Just watch me

I've been struggling.

With a lot of things, really, but relevant here is my struggle with What to Write and When to Write and How to Write in a weblog which started out as a means to an end -- namely, facilitation of pre-wedding coping -- which has now come and gone in a flurry of paper lanterns and vellum.

For instance, in the past week I've been tempted to write about topics ranging from a disturbing dream about a talking cat, to my trip to the National Portrait Gallery, to the circuitous routes taken by discount busdrivers, to the effect of the weather on my personal hygiene.

The overarching connection between all of these potential posts is that they teeter dangerously atop the precarious perch of Boring and/or Unnecessary and/or Inappropriate.

The last thing I need is for my weblog to become the Master of Me, rather than vice versa. There are more than enough forces in the world jockeying for that position.

So I decided, propped stiffly upright in my discount Chinatown bus seat last night, that I am going to choose a Healthier Path and not worry about it. I'll post when I post.

This will have the doubly delicious effect of protecting an unsuspecting public from undeserved harm at the hands of my Need to Share, while also freeing up my mental and emotional energy for more immediate concerns such as staring at the wall, catching up on America's Got Talent and, perhaps, finishing that novel.

Fly, little birds.

Offer to blow retracted

OK, nevermind -- thanks to my friend Pregnant Lady for pointing me in the direction of this, which has already made me feel miles better, and gives me the eerie but distinct feeling of having dodged a bullet.

This makes me feel better too. Poor awkward-looking, odd-man-out Lance. But good for him. And with that cute stick-o-butter Reichen, no less?

Who do I have to blow?

So I thought I'd gotten past the emotional hurt of being jilted by the New York Times Weddings & Celebrations section....that is, until I just checked out this past weekend's W&C list and found three homo couplings, none of whom had anywhere near as interesting of a summary statement as we did. Closer analysis reveals that M. and I were lacking in three critical areas:


1. We are not members of the elite New York City intellectual/academic/artistic royalty. In other words, Daddy didn't used to run B.A.M.

2. We aren't former writers for the New York Times. In their 70's. Who've been together for 40+ years. And had to travel all the way to Canada just to get a little legal validation of their relationship. OK, this one kind of makes me want to cry, but...I mean, whatever.

3. We're not 20-something lesbian schoolteachers with no societal clout whatsoever who just happened to have been smart enough to get married in a month when nobody else in their right mind would consider getting married.

Between this and my Modern Love submission last year, this is twice that I've been burned by the NYT. Shame on me. Shame. On. Me.

This is the kind of cockadoodle they choose to print instead -- once again, by a published author.

I've turned into a very bitter kind of woman.

I need to go finish that novel in time for the birth announcement.

Signs

Lately I've had trouble getting to yoga -- purely a logistical and emotional concern, as my yoga studio is directly across the street from our apartment. I could really just sit on my bed and look through the giant plate glass window and take the class for free, it's that close. But I don't go.

I'm also a believer in signs. So when I woke up and it was 9:11 (can't explain now, but about 65% of the time when I look at the clock this is the time that's showing, and it's not related to September 11th as much as it's related to my own psychological idiosyncracies, but I am more or less of a believer in synchronicity, so I've taken to soul-searching and inventory-ing whenever it happens) and then M. suggested off-handedly that I go to yoga, and then I was on the phone with my friend Pregnant Lady who concurred that going to yoga was a good idea, I decided Well I'd better just go with it, maybe the Universe is telling me I'm getting slovenly or maybe some Bright Idea will come to me in the midst of a half-moon pose, even though all I really wanted was an iced coffee and a donut.

So I pulled myself together and somehow managed to cross the street and walk up the flight of stairs to yoga and stand in line to sign in, and that's when I noticed that people were literally signing their names up the margin of the sign-in sheet, and then I looked into the studio and saw rows and rows and rows of yoga mats lined up shoulder to shoulder and head to tail so that there wasn't any visible floor space remaining, and then I looked at the sixty hyped-up 23-year-olds sitting and standing and chatting and looking thoroughly annoying on their yoga mats, and that's when it hit me:

Yes, I was meant to come to this yoga class to learn a very important lesson, but nothing along the lines of self-actualization or inner peace or emotional cleansing -- what the Universe was telling me, through this very yoga class, was that it is officially time to get the hell out of Dodge.

And I didn't even need to break a sweat.

And I still got my iced coffee.

Somewhere a Place for Us

Speaking of cats, our friends are going to come home to find seven feet worth of claw marks on the walls leading out their front door, from where M. had to drag me out of the apartment to make the return trip to Manhattan. It's been that nice. Like, two-days-feels-like-five-days, been-on-a-caribbean-cruise, pass-the-Uncle-Louie-G's-holi-cannoli-ice nice.

The good news is that I've officially reassessed and retracted my red alert bulletin to get the Hell Out of Dodge, having realized that all that stands between me and a saner life in New York City is a spacious two bedroom apartment on a quiet tree-lined street with a private back yard in Brooklyn.

The bad news is that I have retained enough conscience to know that It Would Be Wrong to follow through with my plan to frame our friends for a semi-lethal misdemeanor and have them extradited to Istanbul so that we can squat on their apartment long enough to legally call it our own. Bad for my karma, bad for the cats, bad for our friendship.


We did see one studio in Carroll Gardens this afternoon, masquerading as a one bedroom, which was actually pretty sweet albeit Too Tiny For Two, plus there was the crazy unabomber child molester co-tenant who gets a break on his rent for showing vacant apartments and handling minor tasks like sweeping the hallways and burying his neighbors under his sink, not to mention a gigantic backyard laying a mere three tempting feet below the living room window which was completely overgrown and designated No Entry due to some sort of vague "insurance reasons".

We also saw a gigantic two bedroom in Prospect Heights, which we loved for its size and sunlight and quirky amalgam of oddly-shaped and -sized rooms, but hated for its dingy elementary school gymnasium linoleum tile flooring throughout the entire apartment.

So we'll wait until something better comes along, and in the meantime we'll recall our wedding vows and remember to be happy with what we've got (and that's a lot), and the insanity of 9th Avenue will be tempered by the secure knowledge that A Better Place Exists and, for now, the cats will keep their home.

Better than Cats

Which is worse:

The fact that one of our friends' semi-identical uber-gay cats, Tony and Bruce, shamelessly looked me up and down while I was toweling off after my shower tonight....or, the fact that I kind of appreciated the attention?

Or the fact that less than 24 hours after arriving here, I've already evidently become One of Those People who can't get through six sentences without mentioning the cats?

It's been decided that we're moving to Fort Greene. As it stands now, to an empty refrigerator box on a sidewalk in Fort Greene.

At least it's an Amana(TM).

Take me home, country roads

M. and I are spending this weekend house- and cat-sitting at our friends' place in Brooklyn, with the purpose of a) getting out of Manhattan for a couple days and b) looking at apartments so that we can get out of Manhattan for more than a couple days. So far, no bites, but as we were sitting outside eating dinner at Porchetta last night (great food, dismal service) amidst the relative peace and quiet of Smith Street, we both commented on How Different we already felt. It's a sad day when taking the train to Brooklyn has the same physical and mental impact as taking a wagon to rural Iowa, but I'll take what I can get.

More importantly, here are a few videos taken by our friend RJ on his digicam at the barbecue and the wedding, which may provide a poor but acceptable substitute for the Real Thing. Enjoyez-vous.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_sW9M6m8kM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivcF-Fygg9E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Js0QwExv9ZA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlMXoCrd6vg


Also, this it Too Little Too Late, but if anyone can get their hands on the US edition of the London Times from July 1st, a Very Good Friend wrote an insightful article on the state of gay marriage in America, with a particular focus on our wedding - - I, of course, had planned on giving a heads up on here prior to its publication, but was still living on Neptune at the time and thus neglected to do so. I don't think it's available online (VGF, please correct me if I'm wrong) but maybe I'll ask M. to scan it at work.

Tonight, we're testing out the local gay scene at a quaint country bar called Excelsior. Which sounds like a gaudy hotel or a specialty prophylactic, and is therefore already near and dear to my heart.

Call off the wedding

I was going to write a starry-eyed and hope-filled post about the New York Supreme Court's anticipated ruling on gay marriage today, and how maybe they'd give it the green light, and how then we'd get to reenact our whole wedding complete with cannolis and chartreuse lanterns and paper bag hats, but then.....

....they beat me to the punch. Mother fuckers.

I think this officially calls for secession.

My name is not Susan

I think I may have digested the better portion of my creative juices along with that slice of cannoli cake.

I'm at a loss.

Meanwhile, all the other gay bloggers are out doing fun things like stripping or watching each other strip, while I'm holed up in my Easy Bake Apartment triple-checking our wedding registry for stray gifts and trying to manipulate Flickr into accepting 600 wedding photos at once.

It's like I've forgotten how to do anything that doesn't somehow relate to You-Know-What.

The good news is that in my therapy session earlier tonight, I was in the midst of making apologies for not allowing myself to simply enjoy the wedding and talk about how fun it was and how I love being married -- and instead rehashing the wedding-funeral analogy and trying to tap into the underlying sadness which seems to color any Significant Life Event and bemoaning the fact that I live so far away from my new favoritre person My Mother and generally Overthinking Things -- when my therapist interjected and told me, "But that's not who you are."

Which made me feel good, because it means that on the one hand, I'm kind of fucked up, but on the other hand, I'm a validated kind of fucked up.

Speaking of which, since Flickr is stonewalling my efforts at creating a comprehensive online multimedia virtual wedding tour, and since I miss my Mummy, here are a select few photos of my mother dancing with a bag on her head, me dancing like I should have a bag on my head, and both of us keepin' on keepin' on.

Apple? Fall? Far? Tree?