Wanted to make sure anyone who still follows me here sees this call for volunteers for a new COVID-19 writing project:
A Call for Volunteers

I continue to now blog over here: https://toastpoint.wordpress.com/

#moc19

I'll be blogging over at Wordpress now.  toastpoint.wordpress.com

Ideally, eventually, I'll set it up so those posts appear here automatically, and/or this content appears over there.  But not today.

Let's see.

Mom has been gone for a month now.  I've been scanning old pictures.  Came across this cute little article, which for some reason was lamnated as a bookmark.  First of all, the photo is stunning.  Second, why a bookmark?  Anyway, I'm going to use it as a bookmark, because there is nothing Mom loved more than books, and she passed that love along to me as early as possible.  I still remember with great humor her pushing Travis McGee books on me when I was eight.  No censoring books for appropriate age level for her.

There are some other articles I've scanned, including ones with titles like "David Peterson and Bride Locate to Maryland".  Oh, interesting, does Bride have a name?

---

Job search continues apace.  I got some contact from a recruiter about a job at a fancy famous law firm and rewrote my resume according to his specs.  "I don't love your resume", he groused.  I rolled my eyes and said, 'the only thing I've been able to determine about proper resume format is that no matter what format your resume is in, the next person who reads it will hate it and want you to rewrite it'.  'Oh, but I've been in this business for X years, I know what my clients want to see'.  Me, unsaid, 'yeah, that's what the last recruiter said, the one who wanted me to rewrite into the format you're looking at now.'

Then I got a request for a phone interview (as yet unscheduled) for a different fancy law firm.  Both of these fancy law firms were places I interviewed at the summer of 1994 when I was trying to move to here from Philadelphia.  I ended up at a not-quite-as-fancy law firm, and that job was hideous.  I did swear once upon a time to never work at a law firm again, but I'll bet I could handle the weird social structure now and they do pay well and have good benefits (and the offices are fancy, even though the rank and file aren't in the fancy part of the office).  Most of my business line experience as a BA is in legal services, so at least I wouldn't be starting from zero.  We shall see.

Other excitement for the week.  Meeting an old work friend for lunch today before I go to the dentist and get a filling replaced, whee.  Tomorrow night being taken to the Met to see "Agrippina", that will be fun.  Then the schedule empties out for quite a while.

---

I did get some good financial news.  Because of the contract-to-hire weirdness of last year, I overpaid in taxes, and that overpayment is coming back to me just when I need it.  It doubles the financial cushion I had, which means I have more leeway than I thought I did, and I may not lose my savings over this.  Plus I can be a little less penny-pinching (not that I've been particularly good at that).  I've signed up for the next semester of skating classes (yay!) and even better, it looks like they have an adult class for exactly the level I'm in.  (I was worried that I'd be placed with beginner-beginners which is kind of a waste of time for me now.)  So that's cool.

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Lots of media consumption.  We finally watched the last season of "Game of Thrones".  I knew there was a lot of hair-tearing about how it ended up, but I thought it mostly made sense.  I had gotten completely bogged down in book 4 (twice) so I don't know how it compares to the books.  Great effects, good acting, lots and lots of scruffy bearded men.  I do wish they'd addressed some of the weirdnesses, like 'why are seasons unpredictable in this world', but maybe it's more fun that they didn't.  Also, are there no more White Walkers left at all now?

We finished the latest Grace & Frankie, are working our way through Madame Secretary, have The Good Place and Will & Grace and Handmaid's Tale cued up, not to mention a dozen Netflixxy shows behind it.

Saturday night, we watched "Motherless Brooklyn", which is excellent. My friend Susan is an extra in it and gets some quite obvious screen time.  She'd told me some really nice stories about shooting the film, which was a really nice experience.  Then last night we watched "Hustlers", which wasn't what I expected and wasn't particularly good.  I loved Constance Wu in "Crazy Rich Asians" and I have nothing against JLo and holy crap, is that Mercedes Ruehl?  Where has she been?  And Julia Stiles, who is really quite wonderful and has a deep lesbionic voice.  Oh, and that's Lizzo, complete with flute.  But not a great movie.

Also, I finished Fall, or Dodge in Hell.  Much as I love Stephenson, and loved "REAMDE", I did not like this at all.  Vance and i had an interesting little text discussion about this - I found the tech part really interesting, but the 'creating a mythological world' part dull dull dull, where he felt the opposite, and loved it.  Ah well.

Now still working on my other print books, but started a bio of Mary Wickes.  According to C, it does indeed touch up on her brief appearance as Lady Bracknell in my college theater dept's "The Importance of Being Earnest" my freshman year.

Life is moving quickly for someone who is ostensibly unemployed.  Let's see...

OK, on the job front, I had one first interview (via Skype) with Leading Hotels of the World.  The job didn't sound like a perfect fit, but not bad and of course I'd much rather work in the travel industry than some pointless busines line I care nothing about.  But I've heard nothing since, and I know I was one of many they were talking to, so oh well.

I get calls from recruiters every day, but most of the jobs are not worth following up on - they are usually;
 - contract (short term, no benefits)
 - a technically-possible, but in reality-way-too-long commute - to New Jersey, say, or Connecticut or central Long Island.
 - or even just completely out of town.  "Would you like to relocate to Madison, WI"  "No, thanks".

Now it's possible that if I don't get a job in, say, 3 months, I will be far less picky about at least the first two categories, but for now I can afford to hold on tight for a local full-time position or, better yet, a telecommute job.  I met with my accountant yesterday and he actually told me something that I hadn't known - I'm in good enough shape for the long haul that there's really not a lot of reason to turn down a job that is a significant pay cut for me - if it's interesting and fun and compensating in other ways.  I'd turned down the possibility of a job in the fall that had sounded really cool, because it paid significantly less - but it looks like I could actually entertain such possibilities.  One thing this means is that I can take a closer look at tech writer positions, as opposed to business analyst positions - not as well-paid or central to the action, but also less stressful.

I had a meeting with Unemployment over in Flushing on Friday (happy valentine's day!) and that was interesting, and put me on track with various agencies where I can get free training in various things - although I suspect I can also get the same training online on my own schedule without having to go to a class.  Also, again, I'm learning where in the city I can hole up for a couple of hours with a laptop and an electrical outlet for free, which is helpful.

Yesterday, quite a few really interesting job ads crossed my path - so I am not feeling discouraged yet, not at all.  And I'm really only on week 3 of the full-out job search.

---

Valentine's Day was nice, although no gifts were exchanged.  We had dinner the night before at Becco, the restaurant where we'd gotten married, using up a substantial gift card from my parents.  This time was nicer than the last, when we'd been crammed uncomfortably in a tiny space in a too-warm room.  I started with burrata, then had the veal parmesan (so good there) and a cookie plate for dessert.  C, who is doing keto, had carpaccio, then a veal chop and no dessert.

---

I continue to skate, and am itching to take lessons again.  I'm working on the things I can already do, but not well (snowplow stops, for example) and starting to nibble on things I have had no luck at before, but am making small progress on (one-foot swizzles, backwards skating).  Well, I've been able to 'skate backwards" for a while, in that I can do backwards swizzles and a couple of other simplistic techniques that do in fact move me in a backwards direction, but this is actually like stroke skating backwards.   It's terrifying.

I am also excited about maybe in the future doing some sort of winter vacation to skate the canals of Ottawa or some other 'skating nature track', which sounds far more fun (and quite different) than skating around in circles indoors.  I will have to figure out how to lure C into such a vacation, as he does not and will not skate.

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Not much to say on the mourning/family front.  My dad is doing fine, I think - in new-widower-related terms, anyway.  The hospice offered grief counseling to both Dad and Sam, and I think Sam took them up on it.  I've been having good conversations with my own friends who have lost their parents.  I myself am convinced that either the entity that was Yvonne Peterson is now dispersed, or that she's 'graduated' to some new level where our earthly doings just aren't relevant any more.  Like, why would she care what's going on at her old elementary school, she's in college now.

I think it may always bug me that Mom held a lot of pain and unhappiness close to her, and we'll probably never know the nature of it.  But that all has been released now, hasn't it?

---

Media consumption - well, we had our Oscar party and that was a great deal of fun.  We'd seen most of the movies, and I was reasonably happy with the Oscar picks, although I really would have preferred Jonathan Pryce take best actor.  We saw "Parasite" last week after the Oscars - liked it a lot, but probably need to see it again.  Oh, we also saw "Dolemite is My Name", which is a hoot.  (Unintentionally a hoot is all the very very fake afro wigs on display.)  Murphy is a delight, but so is Keenan-Michael Key and Wesley Snipes.  Tituss Burgess played a gay character, and they touched on that very very lightly, but I wish there'd been more about that - maybe it's on the cutting room floor.

We're now working our way through this season's Madame Secretary (one episode featured an appearance by my college friend Mark Aldritch) and Grace & Frankie, but a problem with our streaming stick the other night caused me to start up the last season of Game of Thrones.  Wow, it's kind of amazing - we saw the big battle with the dead last night.  I'll have to do a rewatch of the whole series at some point (yeah, right after I do a rewatch of the extended editions of Lord of the Rings... no time).  Actually, we might do a Harry Potter movie rewatch over the next few Saturdays, that might be fun.  We have all those on Blu-Ray now and haven't watched those.

Reading: I'm hacking through Neal Stephenson's "Fall, or Dodge in Hell".  I've liked parts of it, but mostly it's a slog.  It's a sequel to "REAMDE", and I'd wished REAMDE spent more time in its virtual world, but "Fall" spends huge amounts of time in its virtual world and it's tedious.  Also reading China Mieville's "The Iron Council" and like it just enough to keep going with it, but it's a slog as well.  I loved "Perdido Street Station" and liked "Scar", so feel I need to finish this, but it feels like a duty.  And I have a Scot Turow book going about a Hague tribunal - hoping it will pick up.  I'm determined to get through at least one shelf of to-be-reads this year.

I really want to pick up another gay romance, but I dont' want to get sucked in and spend all my time in the recliner rather than being somewhat productive.  I may make 'gay romance' a Sunday afternoon thing.

Oh, I'm also carving out a bit of time to play some of those Steam games I've bought but never really given a chance.  Then I can plunk them into categories of 'keep going with this when you feel like it' or 'naah' or 'played it'.  There's a couple of quest adventures that are ostensibly funny, but not enough to really be funny, and not that engaging in gameplay.   (probably why they were cheap enough for me to pick up)

Yep, that's it.

Ok, so, first week back from The Event, and first week totally throwing myself into the job hunt.  I'm officially on unemployment now, so can't do that piecework stuff I was looking into, like audio transcription (unless it pays more than unemployment).  I've had a lot of calls from recruiters.  There's a certain class of recruiter - almost all of East Asian descent, who want to submit me for jobs in faraway cities or jobs that I don't actually have qualifications for (paralegal?  really?),  and i get a ton of those calls, but I've learned my spiel - no, New Jersey and Long Island really is too far away for me to commute, for instance. 

But also calls from real recruiters and one in particular has helped me clean up my resume and submitted me for an interesting job, which I'll give more details on if I actually get it.  I have a Skype interview tomorrow for it, and the recruiter is very hands-on about 'and make sure you review the company website thoroughly, and also the hiriing manager's LinkedIn profile'.  OK, i can do that.  Nice to have someone actively trying to get me a job - ok, I know what she's trying to do is fill the position, but it works out the same.

Other than that, I've been doing taxes and going skating and cleaning house and making frittatas and oatmeal.  Oh, the big annual tradeshow (LegalTech) for my old business line was this week and my old boss was in town for it, so we had dinner on Monday.  Neither of us had met the other's spouse, so that was really nice all around.  Doug got me credentials to get into the trade show, and I went on Wednesday.  I was hoping it would translate into maybe job opportunities, and it didn't, but it was worth the effort - plus running into old co-workers and so on.

On Friday, I had two doctor's appointments hours apart, but both in Manhattan, so I spent the intervening time at the Gay Community Center at a computer center desk with my own laptop, working as best I could.  That actually wasn't bad and I have to remember when I need a temporary place to set up in town, that's good and free and they've got a cafe right there for caffeine requirements.

Next week, i have this interview tomorrow and whatever that turns into, and also a mandatory meeting with the Unemployment People on Friday morning.  Thursday night, we'll have pre-Valentine's dinner at Becco, that will be nice.

---

Tonight, we're gathering with our upstairs neighbors for the Oscars, and have done more prepwork than usual, mostly this week, ignoring the political shitshow that we usually watch (and wasn't this a week for that, huh?) and watching nominated movies (all on streaming).  Let's see:

Ford vs Ferrari: I saw this with Sam and Dad last week, C hasn't seen it yet.  I loved it, it's a lot of fun.  Christian Bale is great fun on screen.

The Irishman: we watched this on Netflix last week.  It's beautiful and very well-performed and the CGI anti-aging didn't bother me at all.ab

Jojo Rabbit: we saw it this week, didn't love it, but loved the two young actors in it (and funny Hitler)

Joker: also this week.  Neither of us wanted to see it particularly, and it wasn't our cup of tea at all, but we can certainly see why Phoenix is getting all the accolades.

Marriage Story: really good, really sad.  I agree with my film reviewer friends that it does a good job of not letting you pick sides.  and I liked the resolution at the end.

Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood : this was a lot of fun, and I really liked the ending.  Very very well acted.

We have not seen Little Women, 1917 or Parasite.  Only Parasite is avaiable on streaming right now, and we've shied away because subtitles, although we do want to see it.

I can't say I have a favorite among these, will be happy with almost any of them.

We also saw The Two Popes, which is not up for best picture, but the two principal actors are nominated, and they are both fantastic.  I'd love it if Jonathan Pryce won, but he won't.

Oddly enough, we've managed to see all of the best animated feature nominees.  We had already seen The Last Dragon, Toy Story 4, and Klaus, and watched I Lost My Body and Missing Link the last two nights.  Missing LInk was fine, but didn't do a lot of me.  I Lost My Body is a beautiful and sad movie - unusual, but probably not if you watch a lot of foreign films.  I think of these 5, I want "Klaus" to win.

Sorry about the mild pun.  I now have Maureen McGovern in my head.  I also have Mom's ashes behind me in a lovely wooden box, and am wondering how to make a reference to "The Cremains of the Day".

We've been having an interesting discussion on facebook.  I have many friends who also lost a parent recently and the different timings as to getting rid of the deceased's things.  One friend's mother won't even remove her deceased dad's shoes from the front hallway closet yet, because 'don't make any changes for a year'.  Others took a year to clean out their father's apartment partially because he'd been there for forever.  But because my father isn't a sentimental person who attaches to things, and because, frankly, other than select photos and stuff, doesn't want constant reminders of Mom stabbing him everywhere he looks, we gathered up the clothing pretty much right away.  Mom had a ton of clothes, which speaks more to a packrat-ness than someone who actually was into fashion.  There was room, so they kept stuff.  I think we donated 80 shirts.  But she wasn't girly in her dress habits once she retired, so there were only about five dresses - mostly blouses and slacks and such.  Two trips to the thrift store.

She read constantly, even towards the end when she had no short-term memory, and for some reason bought everything in hardback.  So a ton of books which Dad will go through at his leisure, but I pulled out about 12-15 for myself, mostly Jack Reacher books.  Dad and I also went through photos - dumping many that were just like scenery from trips, but I kept everything that was a picture of someone in our family (including us, of course), even if he didn't want it.  I'll be sending those to a scanning service - so boxed up the books, the photos, the wedding album, mom's yearbooks and college literary magazines (she wrote poetry!  I didn't know that)  and media-mailed them to myself to deal with at my leisure at home.  I'm also having Dad copy all his photos from the computer to a jump drive so I can bring them home, put them on my media drive and have them backed up.

A big trip to the dump - we have two recliners that have been cat-shredded but are otherwise functional - decided to dump just one of them, plus two microwaves, an old vacuum, a VCR, an old mini laptop and such.

And lots of little drives - to bring C to the airport, for grocery shopping, post office, office supply store.  And crematorium, that was yesterday, sad but peaceful.  I'd been having morbid thoughts about Mom's body just in a cold drawer - to be replaced by morbid thoughts about it burning up.  But it's done now, and I'd much rather have the corporeal discorporated than decaying.

---

And the real stuff. Lots of conversations and reminiscing with my dad and my brother, many meals together.  My uncle Paul (Mom's brother) was here for some of that, and my cousin Pete (Dad's sister's son) and his wife came last night for a visit.   But also one-on-ones with both Dad and Sam and many with the three of us, much needed and helpful.

And many nice things.  Paying attention to the cats.  Having dinner with a friend.  I went skating once.  Dad and I got pedicures together (!!!), that was kind of a hoot!  The three of us sat down to watch "Ford vs. Ferrari" yesterday afternoon, which was really great.

And quick phone calls with the man I love, holding the fort at home.  An email to him, titled "We have a problem", saying "There seems to be a person missing from the other side of my bed and I think its you." His response, "I have the same problem!".  :)

---

Unlike possibly other couples of their generation, where the loss of a wife would leave the husband baffled about how to run the household, my dad is going to be just fine.  He's been running the household with little help from Mom anyway the last few years, as she declined, and he's shown a remarkable talent for simplifying their life to match the level of maintenance he feels up to giving.  He's in great shape for his age.  And my brother is here to keep an eye on him and help.  We have to find our new normal, all of us, but we are ready to do that.

I head to the airport this morning.

My mother passed away on Thursday, January 23rd, after a quick battle with esophageal and liver cancer.  She was 83 years old.

We had last seen her three weeks ago, when we came down for their 60th anniversary.  At that time, she was in assisted living (a very nice place, I must say), but soon after was moved to hospice as her nausea had returned and need to be on IV medication.  I never met the hospice people, but apparently, they were even nicer and better than the assisted living place.

I'd been slated to visit for a week starting Friday, but my brother called Wednesday afternoon, basically saying, 'you need to get here now if you want to see her'.  She'd taken a very obvious turn for the worse.  Once C got home, we discussed whether it was worth trying to get down there that night   - no, not really, so we booked a 9:30 am flight for the next morning, packed hurriedly, ordered Chinese and went to bed early.

Plan was to go straight from the Durham airport to the hospice, but while we were in the cab just arriving at the LaGuardia terminal (on our end, before the flight), Sibling Sam rang with "This is The Call."  Mom had died ten minutes before, probably while we were loading the Uber with the luggage.  So I told Sam I'd call him back when we were checked in, told C, had a 10-second meltdown, and then we checked in and went through security.

When I called Sam again, he gave more details.  Both he and Dad had gone home late to get some sleep, neither of them had been there when she died.  (Charles made the point later that she probably exerted whatever control she had to do that deliberately.)  Sam had said on Wed that he felt like she would make it through the night, but not much past that, and he was right.  She'd looked awful (like death) and had been breathing very badly.  Dad had asked the hospice people to call if she started getting even worse, but once she did, it went so quick that they didn't have a chance.  Both Dad and Sam had been minutes away from heading back to the hospice in the morning when they got the calls.

---

My Uncle Paul (Mom's brother, 13 years younger) had been visiting and I had been under the impression that he'd gone home, but no, he was still there when C and I arrived at Dad's condo.  So there were hugs and sniffles and the five of us (Dad, Sam, Paul, Charles and I) spent the afternoon alternately discussing what had happened and what had to happen next and then just other stuff.

There won't be a funeral - Mom and Dad are atheists and not big on ceremony and burial was never something either of them wanted.  Sam had taken care of lining up the cremation, and had offered the chance to have them hold off on picking up Mom's body until C and I could get there and see her.  I declined after checking with C - who I think would have actually liked to, but went along with me - I didn't like the thought of the body just lying there waiting for us to look at it.  I'm kind of sorry I missed that chance (Dad, Sam and Paul all got to visit with 'her' and view the body, which apparently looked no different than it did the day before on her last day.)  But I knew it wasn't Mom. I firmly believe that when a person dies, that person is no longer in the body, that's just something that the person used to ride around in.  I don't know where the person is now but the person isn't there any more.

Anyway, since then, it's been meals (one out to a restaurant, otherwise cooked by Charles or taking advantage of food that neighbors have brought by) and discussions and making a big List of What to Do.  Dad has to do most of it, but I've been handling things like closing her Facebook account and email accounts and stuff.  Reaching out to friends to let them now.  I've been making sure the laundry and dishes are being done and other house projects.

Paul left yesterday, C leaves today, and I will leave by Friday.  Much to my surprise, I found out yesterday that I don't have a plane ticket home.  Because I hadn't flown down using part 1 of my round trip flight on Friday (I was already here), that means I lost my return trip too.  That sucks, but it was a cheap flight and I'm not going to worry about it.  But I think Dad and I are going to figure out today whether I should hang around until Friday or go home earlier.

Projects: we'll empty her room at the assisted living today - there's a fair amount of furniture as well as clothing and stuff, so I think we'll bring all three cars.  Clothing will go to the thrift shop - Dad doesn't feel the need to hang onto it for mementoes, although we've been going through her jewelry (not much) to figure out what to keep as mementoes and what to give to others and what to donate.  (Mom was allergic to metal, so she wasn't much of a jewelry person.)  There are other projects for the week, like taking some stuff to the dump (has nothing to do with Mom, just something I can help with while I'm here).

And we move on.  We are all shaken, but it was the opposite of a surprise, so we've had plenty of time to prepare.  My dad is doing great, I must say.  He won't be alone alone, my brother is still here once I leave.  Mom was a terrific person and extraordinary in many ways, and we will all feel her absence.  I'll post an actual obituary later.  Rest in Peace.

Let's see, what was the week like?

We did our anniversary stuff, dinner at Akrotiri, a nice Greek restaurant in Astoria.  I had two cosmos and a glass of wine, Greek meatballs in tomato sauce, a (shared) prasini salad and goat cheese gnocchi with bacon and tiger shrimp.  I forget the name of the greek custard dessert, but I had that, very nice.  We didn't exchange gifts (he paid for dinner) because I'm unemployed

Work and job hunt - I did some transcription jobs.  They literally pay pennies, so I will probably not spend a lot of time on that.  But there are similar 'log into a website and pick up work' things for editing which pay better, so I'm trying to line that up.  No leads yet on 'go to an office for a week' temp work - I need to look into that some more when I get back from the next trip south (I leave on Friday).

Mom is in hospice now, as opposed to the assisted living facility.  Difference being that right now she needs IV meds.  If that problem resolves, she can go back to the facility.  (and also get to go home for visits, which isn't an option right now)  We're in a steady state there for the moment.  Dad is coming up with house projects for me for the week I'm there, that's good.  It's going to be somewhat of an experiment for me - usually when we're there, I have a rental car and am free with spending, but this trip will be on the cheap and I won't have a car.  I'll make it work somehow.  I'm also going to bring my skates, check out the local rink.

Yeah, I did a lot of skating last week.  Monday early in the AM at Bryant Park, which was great because mostly empty, but not great because the ice sucks, even after resurfacing.  Tuesday and Thursday I went to coffee club at World Ice (Flushing Meadows, indoors).  Some things are coming back to where they were when I was taking lessons last year, and I inadvertendly discovered how to do two-foot snowplow stops.  (I can sort of do one-foot, but two-foot was eluding me.  So I tried doing a mirror-image one-foot on the opposite foot and found I was using both feet, which is what I was aiming for anyway.)  Also one-foot glides, although towards the end of my session on Thursday, I was happily gliding on my right foot, hit a bad patch of ice and fell.  Ow.  Shoulder and knee hurt now.  (I do have knee pads, but I wasn't wearing them.)

Yeah, one of the issues with skating is in order to get better, I have to take risks and try different ways of doing things and some of the things I try will be wrong and I will fall.  Same principle as learning an instrument, but when you try wrong things on an instrument, it just sounds bad or doesn't work, it's not actually dangerous.  Well, part of the downside of picking up a sport in your dotage.

What else?  Our niece Allison came in for an afternoon visit on Saturday, that was fun, and I sang in a concert "Yeomen of the Guard" on Saturday night that went really well.  Oh, and we saw "The Irishman" last night, which was really good.  Got through it in one sitting, even though we'd already told ourselves it was OK to break it up over two nights.  I wasn't bothered by the de-aging CGI so much as the bad wigs. 

That was me pretty much from eight grade onward, until I finally hit a point during my final semester in college that I needed to either deal with my feelings and attractions or kill myself.  I'm still here, so... but although I decided to take action, I postponed it until I was in a new school and city that fall.  But I did spend those few months getting used to the idea and allowing myself to think about some stuff for the first time without flinching.

I somehow, in my floundering, managed to hit on a basic truth.  At the time, I was heavy and pimply and no one's idea of a fashion model.  Unlike my best friend, whose wit and charm and offbeat good looks had presented him with countless offers from both sexes during his college years, I couldn't recall anyone ever expressing interest in me.  Well, certainly not a guy or one I was attracted to.  But I'd also realized that I had no interest in what I guessed was what you were supposed to be interested in - young fit handsome men who would be fashion models, or on the covers of sports magazines or whatever.  No, not me.  My pulse pounded at men, not boys, and not handsome men either.  Big guys, bearded, often fat.  ('bear' wasn't a thing then, but once it was a thing, I was like, oh yeah, that's what I like)  Even guys who now I would term "ugly-hot" - on paper, they are the opposite of handsome, but something about them makes them super-attractive.

So, I theorized, I don't think that heavy pimply me is attractive, but I dont have to, do I?  Someone else does.  And if my tastes are weird enough that this hairy balding chunky bus driver is causing impure thoughts, then maybe someone out there has tastes weird enough that this heavy, pimply but young and smart and articulate man might be worth his time.

---

It's easy to forget this truth, no matter how often it's been proved in my life.  It doesn't feel right to me.  Something deep in me is hard-wired to expect that I am not worthy of interest or attention.  But the reality is, although I may not be everyone's cup of tea, I've certainly been someone's cup of tea, more than once.

No better proof of this then when the handsome man at the gay social thing I went to, who otherwise didn't seem to be having a good time, approached me afterward and asked if I'd like to go out.  And when we first overnighted together, neither of us could stop reaching out to make sure the other one was still there.  And when we went to a movie the next day, when I reached for his hand, he gasped and reached for mine and we ended up holding all four hands with our arms pretzelled across our chests.

And in two weeks, after an unusually large number of dates and sleepovers, he turned to me and said, "if this keeps going like it's going, what would you want to do?  Live together?"  Yeah yeah yeah, I nodded vigorously.

Up to this point, even though I'd had what I considered substantive relationships, no one had ever even asked me to 'go steady'.  Or, for that matter, told me he loved me.  But here, this enchanting man was saying, 'this is so right for me, if it's so right for you, let's start making plans'.  A week later, the L Word was said for the first time, and it wasn't a surprise.  We both agreed to be cautious, test the ice before leaping on it, but let's see how far out we could skate.

All this to say that, yes, there really is someone for everyone, and you'll find that person but just putting yourself out there, being yourself and being open to opportunities.  And that this thing that went from 'here's my number' to 'do you want to live together' in the space of about two weeks has been the best thing that ever happened to me, and it's twenty-five years old today.  I still have no idea why I'm his cup of tea, I just know that I am.  He certainly is mine.

(edited version of a post I share periodically)

Where was I a quarter-century ago?  Right here, pretty much - but that, in itself, was new.  I was starting a new year in a new life after a reboot.  In the past few months, I'd:
 - turned 30
 - moved to New York City and started to figure it out
 - left behind (and apologized to) a man I loved very much, but had no future with (although I did then take him down to my parents' for Christmas)
 - started a new, albeit hideous, job
 - joined a new musical group
 - seen several Broadway shows
 - had some dates, middling at best

and here it was, the new year, somewhat settled and wondering what to do next.  I'd had vague plans of spending each weekend exploring the city, and figuring out where I really wanted to live, because my small one-bedroom apartment in Inwood, at the very tippy top of Manhattan, felt a bit like exile.

Oh, and I'd also reconnected with one of my best friends from college.  Vance and I had maintained a hilarious and entertaining snail-mail relationship that had faded in and out over the years. After a couple of years of silence, he'd sent me a Christmas card that got forwarded from my Philly address - and included his e-mail address. This was at a time when the Internet was an exciting and new thing to most of us.  The only fun part of my hideous job (tech support and training at a law firm) was to actually explore the internet, with email and the World Wide Web and things we don't talk about so much any more, like Archie.  I now had my own email address at home, and of course the dial-up modem used to access it.  So Vance was now in Detroit, but we were emailing each other and getting caught up and he was telling me all about this MUSH he helped run (and what the heck a MUSH was) and sent me instructions on how to get to it.

So, here it is, Friday the 13th, and work is slow and I'm faffing about on the computer and was trying to follow his instructions on getting to the MUSH.  Newbie that I was, it took me several false tries to finally get it - but I found myself finally logged on. I was so excited, I was literally trembling.  I looked at the instructions and "paged" Vance's character and he showed up and was all like "who are you" and I was like "It's me!" and we were all like OMG. So I 'chatted' live with him for probably the first time since graduation.

Yeah, so?  I know, I know, we all text with everyone constantly now, using little devices that are a thousand times as powerful as the PC I was using, but in 1995, chatting via text with someone, particularly someone far away, felt like landing on the moon. In college, Vance and I used to IM each other across campus on the old Prime system - and here we were doing the exact same thing in completely different cities! So we blew off the rest of the afternoon chatting away, sending texts over our dial-up modem lines and that brought me great joy.

So in a giddy mood and with no plans in this strange town, when work was over, I decided to check out a gay social group that met at the community center on Friday nights, just to see if it was worth going back to for real. I'd noticed the flyer on the bulletin board, it was called "Gentle Men".  Ooo, I thought, that sounds nice, very suited to this vanilla man.  The meeting didn't start until 8 or so, so I went to see "Bullets over Broadway" at a nearby movie theater and then went to the Center.  The facilitators were setting up the meeting room, so a bunch of us were waiting out in the hall. The gentle man that caught my eye was a very well dressed handsome man (WDHM) with a receding hairline and a bushy moustache, but he seemed stand-offish and I chatted with some other guys instead until we were invited into the meeting.

Gentle Men is a neat idea (I don't know if it still exists) and it was sort of like an encounter group or group therapy in a touchy-feely (but deliberately non-sexual) way. The room was completely clear of furniture except for pillows around the parameter, and we (I guess about forty of us?) sat on the pillows and introduced ourselves in order. It was somewhat structured, and I think we had to say our name and what we were feeling at the time.  Then we did an "intimacy exercise" that was really cool - non-sexual (ostensibly) and you didn't have to do it if you didn't want. You picked a partner, hugged front-to-front for one minute and tried to match your breathing so that he exhaled while you inhaled and vice-versa. After a minute, the facilitator rang a bell and you switched partners. This went on for a half an hour, so everyone got to 'meet' many other men this way. With some men, you couldn't click at all, some were perfectly nice, and with some, the simple act was so bzzt with energy that your glasses fogged up. The WDHM had not seemed to be into it during the first round of talking, but I did get to hug with him and it was very nice indeed.

After the exercise, we sat on pillows again and went around in order and talked about whatever we wanted. I talked about how excited I was to make contact with Vance via this newfangled internet thing and how that had just made my day. Everyone else had different stories, and everyone was really nice. WDHM for some reason really did not want to share and declined a couple of times, but talked a bit. I was like, "hmmm, why is he here if he doesn't want to do this?" Although I did have my eye on him because he was the most handsome thing in the room, and the whole point of this group was to meet other men, I'd pretty much ruled him out, he seemed like a grump. Several of the others were obviously very happy to meet me, and I was very much enjoying myself.

Eventually, the session ended, we're invited to all go to the local diner for coffee and there were lots of handshakes and some exchanging of numbers and I got quite a few "I hope we see you again - it was wonderful to meet you!"'s (*preen*). So I'm out in the hallway again fiddling with my backpack and getting my coat on. and WDHM approaches. I said, "Hi - that hug we had was really nice!" He said, "yes, would you like to get together sometime?"

Holy crap, I did not see that coming.  After picking my jaw up off the floor, I came up with some version of "why, yes, WDHM, I would!" and we exchanged numbers. I asked if he was going out to the diner with everyone else and we could have coffee right then, but he said no, he had an early Saturday appointment. I did go out to the diner with the others and had a very nice time.  But WDHM and I talked on the phone on Sunday night - a phone call that ended with me meeting him for dinner - a date that only reluctantly ended the next afternoon because I had to go to a rehearsal.

I used to claim that I still  had the sheet of paper with his number on it - in fact, have a memory of putting it in a little frame to go on a bookshelf - but it seems to have disappeared with all the renovations and stuff we did over the last few years.  No matter, we have our own phone number now.  We also have wedding rings with each other's name inscribed on the inside, and the word "love".

---

This is what WDHM looked like about that time.  Can you believe how cute he was/is?

Also, Vance now lives in Connecticut, an hour north of NYC, so I get to see him now, although not enough.