For Jack

I heard about Jack Lunde long before I ever met him, as if his personality was too large to just hand over to someone without properly prepping them--in my case, weeks in advance. (Turns out it was.) He finally appeared on an Easter Sunday, when a bunch of us were gathered at Lisa Eisen & David Hudec's house. Lisa had made a leg of lamb and a tablefull of other perfect dishes--such are her talents.

We had a conversation about D.H. Lawrence in a loud bar once when Jack was reading Sons & Lovers, and I had the realization--I think it's pretty safe to assume a lot of people may have had this realization at some point--that Jack was a lot smarter than I had given him credit for, that I had been fooled by all of it: the bawdy sense of humor, the reputation, the beefcakiness. "What do you like about it?" I asked him--meaning the Lawrence. "Oh, you know, emotional manipulation, family dysfunction. It's a real feel good kinda book," Jack said.

He was loud, and he was a little obnoxious (and sexy as hell,) and I would be lying if I said it didn't sometimes feel as if people tolerated his complexity--we all have those friends. One thing about that Easter Sunday that sticks out in my mind is Jack proclaiming, about the habits of gay men: "I know how it works, you diddle-dee-doo and then he fucks you in the asshole!" I liked him, tremendously.

Jack, so many of us miss you. If the uncertainty of the other side became less frightening than every single day, then I hope that wherever you are, some peace has found you.

Things Collected

My office is moving, and I was asked to completely clean out my desk. I was shocked (and yet also not shocked) to see what I had accumulated in the last 8 years. Among the found objects:

--Ralph Lauren pants, still needs hemming
--one bottle olive leaf extract
--three tubes Chapstick
--one Stiles Apiaries Honey Bear
--plastic Mardi Gras cup and beads
--2002 Writer's Market
--pictures from a birthday circa 2000, with mocha birthday cake
--small German paper puppet theater

Lunar Park

I am reading the new Bret Easton Ellis novel Lunar Park, and I am having a complicated relationship with it. I use to be a big fan of his, although in the last five or six years I've become less of one, having discovered that the kind of writing that I really like it something different--simpler, quieter, and "about less," which sounds goofy and somewhat counter-intuitive, but it's the only way I can think to describe it.

I'll finish the book because the narrative is really strong--and for anyone who's read Ellis throughout the years, particularly someone who considers themsevles a fan, the book is an interesting foray into his own mind, his own demons. Still, it's frustrating when gay writers don't write about their gayness. It peeks in here and there in Lunar Park, but he's invented a completely ridiculous suburban existence for himself. Which, I suppose, is also the point. Still, I wonder if there's some unfortunate chicken/egg scenario when it comes to gay work. Publishers aren't willing to take a chance on resolutely gay fiction because it doesn't sell, and it doesn't sell because writers aren't writing it because it won't sell, or it doesn't sell because--well, "gay people don't read books," as one agent said to me.

"I do," I told her. That seemed beside the point.

Had Lunar Park come from any other writer, it wouldn't be very good--it'd be derivative and maybe even cloying. But coming from Ellis, it's just interesting and creative enough to be something.

Iceland

I have been thinking about Iceland a lot. It all started with notices that the Powerball lottery has reached an almost unheard of, absurdly high jackpot: $365 million. And, of course, how that kind of money would buy me not only a really nice home outside of Reykjavik, but maybe I could buy the whole friggin' country.

This morning I went back to read my travel journal from my trip there a few years ago, and came across this paragraph, which I wrote about our flight from Akureyri back to Reykjavik. It's not about the country exactly, but I enjoyed reading it again:

If it’s possible, imagine a smaller plane—the window seats are also aisle seats. You have to squeeze your body into the chair, and there will be no beverage service this morning. The view outside is just as gorgeous as before, but the air is choppy, and the plane makes a few too many (some would say one is too many) jerks and sudden dips. The mind goes immediately to the macabre: wings aflame, the dropping of oxygen masks from the overhead, and our identities distilled to a simple, solemn “two Americans were aboard” when the incident appears on CNN. We’d survive for a few days by melting snow and consuming the flesh of the dead—isn’t that what happens in movies? Or perhaps, since life seldom mirrors beach-reading, we’d just black out and that would be it. Forty minutes later, as we land in Reykjavik, I pry my legs out from under the seat in front of me, and the first line of some Brecht poem, the name of which I’ve forgotten, whispers itself out of the back of my brain. “You, forked out of the sardine tin…”

On Blogging

New York Magazine's cover story the other week was on blogging. Reading the article, I couldn't help thinking over and over that blogging is the kind of thing that, if it were to vanish from the earth in an instant, it would hardly be missed. This is not to say that I don't cherish my own blog, or champion the lessons, posts, words, ideas, love, that I've written here -- but I still wonder sometimes, who cares? It's like when I went from having cable to not having cable. Sure, you miss lots of entertaining TV, but what are you actually missing?

I get about 20 hits per day (about 3,500 since the blog began back in July 2005,) a lot from people I know, but also from people I don't know. Some of these strangers come back every day to see what's here. That's particularly nice to see.

I said once in a conversation that blogging taught me how to write. What I meant is that blogging taught me how to think about my writing -- and how to think about something and writing about something are, for me, really the same thing. (You write to figure out what you think about something.) Blogging has taught me how to give something to read to the world, and then not have to always hear back about it. One thing that's hard to do as a young writer is NOT look over everyone's shoulder as they're reading your work. You want to watch their faces as they come to the line that you think is funny, or sharp, or perfectly devastating. And posting things quietly whenever I find a moment, then actually forgetting about them has given me an entirely new perspective on trusting the sentences to do their work.

After Meg died, blogging about it helped me move through whatever phases of bullshit I was going through, and helped me translate the experience. Tell your story, they said to me in Northampton one night, several years ago when Meg and I were having tea and talking with some of her friends. I thought of that when I wrote about her death. None of what I wrote was therapy. Things you write to make yourself feel better aren't necessarily what you want people to think of as "your work." I have separate files for those other writings. But I'm especially proud of what made it here.

One of my favorite writers, and human beings, on the planet, Sarah Vowell was once asked "If you had to choose, would it be Sinatra or Elvis?" "I don’t have to choose," she answered. "That’s what’s great about the world." That's also what I love about blogging. What (and who) I choose to read up on just enriches my experience. And whatever I miss -- like cable TV -- Oh well.

The Flu

I returned from Florida on Tuesday with what I thought was a throat infection, which was confirmed by my doctor, but as the illness dragged on day after day I began to suspect that what I really had/have was The Flu. All I did for three days was sleep and feel like shit, and walk from room to room wondering what I might be able to do to pass the time. TV was too erratic, books took too much concentration, and even my Netflix was impossible -- two hours sitting in one place not asleep was not happening.

I am just today coming out of it, though still a lot of the residue is hanging on. The universe has also handed New York more than a foot of snow, which is still falling as I write this.

I suppose this week's lesson is about patience.

Orlando/Tampa 2006 Stats

Coasters conquered: 11

New coasters: 8

Total inversion count: 46

Total length of coaster track traveled: 54,580 feet (10.34 miles.)

Vacation Awaits

Tomorrow morning, my friend Sean and I will fly to Orlando to visit my brother and his wife, along with my amazing nephew and their two huge labradors. I am so ready to be away for a while. The weather in Orlando looks to be lovely, despite the occasional threat of rain that hangs around (what seems like) the entire state every afternoon.

We're going to ride a bunch of rollercoasters at Universal's Islands of Adventure over the weekend, and then on Monday, Sean and I are driving to Tampa to go to Busch Gardens, where SheiKra lives, a massive 200-foot diving coaster, the tallest of its kind in the world, with more than half a mile of track at 3,188 feet long. By comparison, New Yorkers will probably have ridden the world-famous Cyclone at Coney Island, which is 2,640 feet long. Even geekier stats for SheiKra can also be seen here at the RollerCoaster Database.