriend activities.

"What's that, Dad?"
"..."
"You believe I'm going to Hell? Really?"
"..."
"And you, too, if you attend my wedding?"
"..."
"Hmm."
"..."
"But you're still up for a little Big Bass Fishing?"
"..."
"Well....okay, sounds good, but only if you let me steer!"
"..."
"Oh, Dad!!"

This is somewhat of a foregone issue, as I already know that I will absolutely pretend like life is otherwise normal, Big Bass Fishing or not.

But still, it makes me feel funny. In a bad way.

The good news is that my ongoing intercranial concerns - which have dissipated somewhat, in addition to moving from my left ear to my right - appear to have granted me Supersonic Hearing Powers. I was laying in bed this morning and realized, when I put my head on the pillow, that it wasn't just some sort of lawnmower-like sound in my own head that I was hearing, it was the sound of Ninth Avenue four floors below me.

"Yeah, Groomzilla," you say, "That's awesome, but you live right on Ninth Avenue, you hear that sound all day and night."

To which I say, "Yes, normally this is true, but this morning, when I didn't have my head on the pillow, I couldn't hear any street noise at all. It was only when I placed my new Preternaturally Powerful Ear on the pillow that I could literally hear the crunching of tires on the street."

To which you say, "I think you need to get your thyroid rechecked."

And I reply, "Perhaps so, but at least I am crazy, depressed and skinny."

(N.B.: My tests came back normal today, which means it is only a matter of time before I am fat and happy again.)

Deaf, Dumb, Blind; or, Serves Him Right

And then? I spotted a neighbor who might finally be worth spying on in the building across the street? And so I picked up the binoculars that have been sitting on our window sill since who-knows-when? And held them up to my face? And immediately got an enormous amount of black city soot in my left eye? Which is still slowly burning my retina?

On Going Deaf, or How He Kept the Weight Off; *PLUS*, two people who make hearing a joy

I woke up this morning with a decidedly unpleasant feeling of disequilibrium in my head, a combination of pressure and a sort of heavy, whooshing wind sound. A little bit like the morning after dancing directly next to the speakers at one of those discotheques the youngsters favor, but without the buzzing or self-chastisement.

So I spent the whole day feeling like my head was in a metal box, and I went to Employee Health and they said it wasn't an ear infection, just probably some allergy-related fluid. But, of course, because I spent yesterday swimming underwater at Jones Beach, and because I am a hypochondriac, I am convinced it's a cluster of sea lice eggs, or a burst ear drum from getting hit in the head too hard by a wave, or some sort of salt-water-borne flesh-eating virus.

And it's only getting worse, which I just noticed when I was on the phone with Miriam and could barely hear her, and then when I put my ear on my pillow (I like to recline while on the phone) it sounded like there was a lawn mower under my bed, but...it's all in my head. Is this what crazy people feel like? Am I going to wake up deaf in the morning?

The P.A. at Employee Health also told me my thyroid felt enlarged, and sent me for some bloodwork. I'm somewhat ambivalent about this, as I seem to have slimmed down quite nicely and unexpectedly/undeservedly lately, and I would hate for thyroid regulation to take this away from me. Of course, a thyroid problem could also explain why I've been more depressed lately, and treating a potential irregularity could save me from developing a goiter or something worse just in time for my wedding.

All in all, a toss-up. Right now, if I had to choose between getting rid of this screaming head trauma and having to find a suit loose enough to cover my goiter but tight enough to conform to my deliciously thyroid-thin figure, I'd have to go with Door #1.

In other news, I feel compelled to share two musicians who have been like my new best friends over the past week, helping to ease Kelly Clarkson's burden as primary caregiver as well as providing me with a respite from the screaming voices inside and outside my head.

The first is Antony, of Antony and the Johnsons. Creepily eerie, yet beautifully soothing.

The second is Annie. Perfect afternoon-commute sidewalk-supermodel material.

It ended with a BM

Lest this blog become purely rainbows and sunshine, I feel compelled to share that my love affair with Hot Yoga Teacher is officially kaput, as he took a great big poop in the single bathroom in my yoga studio, right before I went in to pee before class this morning. And yeah yeah, as M. tells me, everyone poops, but...I dunno, I'm just not feeling it anymore. I didn't even swoon when he came over to adjust my chataranga.

The good news is, I guess I can go back to planning my wedding now.

I Feel Love

Let me tell you - let me tell you - it is a grand feeling to be walking home in the beautifully sunshiney and temperate golden-hour glow of a Friday afternoon in September, having cut out of work an hour early, wearing an exceedingly bright pink shirt and drinking an inexcusably bright green Frappucino, and smiling uncontrollably as you literally feel the raincloud depression that's been hovering over your head for the past three weeks lift away, right as Donna Summer's "I Feel Love" comes on the iPod. Seriously. I can't even put a cynical or sarcastic button on it, it felt that good.

Philadelphia

Here are some photos from our weekend trip to Philadelphia, which - despite a decidedly rural gay scene - we really really liked. Maybe enough to move there someday soon. But probably not enough to move there whilst still planning our impending nuptials.

Which, by the way, will hopefully be advanced one step further the weekend after next, when we will meet with one overpriced caterer and one that we have a good feeling about. The other two are evidently too busy to meet with two young and frivolous gays with (somewhat) disposable (parental) income.

And, rest assured, we're bringing my mother. I think she's more than a little excited about this.

Anyways, some photos:


Philadelphia: where the streets have trees....


....and you, too, can own a row house....


....or a real house ten minutes outside of the city....


....which might be considered preferable, given the city dwellers' penchant for Glass Brick. Seriously, everywhere.


The view from the art museum, where Rocky ran up the stairs and did the jumping thing. And then, three decades later, so did everyone else and their heeeesterical friends.


A kinky enema fetish sculpture with running water. Outside of a TGIF.


The fine art of the self-portrait I: Two loving brothers in the city of brotherly love.


The fine art of the self-portrait II: Two loving brothers in front of the city of brotherly love.



And finally, the fine art of the self-portrait III - or, What M. and I are Willing to Endure to Get the Perfect Self-Portrait - or, Please Steal Our Digital Camera:

Good Lord

Between this and the subway story, I know I'm getting off-track, but....you have to read this transcript from Scott McLellan's White House press briefing today (thanks to C&L).

When I Think About You

Dear Crazy Lady on the 4 Train,

You probably don't remember me, but I'm the guy in the light blue shirt sitting across from you on the train after work this afternoon. I couldn't help but notice - in fact, none of us could - your reading selection, Sex for One: The Art of Self Love, which you held so prominently displayed in front of your face from the time you boarded the train at Burnside Avenue til the time you got off, so to speak, at 86th Street.

I hope you didn't mind everyone staring at you; with the exception of our sixteen year old gentleman friend sitting next to you, most of us tried to be subtle about it. If you did happen to catch us, you probably assumed we were alarmed by the way your entire upper body twitched, as though on cue, every five seconds. That, or we were fascinated by your predilection for fingernail- and cuticle-biting, wondering what sort of delicious discovery we all had yet to make.

In fact, what most of us were doing - or at least myself, the sixteen year old, and the homeless man next to me, with whom I developed an unexpected, silent reparte - was, against our better judgment, imagining just what you must look like practicing your solitary art. I found myself awash in choices - showerhead vs. wilting produce vs. hairbrush; dirty, yellow-carpeted living room floor vs. card table in the kitchen under the glare of a single, bare lightbulb vs. utility pole on the 86th Street subway platform; surrounded by three cats vs. four vs. five; etc. etc. - yet unable to choose.

Somewhere between 149th St. and 125th, it struck me that perhaps you were Sent By a Higher Power. The truth of the matter is, I've been struggling to cut down on the countless, lost hours I spend honing my own art, with limited success. But now, having met mouse-haired, twitching, cuticle-free You, I find myself unable to consider the words masturbation, self, love, art or subway without feeling an accompanying sense of something somewhere between nausea and alarm.

So, thank you, Crazy Lady. Thank you for giving me and my co-commuters a fleeting sense of comradery and brotherhood before we went on with our respective Tuesday night schedules. Thank you for giving us something to smile and feel twelve years old about. But most of all, thank you for giving me back three hours of every day of the rest of my life, time that will hereforth be more productively spent cleaning my toilet, or completing my novellette, or staring panickedly at the ceiling as I try to Fight the Demons by conjuring up you and the hairbrush subway platform scenario again.

Sincerely,
Groomzilla

Can't Stop the Music

Can't. Stop. Listening. To. Kelly. Clarkson. Album. SO. IRRATIONALLY. GOOD.

But seriously, can't stop. And I was listening to it last night when I walked to pick up my burrito, and just as I was in mid lip-sync, complete with pseudo Kelly Clarkson rock star scowl/brow-furrow, I looked up and the guy walking past me was doing the SAME thing, with the same face. I can't decide if both of us doing it made it more or less embarassing.