Necessary Luxuries

The New Beginning

2009-11-16T11:48:00.000-05:00

Preppy and I were marching in the Pride Parade with the crew from Southern Voice and David Magazine. Everybody’d dressed as “Newsies,” which my gal pal Slutty Mandy had still managed to turn into fetish wear. It’s a talent, folks, I’m tellin’ ya.
We’d just returned from our honeymoon, and my column that week was simply a wedding photo accompanied by the note “Sorry boys, something came up…” We thought it was pretty damn cute. As Preppy and I walked the parade route, a couple of overgrown paperboys holding hands, I was a little stunned, and pleased as punch, by the number of people shouting out congratulations. I suppose I shouldn’t have been. Our long road to the altar was well-documented, with weekly updates.
“It’s like the biggest wedding reception line ever,” I told him as we strolled down Peachtree Street. This was almost as good as the gift registry. These people didn’t know me, but the connection through more than four years of reading the column made them feel like a friend had found the right boy with whom to settle down. Their support has meant more to me than I could ever hope to express.
I have learned over the years that so many fears, frustrations, and hopes really are universal- it doesn’t matter if you like boys, girls, or some point in between. We all want to find our place in a community, and have a sense of purpose. We have a basic human need to connect. Having an outlet in which to do that every week has been one of the great blessings of my life.
Another “paper of record” will emerge in the Atlanta GLBTQ community, whether that’s online or in good ‘ol print, because as my friend Rich said, “There’s still people who want it, and still people who want to do it.” And I look forward to what happens next. But I’m sad to see this particular chapter in my life close. I loved our little magazine, made great friends there, and think we all did a damn fine job. I am forever grateful for being welcomed in some small way into people’s lives. Thank you, thank you for that.
The challenge to myself, and I guess to others as well, is to find a way to continue that connection. I found my voice and my inner activist in the last four years. I’ll keep writing, and I’ll go back to posting it on www.topherpayne.com. God knows I’m in no danger of running out of things to say. So this isn’t really a goodbye, just a change in the state of things- a new adventure. And experience has taught me that no matter how things might seem at the time, that’s never really a bad thing.
Love,
Topher

Necessary Luxuries: On Our Marry Way

2009-10-14T08:59:00.001-04:00

The first video from our trip to Massachusetts to get married.

Wish List

2009-06-06T12:28:00.002-04:00

“Topher, take those off the list,” my fiancé Preppy says, tapping the computer screen.
“What? I need new shoes,” I protest.
“You can’t put shoes on our wedding registry. It’s trashy. And they’re not even good shoes. Go back to looking at blenders.”
“I already found a blender. What if I get married in the shoes? Someone could buy my wedding day footwear. They’d be in every picture. That’d be really gratifying for the buyer.”
“You can take them off now, or I can do it while you’re asleep, but they’re not staying. New rule: You don’t put anything on this list without us both agreeing to it. You can’t be trusted. You’ll put light bulbs and Clorox on there.”
“Like we don’t need those things? Those would be very practical gifts.”
We’re on the Target Club Wedd website, registering for our gifts. I really thought we didn’t require that much around the house, but once I started looking, I discovered a slew of items we desperately needed. It’s like when the annual Sears Wish Book would arrive in the mail back when I was a kid. I’m enjoying the shit out of this. Any gay person who’s on the fence about supporting the necessity for marriage needs to create a wedding registry. They’ll be on board for equality faster than you can say “Kitchenaid Mixer.”
We’ve been infuriatingly elusive on setting a specific date for our wedding- Preppy’s got a huge work thing that’ll take up most of the summer, then his parents are renewing their vows in September, and I’m up for a role in a play in October… it goes on like that until roughly July of 2012. We have been operating under the assumption that two weeks will magically appear in both of our schedules, and that’ll be our wedding. I have no idea why we thought that would happen. It has never occurred before. Our mutual days off are as rare as unicorn sightings, but we held out hope.
Then Club Wedd asked us for our wedding date, and we had to come up with something or it wouldn’t let us create our wish list. Flush with our desire for a new lawnmower and 600 thread-count sheets, we agreed upon October 17th as our fake date. Funny, that materialism was able to get an answer out of us, after friends and family have been begging for months. My pal Slutty Mandy has been resorting to threats.
I can’t speak for Preppy (even though I do, constantly.) But I know the reason I haven’t been in a huge hurry to set a wedding date is because even though it’ll be the biggest event of my life, when we leave Massachusetts and return to Georgia, nothing will have changed. We’ll have this wacky marriage license that’ll only work in some parts of the country. It’ll be like my Sprint service when I was on tour, fading in and out of range as we drove from state to state. My desire to get married has been overshadowed by the more immediate concern of having that marriage actually mean something wherever we go.
The night we get home from our Cape Cod nuptials will likely be very similar to what we’re doing right now: I’ll prep dinner, he’ll make sweet tea. We’ll watch bad reality television and fold laundry. He’ll do some planning for work and I’ll make him read whatever I’ve been writing. Not exactly Earth-shattering stuff, but it’s the life we want. If flying to another state and getting a piece of paper lets folks know we plan to have a whole lifetime of nights like that, then it’s probably worth making room in our schedules.
“You wanna just go with this October 17th date?” I ask. “It’s as good as any other day.”
“Sure,” he says. “We can do that.”
We both open our planners and cross out two weeks in October. I write “GETTING HITCHED” with a Sharpie. We’ve set a date, thanks to the good people at Target. When we return, we’ll still have about forty miles of bad road toward getting that marriage recognized in our hometown. But our lives will be noticeably different: We will have new sheets, and a lawnmower if anyone’s feeling generous.

And if I play my cards right and ask nicely, I might get some brand-new shoes.

Play Ball

2009-06-03T12:22:00.001-04:00

My summer job took me by surprise. While I was in the midst combing Craig’s List, applying for jobs as a veterinary assistant, coffee slinger, dog groomer- basically anything that didn’t involve much counting or moving heavy objects- I got a call from my friend Jennifer. I was her children’s babysitter when they were in diapers, but now they’re both pre-teens, which is confusing to me.
I don’t understand how time continues to advance for those kids, while I’ve barely aged a day. It must be one of those paradoxes they talk about in the Star Trek movie.
I’d really appreciate it if you just let me go on believing that.
Anyhoo, Jennifer was looking for child care for the summer, but can’t call it babysitting because the very idea of being babysat makes her twelve year-old apoplectic. After quick negotiations and scheduling, I got back into the “manny” business. It’s really a fantastic way to spend the day. I am simultaneously reminded of why I love kids, and why I have no intention of ever having any of my own.
It’s fairly easy to entertain them when they’re young. My nephew is three, and pretty much anything you come up with is compelling to a preschooler. You can put a piece of Scotch tape on their hand and they’ll keep busy for fifteen minutes. The trouble with age ten and up is that they stubbornly insist upon having their own interests, and you’ve gotta get on board.
My mother says one of the happiest days of her life was when I quit playing clarinet in the school band, and she never had to suffer through another student concert slaughtering the likes of “Louie, Louie” and “Wild Thing.” Despite the claims of many, no adult has ever had any genuine interest in kids’ activities or performances. They go to basketball games, concerts, and school plays out of love for the child, and hope the experience will be mercifully brief. It never is, but one can hope.
So that’s why I’m in the back yard today, playing catch with ten year-old Jackson.
“That’s not bad, but you’re hesitating on your release and losing speed. Just power through the pitch,” I instruct.
Oh wait, I didn’t say that. HE said that. Because Jackson can actually PLAY baseball, whereas I am just one giant bag of suck. The last time I played baseball, I was eight, and I was terrible. My coach kept me in the outfield, where I would sing to myself and chew on my glove, enjoying the musky taste of leather. Occasionally the ball would manage to land in my general vicinity, which would fill me with dread, because I’d never see where it landed. I would meander around, scanning the grass for the ball like I was in an Easter egg hunt, never terribly invested in how this enterprise turned out.
I lasted one season before being allowed to return to the fudge and Murphy Brown episodes I’d been longing for the whole time. The only thing I missed was the uniform, because I liked costumes.
“Jeez, Mister Topher,” shouts Jack as I evade another pitch. “It’s like you’re TRYING not to get near the ball!”
That is exactly what I’m doing. I’m also resisting the urge to start chewing on my glove.
“Jackson, with all the things I’m good at that we could do together, do you realize how huge it is that I’m willing to do stuff with you that I’m terrible at? That is true friendship, pal.”
“I know that, Mister Topher,” he says. “But I really think you can get better.”
That thought hadn’t occurred to me. I had long since crossed out baseball on the list of things I’m capable of doing without humiliating myself. That list also includes, but is not limited to: Dancing, dribbling a ball, and wearing a swimsuit. But this kid believes I can improve, which is a stark contrast to the kids on my little league team. I am lifted by the belief of this child that I can learn. So we continue to toss the ball, and I actually manage to catch it a few times without flinching.
It’s probably for the best that Jackson and his sister won’t let us call this babysitting, because right now I’m not certain which side is benefitting more from it. I wonder if this kid can teach me to dribble a ball.

Almost Home

2009-05-27T12:17:00.000-04:00

My fiancé Preppy’s job requires him to rise in the pre-dawn hours a few mornings a week, in order to receive shipments at his store and get new merchandise on the sales floor. When I’m home, he always says goodbye and gives me a kiss on the cheek. I actually wake up enough to be cognizant of this interaction one out of every ten times, but it’s still a sweet gesture.
For the last few months on the road, I have dreamed of this exchange, only to wake up in a hotel hours later and discover that it didn’t happen. It’s kind of a downer way to start the day. My sister Shannon believes in the power of our subconscious (not in a wackadoo Sylvia Browne kinda way, just a casual sort of thing,) and it has been her belief that the mornings I dream that are when Preppy has stood in our empty bedroom and wished I was there. I’m inclined to agree, because that makes us sound like lovers torn apart by fate and circumstance in an epic novel.
I wouldn’t trade the experience of performing for audiences all over the country for anything, but I think it’s going to fall in the same mental category as skydiving: Fantastic, a little uncomfortable, incomparable, and not something I need to do on a regular basis.
An interesting thing I’ve learned in the varied locales is that cities post no signage informing you that you’ve entered the bad part of town. Neighborhoods that look perfectly lovely in sunshine can take a surprising turn after dinner (residents of East Atlanta back in the day will be happy to confirm this.) More than once we’ve dropped off our suitcases in the afternoon at a sleepy little hotel, only to discover a gaggle of vagrants upon our return.

Last week in Oregon, hunger propelled me out after midnight to a nearby 7-11 for taquitos. My return trip to the hotel on the deserted street was impeded by two guys in a pickup truck, who stopped and beat the shit out of me. I wish I were kidding. I got away pretty quickly, and ran to a grocery store where I’d seen cars in the parking lot. The police were very kind and apologetic. Apparently there’s a bit of a crystal meth problem in the area, leading to a lot of random acts of vandalism and violence.
There’s been a consistent question about whether I was jumped because I was gay. I don’t think so. I was wearing flannel and munching on convenience store taquitos, which doesn’t really fit any homo stereotypes I’m aware of. But it does bring up another missing element of my life. Where the hell are the gays in the Pacific Northwest? Okay, I’ve suspected a few, but nobody presented their membership card or openly enthused about Adam Lambert, so I couldn’t be sure.
So I’ve been on hotel lockdown ever since the assault, and my show prep now includes covering my bruises with an inch of foundation. I could be another race under all that base and nobody’d be the wiser.
My nose, however, is the size of a baked potato, and my nostrils point in the wrong direction. I’ve never liked my nose, but I now think my uninjured nose is adorable. Cute as a box of puppies. I will never complain about it again. Those are the things for which touring has given me newfound appreciation: Early mornings with my fella, and my nose. Also, gays.
This morning we entered California, our final state. As we drove in, we had to stop at an official-looking booth, where a woman signaled for our driver to roll down the window.
“Welcome to California, sir,” she said. “Are you carrying any fruit in your vehicle?”
“Just one,” I shouted. “But I won’t be any trouble.”
I’m tired of what I once called my life being a dream I have in random hotels. If I can make it home in one piece, I’m gonna nail my feet to the ground.

Necessary Luxuries: Idolizing Home

2009-05-23T02:13:00.001-04:00

Back on home turf, and happy as can be. Thoughts on American Idol finale with Paula Puppet, and Queen Latifah's new single.

Back to the Future

2009-05-13T12:10:00.000-04:00

We have the night off in Sandpoint, Idaho, the birthplace of Sarah Palin. I fully expected to see a statue or effigy of some kind in her honor, but so far no dice. Maybe ever since her grandbaby daddy popped up on Tyra and she guested on American Chopper, she’s become more like the mildly embarrassing relative they wish people didn’t notice.

My costar Jef and I spent our afternoon doing radio interviews. The last was with a podcast called The Quasi-Glamorous Life, which is the best description I’ve heard of my current circumstances. It was an afternoon of technical gaffes, odd delays, and dropped cell phone calls. I’m terrified I ended up sounding like Paula Abdul when she does those morning shows via satellite.
Now the night is my own. I would stick around the hotel and watch TV, but there’s really no point- When I talked to Preppy tonight about my post-tour job opportunities, he told me how American Idol wound up. Because of the time difference, it ended for him before it even starts for me. As if the distance between us wasn’t bad enough, now my fiancé actually lives three hours in the future.
I grab my trusty notebook and head out into the night, settling on a coffee shop on the town’s main stretch. There’s a view of a rushing river and an extraordinary mountain range. If I in any way liked nature, it’d be breathtaking. My time in the Pacific Northwest has confirmed a long-held suspicion: I’m simply not a nature person. I like vast expanses of concrete and tall buildings.
The only other occupied table in the coffee shop is three college-age friends, two guys and a girl, sipping those frozen milkshake things coffee shops sell to people who don’t drink coffee. They keep shooting looks at me, which we get a lot when we stay in smaller towns. The locals sniff us out as strangers pretty quickly. Finally, curiosity gets the better of one of the guys, who approaches my table to ask if I go to school around here. I explain what brought me here, and as I do, the three of them join me at my table. Introductions are made.
“So you signed up to tour the country, and you wound up here?” says the girl, Susan.
“And a lot of places like it, yeah. But it’s cool, actually. After all, this is what Sarah Palin calls Real America.”
I am awarded points for my Palin shout-out. In short order, it’s decided that if I’m stuck in Sandpoint for the night, I should get the grand tour. So we head out to see the sights and soak up a little history. I learn the locals are much more proud of their other notable native: Viggo Mortensen, whom the guys, Robert and J.T., declare “badass,” and Susan calls “yummy.” I agree with Susan, which takes care of me coming out to them.

They find the fact that I’m gay “awesome.” I like these people.
We jump a locked gate into the town graveyard, and J.T. gives his reviews of local bars as we weave through the tombstones.
“There’s a few 18-and-up places. Are you over twenty-one?”
“Yeah,” I say. No need to elaborate on my upcoming 30th birthday.
“They let us in because we won’t drink, so nobody gets in trouble.”
They’re all under 21. I’m spending my evening breaking into graveyards with people a decade younger than me... and they don’t know. I want to call every casting director I know and tell them I can still play a college student. Provided it’s dark outside.
My newfound Idahoan pals walk me back to my hotel, bemoaning the fact that none of us have a camera to commemorate the night.
“Dude,” says Robert. “Can I have your hat? It’ll be like a souvenir.”
Before I can answer, he’s removed his Puka shell necklace, and is offering it for trade. How could I turn him down? I give him my baseball cap, put on the necklace, and hug them all goodbye.
Then I walk back into my hotel, where writing, interviews, and a job search await. After a lovely evening out pretending to be twenty again, I have to lay the groundwork for getting back to the future.

Until I remember: This hotel has a freakin’ waterslide.

Maybe the future can wait ‘til morning.

Necessary Luxuries: Bruised But Not Broken

2009-05-13T04:20:00.001-04:00

A random act of violence, covering bruises with makeup, and a re-creation of the title sequence of Mommie Dearest, just for fun.

Hey Mama

2009-05-06T11:59:00.000-04:00

Happy Mother’s Day, Mama!
I’m sorry I don’t call as much as I should. I know I don’t write, well, ever. But honestly, who writes cards and letters anymore? I don’t even keep stamps in the house. If you held a gun to my head, I still couldn’t tell you how much a postage stamp costs these days. Are they fifty cents yet?
I’m sorry. I shouldn’t include the image of someone threatening to shoot me in a Mother’s Day letter. You shouldn’t be distraught on your special day. You should be wearing a large corsage, and having breakfast in bed. I myself am not a huge fan of breakfast in bed. I find I get toast crumbs in the strangest places, and those lap trays always scoot around when you try to tear off a piece of your waffle, which knocks the orange juice over. It’s kinda like using whipped cream in romantic encounters- seems like a decadent idea, but it’s really just a lot of cleanup.
I also should not be talking about sexy whipped cream in your Mother’s Day letter. Crap.
Oh, crap, I said crap. This is going terribly. I’m just going to start over.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mama!
I’m sorry I can’t be with you on this special day, but know that you are in my thoughts and in my heart. Not just on this day, but every day. Particularly when I see a screaming child in a shopping cart terrorizing his mother, or overhear a kid asking an embarrassing question in a public place. That always brings back memories.

I want you to know that, in case you had doubts, you were a really great mother. You weren’t one of those perfect moms like Claire Huxtable, or the Fresh Prince’s Aunt Viv, or Harriette Winslow on "Family Matters" (it is widely accepted that all the best TV moms of the early ‘90s were African-American.) I admit there were plenty of times I wished you were just like those sitcom moms, mainly because they often arranged musical numbers in their houses involving the whole family. That was something we were really lacking in our house, but I have since made my peace with it. As a grown man, I often have musical numbers at my house starring just me, so I didn’t miss out completely.
But the lack of choreography notwithstanding, you loved me, and I knew it. And you were perceptive enough to recognize you had a kid who marched to a slightly different drum. You didn’t always know what to do with that information, and you may not have been fully prepared for how different that drum really was, but you never let me forget I was loved.
I see kids now who are coming out at fourteen, or fifteen, and that boggles my mind. What would things have been like if I’d done that? I wonder if either of us could have been that strong. I know the most unexpected benefit of me coming out to you has been the closeness we’ve shared since. It’s amazing what happens when you trust loved ones enough to be honest with them. I am very grateful for that. I know this journey has not been easy, but in my defense, think back to my childhood: Being my mother has never been easy. That’s not because I was a gay kid, it’s because I was a bizarre, difficult kid. The gay thing was a seperate challenge altogether.
Our journey together isn’t over. You taught me to believe that it isn’t enough to be content in your own life; you have to help others find peace in theirs. We’ve had a long road to get to the relationship we now enjoy. The next step is taking that relationship into the world. Don’t worry, I won’t make you march in a parade.
It’s as simple as this: If someone makes a gay joke, you call them out on it. If someone speaks against same-sex marriage, you tell them about the couples you know. When you’re talking with the ladies at church, bring up the 11 year-old boy who saw no way out of the pain caused by bullying, and ask what communities can do prevent such tragedies. This is activism on the most basic level: Defending and supporting the people you love.
I love you so much, and I’m proud to call you my Mama. Enjoy your day.

Your Son

Necessary Luxuries: Would You Quit for $200?

2009-05-01T02:21:00.001-04:00

An oversight on my bank account leads to disaster and epiphany. Updates on a script that's almost out of my head, and one on its way to the stage.

Sins of Omission

2009-04-29T11:52:00.000-04:00

If you’d like to recreate the experience of visiting the Midwest, stand in the middle of a football field and turn on a wind machine. Productions of “Oklahoma” should include cowboy hats flying off heads and dancers being knocked on their asses by malicious tumbleweeds. En route to a post-performance party in Kansas, I note turbulent waves suitable for surfing in a hotel swimming pool.
Despite the bracing winds, the area does have its charms. Everyone I’ve met in Kansas is downright cheerful. And not that fakey Southern "Bless-Your-Heart" cheerful. It’s a genuine placid contentment I can’t help but envy.
My costar Jef and I arrive as the guests of honor in a lovely home thematically dedicated to rabbits. Seriously. They’re everywhere. Cloth, ceramic, wooden, any material you can imagine. My mother does this with roosters, so I’m not gonna judge. We are feted and fed, enjoying the rare chance to interact with the folks who paid to see us onstage.
“Alrighty,” says our hostess. “Which one of you is getting married?”
My biography in the show’s program mentions I’ll be getting hitched when I’m done with the tour. I include this info because I’m very proud of it, and as an unexpected bonus, mentioning weddings makes most of the women in the audience like me before the show even starts. Straight baby boomer women love weddings.
“That’s me,” I say. “I’m very excited. I like your concrete rabbit table. Did you paint it yourself?”
“Tell us all about the wedding! Where is it?”
“Coast of Massachusetts.”
“Is that where she’s from?” asks another woman, joining us.
“Both from Mississippi,” I say, artfully dodging a pronoun. A crowd is forming. They all start peppering me with questions about my intended bride, her dress, if she’s driving me crazy with all this wedding nonsense…

I maneuver around every awkward question with evasive dexterity Anderson Cooper and Queen Latifah would envy.

I never lie to these people, not once. I do, however, end up with a few odd sentence constructs, like when I’m asked if my fiancée is in theatre as well, and I say, “No. Retail manager.” I sound like Captain Caveman.

When a woman asks what the bride’s name is, I take a long sip of my soda and admire another rabbit until I can take the next question.
Back at the hotel, my sense of accomplishment begins to fade. I confess to Jef that the entire exchange left me feeling deceptive.
“Yeah, no offense, but there’s no way I would’ve done what you did tonight,” he says.
“Well, you wouldn’t ever have to,” I snap. “If you and Lucy ever get married no one’s likely to fucking hate you for it.”
“Whoa. I don’t think anyone in there would’ve hated you, Topher.”
“Really? The gay marriage ban passed in Kansas with seventy percent of the vote. Seventy Fucking Percent. Statistically, a good number of those party guests don’t believe I have the right to get married. And no matter what moral code those nice people or Miss California or whoever wants to wrap that up in, it is still a kind of hate.”
“Then why didn’t you just change the subject?”
“Because I didn’t wanna be some fag shooting the shit about bunnies with bigots! I’ve never had the chance to just talk about the wedding and get marital advice from strangers, and I thought it would be nice to feel normal for once.”

"Well, was it nice?"

"No, Jef. I felt like a fraud."
It’s exhausting feeling like I have to be an activist every time I leave the house. I didn’t want to go to all the effort of selling them on the validity of my life with Preppy. And yet when I decided to remain silent, I ended up feeling like a sleazebag because I never gave them the chance to hear the truth. Maybe the reason a lot of Kansans voted against equality is because they hadn’t met and liked anyone who was personally affected by it. If I’d told them the reason we’re having a destination wedding is because we have to travel to someplace legal, it’s possible I could have changed someone’s mind.
The day I decided to live my life openly and honestly, I accepted the responsibility of defending it. Sometimes that means standing on the steps of the Capitol, and sometimes that means having the balls to speak up in a rabbit-filled Kansas living room. Next time, I will. My life is worth talking about.

It Was Never Just Me

2009-04-22T11:29:00.000-04:00

Following my week at home for Easter, I went back to Columbus, Georgia for a brush-up rehearsal before resuming our national tour of the play. Our next stop is glamorous Tulsa. Try to contain your jealousy.
With an evening free, I stopped by Fat Cat, which recently opened as the second gay bar in Columbus. I’m pleasantly surprised that this city can sustain two homo watering holes, although I’m not entirely convinced- I recognized most of the faces at Fat Cat as regulars from my visits to the other gay bar, leaving me to wonder who was over there now. Maybe there’s some sort of timeshare scenario worked out. I should investigate this further next time I’m in town.
“Heeey,” slurred a man at the end of the bar.
I chose to ignore him, and pretended to answer a text message. I was actually just reading the latest from Demi Moore on Twitter, but how was he to know?
“Heeeey! You! Red!”
I sometimes wonder how drunken strangers would address me if I dyed my hair dark brown. None of my brunette friends ever get “Brownie,” or “Walnut,” or what have you.
“I know you kin heeear meeee.”
“Yes,” I said. “I can hear you.”
“Firecrotch! Do people call you that? I bet people call you that.”

"No," I seethed. "No one has ever called me that."

A woman in a baseball cap and polo shirt settled on a stool between us. She squeezed my hand and flashed a warm smile.
“There you are! I’m sorry I was running late.”
This was unexpected. I wanted to tell her I had no idea who she is, but my memory isn’t that reliable. It was entirely possible I did know this Izod-clad lesbian, and that I made plans to meet her at the bar. My life’s a bit of a jumble these days.
“That’s Ricky,” she said, leaning in with a conspiratorial grin. “He goes after anybody who’s alone. You looked like you could use some help, dude.”
I have a weakness for lesbians who use the word “dude” in casual conversation. I believe they can handle any trouble if it arises, like a fight or an unexpected problem with my car.

In short, I feel safer with them around.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m…”
“I know who you are. You’re David Magazine, right? What’re you doing down here?”
She said it as though my actual name is David Magazine. Perhaps Dave, to friends. It’s not a bad name. Sounds vaguely French. She introduced herself as Cindy, which was just about the last name I would’ve given her. I think of Cindys as cheerleaders or Baptist youth group leaders. Not necessarily PBR-chugging roughneck girls in baseball caps. But it just goes to show you can’t judge nothin’ by a label. Cindy lived in Atlanta back when she was with, as she put it, “This bitch,” at which point she lowered her shirt collar to reveal the name ‘Allie’ tattooed in script on her shoulder. Allie had introduced her to my column.
“Dude,” she said. “You and I seriously have been through so much of the same shit. It’s crazy.”
I’ve had that moment more times than I can recall. I called my column “Maybe It’s Just Me” as a legitimate inquiry, wondering if anybody could relate to my daily frustrations, or if I just needed to be on some sort of medication. In the nearly four years that followed, I found that it’s that very uncertainty which unites us. It crosses all boundaries- gay, straight, male, female, and all points in between. It’s been very reassuring.
So this week, my column gets a new name. Part of it is a fun little bit of marketing synergy: Necessary Luxuries is the name of my book, CD, and YouTube vlog (please subscribe,) so it seemed like time to bring the column under the same banner.

But moreover, it’s because the initial question I had has been answered: It ain’t just me. It never was. Now I can focus on appreciating the little things in my life which truly define it- the necessary luxuries.

Necessary Luxuries: Stage Door

2009-04-20T04:35:00.001-04:00

From Hays, Kansas: Backstage at "Greater Tuna," responding to a Twitter review from a compulsive gambler. Also: The Will Rogers Inn in Oklahoma is officially zero for two in the service category, and Oprah might be slaughtering cows.

Necessary Luxuries: Whose Side Are You On?

2009-04-18T18:33:00.001-04:00

From Russellville, Arkansas: Possible nuclear disasters, a writing injury, surprising information about Super 8 Motels, and Dennis Hensley's new podcast leaves me torn between loyalties to strangers.

Hard Times

2009-04-14T11:25:00.000-04:00

I ran out of deodorant this morning, which is right up there with smoking my last cigarette: Taking care of that situation instantly moves to the top of my priority list. I’m home for a few days, and Preppy’s deodorant is right there in the medicine cabinet, but that simply won’t do. We use different brands. I associate that scent so closely with Preppy that if I use his, I spend all day distinctly aware that I smell wrong.
So it was off to the neighborhood pharmacy, where I discovered yet another symptom of the economic downward spiral: Remember when stores had four or five people working the floor during business hours? Alas, those were the days. Now, everywhere I go there seems to be a skeleton staff- usually one or two harried employees attempting to meet the needs of the masses. I try to be as patient as possible when I encounter this scenario, as my fiancé is responsible for staffing retail with limited hours and I hear the daily horror stories.
I see the only apparent employee in CVS attempting to help a customer at one of those photo retouching kiosks. As best I can tell, the customer has brought every family photo taken in the last thirty years. Seriously, the guy has a cardboard box filled with picture frames. I find it intriguing that he didn’t even bother to take the pictures out of the frames before making the trip over. What sort of retouching emergency would have someone frantically pulling photos off the walls and dashing out the door? I’m more than happy to busy myself with his imagined back story while I wait at the register. Besides, I’m just here for a stick of Degree, and as long as nobody stands too close to me it’s not much of an emergency.
The elderly woman behind me with a cart full of discounted Easter candy, however, apparently has places to be. Important places where a shitload of Cadbury eggs will be required.
“I need help!” she screams to no one in particular. I’m not certain if she’s referring to the current circumstances, or just bemoaning her life. Both seem valid. Between her leopard-print blouse, plaid pants, and bright pink scarf, at the very least she needs the help of a stylist. Then she lets out a mournful moan, which rouses the attention of the lone employee.
“It’ll be just a moment,” she says, returning to the man with the photos.
“Oh, come on!” says Candy Lady, shuffling her feet like she has to pee. Which could be the source of her anxiety.
“I think they’re short-staffed,” I say.
“Oh, you think so?” she says with an arched eyebrow. “This is foolishness. She needs to get over here and do her job.”
“She is doing her job. It’s not her fault. She’s just the only one scheduled to work.”
Candy Lady responds with a disgusted snort, similar to the sound my friend Lori’s Great Dane makes. A moment later, the beleaguered CVS girl does make her way to the counter, apologizing for the delay. I feel a bony finger poking my shoulder.
“Can I go in front of you?” says Candy Lady.
I look at my one item, and her cart full of sweets. Before I can respond, the cashier speaks up.
“You can wait, ma’am.”
Candy Lady looks comically stricken.
“I am doing the best I can, ma’am,” the cashier continues. “I will be with you after I help this gentleman.”
Right now, we are all doing the best we can. The audacity of hope we had in January has led to a grim realization that nothing is repaired overnight, and sometimes things do get much harder before they get any better. Maybe it’s just me, but lately that’s a lesson I’ve had to digest in more areas than just the economy. But the lesson remains the same: Be patient, and remember that nobody has the market cornered on hardship. We are stronger when we work together. If we show a little kindness and charity, we’ll make it through.

Necessary Luxuries: Jesus Chris, It's Easter!

2009-04-12T19:25:00.001-04:00

Happy Easter, everybody! Chris is risen!

Necessary Luxuries: Scratch and Sniffles

2009-04-09T19:53:00.001-04:00

Sad Paula, Happy Furniture.

Necessary Luxuries: Chasing the Right Dream

2009-04-08T19:26:00.001-04:00

American Idol, and fun with puppets.

How We Didn't Meet

2009-04-07T19:11:00.000-04:00

It’s the day of my performance in Mississippi, which has become a homecoming of sorts- my parents arrived with a group of nearly thirty people to see the play. All of these people brought food. My costar and I have agreed to put our fitness regimen on hold for the weekend, because of all the awesome fatty foodstuffs we’d miss out on otherwise.

There’s a reason Mississippi’s the fattest state in the country, and that reason is because lard-based cuisine is freakin’ delicious.
My fiancé Preppy’s parents are staying in a hotel across the street from my family’s mob, which is smart because the Paynes tend to get loud and raise the ire of innkeepers. I meet Preppy’s mama in the lobby .
“Daddy’s back is all bound up from the drive,” she says as we embrace. “But he’ll be fine for the show. I’m not giving him a choice. Come up and say hello.”
Preppy’s stuck in Atlanta this weekend, because the store he runs just started selling bras. It’s a much bigger deal than you can imagine. He’s been angling for those bras for months. There’s always money in boobs. To make up for his absence, I have been texting him with consistent updates since we crossed the state line.
We reach the door of a hotel room, and my future mother-in-law turns to me with a mischievous grin.
“I have a surprise for you.”
She opens the door. Revealing my fiancé. I burst into tears, which alarms him.
“I thought you’d be happy!” he says, holding me up.
“I am, I… muh huh huh… I thought you (sob)… bras… and I tried so (sniff)… pragmatic.”
“I know, darlin’. But both sets of parents? We’d never make you deal with that on your own.”
Then the bathroom door opens. My best girl Slutty Mandy enters, in a towel, appropriately enough.
“I had sex with the hottest rugby player last night, and I drove seven hours just to tell you about it.”
And now my life is complete.
An hour later, I’m ironing Preppy’s shirt for the show while describing the family members the assembled group will be meeting later.
“My Aunt Ellen is the only other actor in the family. She did plays in high school, always played the maid. One of my cousins told me she was in blackface, but she denies it.”
“Mississippi in the fifties,” says Mandy. “Seems entirely plausible.”
“And my Aunt Grace, she’s married to my Uncle Big Bub.”
“Father of Little Bub,” Tommy clarifies for his mother, who’s new to all this. “Big Bub’s real name is Roger. They used to live in Vicksburg, you and Dad might have known them. Roger and Grace Patterson?”
Preppy’s mama’s face goes gray. She stands, turns toward the door, then turns back.
“Mom,” says Preppy. “What’s wrong?”
“Roger and Grace Patterson are your aunt and uncle?”
“Oh God,” I say. “Did Uncle Big Bub sue you? He likes to sue people. My family has weird hobbies.”
“No, no… They were divorced at one time, yes?”
I nod. It was back in the early nineties. She got a little house, which I was allowed to visit once. She made Frito Pie, which I think proves she was keeping herself together pretty well. People in total crisis don’t make Frito Pie. They go to Sonic or something. In the family we refer to this entire episode as “Aunt Grace’s Vacation.” But I’m digressing, and there’s a panicked mother-in-law standing before us stammering.
“Son, you remember when your Daddy and I were separated for a bit. I dated that nice man who had the pool and the catfish pond… That was… Topher’s uncle.”
Our happiness is so ridiculously dependent upon timing. Had that brief courtship not ended with Preppy’s parents reconciling and my aunt and uncle remarrying, things could have been quite different. My future husband would instead be my cousin. If that ain’t the most perfect damn Mississippi story ever told, I cannot imagine what is. And had Preppy not decided to forsake his bras and join me at my side, we could have missed out on what is certain to become our favorite story of how we didn’t meet.

Necessary Luxuries : No Go HoJo

2009-04-07T13:12:00.001-04:00

From a Howard Johnson's in Knoxville that is certain to haunt my dreams.

Necessary Luxuries: High Fashion and Hidden Holes

2009-04-07T13:11:00.003-04:00

Day two in Ohio.

Necessary Luxuries: You Think You Know a Person...

2009-04-07T13:11:00.001-04:00

Entering that 21st Century everyone's been talking about, with the launch of my video blog.

Where the Heart Is

2009-03-25T13:22:00.000-04:00

It’s a travel day, which means we hop on the tour bus at dawn and drive ‘til sunset, stopping for meals and smoke breaks along the way. I’ve downloaded the audio book of Jane Fonda’s autobiography, which is a curiously intimate experience. I feel like I’m taking a road trip with Barbarella, and she’s regaling me with stories for seven hours. By the time we get to Atlantic City, I’ll know her better than most of my friends.
Jane’s right in the middle of a fascinating story about when Greta Garbo told her to become an actress (Garbo was naked at the time. Seriously, read this book) when we stop in a random South Carolina town for lunch at Subway. Most of our meals are at Subway now, because my costar and I are trying to get skinny, so audiences will find us funnier. It’s a proven fact that audiences prefer their quick-change comedies performed by people with flat stomachs. It’s in a book somewhere. Look it up.
Our sound guy Max had been snoozing on the bus, and when he emerges he takes a moment to survey his surroundings. It’s disorienting, falling asleep and waking up in different cities all the time.
“Holy shit,” he says at last. “My family lives here.”
Our company is made up of theatre gypsies who’ve spent their adult lives chasing work from city to city, so it’s fairly common for at least one of us to have a story about whatever locale we pass through. I suggest Max call up his people so we can see who managed to create our bizarre sound man, but he shoots the idea down. He hasn’t been home in seven years. His mother’s no longer alive, and a twenty-minute reunion with his father over five-dollar footlongs wouldn’t really work out so well.
Max is silent over lunch, which is unusual for anyone in this group. I choose to let him keep his own counsel. When we stopped at a mall food court in Gainesville, Florida, I was overwhelmed by memories of the last place I called home before Atlanta. I was nineteen, and dating a U of F student whom I adored in that all-consuming way you can only really pull off the first time you’re in love. He was also the first boy to rip my heart out and pulverize it. Every inch of Gainesville served as a reminder of that wound. I didn’t eat lunch that day. Instead, I sat outside the mall and smoked, which only made it worse because I was beside the movie theater where we saw The Phantom Menace on our first date. A shared hatred of Jar Jar Binks became the foundation of our relationship. But that's a story for another time.
It’s a disquieting discovery I’ve made on this tour of America: When you leave a place, no matter how much time elapses or how thoroughly you think you’ve changed, part of your heart stays frozen in that precise moment in time. If you ever come back, that little piece thaws, and it feels as though minutes have passed instead of years.
This weekend, we journey to my home state of Mississippi. It’ll be the first time I’ve performed there in over a decade. When I left, I was doing children’s plays for a hundred kids or so. I return on the national tour of a two-man show, performing in a thousand-seat opera house. I’d say it’s a dream come true, but I honestly never considered the possibility of something like this ever happening. My entire family will be in attendance, plus folks from my hometown, and my fiancé Preppy’s parents. Preppy himself will be stuck working in Atlanta, which I’d seen as kind of a bummer, but now that the day is upon me I realize his absence actually scares the shit out of me. When I’m confronted with that much of my history all at once, I need an anchor to remind me I’m not an anxious adolescent anymore.
But the reason Preppy can’t be there is because he’s at home, maintaining our life, and I’m latching on to that. I’ll deal with the little piece of my heart which defrosts when I return, secure that Preppy’s absence is a reminder of where the rest of my heart lies. My talkative new friend Jane Fonda says with each passing year we become ourselves just a little more. I like that notion. The version of me approaching thirty has plenty to offer the place an optimistic eighteen year-old left behind.

Man In Motion

2009-03-25T13:17:00.002-04:00

My bed in the Greenville, Alabama Jameson Inn is freakin’ huge. You could throw some ropes up and hold an exhibition wrestling match in here, like those gay wrestlers used to do in Suburban Plaza.

I’m lounging on a pile of pillows, engaging in my nightly ritual of loading up my I-pod with music and podcasts for the drive to our next tour stop. I’ve been working my way through the NPR catalog of podcasts. Also, as we drive, I’ve taken to writing down the names of songs I haven’t heard in a while and downloading them when I get to the hotel. That’s pretty much the extent of my life right now. Two hours of performance, followed by eight hours at hotel, and the rest is driving.
Not that I’m complaining. It totally has its upsides. I’ve listened to so much NPR on these daylong drives that I’m now better-informed than at any previous point in my life. I’ve got an amazing handle on this whole financial bailout thing. Plus, after listening to him talk for up to ten hours at a time, I think I have a crush on This American Life host Ira Glass. I already had a crush on Atlanta public radio personality John Lemley, so now I feel like I’m cheating on him with Ira. Sorry, John.
I’m also hearing songs I haven’t even thought of in years. Like “Walk the Dinosaur,” and the theme song from St. Elmo’s Fire, which took a minute to find because to my surprise it isn’t called “St. Elmo’s Fire.” It’s titled “Man in Motion,” and I’ve listened to it so many times I’m pretty sure it qualifies as my theme song. I totally love it, and am convinced that I too can be where the eagle’s flyin’, higher and higher. All I need’s a pair of wheels.
My co-star Jef and I have begun to notice the result of lengthy bouts of inactivity followed by trips to Wendy’s and Burger King. Zippers on our costumes began to catch. Pants which once fastened without resistance started to put up a fight.

Three meals a day from the dollar menus are officially taking a toll.
“Jef,” I say at last one night in an Arkansas Days Inn. “Have you seen Super Size Me?”
“I know where you’re going with this.”
“Where I’m apparently going is to the Big and Tall shop, and I’d really like to avoid that. I refuse to get fat. I can’t afford a new wardrobe.”
“I’m game for a boot camp if you are,” he says, and an idea begins to form in my mind.
Several years ago, I hired a personal trainer named Drew, who managed to get me in the best shape of my life. This was despite my resistance at every possible turn.

With my newfound biceps and less expansive ass, I managed to trap myself the man I now intend to marry. And I never touched a free weight again.

Until now.
Apparently personal “training” turned out to live up to its name, because I still remember everything that buff bastard taught me. I’d just blocked it out, like a childhood trauma or a the details of a car accident. And that information’s been lying in wait, knowing eventually I’d come waddling back, and do those damn lunges again.
I wrote out routines for upper and lower-body workouts. Weights were purchased, and early-morning plans were set. And against my own body’s protests, I was back in motion. But this time, my cohort is a man who’s sobbing right alongside me, missing cheese. I think it also helps that this time, I’m kinda in charge, which I really dig, because I like to be in charge of things. I’m never happy as a student for very long. The responsibility of setting a good example is the number one thing getting me out of bed.
If we keep this up, and maintain our united front insisting on Subway for lunch and dinner, when I return home this June I’ll be in great shape for whatever the hell I’m doing after this tour ends. Which is probably the next thing I should tackle- come summer I’m gonna need something else to do for money.

I’ll think about that while I do crunches. As long as I keep moving, something good’s bound to happen.

Screen Test

2009-03-18T13:13:00.002-04:00

It’s our night off in Kansas City, and the company’s having dinner while making plans for the evening out. I’ve missed two episodes of Lost, and I have a pile of candy bars and cigarettes, so I’ll be staying put at The Comfort Inn.
“I need to quit hitting the titty bars,” says Max the sound guy. “I blow through all my cash, and for what? Overpriced drinks and tossing singles at some high school dropout with silicone fun bags.”
“You should use my time-tested gay bar rule,” I say. “Whenever a night at the bar seems like a good idea, take ten minutes and go whack off. If it still seems like a good idea, then head on over. But usually afterward you’ll just wanna watch Food Network. Or whatever straight people watch. A sport of some kind, I’m guessing.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” says Max.
“Never go to a bar when you’re horny. It’s like going to the grocery store hungry. You’ll just end up bringing a bunch of crap home you don’t really need.”
Meanwhile, Randall found a dollar movie theatre, and is trying to rustle up a group to see Madea Goes to Jail. As intriguing as seeing Rudy Huxtable turning tricks in Old Fourth Ward might be, none of us are willing to pay actual money for the chance.
“That’s really interesting,” I say to Randall. “I knew you were a black guy, but I didn’t know you were… you know… THAT kind of black guy.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Oh, nothing. Nothing. I’m pretty sure I’m not allowed to observe this without getting hurt.”
“What kind of black guy, Topher?”
“Just, where seeing a movie with an all-black cast supersedes your need for actual artistic merit.”
“Oh, no, Topher,” says Max, intervening. “White people aren’t allowed to talk about Tyler Perry movies.”
“No, it’s okay,” says Randall. “I admit it. The Medea movies aren’t that good. But usually in a movie, if there’s some supporting black cast member, the whole point of the character is their blackness, and what the white people think about their blackness. I know this may shock you, but I sometimes go an entire day without having a conversation about being black. In the Tyler Perry movies, everybody’s black, so then they get to talk about other things. Don’t you see shitty gay movies for the same reason?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie about gay people where the entire film wasn’t about them being gay,” I joke. And then I realize I’m not joking at all.
It’s one of the sad truisms of gay life. For some reason, despite being known as the standard-bearers of art and culture, we can sure make a lot of bad movies about our own lives. I’m not entirely certain why this is. After My Best Friend’s Wedding, I remember Rupert Everett trying to develop an action movie where he’d play a gay James Bond type. It’d be just like a James Bond movie, except he’d be bedding twinks instead of Ursula Andress. It’s a shame that never happened. I’d see that. Brokeback Mountain was an excellent movie about gay love, written by a woman, directed by a straight guy, starring two straight guys. I had high hopes for Not Another Gay Movie- give us our own American Pie franchise! But come on. Admit it. That movie was horrible, and the sequel somehow managed to be worse. I’ve heard more genuine laughs in a cancer ward.
And yet, I saw it. Just like Randall sees the Tyler Perry movies. Because it is nice to see some reflection of yourself on the big screen, no matter how skewed or poorly executed it might be. But when you do exist as part of a subculture, does it really help when you consistently show you’re willing to feast on scraps?
So I’m adapting my gay bar rule. The next time my local multiplex showcases the current “gay movie,” I’m going to gather a group of my friends together and hang out at my house. If after a few hours of enjoying the sparkling conversations and zingers I still want to see the movie, then I’ll buy my ticket. It’s always good to have a screening process to consider what’s motivating the choice.

I have a feeling I’ll save a lot of money that way.

Stuff I Learned When I Almost Died

2009-03-04T13:09:00.002-05:00

I got an e-mail this morning from a regular reader of my column- I can’t use the phrase “fan mail” because those are letters dedicated to flattery and asking for photographs. I worked at “Party of Five” star Mitchell Anderson’s restaurant for a number of years. That man gets real fan mail. I get critiques of my columnist photo and occasional requests for information on home repairs.

But this letter was different. The reader had recently been diagnosed with cancer, and as I’d written a little about it in the past, she was requesting a few pointers from my experience. She included her phone number, so I just gave her a call.
When asked why I’ve never written in detail about my experience with B-Cell Lymphoma, my stock answer is that I’m saving it for my one-man show. It’s my clever slight-of-hand which keeps me from having to discuss it. As I’ve said before, I firmly believe there are some challenges in life which we need not revisit. Just extract what lessons you can and get on with things. Maybe that’s unhealthy, but unlike a physical disease, one’s methods for maintaining emotional well-being really can’t be questioned. Whatever you’ve found keeps your shit in one sneaker is what works for you. Rosie O’Donnell likes to hang upside down. If it makes her less Rosie hosting “The View” and more Rosie hosting The Tony Awards, let the woman pretend she’s a vampire bat for an hour or two.
That’s why I hated my few attempts at therapy. You sit in a dimly-lit room with a stranger and talk about all the horrible moments from your life. How awful. Just put on a pot of coffee and a Pixar movie, and I’ll be right as rain in no time. As for all the traumatic crap, I’m a fan of good old-fashioned Southern suppression.

But then a moment like this comes up, and I’m on the phone with a stranger, navigating the land mines of my own history.
So okay. I’ve told you about my life for four years. We’re friends now. So here’s the two big things I learned from the period when I was trying really hard not to die.
Thing one: I insisted in my first course of treatment that I face it on my own. I went to chemo by myself, met with doctors by myself, the whole shebang. This was because I needed to know I was strong enough to fight on my own power. I know now that doing this caused a fracture of truse in my relationship with my family that took years to repair. The effect it had on my boyfriend at the time was never repaired. Asking for help is not a sign of weakness. It is smart, strong, and brave. When you’re in for the fight of your life, utilizing every resource you have means utilizing the people around you. It’s tough for them too, and during times that you’re doped up and delirious, you get to have a little break. They don’t.

Nobody gives them anything to take the pain away.
Thing two: People who survive chronic illnesses are not “survivors.” They are Veterans. They have been to battle, fought like hell, and all they want is to get back to the life they were fighting for. Don’t treat them like a sick person. No one is ever “dying.” You are alive until the moment you aren’t anymore. So don’t make the weepy “You’re dying” face when you see them. They hate that.
The expression, “You were spared for a reason,” implies others are DEAD for a reason. Granted, I’m not in charge here, but I find it hard to believe that people with children, houseplants, partners, and a lot to offer the world are getting snuffed out for a reason. Living through an illness simply gives you an appreciation for the unpredictable length of life. No one can predict how long they’ve got, so just marvel at how extraordinary RIGHT NOW is. And if in that moment of now, you find you’re not happy with what you see, get busy changing it. Because yesterday and tomorrow are both completely beyond your control.
That’s what I learned. Use it as you see fit.

Fun and Games

2009-02-25T00:16:00.002-05:00

It all started with Word Challenge. My fiancé Preppy found a Facebook application that’s sort of like what would happen if Boggle and Scrabble had a baby, and within a week it was consuming every free moment. He was delighted. I’d sit by him on the sofa and help him find words, but spend half that time arguing with it about words it refused to recognize. Despite what that know-nothing Word Challenge will tell you, “indices” is a word. I looked it up to prove my point. But it’s a hollow victory when one manages to outsmart something that isn’t actually, you know, ALIVE.
Anyhoo, eventually I signed myself up for Word Challenge, and my sister Shannon quickly followed suit. That’s when things turned ugly. My sister is a college graduate who spends all day feeding her insatiably hungry newborn. She beat Preppy’s and my high scores within two days. This roused the competitor in me. Emerging as the Word Challenge champion became an obsession. We would have hour-long conversations about strategy.
Not coincidentally, around this time my fiancé lost all interest in the game. Apparently my sister and I had raised the stakes beyond his ability to enjoy it. We have a tendency to do this in my family. My mother’s mother, Memama, would play remarkably contentious Scrabble games with my Uncle Paul. The games would last entire afternoons, and none of us would be allowed in the room while the death match was being held. So we’d sit by the door and listen, since the language was much more colorful than anything on TV.
“God…Dammit, Shirley! That is NOT a goddamn word.”
“Go ahead and look it up, Paul, if you’re willing to risk the points. You were wrong about ‘striven,’ but maybe you’ll be right about this one.”
“God…DAMMIT, Shirley!”
Then we’d hear her delighted little chuckle.
“Alright, so that’s a triple-word score…”
Memama was a teensy slip of a woman from Arkansas without much education, up against the 300-pound Shell Oil executive who’d married her daughter. In any other scenario imaginable, he’d have the obvious upper hand. But Memama had one hell of a vocabulary, and on the battlefield of Scrabble, she was a formidable opponent who could knock your highfalutin’ ass down a few pegs, ‘til she could look you in the eye.
She taught her grandkids that simply by sharpening a few well-chosen skills, you could take down any opponent. The trick was always making sure you were playing your game, not theirs. It was a life lesson that served us all very well.
Leaving my sister and I to battle it out over Word Challenge, Preppy moved on to a new Facebook game called Pet Society. It’s a benign little enterprise where you create a big-eyed cartoon animal which you can play Frisbee with and dress in little outfits. You can also earn coins to purchase home furnishings for your pet by visiting strangers and washing or feeding their animals. Once my Shannon and I discovered this, the game was once again on.
“I’ve neglected my own children all morning while I sat online bathing strangers and feeding them pineapples,” says Shannon on the phone. “But I got four hundred coins and bought a chandelier!”
“Preppy says we’re ruining another game,” I say, brushing a random rabbit and stocking up on coins.
“He’s just saying that because we’re winning. If you’re that worried, buy him a present.”
So, sitting in my hotel room hundreds of miles away from my man, I send my pet over to his pet’s house. Preppy was a few beers in when he created his animal and accidentally misspelled its name, which apparently one cannot change, so he’s stuck with a cat named “Butterscotche.” I spend the coins I was saving for a new sofa and buy a bunch of presents for Butterscotche. This may all sound insane to the uninitiated, but it’s a significant choice in Pet Society: I’m not winning anymore.
But the next time he opens the game, instead of seeing how high I’ve managed to push my score, he’ll find a room full of gift boxes. It’s not the same as me being home with him, but it’ll do, and it’s another good life lesson for me. Sometimes, when you lose, you win.

I Can See Clearly Now

2009-02-18T00:08:00.000-05:00

For the last two years, my fiancé Preppy and I have had a little game. Okay, he might call it something different, but to me it was a little game. Whenever we went to a restaurant, I would ask him to read the words on signs or television screens across the room. He’d crane his neck and squint his eyes, straining to make out the words.

It was like Morgan Freeman looking for that tombstone in “Driving Miss Daisy.”
“Try… a… marshmallow?”
“It says margarita, baby. Try a margarita. Why would the bar be selling marshmallows?”
“It could happen. Could be the name of a shot. I’d try it.”
“Don’t try to distract me. What’s the word below margarita?”
His frustration is mounting, but I have a point to make here.
“…mojito.”
“That was a lucky guess based on context clues. Being defiant will not make you any less blind.”
He knows this. All of his friends know this, as do his co-workers. Yet, he resists. I know my random eye tests in public places are straining his patience more than his eyes, but I’ve only got a few days left at home before I leave for four months. So I have to nag him as much as possible. Because while his determination and denial have reached Hillary Clinton levels, this man I love who cannot read the names of drinks on a chalkboard is driving a car. I find this alarming, and I know I will spend the next four months waiting for a late-night phone call announcing some horrible accident. I can picture the scene quite clearly. It involves police tape and Preppy on a stretcher, weakly calling my name. I can be really detailed in my nightmares. My mind always goes to the worst-case scenario first, because it makes the trip back to reality so reassuring.
Preppy says the situation is not nearly as dire as I claim, that he’s learned to cope with it. My argument is always that we’re not talking about a mysterious condition here. He doesn’t have whatever that sleepy disease was that Cher had; he just needs to get glasses.
I admit I’m being judgmental and shrewish over this whole thing. It might as well be Lynette’s B-plot on an episode of Desperate Housewives. I don’t doubt that Preppy has learned to live life like Mr. Magoo, and to him it likely all seems quite manageable. The truth is, we’ve all got something like this in their lives- an element of our existence that has been declining in quality or payoff, but we hold onto it, adjust, try to make do.
My pal Mel lost a whole bunch of weight. No, seriously, you could have built two Jonas brothers out of the weight she lost. The newly skinny Mel met a new guy who simply was not a good match. They struggled, and tried, and wrote down goals to improve their relationship. Still, they resisted the breakup long after the relationship’s natural expiration date. Part of that was because he was the first guy she’d seriously dated since she became the new her. But staying with him was preventing her from becoming the NEW new her, which was even better. Eventually she had the little light bulb moment, and did the necessary repairs on her life.
We don’t lower our standards because we’re incapable of fixing the problem, and it isn’t because we can’t see what’s deteriorating. It’s because doing the repairs requires acknowledging that something’s not working anymore. Whether it’s the wrong job, a bad relationship, an unflattering hair color, or failing eyesight, it’s just easier to lower standards than it is to cowboy up and admit things have gotta get better.
Without any warning, Preppy came home from work last night sporting brand-new spectacles. They make him look smart, and even preppier, so I’m a fan. I’m proud of him for taking care of the problem, and I choose to believe my nagging had something to do with it.
“So, is it amazing?” I ask. “All the details you’ve been missing?”
From across the room, he smiles and studies me closely.
“You really need to touch up your roots. And when’s the last time we vacuumed in here?”
Okay. I had it coming.

Travel Wear

2009-02-11T00:04:00.000-05:00

The challenge: Packing clothing appropriate for New Jersey in winter, Ohio and Colorado in spring, then California in early summer. Make sure it all travels well, won’t wrinkle much, and doesn’t require washing after one wear. Oh, and it’s gonna need to fit in one suitcase. And they all need to be components that’ll make cute outfits.

That last edict is a self-imposed regulation, but should be considered just as important.
I’m the sort of person who brings three changes of clothes for one night of dogsitting for friends in Smyrna, on account of you just never know what the night will bring. An unexpected spill, temperature change, or dinner invite would require a wardrobe adjustment, and I wanna be prepared. For the last few weeks, I’ve been working at the Center for Puppetry Arts a few hours a day, helping seat groups of school children for matinee shows. I have come to love my morning ritual of standing in front of the armoire in my underpants with a cup of coffee in hand, deciding what to wear that day. It’s a process that requires at least half an hour of failed combos, but when I find it, it’s such a happy moment.
Somehow I have to figure out how to condense that experience into one suitcase for the next four months, while I’m back on the road with the tour of my play. And it’s not going well. I read somewhere that Albert Einstein had a wardrobe of nothing but white Oxford shirts and khakis, so he never had to waste thought on what he was going to wear on any given occasion. I have no idea if that’s true- 90% of my knowledge base is from Wikipedia and Access Hollywood- but there’s logic to the notion. I could just wear variations on the same ensemble from city to city, and the only people who’d be any the wiser would be my co-workers. It’d be fitting, since I wear the same costumes every night and all the hotel rooms eventually start to look alike.

It’d be like one day on continuous loop, which for some reason sounds like the most depressing thing I can possibly imagine.
I think that’s why I’m placing such importance on the contents of this suitcase: It’s the one tie to home I’ll have as I go from city to city. Every sweater, every t-shirt, every pair of socks has a different memory attached to it, and I crave that connection with my home life. As the clock winds down on my month-long break, I keep questioning whether I spent my time properly. I meant to put crown molding up in the bedroom, visit my sister, finish my play… most important, I’d planned on filling the last thirty days with beautiful, romantic memories with my fiancé to reflect upon while I’m gone, which could get us through the harder nights in the months ahead. But I don’t know if I pulled that off. Most of the time, we were just back in our old routine- forgetting to take out the trash, eating pizza and watching Lost, complaining about work. Granted, those are exactly the things I’ll miss, but I wish I’d done something bigger.
So I take out the trash.
While I’m outside, I note the tulip bed by the front door, planted by the previous owner. She had talked us through how to cut them down and prep the soil every winter, so they’d return healthy and happy later. We didn’t do that. Leaves and trash piled up, giving the impression that we’re greeting visitors with our compost heap. I consider this for a moment, then go inside and Google “Tulips.” Quick as a flash, I’m outside again in my grubbies with a rake, shovel, and trowel. For the next two hours, I rebuild the flower bed, and uncover the little eager sprouts under the mulch.
In a few months, while I’m a thousand miles away, my fiancé will come home and (hopefully) find tulips in full bloom. It’ll be like I gave him flowers. Speaking as someone who struggles with being romantic, I’m pretty proud of the notion. Plus, it’s somehow fitting that when I finally figure out a grand gesture, I won’t be here to see it. But you’ve got to switch your thinking and your methods while you’re away from your own life. That concept should probably apply to my wardrobe as well. So I go back inside with renewed determination to tackle that suitcase. I don’t really need twelve sweaters.

Maybe nine, at most.

Pretty as a Picture

2009-02-04T23:59:00.000-05:00

My sister Shannon and her husband are now the proud parents of another son, named Wyatt. His father likes that their newest addition shares a name with legendary gunslinger Wyatt Earp. This doesn’t impress me all that much, so I’m pretending his namesake was actress Jane Wyatt, who played Spock’s mother on “Star Trek.” I concede that’s kinda reaching, but it makes for fun trivia.
Wyatt was adopted from the same woman who gave birth to my sister’s first child, Jack. She didn’t let them know she was pregnant again until her second trimester, so the prep time for Jack’s little brother was disconcertingly brief. But what a bonus that they got another kid from the same source, ya know?

It’s like finding out they made a sequel to your favorite movie.
“I need your help,” says my sister Shannon on the phone. “I’ve got pictures from the day Wyatt was born, and I don’t have a stitch of makeup on. Can we take a trip to Photoshop Land?”
Disney World be damned, Photoshop Land is the real happiest place on Earth. It’s the magical world of meticulously clone-stamped perfection where Faith Hill has arms the size of wrapping paper tubes and Mariah Carey looks like an oil painting. If the camera adds ten pounds, Photoshop removes fifteen. In my house, no photograph is made available for public viewing without first taking a trip through the happiest place on Earth. And now my friends know that if they tag a picture on Facebook without running it past me first, I’m gonna be pissed. Usually I’ll just swipe it from their page, make the necessary changes, and e-mail them the new version.
It’s not ENTIRELY driven by vanity. That’s only part of the rich tapestry of neuroses involved here. I see digital manipulation as no different from editing stories when you’re in mixed company. My fiancé’s friends know I would rather set myself on fire than hear stories about his ex-boyfriends, so when they reminisce in my presence, they’re kind enough to edit out any references to who he might have been dating at the time. Then I get to enjoy my carefully-constructed illusion that he spent the first twenty-six years of his life patiently waiting for me. Despite my insatiable curiosity in many other areas, I have very little interest in people sharing uncomfortable moments from their pasts, especially if the story will make me uncomfortable too. That sounds just awful. Who would want that? So I edit, and expect others to do so as well, as a courtesy. Just extract the lessons and drop the stories.

My entire family does this.
Over time, photos become the inarguable link to our histories- a trip down memory lane that gives newcomers a sense of our personal journeys. I hate that. When I look back at pictures from my birthday in 2005, there’s the ex who turned out to be such a dick. There’s that zit which of course popped up in the middle of my forehead that morning. There’s George with the red wine stain on his shirt. Well, not anymore. Photoshop Land creates an alternate reality where my skin and George’s shirt remained flawless, and that ex is replaced by a carefully-positioned potted palm tree. I don’t have to destroy the pictures, as previous generations of my family have done. Our family albums indicate which eras are open to discussion. If there are no pictures from 1967, it’s best not to ask why. But now, the visuals can match the edited stories. Empty beer bottles and overflowing ashtrays? Click. Drug paraphernalia? Click. Regrettable relationships? Click.

This software is the greatest technological advancement ever, with the possible exception of the Sham-Wow.
This has actually made me less self-conscious about pictures. It used to be impossible to get me to open my mouth in a photo, because I hate my teeth. Now I smile like I’m in a Crest commercial and let the airbrush deal with it.
As time goes by, my nephews will become curious about their own family background, and when they look at photo albums they’ll see the world as we choose to remember it. They might not remember their mother putting on full makeup every Christmas morning, but there’s the proof in the picture. If they ask why we look so horrible by comparison when viewed in person, I will tell them not to question it. It’s best to just enjoy the moment, and we’ll review the photos later.

Side Effects May Include...

2009-01-28T23:54:00.000-05:00

My fiancé Preppy had a friend in from out of town, so a group of us headed out to a pub to toast her visit. The liquor we managed to stockpile at our recent engagement “stock the bar” party has kept the two of us close to home of late, so being out in the world was a lovely change of pace.
“Gimme your shot glasses,” our friend Janet instructed after we’d all done a round. She pulled a bottle of Jagermeister from her purse, and passed overflowing shots to the table.

I can’t do that anymore.

At some point in my mid-twenties my reaction to shots of that sticky sweet evil licorice liquor abruptly changed. It went from being a guaranteed night of delighted debauchery to a guaranteed night of blubbering and hugging the toilet. But I’ve made my peace with it- I had fun while it lasted, at least according to the vague, fuzzy memories I have of those nights.
But everybody else was doing it. So, okay, one shot. Or four. Preppy reminded me that I haven’t drank much since I started taking meds for my ADD, and I should be careful. I dismissed this. I felt fine.
Time and experience eventually reveals what kind of drunk you are. I am not a mean drunk, for which I am grateful. I am a sappy, silly, chatty drunk, which is fairly benign by comparison. As long as I’ve got a ride home, it’s not a big deal. But sitting in the pub that night, I was feeling neither sappy nor silly. I was feeling concerned.

I was becoming increasingly certain that Janet wanted to sleep with my fiancé.
As I watched the two of them laughing and hugging, I wondered how I’d never seen this before. My guard must’ve been down because she was a girl. But just because he’s not attracted to females doesn’t mean a female wouldn’t make a move. I realized, sitting there fuming, that I must be able to spot the warning signs now thanks to the magic pills. I couldn’t focus on these little details before, because of all the bright, shiny objects distracting me. Fuming, I did another shot and considered what else I might have been missing.
Preppy works retail, and has to do a lot of overnights at his job. But what if... WHAT IF… All those times he said he was doing overnights he actually had this whole other life I didn’t know about? What if while I’m on the road he’s living it up, having a blast? And here I’ve been looking like an idiot, feeling awful because I thought he was working so hard?

I decided not to say anything, to keep my own counsel here because I’m so much more perceptive than I ever was before. I could talk to my sister about it, except… I realized when I call her for advice, she’s secretly mocking me. Sitting at home with her little perfect family, her little perfect life, making fun of her faggy brother and all his faggy problems. I thought I had this amazing support system, but the more mulled it over, I realized I was totally alone in this world.

Why had I never seen this before?
At this point, I’ll go ahead and note that the most common side effects of mixing my new drug with excessive alcohol consumption are paranoia, anxiety, and psychotic episodes. But I did not consider that at the time. Nor did I think about it in the three hours that followed, after we’d returned home. I was enraged. I revealed everything I’d figured out to my very confused fiancé. I knew I sounded insane, and he certainly reinforced that point. He suggested this might be a drug/alcohol thing, but I dismissed it, because everything I was saying made so much sense in my head. I felt it so deeply. It had to be true. When I was too tired to scream anymore, I fell asleep.
The next morning, I remembered every word I’d said. I. Was. Mortified. I called my aunt, a doctor.
“I had the strangest experience last night,” I said. “We went out and had a lot to drink…”
“Oh no,” she said. “You shouldn’t do that on your meds. Did you go crazy?”
It’s an odd feeling, knowing I’ve surrendered my brain to a drug. In the last few weeks I’ve experienced so many of the intended results; it stands to reason that I’d also experience the worst-case scenario side effects. I never believed that would happen to me. I thought I would have more control, and be able to spot trouble before it hit. Never mind that the whole reason I started taking the drug was because I thought I was maintaining a level of control I didn’t actually have.
A major step in improving yourself is establishing boundaries. That night I learned a very clear one for me is when the bottle of Jager comes out of a purse. But beyond that, the harder lesson that has nothing to do with the medicine or the booze is that sometimes the people who love you can see you more clearly than you see yourself, and you have to learn to trust that.

They don’t make a pill for that one.

Interview with Topher

2009-01-23T13:01:00.001-05:00

A little off topic from the usual posts- An interview from darynkagan.com (great website, you should go see.)

Earning My Keep

2009-01-21T12:02:00.000-05:00

“I came up with a great way to make some extra cash before I go back on tour,” I tell my sister Shannon on the phone. “You know how I had to study massage techniques back when I was in school?”
“No, I did not know that. You went to art school. Why on earth would you study massage?”
“Dance classes, movement classes, we had to learn massage. It was educational.”
“Your school was so fucked up.”
“Will you please listen to my idea? Preppy went to massage school, years ago. He’s still got the table and all the supplies up in the attic. I could be a traveling massage therapist! Spend my day going to houses, helping folks release their tension.”
“Topher. You have to be accredited to do massage therapy. Even on Craig’s List you gotta put your license information in the ad.”
“That’s only if you’re claiming to be a certified therapist. I think they call it something else if you’re not certified.”
“Yes. Prostitution.”
“Well… crap. Okay, then I don’t have any ideas. It’s a shame, too. I think I’d be really good at helping folks get rid of tension, even if it is illegally. I have large hands.”
“And you’re creative enough to be a good drug mule, but I wouldn’t recommend that either. I know times are tough, baby bro, but let’s stay inside the law here.”
I’m home for another month before the play I’m in goes back on the road. I’m enjoying being back, but the delight is dampened by the fact that I’m earning virtually no money while I’m here. I’ve managed to pick up some odd jobs here and there, but these are harsh economic times. I’m competing against people who have things I don’t, like education and experience.

I always meant to get those.
So I’m at home with plenty of time to write, which is fun but not a quick way to earn cash. I also have my schedule clear to closely observe the effects of the medication I’m now taking for Attention Deficit Disorder. And lemme tell ya, that’s been an adventure. Three days ago I decided to clean the bathroom, which I never do, and I noticed how dingy our grout is. After scrubbing the floor with pure bleach for twenty minutes, it was still a yellowish-gray. Puce, maybe? I forget what color puce is, but I think it was puce. Undeterred, I found a white paint pen, and for the next four hours, I repainted every line of grout on the bathroom floor. It looks fantastic in there now. I mean, that floor sparkles like it’s in a Pine-Sol commercial. I can’t decide if I was admirably thorough, or dangerously unhinged.

I suppose it’s possible to be both.
The next day, I accidentally left the back door open, and a squirrel got loose in the house. Let me repeat that: There was a goddamn SQUIRREL in my house. Thing one, those bastards look three times bigger when they’re not outside. Thing two, even though it was the squirrel’s choice to enter my house and it could have easily left the way it entered, it began to freak out run amok in my very clean kitchen. While I was profoundly disturbed by the event, I still was able to formulate a plan for its departure by building a maze out of Christmas decoration boxes and suitcases, then shooing it out the door with a broom. I was impressed with my own level-headedness. I think my little orange pill might be working.
Another benefit is that I’m rarely hungry on the drug. I feel this is me contributing to our financial state, since now it costs much less to feed me. And thanks to a recent engagement party where the theme was “Stock the Bar,” Preppy and I have enough vodka from our friends to last us the entire Obama administration, including if he’s re-elected in 2012.
So I am doing my part, as best I can. Granted, it’ll be better if I can figure out a revenue-generating enterprise soon. But in the meantime, I keep the grout clean and the house rid of squirrels, don’t eat much, and try to be ready with a cocktail whenever my breadwinning fiancé comes home.

If I can’t help strangers alleviate their tension, I can still try to reduce his.

On a Very Special Supernanny...

2009-01-14T11:52:00.000-05:00

My fiancé Preppy will tell you it’s no cakewalk trying to live with a writer. Every moment of our shared life holds the threat of becoming art. Preppy has endured the surreal experience of watching actors reenact our arguments for paying audiences. He has discovered his supervisors at work read about his sex life in a weekly magazine. He has sat smiling at book signings as I demonstrate what his snoring sounds like.
Dating a writer ain’t for sissies.
In my defense, he was warned. Early in our relationship, I gave him a binder containing all of my columns, with the explicit understanding that he’d be signing up for a life of full disclosure, told from the perspective of a crazy person who would always cast himself in the role of the hero. That’s an important element to consider: You’re always getting my side of the story, where every action is, if not defensible, at least explicable. I don’t pretend I’m faultless, but I suppose I’ve reached a point where I accept there are things about me that aren’t likely to change. I am well-intentioned, yet hopelessly scatterbrained. I’m devoted, but unreliable. Caring, but self-centered. My mind works funny, but the positive spin is that it helps me see the world in an interesting way.

And isn’t that worth the hassle?
It was a Friday night, and both of us were on the sofa with laptops in front of us, working. I’d disabled the wireless internet on my Dell so I couldn’t fall in a Facebook or YouTube K-hole and inexplicably lose six hours of my life. Supernanny was on. I love that show. A solidly-built British nanny named Jo is calls upon American households, where she observes for a few days and then explains in a stern but loving voice why the parents are unfit to raise children. It’s delightful.
In this episode, the parents had the most severely ADD child ever to walk the planet. They’d chosen not to medicate him, which is fine, but they also had made no provisions whatsoever to deal with raising a hummingbird on crack. Nanny Jo found this “totally unacceptable” and commenced working her stern but loving magic.
“You know, I was diagnosed ADHD when I was in my teens,” I said.
“I do not find that at all surprising,” said Preppy. “Were you on meds?”
“Yeah. Ritalin. High dosage.”
“Again, not surprising. Did it work?”
I thought back for a moment.
“You know what?” I said. “It did. That was the only time in my life I was a good student. I made it through Chemistry and Spanish II in a month of summer school, with A’s. Then I got back to school and by the end of first semester I realized I could sell it and make some decent cash, especially during exams. So I stopped taking it, and then I dropped out…”
This gave me pause.
“Do you think I still have it?”
“Yes,” he said without the slightest hesitation. “You absolutely still have it.”
“Well, even if I do, I’ve found a way to deal with it.”
“I guess so,” he sighed. “God knows I’ve had to.”
It’s been thirteen years since I sat in a psychiatrist’s office, sobbing in confusion and frustration over my impatience, procrastination, and insecurities. I remember the overwhelming sense of relief my parents and I felt when the evaluation gave it a name, something we could examine and attack. I still had that assessment in a box of old paperwork from the 90s. I found it, and re-read it.
Every word of it was still true.
I went online and started reading about Adult ADD, how it can impact everything from communication in your marriage to car maintenance. I felt violated reading the personal accounts- every one of them seemed lifted from my own life. I considered my last desk job, where I would sit in my office paralyzed by inaction and never able to understand why. My boss and I would fight constantly. He saw me as unconcerned. I knew how hard I was trying, yet had little evidence to show for it. I’d have the same conversations at home, when it took me nine hours to clean the kitchen. I cannot count the number of times people have come to me bewildered, wondering why a seemingly capable man could not accomplish the most basic tasks. I’ve been accused of not caring, of being lazy, of being unreliable. Deep down, I feared it was true, despite my intentions.
And all this time, I had an answer. I’ve had an answer for thirteen goddamn years, and I’ve done nothing about it. I was too ADD to deal with my ADD.
Three days later, I took care of two long-overdue tasks: I wrote a letter of apology to my former boss. I didn’t go into an explanation of my psyche. I just told him I was sorry, and that for the first time, I could see his side. And then I made a visit to my doctor.
There’s a lot of things I’ve asked Preppy to accept in our life together, and he has done so with grace and aplomb. Living with a man who has given up on improving himself shouldn’t be one of those requests. The little orange pill is just a tool- the work falls in my hands, and I intend to try. I believe Supernanny would be very proud.

Sick Day

2009-01-03T13:42:00.003-05:00

As difficult as it may be to imagine, it’s actually much harder to take a sick day when one works from home. It’s enough of a challenge for me to convince people I’m actually working when I’m at the house, because I get to wear my jammies and take lots of smoke breaks.

Also because no one actually pays me TO write, they pay me when I’m FINISHED writing, the pressure’s always on to get to that completed product as quickly as possible. It’s a dicey proposition. My friend Steve Yockey, a very successful playwright, appears to have a new script ready for production every month. I average about one a year. And it’s not like he’s writing crap, they’re really good plays, which makes me hate him. I’m trying to become more prolific, devoting a minimum of five hours a day to being imaginative. I’d been making fairly decent progress on a romantic comedy this week… and then I got sick.
I woke up this morning around four, all sweaty and icky, so I went to the kitchen wanting peanut butter and some milk. It’s a habit my sister and I share- an unexplainable need to get out of the bed in the middle of the night and have peanut butter and milk, naked in the light of the refrigerator. Just to be clear, we’ve never done this together. Neither of us even knew the other did it until she was oversharing on the phone one day and I fell over from shock.

I had no idea anyone else in the world did this, let alone that it was a family trait. She squats on the floor while having her snack, but I stand. If I squatted, my balls might touch the linoleum, and that would be cold. I’ve warned Shannon that she has to stop this before her children get old enough to go wandering late at night. If I’d ever seen my mother crouched naked on the kitchen floor with a spoonful of peanut butter and a glass of milk, I would have blinded myself with the nearest convenient sharp object. I expect her kids would have the same reaction.
Normally my little late night forage does the trick and I feel right as rain, but I had an inkling there was trouble brewing in my body. I woke up at seven feeling like I’d been hit by a train. Coughing, hacking, fever, pounding headache, the works.
“Ugggggh! Baby!” I called out, but there was no response. My fiancé was already at work. Damn it. Don’t you hate it when you feel like hell and there’s no one around to watch?
I stumbled into the bathroom, searching for the leftover mega-strength Ibuprofen I’d gotten from my dentist a few months ago. I found it, choked down four, and laid on the bed, waiting for sweet release.
That’s when I remembered we’d run out of those Ibuprofen back in October.

So what the hell did I just take?
“You’re up early,” said my best galpal Slutty Mandy when I called.
“I think I just took a drug overdose. Tell Preppy I love him and I didn’t do it on purpose!”
“What are you talking about?”
“I thought it was Ibuprofen! Quick, get some paper, I have to tell you how my romantic comedy is supposed to end. Make Steve finish it. He works quickly.”
“What did you take?”
“Four muscle relaxers.”
“Oh, please, Topher. I could take four muscle relaxers and go to a spin class.”
“I don’t have your freaky drug tolerance!”
“You survived chemo. You’ll survive this. Just get back in bed and sleep it off.”
“Are you sure?”
“You’ll sleep like a rock. Oh, make sure you pee first, you don’t want to deal with the consequences of that one.”
I fell into a fitful sleep and dreamed about the play I wasn’t writing. I wish I could remember details, because then at least I kinda would’ve been working. When I woke up a few hours later, I was groggy and it felt like a muskrat had taken up residence in my mouth. I was floppy and couldn’t move. This happened to me the last time I smoked pot. We had a houseguest who broke out a gravity bong, and I wanted to show I was hip and could be part of the fun. I lost a whole Sunday as a result, lying on the bed convinced that I had actually damaged part of my brain. The room swirled in and out of focus for an entire afternoon, as I slowly returned to sobriety and accepted that I’m simply no longer a party boy.
Now the bedroom was once again spinning, but I’d painted since the last time, and the green made it much more pleasant. I tried watching TV, but abandoned it when I couldn’t take Kathie Lee Gifford for one more second. When and why exactly did they unleash her on the public again? She’s a horrible, horrible woman. I think she really tries to make her guests feel uncomfortable. I’ve got a cousin who does that. I thought about calling her and telling her off. The cousin, not Kathie Lee. I don’t have Kathie Lee’s number.

And it’s a good thing I don’t.
I drifted off to sleep again, and dreamt of Kathie Lee Gifford interviewing me while I ate peanut butter. This had nothing to do with my play, but was certainly imaginative, which was all I’d wanted out of the day in the first place.

Total Turnaround

2008-12-22T04:18:00.002-05:00

I’m staying outside Tulsa, Oklahoma in the Will Rogers Inn, mere days away from my homecoming. My fiancé and I are having a phone date, which I’m totally ruining by watching CNN and screaming. The topic? Reverend Rick Warren, author of The Purpose-Driven Life, recent presidential inauguration invocation designee, and a man who casually lumps me with pederasts, polygamists, and men who wanna bang their sisters.
“Oh no,” he says. “Listen here, Topher Payne. You were supposed to calm down after the election.”
“I was hoping I’d get to,” I say, feeling my audacity of hope losing its gleam.
So here we go.

2009 is off to a rousing start, with President-Elect Obama choosing one of America’s most revered Evangelical pastors to participate in the celebration of all the efforts of the presidential election. Look him up, if you haven’t gotten the goods on this guy yet. I’m seriously beginning to question Obama’s taste in ministers.
You will hear that this is a strategic move on Obama’s part, and that it’s all part of his master plan. That may be true.

As my friend Jo pointed out, the highways are littered with people who underestimated Barack Obama. Maybe opening the speech with Warren and closing with Lowery is some sort of changing of the guard- One last time, here’s the crap you’ve been hearing for eight years, and now on to the good stuff. Or maybe he’ll have a whole roll call of hatemongers, with a few words from a jokey Anti-Semite or a mannered misogynist, to show how far he’s willing to go to unite us all. But the last time a verbose, gay-friendly president told us to trust him and watch things play out, we got stuck with Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell and DOMA. Those are two disasters we’re struggling to overcome a decade later. Actions speak louder than words, and the action here indicates that those who seek to deride us, to promote misunderstanding and panic, have a place at Obama’s table. That is not okay.
If Warren had made equivalent remarks demonizing single mothers, African Americans, Dairy Queen employees, or Methodists, we’d call him a lunatic. But say it about gay people, and people defend the man. Why is that? If one of my straight friends, for even a moment, defends Warren’s comparisons, I am going to go over to their house and break something pretty. Nothing too expensive, but enough to express my frustration.
I do not begrudge Rick Warren’s right to believe what he wants within the context of his church. I will defend that right. If I disagree with him, I will not go to his church. When I was growing up, the Southern Baptist church in my town didn’t allow dancing. My family loves dancing, so we became Methodists. Ain’t Freedom of Religion great?
There are plenty of people in this country who don’t support gay marriage. Members of my own family do not, but I love them still. President Elect Obama does not, but he still got my vote. We’ll keep that conversation open and hope hearts can be turned. But Reverend Warren doesn’t just oppose gay marriage. He has mobilized his support base with misinformation and fear-mongering. He has said that the difference between his ministry and the incessant nightmare that is Focus on Family is “A question of tone,” but not belief. He has stated that legalizing gay marriage would lead to hate-crime prosecution of ministers who believe homosexuality is a sin. By this logic, pro-lifers should also be prosecuted since abortion is legal. Rick Warren knows this is patently untrue, but it’s an effective sound bite.

For those of you up on your Ten Commandments, God calls this “Bearing False Witness.”
The outcry has been justified and satisfyingly loud. But they’ve already sent out the invites and everything, so it looks like this one is a done deal. That is why I am asking you to make a very simple, basic gesture on Inauguration Day. When Rick Warren is presented, turn your back. If you are at home, or work, or a party, or in D.C. watching it in person, just turn around until he is done speaking.
Out of respect for the President and the event, I wouldn’t want to see people yelling or protesting. But we can show that our community and its supporters are capable of a more graceful act of objection. We needn’t spread hate or fear. We don’t have to follow their example. We can simply turn our backs. Imagine how proud we’d feel seeing that on CNN. Or, I guess seeing it played back later, since our backs would be turned at the time.
People will say that Rick Warren represents a majority. The narrow majority which passed Prop 8. The majority that prevents us from adopting or marrying in state after state. The majority who refuses to call this an issue of civil rights. There’s a quote I love which addresses that pesky ol’ majority.
"Bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal laws must protect, and to violate would be oppression."
It’s from another Inaugural address. Thomas Jefferson’s. The guy who wrote the Declaration of Independence. But what the hell did he know?
On January 20th, turn your back on Rick Warren. Pass it on.

Let Nothing You Dismay

2008-12-22T04:06:00.003-05:00

My birthday was a quiet affair, celebrated at a hotel in North Carolina. There was an indoor pool and a hot tub, so I spent a few contented hours wandering from one to the other until my hands were as wrinkled and pruny as a pre-facelift Cindy McCain. Afterward I stopped by The Food Lion for some sandwich stuff and beer, and on impulse bought myself a slice of coconut cake.

Back at the hotel, I made a little picnic on my bed and watched 30 Rock in my underpants.
I’m not sure when hangin’ out in my underwear became the pinnacle of decadence for me, but now it’s really a benchmark of quality in my mind.

If I got to perform everyday tasks in my Ginch Gonch, it was a damn fine day. This is even more bizarre because it’s not something I’m comfortable doing in my own home. I fret that the UPS man or Carlos the lawn guy will stop by. In hotels, you needn’t worry because you’ve got the “Do Not Disturb” to ward off all potential pests. If I put that on the front door of my residence, I know folks would pay no heed and disturb me anyway.
I was really happy with my party for one until three days later, when my beer-and-cake splurge caught up with me and I ran out of money long before my next paycheck. I pulled all the small change from my backpack and managed to work a little magic at the McDonald’s dollar menu, but then that money was gone too. I might’ve flat-out starved if there hadn’t been a shining beacon to give me hope:

Our Hilton in South Florida had a free Continental breakfast.
I set my alarm for ten minutes prior to its start the next day. I wanted full selection and few watchful eyes. I took my computer bag down with me, which I set next to my chair in the corner. I started toasting English muffins and bagels, which I would bring back to the table and using my computer as a shield, I’d wrap the baked goods in napkins and drop them into the bag. I made four trips to the counter using this method, helping myself to oranges, bananas, waffles, handfuls of Splenda, boxes of Honey Smacks, whatever they had. It was after the fourth trip that I aroused the suspicions of a steel-jawed Hispanic housekeeper with long hair and a short fuse.
“Excuse me, sir,” she said, approaching my table. “You cannot take food to your room.”
“I’m not,” I said, closing my bag and hoping she didn’t have the right to search it.
“You have food in your bag.”
“No I don’t. I have various kinds of documents. I am a writer. Nothing but my documents in there.”
“No more, sir,” she said, and walked back to a corner with her arms folded, watching me.
I wanted to say, “Look, lady, show some fucking charity, I’m poor and it’s Christmas,” but I’m guessing a middle-aged hotel housekeeper wouldn’t be moved by pleas of poverty from a twentysomething guy holding a Blackberry and an I-Pod.
Even so, we had a standoff for like thirty minutes before she finally pushed her cart away, at which point I tossed six Danishes in my bag and filled an Aquafina bottle with apple juice. I’m not letting one Scrooge cause me to go hungry.
It was our day off, so I had my lunch of bagels and bananas on the beach, wondering if perhaps the Christmas spirit eludes those who get no cues from the weather indicating the holidays are upon us. I know I felt much more Christmasy last week in snow than I did sitting in my swimsuit at the ocean. Even Atlanta has our traditional slightly-frozen rain to signal Santa.
The unexpected lesson from touring America for the last two months has been learning what I can live without. There’s the big stuff, like the house, or my fiancé and friends, that I saw coming, but the little stuff has been very instructive. This is how one eats on ten dollars a day. This is how one spends twenty-four hours in a hotel room without putting on clothes. This is your life when it’s simmered down to just you, without all the clutter.
I talk less than you think. I listen to podcasts for hours on the bus, and then I’ll leave my headphones on and pretend to listen to music while I think in silence. And you know what I think about? Clutter. I miss the clutter of my life. Making a home, loving someone, maintaining friendships, it’s messy. And I think I’m at my best when I’m in the midst of that mess.
When I’m finally home again after Christmas, there won’t be presents under the tree, and I’m okay with that. My present to myself this year is a new appreciation for the home I have. I know that’s so stereotypical and sappy that I can’t even muster the energy to mock it, but it’s true. When you take a step away from your life, you’ll often find you’ve got most everything you need.

And then all you really want is to get back to it.

For Richer, For Poorer

2008-12-11T21:04:00.002-05:00

“How have you never seen this movie?” says my fiancé Preppy, marveling at how delighted I am by the antics of Will Farrell’s Anchorman.
“I just plain don’t trust Will Farrell. He’s like Sandra Bullock. That woman has burned me too many times now with shit heap movies. I simply cannot take the risk anymore.”
“This is early Will Farrell, though. You’re safe with the early works,” he says, sifting through a pile of snacks on the bed. “Hey, you got a Hershey bar! This night keeps getting better!”
It’s almost my birthday, so Preppy took a little road trip to join me on a tour stop. Now we’re piled up on the bed in a Comfort Inn watching Will Ferrell movies in our underwear, drinking Cokes, smoking cigarettes, and eating candy. So basically I’m spending my twenty-ninth birthday acting like I’m sixteen, which is just fucking awesome.
I’ll be home for Christmas soon. I haven’t done any Christmas shopping, because in my off time I have only seen hotels and fast-food restaurants, and because there really isn’t money for material expressions of devotion this year. Lately having money for keeping the lights and water on at our house is an impressive feat, so we’re not really the target market for a plasma screen.
“I thought of what you can give me for Christmas,” I say, dumping the ashtray and pausing to check out the haircut I gave myself with a pair of sewing scissors earlier in the week. It’s amazing my hairdresser still talks to me. All I ever bring the woman is repair work.
“Homemade dirty movies,” I continue. “I can watch ‘em on the road. You can e-mail them. That’s my dream gift.”
“That’s exactly what it is, because your dreams are the only place those movies will exist. You’ve seen homemade flicks. The lighting’s always awful and people get caught at weird angles. Nobody needs to see that.”
“I’d do it for you,” I say.
“Of course you would,” he says. “You’re a total exhibitionist. You’d get naked for free sandwiches. I would not.”
He’s only half-right. It’d take a really good sandwich to get my clothes off.

Like a Panini or something.
“Fine,” I say. “Then you can pay for the save-the-date cards as my present, and I’ll pay for the stamps as yours. The next six months have to be devoted to wedding expenses anyway.”
His face hardens. I’ve said something wrong. I quickly review: Will Farrell, dirty movies, stamps, wedding expenses. I go with the most likely offender.
“I know you’re worried about the cost of the wedding. But we can totally scale back. Make the reception B.Y.O.B, or maybe have some carnival games they have to buy tickets for. I’ll have Jennifer make homemade Twinkies. Just gimme a budget.”
“This is beyond budget. I’m trying to pay property taxes. Insurance for a house, two cars, and a former cancer patient… Darlin’, I think we need to reschedule the wedding.”
“No! We already did that once for the theatre tour. If we reschedule again, people are going to think that you’re getting to know me too well and it’s never gonna happen. I can’t hold back my neurotic side much longer.”
“Are you saying what I’ve been living with the last few years WASN’T your neurotic side?”
“See? Now you have doubts.”
“I don’t have doubts about anything but our ability to pay for this thing.”
“Okay, well what if I could find someone to sponsor our wedding? Like, Coca-Cola presents Preppy and Topher’s Wedding, followed by the Delta Airlines wedding reception?”
“I don’t think Coke will pay for our wedding.”
“Why not? They’re real gay-friendly.”
“Topher. I am serious. We need to let the church know, and call people. There is no way our big wedding is happening in June.”
In my mind, our beautiful little chapel in Candler Park bursts into flames. Our attendants run screaming from the building as the reception tent falls to the ground. There goes my mother in her cream-colored suit. George’s flower arrangements. Slutty Mandy and Preppy’s girlfriends in complimentary dresses. I watch in open-mouthed horror as the dream wedding slips from my grasp. Little laser beams taking it all out, making little Pew pew pew sounds while they vaporize my fantasy. Goddamn it, I didn’t even WANT a wedding three years ago, now it’s ripping my heart out that it won’t happen. We were on our way toward being real grown-ups having a real wedding. Now we’re just a couple of poor people in some random city, eating candy in our underwear.
And that’s not so bad.
Because the day after our wedding, we’d still just be destitute candy-eating homosexuals, with nothing to show for our efforts but photographs, once we could afford to buy prints. We wouldn’t even have a marriage license. Which gets me to thinking.
“How much you think it costs to file a marriage license in Massachusetts?” I ask.
“I have no idea,” he says. “Why?”
“What if we just drive up to Provincetown this June for a long weekend and get married at the courthouse? If our friends want to come, they’re invited, but we ain’t payin’ for nothin’ but some Uncle Ben’s to throw at our heads?”
“Hm,” he says after some thought. “That sounds possible.”
“There. Problem solved. We’re eloping.”
We shake on it, and then I settle in next to the fella who so help me Baby Jesus, I will be married to this summer. And when it comes down to what actually matters, the only people I really dream about being there are already in this room eatin’ candy.

A Little-Known Fact

2008-12-11T21:01:00.001-05:00

“Greeneville, Tennessee is the only one with an E on the end,” I report to my colleagues on the tour bus. “Every other one in America spells it ‘Greenville’, without the E.”
“Well, that’s pretty classy, isn’t it?” says my costar Jef. “I wonder if they add random vowels to anything else in their town.”
“Ooh, I hope so,” I say, looking out the window at the snow-covered town, hoping for a Texacoe or a Tacoe Belle.
It’s a travel day, meaning we’re just driving for twelve hours before checking into another hotel (a Hiltone, perhaps?). My i-Pod died a few hours ago, and I don’t think I can beat my new high score of 6500 on Brickbreaker, so I’m entertaining myself by looking up historical factoids on my Blackberry about the towns we’re driving through. It’s fun and educational, and since everybody else’s electronics are also in need of a re-charge, they have no choice but to be educated as well.

They’ll thank me later, when they’re smarter.
My fiancé Preppy has expressed concern of late that I never have much good to say about being on tour with the play, and I gotta admit he’s right. Other than the actual experience of doing the play, I’ve really been pushing the whole “glass half-empty” mindset, much to my own frustration. The nomadic spirit I possessed at a younger age was carefully beaten into submission in the last few years of nesting, and now I’m just supposed to pick up and enjoy being rootless again. Preppy encouraged (ordered) me to start finding the good things about being away from home.

Funny thing is, there really are advantages when you start looking for them.
Case in point: Last night the whole company went to one of those Brazilian restaurants where they give you the little coaster that’s red on one side and green on the other. When you want more meat, you flip it to green. When you can handle no more meat, you flip it to red. I gave those gauchos the green light for an obscene amount of time. As I dug into the better portion of a side of beef being served to me in myriad appealing preparations, it struck me that this restaurant would be my vegetarian fiancé’s notion of Hell.

So there’s a happy little moment right there. I don’t have my man, but I do have a dazzling variety of beef. That’ll do for now.
And now there’s this new history-of-unknown-cities hobby, which means I’ll be coming home with a better understanding of America.
“Greeneville is the former capitol of the state of Franklin,” I announce to no one in particular. I get a lot of furtive glances from the group, but no one takes the bait. “Doesn’t anyone want to know what the state of Franklin was? Gina? Calvin?”
“Oh, fine,” says Gina. “What was the state of Franklin, Topher?”
“I’m glad you asked. In the late 1780’s, a few western counties seceded from North Carolina and formed their own state, but the U.S. government refused to recognize it, and they made them go at it on their own for a while. And when the Indians realized they didn’t have military support, they started attacking Franklin like crazy.”
“And then Franklin became North Carolina again?”
“Nope. The governor borrowed money from Spain to keep it running, but he didn’t read the fine print and accidentally placed it under Spanish rule for a minute. To get out of it, they said they’d come back to the union, but only if they didn’t have to be part of North Carolina. So Franklin got tacked on to Tennessee.”
“Topher,” says Jef. “Will the history lesson end if I let you borrow my i-Pod for a little while?”
“Y’all be nice to me or I am seceding from this bus and declaring my seat a separate state.”
“Hope you got rich friends in Spain for when the Indians attack.”
I retreat to my own research. Poor Franklin. They wanted to venture out on their own, but eventually learned that sometimes it’s best to stick with the group and work your shit out. I can relate. I’m trying to find that nice moment when we all connect, but you can’t force that sort of thing. Friendships and alliances build slowly. One must be patient. I continue my Googling, and then hit upon a new idea.
“Hey Gina!” I say. “I don’t know it it’s your kinda scene, there’s a couple in Wheeling, West Virginia looking for a hot female to spice up their love life. Oh wait, they said no brunettes.”
“What the hell are you looking at?”
“I got tired of historical factoids, so I switched to Craig’s List. I’m checking out the sexual fetishes in towns we drive through.”
“That is twisted, Topher,” says Gina, returning to her book. Then she looks up. “What the hell do they have against brunettes?”
“The other girl is probably brunette,” says Wes, who I thought was asleep. He sits up. “She’s probably really insecure.”
“Then she shouldn’t be doing a threesome,” says our driver. “That’ll mess with her head.”
“Insecure people are always the first ones to agree to threesomes,” says Gina. “And the last ones who should. Let’s find one for Wes! See who’s looking for a skinny guy in Illinois next week!”
And just like that, united by a common, filthy cause, we finally begin to form a more perfect union.

The Road Worrier

2008-12-03T20:56:00.000-05:00

I’ve been at my parents’ house all of ten minutes, and I’m wandering around outside in the dark, calling for a cat. I don’t even know this damn cat. It’s my Uncle Big Bub’s ancient feline, a calico named Calico. As soon as we walked in the house, Uncle Big Bub was on the doorstep, asking for assistance. How do you turn away an elderly man missing his kitty? So we grabbed the flashlights and headed into the night.
“Calico!” I call out, trying to sound warm and inviting, watching other beams of light bouncing in the distance.
This isn’t really Calico’s fault.

He lived his entire life in the same house until last week, and now he’s just confused. He keeps trying to go home. Uncle Big Bub (father of, you guessed it, Little Bub) and my Aunt Barbara recently built a house on the same land as my parents and my Aunt Merry, meaning we now have an actual family compound. You know, like the Kennedys. Only instead of playing touch football, we play flashlight tag with a semi-feral cat named for his physical description.
The tour of my play is performing in Louisiana tomorrow, and as a favor to me, they adjusted our travel route to spend the night at a hotel near my parents. That way, I could stave off homesickness a little with a family meal and a bed that isn’t at a La Quinta Inn. That last part is really appreciated, because I keep having terrible dreams in hotels. Is that normal? I can barely remember my dreams at home, but on the road it’s been vivid, detailed visions of large animals chasing me, my nose falling off, my parents divorcing for no reason, and me getting my foot caught in a bathtub full of quicksand. This crap stays with me the next day. I’m assuming it’s standard anxiety about being away from home and all that, but I wish my subconscious would let me get some decent rest.
Other than while I’m sleeping, I’m adjusting fairly well to life on the road.
That last sentence was a complete lie.
I’m fine as long as I’m WORKING, either performing on stage or getting ready to be there. But as soon as the show ends, I launch into my new hobbies: Overanalyzing phone conversations and worrying about what Preppy’s eating.
“I worry he’s not eating vegetables,” I told my best gal Slutty Mandy a few days ago. “He’s disinclined to have them when I’m home cooking, and I’ll bet he’s given them up altogether. Do you think he’s just eating microwave popcorn?”
“Yes,” said Mandy. “Of course he is. And there’s not a damn thing you can do about it from hundreds of miles away, so just deal with it, sweetie. You’ll be home for Christmas. You’ll make green beans. Feel better?”
“No, I don’t feel better. And Preppy told me today our washing machine’s broken, too.”
“Well, shit,” said Mandy. “I guess you’d better quit the damn tour and come on home. Come fix the washer, steam some broccoli for your fiancé, and forget all this acting crap.”
I got it, I got it. It takes getting used to. The smart choice is to just keep looking forward, accept that the life you had before is not your life anymore, and adjust.
My sister Shannon and her husband got a call last week from my nephew’s birth mother. They’ve kept up with her over the years, sending occasional photos and updates regarding his growth and inherent genius. Birth Mama called to alert Shannon that she’d accidentally gotten pregnant again, and would she be interested in taking this one too?
They hadn’t really planned on adopting again- certainly not soon- but they couldn’t turn down the opportunity. They agreed, only to discover she’s due in SIX WEEKS. This would be shorter than usual. Most people, you might have heard, get nine months. Shannon’s taking it all in stride, and adjusting. I envy her malleability.
“I got him!” hollers Aunt Merry with triumph, and everyone cheers.
“Damn! That little so-and-so just scratched the hell outta me!” she then shouts, throwing the cat away from her, and we all give chase, which is a stupid thing to do when trying to catch a skittish housecat. I take a break for a cigarette and a phone call home.
“Hey baby,” says Preppy, sounding like someone beat him up.
“What’s wrong?”
“Sick. Possibly dying. Might be flu. I’ll be okay.”
“We’ve got Theraflu in the master bath. And get some orange juice. Drink lots of water.”
“Already doing that.”
“And you should eat better. I think there’s tomato soup in the pantry.”
“Topher. Darlin’. Have you forgotten I took care of myself for a long time before I ever met you?”
The man has a point. But it made me feel needed to problem-solve. He simply refuses to sink into any kind of obvious misery over my absence. Not one tear shed, not one freakout, and frankly, I’m kinda disappointed. I was fully prepared to reassure him and hold him lovingly, telling him all will be okay. But he hasn’t required it.

God, nothing makes you feel more neurotic than a conversation with a sane person.
My Aunt Barbara walks into the light, smiling broadly and holding the cat tight to her chest.
“He’ll be fine,” she says. “He just needs to adjust to his new surroundings.”
I’m right there with you, Calico. Right there with ya.

We Gather Together

2008-11-21T11:11:00.003-05:00

Two days after Preppy and I moved into our house last year, hooligans broke in, trashed the place, and made off with a good portion of our electronics. Welcome home.

We were still a little shaken from the experience the following week, so I decided we needed an event on which to focus that would give us happy home memories as quickly as possible. So I announced we would be hosting an Old Fashioned Thanksgiving at the house.
My childhood Thanksgivings were well-intentioned events that never came together exactly as planned. There was the time two of my cousins locked themselves in the laundry room and fought like peacocks in a pillowcase until my Aunt Barbara went in and had a come to Jesus with ‘em.

And there was the year I came home from boarding school and got so stoned with my sister and cousin that we ate an entire pan of dressing, leaving the table a little bare the next day.

The prize for “Most Awkward Thanksgiving” went to the year we travelled to the somber home of my cousin Paula, a stern and utterly humorless woman who ironically owned a party supply store. In keeping with her profession, Paula operated under the belief that if you followed the instructions on any party theme kit, a good time would be had by all- so she broke out the deluxe paper pilgrim wall decorations and accordion-fold tabletop turkeys, handed out prepackaged favors to the kids, and instructed us to play quietly. It was raining that year, so we sat in the garage fiddling with noisemakers we weren’t allowed to put to use, while her older daughters witnessed to us on Jesus’s behalf, as they did at every family gathering.

Their house was an endless source of confusion and fascination for me. Paula’s family was undeniably devout- they would pray over their food until it was stone cold- but I’d never seen anyone made so seemingly miserable by their own religious beliefs. I often tried to picture Paula at work, proselytizing to anyone foolish enough to come in seeking paper streamers.

I really hope she sold balloons better than she sold Evangelicalism.
My Old Fashioned Thanksgiving would not fall victim to any of that nonsense. My guest list and menu would be carefully planned, and nobody would be allowed to get high or attempt to convert guests to their chosen religion. We would all be healed by the power of turkey and pumpkin pie, and our house would become a home at last.
At the time, my cousin Nelson still lived with us. Nelson is known for his meat- it’s what God put him on this Earth to do. If it had four legs and once roamed the earth, Nelson can braise it to perfection for all to enjoy. So the deal was cut: I would prepare breads and sides, and he’d handle the bird. Two days before Thanksgiving, Nelson came home with the largest turkey I’d ever seen. He dumped it in the kitchen sink in a cold water bath, where it remained until the night before Thanksgiving.

I kept waiting for step two, but it never happened.
“Nelson,” I said at last. “Thanksgiving’s tomorrow. Shouldn’t you, I don’t know, prep the bird in some way?”
“I got it,” he said, opening a beer. “I’m gonna get up at five and put it in the oven. It’s gonna be great.”
On Thanksgiving morning, I awoke at nine to that elephantine bird still sitting in my sink, and Nelson passed out in his room near an monumental tower of beer cans. All hope was not lost for my Old Fashioned Thanksgiving, however. I just rolled up my sleeves and schlepped the waterlogged 22-pound Butterball into a roasting pan.
It was still very, very frozen. I grew concerned. Guests would be arriving at noon. So I threw the bird into a trash bag and tossed it into the front seat of the car. The two of us drove to Kroger, where I purchased a pre-cooked turkey.
Now, what to do with the giant frozen bird sitting in my front seat wearing a seatbelt (it kept falling over)? I drove around to the back of Kroger, located a dumpster, and swung the bag with all my might, letting it fly.
But I’d forgotten to tie the bag closed.
The turkey, freed from its Hefty bag constraints, struck the side of the dumpster with a satisfying smack, landing in the parking lot. I ran over and grabbed it by the legs, swung again, and was successful in my second attempt. I went home, made the switch, and popped the bird in the oven. When all was said and done, everyone was very complimentary, even Nelson, who woke up in a panic around noon and was impressed with my work. Though he couldn’t figure out why the bird seemed to have lost about eight pounds during roasting. I explained that they pump turkeys full of water to increase the weight, and it all evaporates in the oven or leaks out during cooking.

That’s where gravy comes from. Everybody knows that.
I’ll be on the road in North Carolina for the holiday this year, breaking bread with new friends in a strange place, just like the pilgrims, without the buckle shoes or cholera. But when I am home for my next Old Fashioned Thanksgiving, I’m going straight to the pre-cooked bird, which involves a lot less work and panic, and seems to make everyone perfectly happy. I'm not very domestic, I’ll grant you. But I am creative in a pinch. And I suppose that’s something for which I am very thankful.

The Outsider

2008-11-13T00:24:00.003-05:00

It’s Friday night in Columbus, Georgia. I’m on the top floor of the opera house, waiting for water to boil. Apparently I’m doing something wrong. All the water keeps evaporating out of the pot before it starts to boil, which defies my understanding of how this works. It’s moments like this I wish I’d finished high school, so I’d have a better grasp of science stuff. Or Home Ec. Whatever class teaches you about how water boils.
I give up after a second failed attempt, toss the water, and make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. My roommates (which I have three of now, we’ll get to that in a minute) have gone out dinner. But I had bad luck the last time I ate at a restaurant, nearly choking to death, so I’m a little gun shy. Plus, I’ve got myself on a pretty tight allowance. I have to send money home to help with bills, just like the dishwasher at the restaurant where I used to work. Only I’m sending it to Atlanta, not Honduras, and I don’t have four children.
Now, about those roommates. My first week here I lived alone in a room with four twin beds. I pushed them all together, envisioning the wrestling arena-sized SUPER BED I’d always wanted. Unfortunately, it made more of a mattress runway, where I could roll endlessly left or right, but my feet still hung off the end. I then tried a two-by-two configuration. I then realized I had entirely too much time on my hands, and moved the beds back. Two days later, the occupants arrived- the technical crew for the touring play.
The crew has worked together before. It’s a straight couple named Wes and Gina, plus a guy called Calvin who I’m pretty sure plays for our team, but it’s hard to tell because he likes video games and fantasy movies. With that set, the fanboy tendencies override any obvious clues about sexual orientation. The same is true of Wiccans, in my experience.

Don’t judge, I’m just telling you what I’ve observed.
On their first night, my roommates set up a Wii, then stayed up ‘til three watching a Harry Potter movie. I was the grump curled up on the twin bed in the corner, covering his head with a pillow and praying for sleep. It’s not that I don’t want to stay up and play Wii or watch fantasy flicks, it’s just that… Okay, that’s actually exactly it. Fine, I’m a wet blanket. I’m the mean ol’ fag who brought his own bedding (never know who’s slept on strange sheets, not taking chances on crabs), and lies around reading books and staring at a picture of his boyfriend. I’m fun too, dammit, but I came here to work.
I’m still fun, right?
The more I think about it, somewhere in the last six months I kinda stopped going out. For a while, on the rare occasions Preppy and I showed up at a bar people would act like we’d just returned from overseas. But the last time I went to Burkhart’s, I didn’t know any of the bartenders OR the drag queens. All my old bar buddies were gone, too. Time passes quickly in social fiefdoms, and if you’re not consistent, you fall out of the crowd so fast it’ll give ya whiplash.
But just because I’m not a barfly anymore doesn’t mean I can’t be fun. I can stay up and play. I decide to prove this, so I finish my peanut butter sandwich and head over to Club Questions, the one gay bar in Columbus. It’s only open on Fridays and Saturdays, which is usually a good sign. It creates a phenomenon I call “Two-Day Gays,” the people who have to wait all week for the gay bar to open, then really cut loose when it does. It’s the type of bar most of my friends started out in, before they moved to Atlanta and became full-time gay, which requires a lot more outfits.
Club Questions very recently changed its name to the less-fun Club Odyssey, a fact most people in the bar have chosen to ignore, calling it Questions or The Q. I sit at the bar, waiting for someone to chat me up, but also apprehensive about that possibility because I’ve never hung out in a gay bar alone when I wasn’t looking for love. I don’t know how one strikes up a conversation with a stranger in a gay bar without it seeming like flirting. Everyone’s arrived in groups and talking to each other, though some people cast curious glances my way as I smoke the better part of a pack of Marlboros and down four beers. There’s people dancing. I picture myself dancing alone, which I used to do all the time, but now seems a little sad.
Shit. Maybe I’m not much fun anymore.
After about ninety minutes, I come to accept that I am a visitor in a social fiefdom, and nobody’s gonna break rank to say howdy. I make my way to the door.
I know I have a clique back home- the group I feel safest with who’s always up for a good time. But I like to believe we try to meet new people, make them feel welcome. Is this what the next seven months is gonna be like? Finding one closed circle after another? Because if it is, I’m gonna need a lot more books.
I enter the apartment, and my roommates are watching TV. I head for my bed, and then stop. What the heck, sometimes ya gotta make the first move.
“What y’all watchin?” I ask.
“A really unfunny home video show,” says Gina. “Wanna watch?”
“Yeah,” I say, settling on the floor next to them. “That sounds like fun.”

Table for One

2008-11-06T13:04:00.002-05:00

I’m sitting in the Cannon Pub in Columbus, Georgia, trying to look busy. Eating in a restaurant by myself always feels a little awkward. Should I bring a book? Make conversation with my server? Eat my food as quickly as possible and get out? My solution tonight is to sit here writing on my little spiral notepad, which is serving a dual purpose: It gives me an activity, and also makes me look like a food critic, so my service is AWESOME. The manager has already come by my table to check in.

There’s a free dessert in my future.
I’ve been in Columbus for a week now, though I haven’t seen much of the city. My play rehearsals and my little apartment are both inside the opera house. If I didn’t smoke, I seriously doubt I would’ve been outside at all. My apartment is designed to handle a constant influx of artists coming and going, and is stocked with set dressing from past stage productions. It kinda looks like a state college dorm room furnished with a bunch of stuff from your grandmother’s house.
Speaking of college dorms, I’ve been talking on Facebook a lot with my friend Ames, who’s in her freshman year of college. She hates it. The girls are bitches and the unsympathetic professors are shockingly different from her supportive high school teachers. I’ve been talking her off the ledge quite a bit. Because she hasn’t made any friends (nor should she, from the sound of things), she spends a lot of time on her own. I’ve been trying to sell her on the idea of the pleasure of her own company. It’s a tricky skill to develop, but necessary for survival in any number of awkward scenarios. I’ve had to tap into that myself these days, away from my fiancé and friends. When not in rehearsal, I’ve been sitting in my room reading and watching that YouTube clip of a cat eating spaghetti.
I told Ames that there’s much to be gained from taking yourself out to lunch, or going for a walk, and I determined I should follow my own advice. I’d already celebrated the Obama victory by myself, and had too many meals sitting on my secondhand sofa from a Noel Coward play. I’ve found myself longing for a familiar face- not just Preppy, Mandy, or George, but Roberta at Suntrust who always gives me a hug when I come by, or the cashier at Kroger who knows my cigarettes. I apparently need some human contact. So today I decided to break out of the opera house and get to know Columbus a little better.

I went to Burger King.
I’d passed this Burger King on my drive into town, and it’d drawn my interest. It was such a pretty restaurant, and it was huge. Once inside, I had to pause and compose myself. It was the nicest fucking Burger King I’ve ever seen. There were quotes from Mark Twain and Orson Welles on the walls, leather lounge chairs, and a variety of cozy dining nooks. I knocked on the brick wall, expecting it to be faux, but found actual masonry. This is the Burger King that only exists in the company’s commercials- filled with sunlight and happiness, where everyone is polite and near-orgasmic over the taste of their fries. I wanted to move out of my opera house apartment and live here. It’s so damn unfair, because this is not the experience I have at the filthy Burger King on Memorial Drive, where “Having it your way” means “Not getting shot,” and you should count your blessings if you manage to get that.
Thus emboldened by my fantastic fast food outing, I took myself out to dinner, which is how I ended up here at the Cannon Pub, impersonating a food critic for free desserts. Because Preppy is a vegetarian, meat is a rare guest in my refrigerator at home. It’s just too much effort to make two different meals for dinner. So whenever I go out, I try to have a celebration of meat. If there’s a Meat Lover’s option of any kind, that’s what I’ll get. Bring me a burger with a side of bacon.

And a slice of ham. And sausage. Mmm.
My server brings my brownie topped with ice cream, much to my delight. I dig in, enjoying every bit of my date with myself. It’s not bad at all. I might have dived into my dessert with a little too much gusto, because a pecan sticks in my throat and I choke a little. I grab my beer and try to wash it down, but this maneuver backfires and I start hacking like a cat with a hairball. I am drawing curious glances from other tables. I reach for my napkin, trying to preserve dignity and failing miserably. Oh God. This is how I will die. Alone in some nameless pub, like so many of my Scottish ancestors. Who will the restaurant call? How will they know to call Preppy? The first name in my phone book is “Adam,” my friend in New York. He’ll call Mandy, and she’ll call Preppy to report my death. After she stops laughing.
And then my server appears and gives me a firm smack on the back, dislodging the pecan and assuring he gets a generous tip. I collect my things and head for the door, enjoying one more aspect of spending time alone: When you make an ass of yourself, there’s no witnesses to remind you later.

Domestically Disturbed

2008-10-31T10:11:00.003-04:00

“All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.”
-from The Importance of Being Earnest

I know it’s a little highbrow for me to open with an Oscar Wilde quote, but that line has been running through my head all afternoon. I’m standing in the kitchen preparing a casserole for tonight’s dinner, in honor of Preppy’s parents visiting from Mississippi. It’s their first viewing of the house, which of course required a week’s worth of scrubbing, rearranging, dusting…and now cooking.
As I stand at the stove in my apron, stirring the sauce for baked mac and cheese, the image of my mother tending to company settles in my mind. My sister and I always go batty trying to convince Mama to just SIT DOWN when we visit, but she just acts like she can’t hear us and keeps right on cooking. Now I’m doing the same thing. I wonder what Wilde would say.
I’m down to my last few days before I leave town and begin rehearsals for the play I’ll be touring around the country, officially marking the death of Topher the Househusband. The last few months of domesticity have been really informative for me- I’ve discovered I have no actual capacity for it. Don’t get me wrong- I can wash, I can fold, I’m a perfectly competent cook. Cleaning requires no talent beyond the basic willingness to do it.

You can train a slow-witted child to scrub bathroom grout, it’s not what one would even call a skill.
Here’s the damn issue: I’ll throw all this energy into going to the grocery, preparing a lovely meal, doing the dishes, and I get the proper brownie points for my labors. But the next day, you have to eat AGAIN. Sometimes TWICE. So you gotta cook more food. And then there are more dishes. I don’t know why nobody ever explained that vicious cycle to me, but it’s a real drag. Same with laundry. I’m convinced my fiancé is somehow wearing four complete outfits a day without me noticing, because there’s no rational explanation for the turnaround on our wash rotation.
Since Preppy gets up and goes to work daily, he naturally assumes that I’ll be performing my domestic tasks every day. But there’s a key difference- Preppy has a boss. If he doesn’t do his job, someone will fire him pretty quickly. If I leave laundry piled up while I write plays and watch baby animals on YouTube, I don’t have a supervisor lurking around my office busting my balls about it. Well, except for Preppy, when he comes home. So then it’s like my future husband is my boss, and that shit never works out because everybody secretly can’t stand their boss. It’s what makes the world go ‘round.
And worse, for reasons I can’t explain, Preppy can clean the entire house and fold three loads of laundry (including fitted sheets) in the time it takes me to scrub the toilet. I have no idea how he does it. But then he stands there in the sparkly kitchen and asks sincerely why the hell these things take me so long. And I want to answer that I would clean faster if I didn’t keep getting distracted by the voices in my head, but I have yet to figure out how to say that without sounding crazy.
Is this a gender thing?

When Wilde said no man becomes like his mother, did he mean no man succeeds in becoming his mother, despite his best efforts? Is the ability to multi-task household and career management something only women can do? Or, more likely, am I just prone to sloth and easily distracted? Oh well. I suppose some things are meant to be a mystery.
On the plus side, I’ve grown very skilled with gravy and sauces lately, which is a skill I can use in the future. That’s what Autumn 2008 was for me. My book came out, I did a lot of laundry, and I learned how to make gravy.
Two days later, I head to The Springer Opera House in Columbus. I’ll be living on the top floor for the duration of rehearsals, which thrills me to no end. Living in a hundred year-old opera house! I wanna take to wearing a half-face mask while I play the pipe organ and roaming through the catacombs late at night. Surely they have catacombs.

If I grow weary of that, I can head up to the street to the local gay bar, apparently called Club Questions. Don’t you love the names of gay bars in smaller cities? No offense to Blake’s, Mary’s, or Oscar’s, but gimme a gay bar name with some story behind it, like Boneshakers, Rumors, or Please Don’t Tell My Wife I’m Here.
Upon my arrival, the stage manager gives me a tour of the Opera House. It feels good to be back at work in a theatre, doing what I do best, or at least do better than laundry. We round a corner and face a wall of fame featuring all the legendary performers who trod the historic stage- everyone from Ma Rainey to Burt Reynolds. And, on his first American tour, Oscar Wilde. I stop and stare at his photo. The smug dandy stares back at me, smirking. It’s like he somehow knows about the day I accidentally set a loaf of French bread on fire.
Alright, Oscar. This man couldn’t become his mother, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. I’ll hang up my apron and get back to work now.

Some People

2008-10-23T15:18:00.004-04:00

I’m visiting my sister Shannon in Mississippi for a few days, getting some quality sibling time in before I hit the road with my touring play next week. It’s always fun to throw my brother-in-law and me in the same room right before an election. Shannon has warned that if the conversation turns to Obama/McCain at any point, she will throw herself on a steak knife. This is a particular challenge since Sarah Palin announced this morning that, you betcha, she wants to write some discrimination into the U.S. Constitution, gosh darn it.

I am, thus far, holding my tongue on how much I’d like to see that folksy hokum harridan tarred and feathered.
My sister and I tend to bond over finding something on television and providing running commentary. A few Christmases back we stayed up ‘til sunrise watching “Love Can Build a Bridge: The Naomi Judd Story” on Lifetime Movie Network. The goddamn thing was a 4-hour miniseries. We couldn’t tear ourselves away, chiefly due to the fact that Wynonna appeared to be portrayed by a preoperative male-to-female transsexual who didn’t quite pass. I’m not saying there’s a thing in the world wrong with that, I’m just letting you know it sure as shit made for good TV.
Tonight the Learning Channel is doing a marathon of programs about people with peculiar medical maladies, much to our delight. We’ve already seen a man whose arms look like trees, and a middle-aged woman whose abdominal pains turned out to be the fetus of her unborn twin. These people are all mild-mannered, sympathetic folk who just want to return to a sense of normality. The viewer is expected to feel awful for them, and root for a happy ending.
And then there’s the story of Jose.

Jose’s facial birthmark somehow went haywire and now his head looks like the underside of an octopus. He is cared for daily by his beleaguered sister, who keeps encouraging him to give up his favorite hobby: Going to the town square every day and singing to himself until he draws a crowd, then standing up screaming at people, waving his arms. You see, unlike most of the subjects of these documentaries, Jose is an asshole. By all indications he was an asshole long before he looked like Dr. Zoidberg from “Futurama,” but now that he does it’s just brought out all of his worst qualities. Jose is never satisfied with anything- the quality of his cheese sandwiches, the comfort of a train ride, the speed of a guided tour of London, the options his doctors propose for removing his nine-pound facial growth. He bitches about EVERYTHING. This endears Jose to us all the more, because it serves as verification that no matter what horrors you may endure in life, you’re still you.
Back when I had cancer, I would see the same group of patients when I went in for treatment, and eventually got to know a few of them. Veronica was a mother of two who was really pissed about how chemotherapy cut into her busy schedule, and we connected on how inconvenienced we were by disease. The only bright spot we could find was that our treatment schedule let us watch “Starting Over”, which was like “The Real World” if all the roommates had been malcontented housewives. Toni Braxton’s sister was on the show at the time, and that girl was BITTER.
Anyhoo, our nemesis at the treatment center was this old man who had lost all is hair like most of us, but the top of his head looked like a carton of eggs. Nobody could figure out what caused it. If Egg Man made it to the waiting room before Veronica or me, he’d tune into a rerun of “Matlock” and position himself two feet from the TV. And if we tried to change the channel, he’d yell, “Hey, I was watching that!”
One morning I arrived, and Veronica was seated on the sofa, watching “Starting Over” with an expression of triumph. I asked where Egg Man was, she turned to me beaming.
“He died! The son of a bitch DIED!”
“Oh my God, Veronica!”
“Oh, don’t act upset. It’s survival of the fittest around here. Now sit down, Bitter Braxton’s writing a song about how much she hates her family!”
You don’t really see those depictions of life-threatening illness that often. When Meryl Streep played a cancer patient, or Neil Patrick Harris was dying in “Next Best Thing”, they were presented as noble figures whose disease gave them powerful insight from which the protagonists could benefit in some way. I’m sure those people exist, but damn it, not everybody is gonna go that route.

The truth for some people is, if you were a dick on a good day, you’ll really be one on your worst day.
Shannon and I are supporting Jose all the more because of that fact. It’s easy to get on board for the life of the blind paraplegic who saves abused greyhounds, or the nun who needs a kidney, but to look at an absolutely horrible person and hope they live to be nasty another day requires sincere compassion.
Which brings me back to keeping mum on Sarah Barracuda. We are days away from hopefully sending the whole Palin clan right back to Alaska. My vote has already been cast. So I will simply stare at the image of her on my television screen in much the same way I’m watching Jose wave his arms and scream in the town square: With a mix of horror and sadness, recognizing that some folks will be appalling no matter what, and hoping that someone out there can fix whatever the hell’s wrong with them.

Do-Over

2008-10-17T13:09:00.002-04:00

It’s my buddy George’s birthday, and we’re delivering his artwork to a gallery show. I haven’t seen him as much lately, because we don’t live near each other anymore, and we’ve both been busy as hookers at a Shriner’s convention. Playing delivery boy will be the extent of my present to him, demonstrating that the most valuable gift you can give is your time. That’s convenient, because it’s all I can afford. I’m also making him pay for gas.
“Wow,” says George. “What a birthday. Can I buy myself lunch, too?”
“That’s a splendid idea! I want barbecue. I mean, if you do. It’s your birthday, so we’ll do want you want… You want barbecue, right?”
“That’ll be fine, darling,” he says.
I navigate through yet another maze of traffic cones and road band-aids, grunting in frustration.
“Didn’t they just re-pave this like three months ago? Why’re they doing it again?”
“It’s the utility companies. They don’t talk to each other when they have to do repair work, so you gotta rip it up once for gas, once for power, once for pot holes… I may have the details wrong but it’s basically lack of communication.”
“How the hell do you know that?”
“Funny story. You remember the one time I rode on a motorcycle with a trick?”
“When you got back to his place and it turned out he had a slave? Didn’t he chain you up?”
“It was straps, not chains. Anyway, he was in road construction, and he explained it all.”
“When? While he and his slave were taking turns whipping you?”
“The slave didn’t GET to whip me, Topher. God, you’re so naïve. And no, this was later, over coffee and eggs, while we were all talking about work.”
“Coffee and chitchat? Not how you picture an S&M fantasy.”
“Oh, it never is. People don’t consider how much fucking energy it takes to discipline someone. Eventually you just want a glass of water and some rest.”
There’s a lot of truth in that. I’m sure that even people who have entire basements dedicated to their myriad fetishes still hang up the latex once in a while to pile on the couch and watch Desperate Housewives. It’s all about pacing yourself, I suppose.
After lunch, we share a piece of cake, and I wish George a happy 28th birthday.
“Twenty-seventh,” he corrects.
“No,” I reply. “You and I are always the same age for two months, and I’m turning twenty-nine in December. You’re twenty-eight. Happy birthday.”
“I am aware of my birth date, Topher. But this year sucked, and I deserve a second shot. So I’m doing twenty-seven again.”
“You can’t do that! I turn thirty next year! You’re not hanging out in the twenties while I face that crap on my own!”
“Darling, I guarantee Mandy will stall out at thirty for a few years. She can keep you company.”
This is so unfair. My older sister has already started telling people she’s younger than me. Just you wait- five years from now I’ll be the only one of my friends over thirty, wondering how the heck it happened. Besides, if you’re going to the trouble of a do-over, twenty-seven seems like a waste of effort. I’d redo twenty-one, which was just a shit heap of a year for me. My boyfriend wasn’t old enough to join me at a bar, so I spent that birthday drinking my first legal beer in our living room. It really set the tone for the whole year, which had me in chemotherapy a few months later. I totally deserve another twenty-one.
My grandfather went into a nursing home on my thirteenth birthday. I was supposed to have a roller-skating party, but my parents weren’t able to do it. Feeling ignored and abandoned, with that level of self-centeredness you only have at thirteen, I made myself a cake and ate the whole thing. I was fat, hopelessly in love with a boy in my class, teased mercilessly every day by Will Albee (who is now in prison, I never tire of mentioning,) and my wish was for my life to magically be completely different than it was.

Thirteen sucked. Damn it, give me that year back.
In two weeks, I’ll hit the road with the touring production of a play. According to my schedule, we’ll be spending my birthday in beautiful Washington, North Carolina. I don’t know anybody around there, and my fiancée and friends will be back in Atlanta. Apparently my options for celebration locales are limited to Bill’s Hot Dogs off Main Street, or a nearby fossil museum, but I'm doing my best to remain optimistic. Every birthday holds the possibility of being the best one yet.
The more I think about it, that’s my strongest argument against a do-over. If you barely survived the last year, your birthday can be a resetting of the clock- a chance to refresh perspective and attack life with renewed vigor.

The hope is always that your best times still lie ahead of you.
Because just like we learned from George’s long-ago S&M trick: sometimes you’ll get whipped, sometimes you’ll get coffee and eggs. Occasionally both. But the only way to find out is to learn your lessons and be open to possibility, and keep looking ahead.

As I See It

2008-10-09T17:11:00.004-04:00

Preppy was digging through his closet, pulling out pants he hasn’t worn in about a year. I watched from the bed as he performed a sequence of stripteases, shimmying into a series of slacks. After three months of portion control and refusing all foodstuffs after eight in the evening, he’d slimmed down to his old pants. This made him positively giddy, greeting garments like old friends.
“Hello pinstripe pants!” he said, clutching the trousers to his face like he was in a fabric softener commercial.

Then he was back in the laundry basket, foraging. “Where are my Gap khakis? You know the ones, flat front, made me look like I have an ass?”
“Look in my closet. Top shelf.”
He went to my closet and grabbed the khakis, then paused to consider the stack of pants and pulled a few more.
“Hey!” I said. “You gave those to me!”
“No,” Preppy retorted. “You stole those from me.”
“See, that’s your problem, mister. In my version, you’re loving and generous. In your version, I’m just a petty thief. That proves I’m a nicer person than you.”
“You are a thief and a liar, and I’m taking back my damn pants.”
It’s moments like that when I fully comprehend the difference between my fiancée’s worldview and my own. He has an obnoxious tendency to remember events exactly as they happened. I am not encumbered by this trait. I will rewrite history without pause, casting myself in the role of the hero or victim as the story requires. My entire family does this, and most of my friends. My best gal Slutty Mandy and I will share an anecdote, and Preppy will politely wait until we’ve finished before quietly correcting a few major details that have been altered for the purpose of good storytelling. We’ll express legitimate surprise, saying, “Wow, is THAT what happened?”
Among my relatives, there’ll be nine or ten different versions of a single event, depending on whom you ask. God forbid a group of us ever witness a crime. They’d declare a mistrial after my Aunt Merry Ellen told the court all about the perpetrator’s earrings, and I recalled with fair certainty that the victim had been reading a copy of my book.
But if I’m a notoriously unreliable witness, Preppy is just as bad, despite his own sincere intentions. Because as long as I’ve known the man, he’s been pretty much blind. I’ve tried dropping hints about how sexy he’d look in glasses, but he doesn’t bite. With Hillary Clinton-level stubborn ferocity, he insists he sees just fine. And then he squints at his computer screen like Mr. Magoo. The color of our master bathroom has been a subject of heated debate between us for almost a year. I, along with everyone who has ever entered our house, say it’s green. Preppy declares it’s gray.

Because he can’t see.
While I was never so deluded to think that I would end up with a man who shares my love of rewriting history, sometimes even as it’s happening, there are still moments that leave me stunned by how different our vision of the world really is. Yesterday we had a little Extreme Makeover of our house, turning the den into my office because I wanted better light and more room. Then Preppy took over my former office, finally giving him a room of his own to do work, or get the hell away from me when the situation warrants. I spent the day setting up my new room, and he did the same. Late last night, we presented the results of our labors.
My old office had been transformed. To fully appreciate this, you have to understand that before Preppy was Preppy, he was Hippie. Hippie followed Phish on tour, selling burritos and handmade stash bags to the unwashed masses. Hippie wore tie-dyed everything and spent his days blissfully spinning around like Stevie Nicks. But that was a long time ago, so I don't judge.

I used to wear vinyl pants in public. We all have history.
What I didn’t realize was, under Preppy’s sweater vest-clad, hardworking exterior, Hippie was in deep hibernation, waiting to stage his return. And Hippie woke up in a big way, with posters on the wall, record player back in business, and a tapestry-covered sofa for lounging. There may have been a lava lamp involved. If there wasn’t, there should’ve been. I stifled my gut reaction, because I could see how delighted he was.
“Well,” I said. “How about this!”
“You hate it,” he said.
“I don’t… hate it. It’s very… young. It’s a happy room. A happy hippie room.”
“God, it’s been killing me having all this stuff in the attic. And now I can just come home, put on my records, and relax. This is awesome! You know when Lori and Coralie come to visit we’re just gonna spend all our time in here.”
This was likely true. Most of Preppy’s closest friends are former hippies themselves, now with careers and mortgages to maintain. But when they come to our house, they can step into the time capsule and remember the best parts of another time. And that’s important to have. As Preppy went over to arrange the Fraggle Rock dolls and Grateful Dead bears on his shelf with a spring in his step, I softened to the notion.

To my own surprise, I started to see things his way.

But I’m still right about the bathroom.

I Approved This Message

2008-10-02T17:12:00.003-04:00

I was at my friend Jennifer’s house, babysitting her kids. Jennifer’s son recently entered the world of politics, running for representative of his fifth grade class. In his stump speech before the classroom, he promised to be responsible and represent his fellow students to the best of his ability. His opponent then stood and pledged, if elected, his mother would bring McDonald’s French fries every Friday.

The landslide victory went to French Fry Fridays.
Jennifer’s son was stunned that such a cheap ploy, which his opponent’s mother would never honor anyway, cost him the election. I told him that this experience was actually excellent preparation for the real world.
I took advantage of early voting this week and cast my vote in the Presidential election. I am one of those slightly begrudging Hillary converts who have thrown my support behind Barack Obama because I do believe he’s got solid strategies for fixing the current national insanity. I even considered putting an Obama-Biden bumper sticker on my car, but those look so strange after the election’s over, and I don’t want dated catchphrases junking up my vehicle, whether it’s “Yes we can!” or “Where’s the Beef?”
My father is less concerned with such things, so he didn’t hesitate to slap a McCain/Palin logo on the back of his truck. He’s never shown such specific support of a candidate before. I actually don’t know who he voted for any previous presidential election, because we generally don’t discuss politics. But the McCain sticker, as far as I’m concerned, means he’s willing to defend the principles of their campaign. He’s also saying that these people speak to his values, which I wasn’t expecting. And I was really surprised by how much it hurt.

I feel like my parents are falling for promises of French Fry Fridays, and I don’t understand why.
So I wrote a letter.

Dear Mama and Daddy,
I am writing you because I need your help. I don’t need money (well, I guess I’ll always need money, but right now I’m not asking for it), and I’m not in trouble. What I’m asking for may seem very trivial, but this is one of the most important requests I will ever make, so please just hear me out.
I am asking you not to vote for Senator John McCain.
I do not deny that Senator McCain has dedicated his life to the service of our country, first in our armed forces, then in elected office. I believe his decision with his wife Cindy to adopt a child in need of a stable and loving home speaks well of his character. His continued financial support of his first wife’s medical expenses resulting from a car crash, even after their divorce, was a noble gesture.
Unfortunately, John McCain does not believe I should have the right to make any of those decisions in my own life. He does not believe I should have the right to serve openly in the armed forces. He believes that if a homosexual is willing to fight for their country, they should keep their identity a secret. And if the truth is discovered, they should be sent home. Members of our own family have fought in the current war and said the unit already knows without discussion which members are gay or lesbian. Picture how much more pride those soldiers would have in serving their country if they could keep a picture of their partner back home, as a reminder of who they’re fighting for.
McCain does not believe that I should have the opportunity to provide a safe and loving home for an adopted child. And I wouldn’t be making medical decisions on behalf of my spouse, because he doesn’t support any sort of government recognition of same-sex partnerships, and worked against it in his home state of Arizona. Do you believe that despite finding a healthy, loving relationship with a man you have come to know and care for, I should not deserve to have that legally recognized? Is my relationship less genuine in some way? Do you believe I could not care for a child?
Sarah Palin has stated her belief that homosexuality is a choice. You know me better than anyone. You know the challenges we have faced as a family as a result of living my life honestly. Do you agree with her? Do you believe who and how I love is a choice?
Do you believe that hate-crime legislation is unnecessary, even as men no different from myself are beaten or killed just for being who they are?
When I came out to you, you said your greatest fear was of the hatred and mistreatment I might face that would keep me from living a happy life. Well, that’s what’s happening. I am being relegated to second-class status, and if you put a McCain sticker on your bumper, or cast your ballot for him in November, you are endorsing that.
Please, please do not do that.
I hope in my lifetime to see a day when I can vote for a president based upon their economic strategies, or defense plan, but that’s not the case right now. One candidate believes in the authenticity of my life, and one does not. I do not have the luxury of choice. You are my parents, and I don’t think you have a choice either when it comes to what is right for your child. When I was growing up, I could count on you to defend me when someone tried to bully or belittle me. Will you do that again?
Asking you not to vote for John McCain is not me campaigning for you to support Barack Obama. I am asking you to have the courage to support me.
I love you so much.
Your Son

Those Were the Gays

2008-09-27T18:45:00.004-04:00

For the magazine's 10th anniversary issue, the editor of DAVID ATLANTA asked all of us to reflect upon where we were in 1998. This was my contribution.

My sister Shannon inherited my father’s ability to harness the power of the sun, producing a flawless golden tan that would last well into October. I, on the other hand, received the Scotch-Irish genetic makeup of my mother and her sisters- skin as pale as the belly of a frog which can redden to a third-degree sunburn if I have to stand in line too long at the ATM. As a child, I was always struck by the unfairness of it all- we’d go to the pool at the country club, and my sister would lounge about browning to perfection, while I bobbed in the pool slathered in SPF 50, a t-shirt stretched over my ample belly. Life was so unfair.
In 1998, I visited my Aunt Merry Ellen, and was greeted at the door not by a fellow pale-face, but by a russet-toned beauty that looked like she’d just spent a week in Gulf Shores. I was flabbergasted, and she couldn’t have been more pleased.
“It’s fake,” she said with pride. “They’ve got a new tanning booth over at Shear Perfection. You just step inside in your underwear, and it sprays the tan right on ya! Took me five minutes and now I’m gorgeous.”
I couldn’t argue with this assessment. Sure, if you examined it closely you’d notice the streaks on her neck and the orange fingernails, but from six feet away the impact was remarkable.

She booked me an appointment for that afternoon.
If you’d come to Jack & Jill’s, Jackson, Mississippi’s one and only gay bar in 1998, you would have found me there sporting my new look- bleached blonde hair, goatee and eyebrows penciled brown, and skin sprayed the color of an overripe carrot. I took to piercing anything that would support a steel stud, and amassed an impressive collection of YMLA stretch tank tops and wide-leg jeans. I’d found an oasis in a cultural Gobi where I could finally be myself, and promptly set about changing everything about me. I’d buy copies of OUT Magazine at Books-a-Million and try to emulate the fashion spreads. I was a divine style experiment, the entire decade of 90’s gay fashion piled onto one person.
In that persona I remained for the better part of a year- I’d come home from work, feed my incontinent Siamese cat, squeeze into one of my flammable shirts, and hit the bar until closing. By my eighteenth birthday, I was sleeping with the manager and drinking for free. It felt like an endless party, and in many ways it was. Because there was only one bar in town, we represented every rest stop on the QLGBTI highway, and formed a small community of revelers. All of us were filled with the optimism and possibility of the era- the first time a president had acknowledged the contributions of gay Americans to the national conversation, the first time the star of a TV series had come out while their show was still on the air, the hope that this visibility would naturally segue into a cultural viability. It was cause for celebration, and we sure as hell did.
But things were about to change.
We’d asked America to acknowledge us, and when they did, our increased visibility led to increased scrutiny. Those who once politely ignored us now looked directly at us, saying, “What is it you people want?” We were forced to define that. We wanted to serve openly in the armed forces. We wanted to be protected from discrimination in housing and the workplace. We wanted our relationships to be validated, and to raise families if we desired to do so. We wanted to stand equal as American citizens. Basically, we wanted to live our lives, thank you very much for asking. And in declaring this, our “gay agenda”, the opposition became fierce and organized. Progressive politics were shoved aside by a new faux cowboy president who believed that belittling, bullying, and demonizing us would make us go back into hiding.
Eventually the maintenance on those platinum locks grew tiresome, and I began to note that I looked a little, well, orange. My hair returned to auburn and my face grew pale again. I gave my vinyl pants to a grateful drag queen. I moved away, got a real job. But the regulars in that little bar with whom I drank, talked, danced, and occasionally got naked made me understand that my sexuality was not something to be ashamed of, it was actually pretty fun. And as the national debate grew increasingly personal and perverse, they were the solid foundation of community that reminded me of why gay is good.
Ten years later we’re in a political climate placing us in a fight for legitimacy. That means holding politicians accountable to the campaign promises that won our votes, and maintaining a community that isn’t broken down by infighting. The power to be a formidable force lies before us, waiting for us to grab it with our voices, our votes, and our refusal to be stereotyped or pushed into the background. Evangelical churches are organizing vans to take people to the polls on Election Day. Why not get bars do the same thing with party buses? The key to winning the culture war might lie in our roots, and for many of us that was the gay bar that first felt like home. Today’s eighteen year-old gay boys deserve to have the optimism and support that I experienced ten years ago. Hell, I guess I still want that for myself, too.

Then the party can resume, because we’ll really have reason to celebrate.

You Can't Take It With You

2008-09-18T21:48:00.003-04:00

Watching the season premiere of Saturday Night Live, I realize that Michael Phelps is not the least bit interesting to me when he’s wearing clothes. While his accomplishments in this year’s Olympics were inarguably historic, I’m a little perplexed by this business of promoting him as a sex symbol. Sure, he’s got that crazy ripped body, but then you get to the face, and the contrast just confuses the hell out of my penis.
Preppy’s working an overnight doing inventory, so I’m hanging out at the house with my cousin Nelson, which I won’t be able to do much longer.
Nelson got an offer he couldn’t refuse, returning to the pricey fancy-pants seafood restaurant he used to work at in our nation’s capitol. Apparently the period of time between the election and inauguration of a new president is like Mardi Gras up there, and people who work in areas of the service industry catering to moneyed pundits spend those months rolling around naked in piles of cash. I can’t really argue with the choice.
Nelson’s straining the laws of physics trying to pack everything he’ll need for the next four months into his Prius. What must go with him, versus what must stay here in Atlanta, reveals a lot about the life he intends to have up there. He’s leaving his good suit, but taking his lacrosse stick.
“This is a challenge,” says Nelson, furrowing his brow and staring at the pile of pots and pans he’d hoped to include. “I want my saucepan, but do I need it more than my brown shoes?”
“Take the saucepan,” I say. “You’re straight. Doesn’t matter if your shoes match your outfit.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, it’s the trade-off. Gay guys don’t have to worry about getting anyone pregnant, and straight guys don’t have to worry about accessorizing. We all get a little something special.”
“That’s fantastic,” says Nelson, as he goes to the Prius to remove the shoes.
The next morning, Nelson is on the road and Preppy’s sound asleep, and I’m sitting in my office tapping away at the next script that will take up six months of my life and make me no money. A little window pops up alerting me that I need to update my anti-virus software. I click “OK” and keep typing.
And that’s when the shit hits the fucking fan.
The desktop disappears. My blood pressure goes up ten points. Fifty pop-up windows fill the screen. A strangled screech forms in the back of my throat. Then the screen goes blue and a message tells me the computer is beginning a “system dump.” This is the entire spectrum of panic, including levels that only dogs can hear.
“Noooo!” I scream. “Don’t dump! Don’t you dare fucking dump you piece of crap I hate you so much! Eee-yaaaa!”
I remove the battery, and sit panting at my desk. You can’t dump if you’re not on, right?
I call my friend Joey, who’s good with computers. It’s important to have someone in your life at all times who’s good with computers. If you’re curious, you also need: A friend with a truck, a stylish friend who wears the same size as you, a friend who can talk about sex in graphic detail without getting weirded out, and a friend with tools. That’s just off the top of my head, I’m sure there are others.
“You fell for a Trojan Horse?” says Joey. “Really, Topher, have I taught you nothing?”
“Apparently not. So really, this is your fault, because you didn’t teach me.”
“I’ll look at it tonight. If you can access your files, get some CDs and save whatever you don’t want to lose forever. We might have to scrap your system and start over.”
I only have one blank CD. Curse all those mixes I burned from I-tunes! Did I really need Best of the 90’s Volume Three that badly? Well, yes I did. Sometimes singing along with Pearl Jam is the only thing that keeps my shit in one sneaker, okay?
“Alright, ya bastard,” I say, restarting the computer and entering the viral minefield that was once my desktop. “What do I really need?”
All of my writing is safely stored for just this scenario, so we’re really talking about photos, music, stuff like that. And much to my surprise, there isn’t all that much I can’t live without. I don’t actually NEED the crappy Nelly Furtado/Bon Jovi mashup, or the naked pictures of famous people.

Well, okay, maybe a few of those.
That night, I bring my sick Dell over to Joey’s perfectly staged home. He’s got it on the market now, following the recent demise of his six-year relationship. After all those years of nesting, he’s cutting his losses and hoping for a studio apartment to simplify things.
“Let’s see if we can save this baby,” he says.
“No worries if you can’t,” I say. “I’ve got what I need.”
It’s like that question of what you’d grab if your house was on fire. We live with an abundance of stuff in our hard drives and houses, which we really could walk away from if what’s important had to fit in a CD, a Prius, or a studio apartment. And that’s actually reassuring.
It’s been said that you can’t take it with you. But if you really examine your life, often you realize you don’t really need to after all.

The Scarlett Effect

2008-09-11T17:06:00.003-04:00

“Okay,” I say as I rummage through the pantry. “I’ve got a few cans of corn, some vegetable broth, six cans of tuna...”
“Why the hell would you need six cans of tuna?” my sister Shannon asks.
“It was on sale, and it lasts for like thirty years.”
I’m on the phone with my sister, trying to come up with something for dinner. My fiancée will be home in an hour, foolishly expecting food. I emptied my wallet into my gas tank this morning, so I’ve gotta make do with what we’ve got. Six weeks into my great experiment determining whether I can make a living as an artist, my life has devolved into an extended episode of Good Times. Every time a bill arrives in the mail, I half expect Esther Rolle to amble into the kitchen saying “Damn, damn, daaaamn!”
But there are good things that’ve come from the whole scenario. I’m a much more creative cook than I used to be. I’ve found that you can mix just about anything in the world with sour cream and call it a salad. If you’re looking for a hot dish, just put marinara on top of it, call it “Italian-Style”, and you’ve got yourself a fine meal for two. And through it all, Preppy has not complained, which is really to his credit as a person. When he calls and finds my cell phone disconnected, or has to take cold showers for a week because the gas is turned off, he takes it in stride. I have a little manila envelope on the bulletin board above my desk, labeled “In Case of Emergency.” Inside are applications for Starbucks and Home Depot. So far, he has not let me open the envelope.

Preppy just tells me to keep writing, even if we end up eating Italian-Style sawdust while living in our car in Hobotown.
I’ve grown to despise several items in my home, because I now picture not buying those items and having the cash instead. The chief offender in my mind is a damn crystal decanter I paid forty dollars for in 2003. It seems absurd to me that there was ever a moment in my life that I was doing so well financially that I could blow forty bucks on a decanter I would never, ever use. Every time I look at it, I picture having the forty dollars back, as if I would have kept the cash in a little box someplace for five years, waiting for a moment when it was needed.
I’ve read stories about myriad problems having too much money causes for folks. Well, I gotta tell ya, that’s a risk I’m totally willing to take. Bring on the wealth-related stress. I would find a way to soldier through that hardship.
I think some people are paralyzed by lean times, unable to adapt to a scenario where they have to scale down there existence. For others, a previously unknown level of ingenuity kicks in- the part of you that needs a new dress, so you take down the curtains and get to sewin’. The Scarlett O’ Hara Effect rises to the surface, all your resourceful beauty is at full command, and then you figure out how to make a casserole using Ritz Crackers and whatever’s in the freezer.
My grandmother had the Scarlett Effect down to a science. She was widowed with six children, and would scrimp, save, and repurpose to keep them all afloat. She was like several Dolly Parton songs brought to hardscrabble life. Stuffed animals were made from old socks. A hand-me-down dress would clothe all four sisters before it was retired and sewn into a patchwork quilt. Once, my sister saw her accidentally pour orange juice on her breakfast cereal. Instead of throwing it out, she sat down at the table and choked down every bite.
The Scarlett Effect was passed down to her daughters.

My Aunt Barbara recently made a centerpiece out of a broken ceiling fan blade, and from all reports the results were just precious. And now I find myself tapping into my own Scarlett Effect, realizing that if I keep bubbling water in the Crock Pot on the kitchen counter, Preppy can still have a nice hot shave before he goes to work.
It seems like there’s a lot more people lined up at the CoinStar at the Kroger cashing in change jars than there used to be, and I can’t help but notice the number of people at the pumps putting two gallons of gas in the tank, so it’s not like I feel alone here. My old bar buddies stay home a little more than they used to, or cut themselves off after two drinks instead of six, which may not be such a bad thing.
But we keep the faith that all will work out in the end, and get creative whenever possible. And it does help one appreciate the minor victories.
“Holy shit, I’ve got RICE!” I shout into the phone, doing a little victory dance.
“Oh, you can do anything with rice,” says Shannon. “That’s a good find.”
She says something else, but I’ve stopped listening. My inner Scarlett is savoring this moment. I’m picturing myself backlit against an orange sunrise, clutching my tattered hat to my nineteen-inch waist and holding my box of Uncle Ben’s up to the heavens, swearing I shall never go hungry again.

Separation Anxiety

2008-09-08T19:21:00.003-04:00

“She’s still out there,” I say, looking out the front window of the house. “Rolling on the doormat, lookin’ all cute.”
Preppy looks up from his work at the coffee table.
“Topher, I swear if you feed that damn cat she will never leave and there will be hell to pay. And don’t get any ideas about doing it while I’m at work because I already counted the cans of tuna in the pantry.”
“But she’s hungry, baby. And she’s adorable.”
“Of course she’s adorable, darlin’. She’s a kitten. That’s all a kitten knows how to be. But we’re not taking on some mangy stray, so let it go. You do this every time you see a stray cat or those orphans on TV, and you always forget how kids and animals get on your nerves after a few hours.”
All of this is true. Last weekend I worked as a technician on a film set. There was a baby in the movie. By the end of day two, I was fully prepared to become a parent.

Thank God I don’t have a uterus.

I know in my heart of hearts I’d be one of those trailer trash mothers who keeps getting knocked up just because she thinks babies are cute.
Even if I could talk Preppy into letting me feed the kitten, it’s not like I could take care of her. I’ve been cast in a play that’ll be touring the country for seven months, beginning in November. I’ll return just in time to get married in June, which I find more than a little alarming. I’d expected all of our wedding plans would be done spread out over the dining room table, the two of us carefully plotting each detail and arguing over cuts to the guest list. Now all that’s gonna happen via phone and e-mail while I’m lodging at a series of La Quinta Inns in minor Red State cities.
This is, quite simply, not the level of control I wish to have over the whole affair.
Being gone for so long worries me. This week, a couple we’re friends with broke up, and I honestly never saw it coming. It shook me up more than I expected. They seemed to really love and dote on each other, and I had every expectation that they were looking forward to a bright future together. When I found out, I asked way too many questions, because I needed to know what the cracks in their foundation were. Where did things go wrong? I couldn’t accept the trite explanation of, “Sometimes these things don’t work out.” I needed to know why. Those boys were seeing each other every day, and couldn’t make it happen. How will I maintain a relationship from hundreds of miles away?
I never got a satisfactory answer from either of them.
“You think you’ve got it bad?” says my sister Shannon on the phone the next morning. “My husband was at WAR, for God’s sake. For over a YEAR.”
It’s so unfair, Shannon being able to play the war card. No matter how bad things are for me, she’ll whip out that whole homefront drama while her husband was off saving America. How the hell am I supposed to argue with that? It’s like Sarah Palin with her damn special needs baby. Back that woman into a corner, and she’ll shift the topic back there somehow.

Jesus, lady. We get it, we get it.
“But how did you keep things stable while he was gone? And don’t tell me it was by thinking about his sacrifices and bravery, because that doesn’t make up for the fact that there’s nobody to watch movies with and it doesn’t make you any less horny.”
“Well, duh,” says Shannon. “That’s why you send naked pictures.”
“That did it? For a whole year? Adding photos to the spank bank kept your marriage alive?”
“Hell yeah. Get creative. The tricky part is getting into your pose in ten seconds, before the timer goes off, but I’ll bet you can do it.”
Since I met Preppy, I’ve placed a lot of faith in face-to-face contact smoothing just about anything over. If we argue on the phone, I know once we sit down and talk it out it’ll all be okay. And if I have a crappy day, I’ve got seeing him to look forward to. Taking this much time away from our life means giving up those things for a while, and having faith that everything will still be in place when I return. That whatever “doesn’t work out” in some relationships won’t happen while I’m not looking.
“I guess I’m just worried Preppy might forget why he loves me without me there to remind him every day.”
There’s a long pause.
“That’s so pitiful I don’t even know how to respond,” says Shannon.
“I don’t wanna leave town if it’s gonna hurt us. Preppy says it won’t, but how does he know?”
“All you know is what you want. And what the two of you want is to get married next June and grow old and ugly together. But you won’t find out what happens until you go. And you can’t stay in his face forever.”
“I know, but I was gonna try.”
I get off the phone and sign the contract for the tour. As I take it to the mailbox, I notice the kitten took the hint. She’s moved on, leaving me with the hope that she’ll be fine without me.

Thank You For Being a Friend

2008-08-28T14:50:00.002-04:00

“So, I think Parker and Eddie are having problems,” I tell my buddy George on the phone.
“Who the hell are Parker and Eddie?”
“You remember, when we used to hang out at Mary’s, before I met Preppy? Parker was tall, had those really complicated highlights, never talked much? And Eddie was always drunk, I think he’s a florist or a doctor or something?”
“No idea who these people are,” says George. “But go on.”
“Well, they broke up yesterday, then they worked things out, but this morning there’s trouble again.”
“Why do you know this? Are they calling you?”
“No, it’s all right there on Facebook. Eddie went from ‘in a relationship’, to ‘single,’ then back to ‘in a relationship,’ and today it says ‘it’s complicated,’ which sounds like an understatement.”
“Just so I’m clear,” says George. “You don’t actually know these people?”
“I do too! From the bar, a few years ago.”
“Darling, this is absurd. Someone you knew from the bar back in your skinny days is not a friend, no matter what Facebook tells you.”
I think I’m developing a problem. After abandoning Friendster for MySpace a few years ago, last week I took the time to create a Facebook profile, since that’s apparently all the rage these days. I really just did it to keep up with the people in my life who now refuse to call, text, or e-mail. If you wanna know what’s up with them, you gotta read their “Wall”. I posted some photos, accepted a few friend requests, and had fully intended to leave it at that.
Within three days, I had two hundred friends.
I was not aware I knew two hundred people. But I hadn’t thought of my classmates from elementary school, or the next-door neighbor of a friend in New York, or the people I used to hang out alongside at bars before I moved out to the suburbs. Collectively, that adds up. And then, you start looking at those people’s friend lists, which reminds you of all sorts of other people you haven’t talked to in fifteen years, and within minutes, you’re caught up on every aspect of their existence since you last met, and you’re getting daily updates.
My friend Molly from junior high is hosting a poker tournament in Louisiana. There is not a single reason for me to possess this information. Until last week, I don’t think she and I would’ve even known each other if we were in the same elevator. I’m certainly not going to attend the poker tournament. But I know it’s coming along very well.
When I get friend requests from people whose identities I can’t quite place, I’ll click over to the photos to see if it jogs my memory. If it’s a cute boy, I’ll go through his whole album to see if he’s got any shirtless photos. It just gives my ego a healthy boost when attractive strangers want to be friends with me. Also, I like shirtless photos. Go ahead and judge, you know you like them too. It takes a minute to upload a picture, so it’s not like they put the picture up accidentally. I figure if a hot guy goes to the trouble of putting up half-naked pictures, the least I can do is observe, and decide what I think about it.
Then I have to check their relationship status, because I have several quality single friends who I’m always looking to set up with someone.
People keep sending me virtual plants, which is somehow supposed to save the rain forest, but I’m not sure how that works. Apparently there are also people “tending my patch”. Slutty Mandy recently told me she’d chased away a chipmunk that was eating my petunias, and the least I could do was send her a sunflower. I think that was the moment I realized I was completely immersed in a bizarre, foreign culture.
My cousin Nelson’s bedroom is across the hall from the den where I do most of my work. There are moments where both of us are on Facebook, messaging each other from ten feet away. We used to have actual conversations. No we send each other YouTube clips.
I don’t really worry about this scenario, because I know once the newness of it all wears off, I’ll move on. When I first discovered Xtube, my friend Greg and I competed to see who could find the most out-there, fetishy clips. But we reached a point where we saw a few things that I questioned the legality or physics of, and most of which I really wish I could un-see, so we abandoned the exercise. After that experience, plus exhausting the searches to find out if there were any clips of people I knew (and yep, there were), I haven’t really been back.
In the meantime, however, I’m enjoying getting caught up with the bartender who snuck me drinks in Florida when I was nineteen, and the guy who played a talking vending machine in the children’s show where I played a giant blue soccer-playing kitten.

And there are, of course, the unexpected benefits.
“I just got a request from some grad student who likes reading Austen and looks great in a swimsuit,” I tell George.
“Is he single?” George asks.
“Sure is,” I say. “I should introduce you. I mean, after all, now he’s a friend of mine.”

Sleepless in the Suburbs

2008-08-22T11:05:00.003-04:00

It’s four in the morning. I wake up agitated. It’s too quiet. I realize the air-conditioning isn’t running. The bedspread is on the floor and the sheets are soaked with sweat. The room even smells hot. Confounded by this, I check the thermostat. It’s eighty-six degrees, which would be perfect if I was at a barbecue but not really ideal for a night’s sleep. There’s air coming out of the vents, but it’s warm air, mocking me. I throw on boxers and look at Preppy snoring contentedly.

I have no idea how he sleeps through stuff like this.
I’ve always been the person who wakes up at the slightest provocation, bolting up to seek the source of the sound. My father used to go to work at five every morning, and I’d jump out of bed when I heard him in the kitchen. I don’t really know why I did it every day. But I couldn’t keep myself in the bed, knowing there was something going on in the house that I needed to investigate. I’d find him at the kitchen table, eating Raisin Bran in his postal uniform.
“You should be asleep,” he’d say. “Everything’s okay.”
Then he’d give me a hug, and I would go back to sleep until I heard my mother moving around a little while later.
Standing outside my house in my underwear and flip-flops, I shine a flashlight on the air conditioning unit, which is currently not doing anything. This is a little panic-inducing, because calling a technician will require money we don’t have. Suddenly I miss having a landlord. Plus, there’s no way I’ll be able to sleep knowing there’s a problem to solve. This is exactly WHY I wake up to every sound. Because there might be something I need to take care of, like a broken air conditioner.

Now, if only I had the slightest idea what to do.

Other than knowing the sound it’s supposed to make I’m at a complete loss.
Back when I lived in Mississippi, I dated a guy named John whose next door neighbor loved reggae music. John’s neighbor seemed to particularly love reggae music at three in the morning, played at a volume which managed to provoke a rage in me I wasn’t aware I possessed. I would toss and turn in John’s bed, pillow over my head, trying my best to avoid the inevitable confrontation. But it was no use. I’d inevitably launch out of bed, pounding on the wall with my shoe. The music would get louder. John was oblivious to all of this. Without his hearing aids John was profoundly deaf, an aspect of his existence which presented countless hurdles, but did usually guarantee a good night’s sleep.
So I’d have to throw on my boxers and a t-shirt, marching across the hall to his neighbor’s door. He’d greet me in a cloud of pot smoke, wearing a sarong, black lights glowing in the background.

Our conversations were never cordial.
“Jesus, do we have to go through this every night?”
“Dude, what’s your problem? Your buddy never complains when you’re not here.”
“Because my buddy is DEAF, you jackass. But I’m not, so could you turn it down?”
“I wish he’d fuck another deaf guy, then.”
I’d try to explain my frustration to John the next day, but he’d just tell me not to worry about it. How does one explain annoying sounds to a deaf person?
“It’s like if roaches were crawling all over you,” I told him. “You couldn’t sleep through it.”
Later, when John started having nightmares about bugs attacking him in his bed, he blamed me.
Still standing outside, I think of kicking the air conditioner, because that tends to work with vending machines when they won’t relinquish my Snickers, but decide against it. Then I follow a cable to a fuse box on the side of the house, covered in ivy. I start ripping the ivy off, delighted by a possible solution. That’s when I see the big spider. It’s one of those fat bastards, so big they look hairy. This launches me five feet back, having a small panic attack. Because I saw Arachnophobia at a particularly impressionable age, I have always seen spiders as malicious, calculating creatures, hell-bent on world domination. Even Charlotte’s Web gave me the heebie-jeebies, especially because she had Debbie Reynolds’ voice, and frankly I find that woman alarming. She’s like a garden gnome in drag.
Now the spider is the only thing standing between me and cool air, and by extension, sleep. I take off one of my flip-flops and run toward the fuse box kamikaze-style. I smack the hairy monster off the box, flip a switch, and the air conditioner returns to life with the sound I was hoping for. I feel quite pleased with myself as I go back into the house, having slain the monster and completed my mission. Back in the bedroom, Preppy is spread-eagle on the bed. I want to wake him and share my harrowing hero’s journey, but decide to wait ‘til morning. I give a little push to roll him over, but he won’t budge.
“Baby, move over,” I say, pushing harder.
He flings an arm out in protest, managing to punch me in the face.
“Jesus Christ!” I yell, a hand to my throbbing eye.
“Shh,” he says. “You’re being loud.”
He resumes snoring. I grab my pillow and the bedspread and head for the sofa, deciding I’ve fought enough battles for one night. I should be asleep. Everything’s okay.

Money Dearest

2008-08-18T12:25:00.002-04:00

My neighbor Mrs. Richardson explained over our back fence that the neighborhood only uses one yard man: Walter, a man in his late thirties who lives at the end of the block. The system is simple: Whenever Walter feels like it, usually around the end of the month, he’ll drag his mower out and take care of your lawn. You can’t call Walter to schedule an appointment, because he uses prepaid cell phones and is always changing numbers. It’s also difficult to decline lawn service, because you never know when he’ll come by. So everybody just keeps fifty dollars on hand for when he comes to your door to collect.
I told Mrs. Richardson that didn’t sound like the best setup, and I might check around for something a little more reliable.
“Oh, please don’t,” she said. “We all use him. Walter lives with his poor mother, and he won’t get a real job. Only way she can get him to make money is by doin’ the yards. We do it to help her out.”
So I hired Walter. Gotta help his poor Mama.
I’m in the kitchen making dinner, which I do now because I’m home all day, and it’s important to have a few noticeable housekeeping things done when my fiancée gets home. Otherwise he begins to wonder what it is I’m doing. And I can’t say “I was writing,” because if I was actually writing all that time I’d have a novel longer than Gone With the Wind to show for it. In truth, I don’t do a lot of actual writing. But I spend a great deal of time staring at a blank document in Microsoft Word, begging my brain to actually come up with something. So then I’ll stop staring and have a cigarette or twelve, call my sister, maybe watch some clips of baby animals on YouTube. I love baby animal clips, particularly panda cubs climbing on things or sneezing. You wouldn’t think you can fill a whole afternoon watching those, but trust me, you totally can.
I can usually snap myself out of gazing at the screen slack-jawed about an hour before Preppy gets home, at which point I’ll start dinner and dust something in the living room. That’s key, because when he walks in the house and smells Lemon Pledge, his brain tells him I’ve been cleaning.

It also helps if I put a little Windex behind my ears, to complete the effect.
“I’ve been thinking,” says Preppy as I drain the pasta. “My domestic partner benefits provide the exact same coverage for both of us. Same health, dental, prescriptions, all of it. And I pay for that.”
“Oh-kaaay,” I say, not really sure where this is going, but really hoping it won’t interfere with my long-term plans to use these benefits to have all of my teeth capped. My ultimate goal is for it to look like someone’s turned on a fluorescent light when I open my mouth.
“So, if I pay for us to have identical benefits, how come you only let me have two movies on the Netflix queue, and you get four? Shouldn’t we each get three?”
Giving Preppy his own personal Netflix queue was a little gift from me last year. It didn’t cost that much more to upgrade my membership, and then he could pick out his own movies. I hadn’t thought of it as being in the same category as him providing my health insurance, but since the Netflix is considerably cheaper, I’m glad that’s how he sees it.
“I’ll fix it tomorrow,” I say, adding it to my to-do list. I’ve got a book coming out soon, at which point hopefully I’ll be financially stable again and Preppy won’t have to cover the bills. Until then, however, things are a little lean. I take pride in not having asked him for actual cash yet, but I had to take my change jar to the CoinStar at Kroger today, so that may be ending soon.
The next morning, the doorbell rings. It’s Walter the yard man, holding the check I’d given him the day before.
“I’m really sorry about this, Mr. Payne,” he said. “But the bank said they couldn’t cash this check.”
Well, shit. So much for having my own money.

I go to my wallet and pull all the money I’d gotten from cashing in my change, and hand it over.
“I’m sorry about this, Walter. There must’ve been some mix-up and the bank.”
“Mm-hmm,” he says, giving me a look that lets me know he’s completely aware I’m full of shit, but willing to spare my dignity and play along.
And just like that, I’m broke. I am officially completely dependent on my partner. The leap of faith I took in leaving my day job now feels more like a stumble. I call around, and manage to get a gig babysitting the next afternoon. Despite Preppy’s assurances that I shouldn’t worry, everything will be fine, I know that I need to contribute more than just the smell of furniture polish to the house. I can just picture Mrs. Richardson leaning over the fence, talking to the neighbors.
“You don’t even have to read the book,” she’ll say. “But everybody’s buying a copy. He won’t get a real job, and the only way Preppy can get him to make money is by writing those books. So we do it to help his husband out.”

Evidence Tampering

2008-08-09T11:24:00.002-04:00

I’m in the drive-thru at Chik-fil-a, which I always feel a little guilty about because they donate money to Focus on Family, and I really shouldn’t support that. But damn, those fanatical fundamentalists sure do make a fine chicken sandwich. I’m mulling over this quandary and looking forward to my waffle fries when the woman in front of me pulls ahead to the trash can, discarding a bag from Wendy’s, and another from McDonald’s.
I’m left wondering if she’s conducting some sort of tour. If I followed her out of here, would she stop at Dairy Queen next? I saw a movie once where Meredith Baxter played a bulimic who’d go on drive-thru raids like that.
There are so many social problems I wouldn’t even know existed if Meredith Baxter and Judith Light hadn’t dramatized them for me.
Then, as I receive my own order at the window, I have to move an empty Burger King cup out of the holder. A quick look in the back seat reveals the evidence from my most recent late-night run to the Krystal on Moreland Avenue, where I’m willing to risk being assaulted just to have tiny hamburgers at two in the morning.
Shit. I’m just like the lady. Only I don’t even throw the bags away. So I’m actually worse than the lady, because I’m also a slob.
It isn’t as though I’m ordering every meal via drive-thru speaker, but it is disheartening to note the change in lifestyle that’s occurred since I got my driver’s license. When I was still a pedestrian, I ate at fast food joints only a few times a year, mainly because it was rare for me to even walk past one. They don’t market fast food to people who walk, because you never see anyone walking down the street stuffing their face with a triple bacon cheeseburger. That’s reserved for drivers, who sit in traffic and eat French fries by the fistful. Oh, and by the way, other people can totally see you when you do that. The image of a man in my rear-view mirror deep-throating a Moe’s burrito is forever burned in my memory.
One would think that my expanding waistline would’ve been enough to sound the alarms in my mind, but it’s actually the moment at Chick-fil-a that really scares the hell outta me. I get home and delay my lunch in favor of cleaning out the car. Every paper wrapper, every plastic cup, every little cardboard Krystal chick container, leave me feeling shamed.
I must destroy all evidence.
I tend to do that. Any physical reminders of an unpleasant incident must be completely eliminated. A photo makes me think of a bad moment? Gotta tear it up. The polo I was wearing the day I found out I had cancer ended up in the trash, because it would forever be my cancer shirt. I bought new sheets once on the day a boyfriend broke up with me, and eventually I had to give the sheets away because I felt rejected every time I opened the damn linen closet. I should let my fiancée know about this, so he’ll know to take me to an alternate location if he ever has bad news for me. Because if it happens at home, I’ll have to burn down the house to eradicate the memory.
My grandfather was an avid fan of Playboy magazine in the 1970s- he had the entire decade stacked on the top shelf of the guest bedroom closet. My cousin Nelson and I used to pull copies down and marvel at the centerfolds featuring women with frosted blue eye shadow and pendulous, pre-silicone boobs. Nelson was clearly delighted by what he saw, but I was always more interested in the staging of the photos. Who stands in their library reading Ivanhoe wearing nothing but garters and heels? Or, why was this woman standing naked in front of a blazing fireplace holding a poker? Wasn’t that dangerous?
Then one day, we discovered a promotional copy of Playgirl that had been sent to my grandmother in 1975. These men were sexy in the Burt Reynolds mode- big mustache, overly tan, a little thick in the middle, overgrown pubes the size and shape of a slice of Sbarro pizza. They lounged, on rocks and in hammocks, looking directly at me with a smirk that said, “Admit it, Topher, you like it.”
I stole it. I took it home and committed every page to memory, reveling in fantasies of these manly men and me doing… something. I wasn’t entirely clear on what, but I knew it was something very wrong and potentially fantastic.
The Playgirl had to be destroyed.
I cut every single page into tiny pieces, taking hours with the task. I put the resulting confetti in a paper bag, then walked six blocks to the Presbyterian Church and threw it in their dumpster.
And here we discover the flaw in my destruction-of-evidence plan: I still remember every detail of that macho man lying in repose on a rock with a boner. I vividly recall the cancer shirt and the rejection sheets. Getting rid of the actual objects didn’t make the memory go away. In fact, the ritual may have highlighted them in my mind.
Maybe the best way to learn from a shameful experience isn’t by trying to eliminate it- it’s facing it head on. With that possibility in mind, I try something new: I take one of those Krystal containers and tape it to my dashboard. We’ll see what happens.

Faithful

2008-07-31T14:06:00.002-04:00

Okay, remember how my pal Slutty Mandy decided try something new and go out with a guy a few years older than her usual meat market? Well, she called me with an update, and it was a doozie.
“Wait, he’s WHAT?”
“You heard me,” she said. “He’s goddamn motherfucking MARRIED. As in, man and wife, rings and shared debt, the whole thing.”
“But you said he was divorced.”
“Because that’s what HE said,” she hissed. “Then last night he clarified that statement. Apparently when he said “divorced,” he meant “not really even remotely divorced.”
“Well that is just… tacky.”
“It seems that the only difference with older guys is that they’ve had more time to get really good at lying. I’m so fed up. The only thing worse than being a dirty mistress is being one without realizing it.”
“Maybe it’s time you try that lesbianism thing the girls are so wild about,” I say. “Lindsay Lohan seems to find it agreeable. I think I’ve got a brochure around here somewhere.”
“I’ve tried the girl thing,” she says. “Aside from it being less messy I really failed to see the appeal. Jesus, Topher, why do men do this? Why is one person never enough for a guy?”
It’s a question often asked. Statistics tell us that men wrestle with the concept of monogamy more than women. Although, I assume these reports are based upon interviews. It’s entirely possible that the men are admitting to their indiscretions, while the women are simply better at hiding it.
For most of the guys I know, finding the one and only remains the stated goal. Listening to them, one would assume they crave monogamous relationships. And yet in the moment, a nice option comes along, and suddenly a man can conveniently forget he’s married until after he’s been on a few dates and stayed over. It’s bad enough when there’s one man involved, but when it’s two guys attempting a relationship, surrounded by other horny gay guys… well, resisting temptation basically becomes your full-time job.
My friend Sammy used to hang out with a married guy, just as friends. There was a little flirtation, but nothing that spelled trouble brewing. Then one night, Sammy got a text from the guy that said “I wish I was inside U,” and attached to the message was a picture of his erect penis. Sammy was without words. He handed me his phone and waited for my response.
“Where is he right now?” I asked.
“I think he’s at Wetbar. Why?”
“Because this was taken in his bedroom. It’s a used dick pic. Not only is he trashy enough to try and cheat with you, he sent you a picture he probably took for his husband.”
“Oh my God,” said Sammy. “That IS trashy. I don’t even warrant a new dick pic?”
“If that doesn’t sum up the situation, I don’t know what will.”
Look, I’m no idiot. Monogamy is hard. I have cheated on boyfriends in the past. I had every excuse in the world, too: We hadn’t been dating that long, I was drunk, he ignores me, I think the relationship is going to end soon anyway, he won’t let me fuck him enough, he won’t let me blow him, or my most consistent, I just wanted to feel desirable. I was smart enough to know, sometimes in the moment and sometimes immediately after, that what I was doing was hurting the guy I was dating at the time even if he didn’t know. I didn’t realize how much I was fucking with my own head. That came later, when I actually committed to one person and finally respected how significant that is, and how unprepared I was to not solve problems in the relationship by going out and getting some strange.
We don’t really need statistics to know that men love the thrill of a new conquest. But a word of advice to those who might conveniently forget they’re married at the sight of a hot ass: Work to maintain what you were lucky enough to find, or know when to walk away. But don’t try juggling your commitments. You might get off in the moment, but at the end of the day all you’ll be is a used dick in somebody’s i-Phone, waiting to be deleted.

The Firing Squad

2008-07-30T14:02:00.000-04:00

I’m on the phone with my best gal pal, Slutty Mandy, catching up on the events of the weekend. Mandy’s been out a few times with a slightly older guy. I mean, not AARP or anything, but a little above the age group with whom we tend to socialize. There’s logic to this, really. She hasn’t had much luck with guys in the late twenties-early thirties range, so she’s just leapfrogging over them and trying the next level.
“My date went surprisingly well. Spent the day on his boat…”
“He has a boat? That’s good. Means he pays his bills.”
“How so?”
“Because,” I explain. “If the bank starts taking things away, the first thing to go is always the boat. So if he’s managed to hang on to that, there’s probably a good credit rating on this one.”
As years pass, different things make a man appealing. Ten years ago, it was abs and access to a reliable dealer. Now it’s steady employment and a solid FICO rating. Although I suppose the abs and reliable dealer would still be welcomed. They’re just no longer deal-breakers.
“So,” I say. “When do I get to meet this fella? I could make dinner. I’m a housewife now, I do that sort of thing. I also do crafts now. Do you need an afghan?”
“I don’t need an afghan in July.”
“Well, I’m really bad at it, so it probably wouldn’t be ready ‘til around President’s Day. Now, seriously, when do I get to see this guy?”
“Um… you don’t get to meet him yet.”
“Why not? What are you hiding? What’s wrong with him?”
“Nothing is wrong with him, sweetness. I’m just not quite ready to put him in front of the Topher Payne Firing Squad. I wanna try this out a little bit longer before you show up and openly judge him.”
“I do NOT do that!”
I totally do that. Here’s thing: I am very protective of my friends. They’re quality people with much to offer the world. I also know that when people get into new relationships, they tend to completely ignore their friends for a lengthy stretch while they’re flush with dewy romantic encounters. Anyone who says they don’t do that is a damn liar. We all do it. I did it. Some of my friends claim I’m still doing it.
My point is, if you’re going to take this quality person with much to offer out of my daily life for a while and keep them all to yourself, I have the right to evaluate whether they are worthy of such an honor. And if they are not, am I not duty-bound to report my findings? What sort of friend would I be if I didn’t point out that the person my best friend is dating drinks entirely too much, or wears pleated pants, or has no chin?
And don’t think that I’m some shrieking harpy here. They all did it to me back before I met Preppy. When I was roommates with George, he would actually reject men on the doorstep. The unlucky suitor would arrive for our date, George would open the door, and make a guttural sound of disgust. Mandy would play it with slightly less subtlety, settling in with a glass of scotch and tilting her head in mock-interest. With careful precision, she would pick my boyfriends apart, leaving them lying in a heap on the floor before announcing they weren’t clever enough to run with me or my crowd. Preppy managed to disarm them all through a method no one had tried previously: He found them all hilarious. Their posturing and interrogation left him amused beyond words.

Which, incidentally, is one of the reasons I like them too.
“All right,” I say to Mandy. “You have your clandestine affair. Keep him to yourself for now. But eventually he’s gonna have to face the tribunal. You can’t hide him forever.”
“I know that,” she sighs. “But for now, let me believe I can.”
“Fair enough,” I say, already preparing my list of questions for the man who dares to win the heart of my best girl.

Make It Happen

2008-07-23T13:59:00.001-04:00

“It’s right here somewhere,” I say, slowly driving through the streets of Candler Park.
“Do we need to turn Vera on?” asks George, reaching for my GPS. “Preppy made you get her for situations just like this.”
“No, I got it. It’s just past the golf course… I think.”
“Watch it, George,” Slutty Mandy says from the back seat. “You’re ashing all over me.”
We’re taking a post-brunch field trip, so my best friends can see the most exciting thing that happened to me all week. Possibly ever.
“There! Right there!”
I slam on the brakes directly in front of a 1920s Baptist Church, which was repurposed in the 1970s when it was purchased by the First Existentialist Congregation of Atlanta. Two days ago, it became the site of my upcoming wedding to Preppy.
“That’s not a little church!” yells George. “You said little. You said you were gonna have a tiny church like the one Slash played guitar in front of in the November Rain video.”
Slutty Mandy begins singing Guns and Roses behind us.
“Turns out those only exist in music videos and episodes of Little House on the Prairie. Besides, we needed a larger space. I’ve got a big family, and the guest list just kept growing. We’ve got sixteen attendants now.”
“Sixteen?” shouts Mandy. “Christ, who are you, Princess Di?”
“Look, y’all. I never had a graduation ceremony, I’m not Jewish so I didn’t get a bar mitzvah, I don’t even do big birthday parties. This is the one and only time I’m asking everybody to drop everything and come celebrate something, and I don’t wanna hear crap about it.”
“Down, Bridezilla, down,” says Mandy. “Nobody’s going to take away your special day. I’ll put the baby’s breath in your hair myself. I’ll carry a parasol. Whatever you and Preppy want.”
“Preppy wants what he always wants. Whatever makes Topher complain the least,” says George, examining the building with a critical eye. “God, I’m just wondering how in frosty hell I’m supposed to do flowers for a space that size.”
“I’ll help you,” I say. “We’ll do it together. It’ll be fun.”
“I don’t know,” says George. “You don’t take instruction very well. And you never have free time.”
“I will for this! My last day at the restaurant is next week.”
“What?” says Mandy. “You quit your job to plan your wedding?”
“No. That’s just a benefit. I’m gonna try to be a writer. Full-time. And if I need extra money, there’s plenty of things I can do. Odd jobs.”
I know, it seems rash, but I really did think this through, in my way. I made a budget of the exact dollar amount I need to make each month, and then I just have to come up with creative ways to make that much money. So I made another list of things I might be good at that would still give me time to write. I came up with babysitting, photographing events, phone psychic, being one of those guys who gives out comment cards at movie screenings, hosting a talk show, and assembling products in my own home, among many others. My friend Vincent in New York does pretty well cleaning houses in suggestive outfits. If I got some abs maybe I could do that.
Poor Preppy. When he met me I had a nice, stable, full-time job doing very responsible, adult-type things. But once I convinced him to marry me, I up and decided I’d had enough of all that. He was a little nervous about the whole thing, but I promised him if by the end of the year I was broke, I’d go put in an application at Starbucks.
But you never get anywhere without taking risks. I could keep telling myself my day job doesn’t define me, but is that really true? Whatever you do with the majority of your day does define who you are, at least to some extent. If you spend ten hours a day being a bartender and two hours a week being a musician, then which one of those words really describes you better? There are two things I wanna be at this point in my life: A writer, and married to Preppy. As I drive away from the church, I feel like I’m finally making both of those things happen.

Rain on my Parade

2008-07-09T13:47:00.000-04:00

“I will never, never be dry again,” I say to my best pal Slutty Mandy as we wring ourselves out under the Civic Center awning. We’ve just walked the route for Pride Parade 2008, apparently sponsored by The Wrath of God.

All that flooding and rainbows felt distinctly Old Testament.
“Preppy is so lucky he had to work today,” says Slutty Mandy, trying to bring her phone back to life. “Is your Blackberry working?”
“I’m hoping it will when it dries out.”
“Great, well there goes getting a cab. Fabulous.”
We decide to forego riding MARTA from Civic Center, suspecting that every single waterlogged reveler was headed in that direction. Instead, we simply return to the parade route and walk it in reverse, back to Mandy’s apartment in Midtown. To pass the time, I bitch constantly about how wet/chafed/tired I am.
“I’m sorry, didn’t you walk EVERYWHERE up until like six months ago?”
“Not in the rain. And not for like, miles. This is coming dangerously close to exercise, and you know how I hate that.”
“How do you think I feel? I had spin class this morning. My legs are killing me.”
“Oh, no, Soggy Mandy. People who exercise voluntarily are not allowed to bitch about having to engage in MORE physical activity. There’s nothing so obnoxious as people in great shape complaining about how sore they are. You’re supposed to like this sort of thing.”
“Your denial of your own history astounds me. You used to go to the gym.”
“I also used to breast feed. People change.”
We decide to cut through my old neighborhood.
“Oh, man. That’s where Neighbor Guy lived. He was my waist size, too. If he hadn’t moved away he could loan me clothes.”
“Sweetie, would you really stop at a former trick’s house demanding pants?”
“Yes. I would compromise myself in any number of ways for dry clothes right about now. Ooh! Charlie used to live over there before he got married. And Dean moved to Stone Mountain of all places, got himself a farm house. Over there’s where Criminal Mike lived until the cops found him. Aw, and that bartender with the tattoo of eyeballs on his lower back, remember? He lived right there.”
“Jesus, did you fuck all your neighbors?”
“I didn’t have a car. It was practical,” I say, really considering my surroundings. “Wow. I don’t think I know anyone in Midtown anymore.”
It’s only been about two years since I left my little apartment on Durant Place, and my fiancée and I almost always make it to a bar once a week, but a curious thing has happened: Right around the same time I packed up my boxes and headed out of the Midtown mix, a good number of my friends did too. No longer content with our tiny, overpriced apartments, yet in no way prepared to buy one of the area’s stately old homes, we took our leave. I got a house on a quiet street in Decatur, a car, a soon-to-be-husband. We have a yard. Now, I borrow lawn care supplies from neighbors instead of having sex with them.
And while the life I’ve built is a source of great joy, I can’t help but be a little wistful as I remember closing Blake’s and stumbling down this street, belting “Express Yourself” for the benefit of my sleeping neighbors. Let it never be said that I don’t have happy memories of my bachelorhood. Vague, drunken, happy memories. I recently visited my friend Nick at his new apartment in Ansley Forest, and of course already knew where his bathroom was.

Half the homos in Atlanta know the layout of those apartments. They’re an inevitable stop on our personal parade route through gay life in the city.
As Slutty Mandy and I approach Grady high school, a blonde guy in his early twenties passes us, drenched and happy, with a few of friends.
“Come on,” he says. “We’re almost home!”
He could be headed back to my old place, or at least somewhere I spent the night. But the thought is interrupted by my Blackberry coming back to life, albeit with a screen full of water droplets. I answer and catch Preppy up on the day’s events, walking away and leaving my old street to a new crowd.

Since U Been Gone

2008-07-03T01:39:00.003-04:00

“Go. Point. Four. Miles and… Turn right. On. South. Atlanta Road.”
I’m driving in Roswell, which is so not my neighborhood, and that makes me very nervous.

I have a disastrous sense of direction, and I’ve only had my driver’s license for six months. Somehow the suburbs confound me twice as much as downtown streets- Downtown is on a grid, but outside the Perimeter streets twist and turn endlessly, changing names without warning.
When Preppy’s in the car, I can keep my panic in check. He navigates, and bolsters my confidence with words of encouragement. But alone, I teeter on the edge of a nervous breakdown. He knows this, having patiently talked me through hysterical phone calls from Marietta and Buford. But he can’t be with me all the time, which is why he introduced me to my new traveling companion.
“Continue to. North. Atlanta Road.”
I call her Vera, and she knows where everything is. When Vera is giving directions, I keep the windows rolled up and the radio off. I don’t talk on the phone.

Vera is in control, and she is a wise and patient leader.

She can even tell me where the nearest Starbucks is. She does everything Preppy does except hold my hand and tell me I’m a good driver. I have every reason to believe future versions of her will do that.
Preppy’s out of town, joining his family at the beach for a few days. I can’t go because I’m in a play, and my free time is being spent rehearsing a dance number for the Atlanta Cotillion Cabaret. In heels. My feet hurt.
Last night I couldn’t sleep, so I built a little fort next to me in the bed- a Pillow Preppy, if you will. It didn’t help, and it took me forever to figure out why. Then I realized: Pillow Preppy doesn’t snore. I’ve grown so accustomed to his nightly symphony of grunts and mournful moose sounds that without it, the bedroom was entirely too quiet. Creepy quiet, just the distant thump of the nightclub behind our house, curiously located between a plus-size clothing store and a 24-hour day care center.

Actually, the more I think about it, that makes perfect sense.
Anyhoo, I laid there in the dark, next to the eerily silent Pillow Preppy, wondering if for his next gift he could locate a device that would replicate his sleeping noises. Then when he goes out of town, I can just throw on the virtual sleeping fiancée and drift off without incident. Then it hit me: I used to be a fairly independent person. I didn’t require GPS navigators and fake bedmates made out of pillows. I didn’t even own a cellular phone until after Desperate Housewives premiered. I didn’t need such things. I made my way on my own just fine. Somehow, being in a relationship was turning me into a puddle of inactive goo, no longer capable of taking care of myself.
So back in the car, I decide to exert some of that old energy- a little of that self-sufficient can-do attitude that used to define me. I turn off the GPS. I’ve been to Roswell a few times, and I have the address.

I don’t need Vera or Preppy. I can do this.
A half-hour later, I pull over and turn Vera back on. I’m in Dunwoody. Don’t know how that happened.
I realize I have romanticized the old me quite a bit more than I realized. I knew I always picture the old me as thinner and less awkward- apparently I also fooled myself into thinking I was competent. I was never competent! I have always been just as bumbling and neurotic as I am now. The only reason I’ve noticed it so much while Preppy’s been away is because since he came along I’ve been ever-so-slightly more honest about it, and he was willing to help prevent me from getting lost or accidentally setting something on fire. He made it okay for me to admit that I can’t do everything on my own. Which is why he needs to come back, before I accidentally drive to Tennessee in a sleep-deprived haze and can’t get myself home.
“Please wait,” says Vera. “Calculating new route.”
You do that, sweetie. I’ll just sit here and wait for further instruction.

Why We Fight

2008-07-02T13:36:00.000-04:00

Here’s a little pointer on European travel: Until George Bush is out of office, just tell people you’re from Canada. I learned that lesson in Ireland, when upon hearing my American accent, locals would accost me and demand answers regarding Dubya’s general incompetence. For a while, I tried to defend myself and my country against their tirades, but then I discovered the Canada solution, and my situation improved considerably. Everybody likes Canada- Good old genial, non-threatening Canada. It’s like the Ellen Degeneres of nations.
So I spent a summer lolling about the Irish countryside as a fake Canadian, never having visited the country I called home, and not actually knowing anything about it. But here’s another pointer: Nobody else knows anything about Canada either. I’ve wondered in the intervening years if any of the Irish people I met later traveled to our northern neighbor, and if they were surprised that the main thoroughfare in Quebec City is not named Celine Dion Boulevard, as I’d claimed.
In the village of Clonmel, I found a pub with internet access and quickly set up shop at a corner table, where I would end each day uploading photos and writing over an endless stream of pints.
It was in the pub that I met Danny, the owner of the local pizza parlor. He was around thirty, and the only gay man in town. He sniffed me out with relative ease, using that beautiful sixth sense that every homo in a small town has: Attuned to every gesture or pop culture reference, any indication that they’ve crossed paths with one of their own kind. He invited me back to his flat, to see the view. It was good to know that closeted or not, regardless of culture, every gay guy had the same few cheesy pick-up lines.
Danny wasn’t out. Not to his family, or his employees, or even the guys with whom he shared this flat. The concept of living a life where he could be out to everyone, even strangers, was beyond his imagination. When I tried to describe my experience of marching in Pride Parade, he couldn’t picture it.
“But you’ve seen movies, and TV shows, right?” I asked.
“That’s just Hollywood fantasy,” he said.
I couldn’t believe I was having this conversation. In an age of the internet and gay marriage debates, people remain who cannot begin to fathom the concept of living their lives honestly. It made me profoundly sad, and a little angry.
“It’s not fantasy, Danny. It’s my life. And all my friends, too.”
“Lucky for you,” he said, and the subject was closed. I returned to my vodka tonic. And then he kissed me. It was startlingly intense- forceful and hungry. I followed him inside, careful not to disturb his roommates.
“You don’t have to hide, you know,” I said later as we lay on his bare mattress, naked in the orange light of dawn. “You could have this every day if you wanted.”
“Let it go, pally. My shop’s doing well here. Not a bad life.”
I rolled over and rested my head by the little V-shaped thing below his belly button. I forget what it’s called.
“But if you know something is a part of you- something that defines you… don’t you owe it to yourself to live honestly, and fight for it?”
Danny gave a heavy sigh.
“Some things you can’t fight by yourself.”
“Then move! Sell pizzas someplace else! You’re a great guy. You shouldn’t be alone.”
“I’m used to it,” he said.
“You shouldn’t settle for getting used to it.”
We meant to exchange e-mail addresses, but it never happened, and I left the country a week later. But he never left my mind, and serves as a consistent reminder whenever people ask why Pride festivals are necessary. Pride is necessary because there are some things you can’t fight by yourself, so wherever and whenever we can gather to show the strength and validity of our lives, we are called by conscience to do so. Because there’s guys like Danny all around the world who believe that the life we have is some unattainable fantasy. It isn’t. It’s right here in front of us. And if we demand to be recognized, support each other, and are willing to battle for the lives we deserve, eventually people like him might feel strong enough to join us in the fight.

History Lessons

2008-06-25T13:30:00.001-04:00

It’s Preppy’s ten year high school reunion, and we’re in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Preppy was class president his senior year, so he was responsible for planning the festivities. That was a little learning moment for me, by the way: I had no idea the responsibilities of class officers continued after graduation. Now he’s a dignified former president making an official visit, like when Jimmy Carter moderates peace talks. And that makes me, in a way, the former first lady of Porter’s Chapel Academy. I should totally be wearing a sensible suit and heels. Maybe a scarf.
At dinner, we’re seated between Jen, Preppy’s best friend from high school, and a girl named Betty, who was expelled her senior year. Betty was the wild child- she could always get liquor or cigarettes, and ditched her prom date to take the limo driver instead. It seems everyone at the table has a Betty story.
“Betty,” says Preppy. “What was the name of that guy you ran off and moved in with junior year? He had a trailer with a big screen TV?”
“Oh, shit, what was his name?” says Betty, sipping her White Russian and peering into the haze of her memory. “My mama wanted to have him arrested. Jim? Tim? Somethin’.”
“I remember that!” shouts Jen. “We went to visit you and you just threw a porn tape on while we were sitting there talking. I’d never seen some of those acts before. Scared the hell outta me!”
“I just wanted y’all to see the big TV,” says Betty. “Everybody knows the only reason you get a big TV is to watch porn life-sized.”
“I didn’t know that,” I say. “Preppy, did you know that?”
The conversation continues in this vein for a while: the teenage adventures of Preppy, Betty, and Jen, most of which involve small crimes or choices that would have shamed their families. So they sound a lot like my high school stories. Good times. Eventually, I start looking around for the cocktail waitress, and I notice Jen’s husband. He was amiable and animated earlier in the evening, but for at least the last half hour, he’s been sitting two chairs down, observing the conversation silently. There’s an expression on his face I recognize, and it does not bode well for Jen when they leave.
Several months ago I met a few friends of Preppy’s from his life in another city. As the alcohol flowed, so did the stories. And there were quite a few that somehow had never come up in our conversations. I tried to maintain a placid expression as my stomach tightened. My laugh became more forced and my glances at my fiancée grew increasingly severe. We did not have a pleasant drive home.
So when Jen’s husband stands and makes it very clear it’s time to leave, I know exactly what’s going on in his head: “Why haven’t I heard any of this before?”
The next day, Jen reports to Preppy that she did have a rather strenuous drive back to the hotel, which left her confused even after they’d patched things up. These events were a decade ago, when they were babies. What’s the big deal?
Maybe it’s just me, but I think there’s a protective instinct which kicks in when we hear tales of wild nights and bad choices from our significant other’s history. We wish we’d been there, to steer them away from a guy who treated them like shit or something they drank, smoked, or snorted. And there’s a small part of us that wishes they’d been there to do the same for us. It’s the part of you that really means it when you say “Where have you been all my life?”, and knowing you can’t change that can be frustrating.
You probably have to be a total control freak to really appreciate this.
Preppy advised Jen to tell her hubby the same thing he told me: Every choice they made before led them to become the people we now love. Not all of them were good, but they were all necessary. And the past we had apart pales in comparison to the future we have together.

Role Play

2008-06-18T13:20:00.001-04:00

Preppy and I are in The Gap with my cousin Nelson, helping him pick out clothing that actually fits. Nelson, like many of the other straight guys I know, tends to wear shirts and pants three sizes larger than he needs. Somehow wearing your proper waist measurement has been associated with being Metrosexual, which I just don’t get at all. Nelson used to be a cross-country runner. Despite his habit of eating an entire large pizza for dinner several times a week, Nelson weighs about twenty pounds soaking wet.

He has the metabolism of a hummingbird. We hate him for this.

But some of the women in his life have told him the same thing I’ve been saying for years: He looks like he was either recently hospitalized, or doesn’t know how to dress himself. I say it, nothing happens. A chick says it, and we’re on our way to the mall. Go figure.
“Go try this on,” says Preppy, holding up a knit shirt.
“I’m not wearing purple,” says Nelson.
“It’s not purple,” I say. “It’s… Merlot.”
“That just made it gayer,” he says.
We manage to wrangle him into a dressing room with a few selections, then stand outside the door so he can’t escape. A woman with a very bewildered expression emerges nearby, wearing a little white summer dress with a flouncy skirt.
“Aw, that’s pretty,” I say.
“Is it?” she says, her desperation leaking from every pore. “I don’t know anything about this style. Is this cute? My hips are too big for this. I feel like a dust mop.”
“No, darlin’, it’s great!” says Preppy, and he’s off assisting her.
Then another woman is at my side, brandishing a pair of madras shorts.
“Excuse me,” she says. “What shirt would go with these other than white? My husband always gets stains on white shirts.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t work here.”
“I know,” she says. “I just wanted your opinion.”
Welcome to Queer Eye for the Straight Gap.
I’m always hyper-aware of scenarios like this. I can’t begin to count the number of baby showers, bridal parties, or lingerie shopping excursions I’ve been asked to attend over the years. At least once a month Preppy calls to say he’ll be home late because one of his girlfriends needs help picking out a dress or cute pair of shoes. For my friend Katie’s wedding a few years back, I did the makeup for the entire bridal party.
I am not a trained professional, and frankly there’s nothing about my wardrobe that indicates I have an excess of taste to share with the world. When someone hands me a bouquet of flowers and says, “Do something with these,” my only instinct is to throw them away. Somehow, somewhere, a list was compiled of traits everyone assumes you have if you’re a guy who likes to kiss other guys. It’s this damn chicken/egg scenario I don’t have a clear grasp on: Did I have a natural instinct about what shade of lipstick looks best with which skin tone, or is this something I cultivated because everyone kept asking my opinion on the subject.
Is this the by-product of integrating into the culture?

By increasing our visibility and relevance, we’ve been assigned tasks which all of us are expected to perform? Not once, ever in his life, has Nelson been asked for his opinion on what color to paint a room or where to hang a picture, although he’d have just as informed an opinion as I do. But he is consistently asked to help move furniture or change the oil in someone’s car, tasks I can perform just as easily, but I’m never asked. Which is just as well, because I hate doing shit like that.
I suppose the nature versus nurture debate is irrelevant, because either way here we are, playing fashion consultants to the dressing room. When Preppy walks away from the girl in the flouncy dress, she’s got a big smile on her face and a healthy boost of confidence, as does Nelson when he walks out with his bag of new clothes.
And that may be why I don’t resist the role the world at large expects me to play sometimes: When I’m approached and asked to pick out a shirt for someone’s husband, they’re identifying me as someone with authority to share. It’s an opportunity to forge a small connection and be the person who made their day a little brighter.

And that’s not a bad role to play.

The Tipping Point

2008-06-11T13:15:00.002-04:00

I found this YouTube video, taken from a security camera, of an office drone working in a cubicle maze. Some guy comes along and accidentally knocks a bunch of papers off his desk. The drone notices, and he makes the guy pick up the papers. And then, for reasons unknown, the drone takes his computer keyboard and smashes it on the guy’s head. Thus emboldened, the drone throws his computer monitor across the room. And then he really cuts loose. He leaps from desk to desk, wreaking mayhem on various pieces of office equipment for three minutes, until someone finally tasers his ass, and down he goes. And the whole time I was watching it, I kept picturing the drone, sitting at his desk thinking, “If Glen knocks those profit and loss statements off my desk one more time, I’m gonna go fucking psycho.”
Then Glen knocked the papers off, one last time. The tipping point. I’ll bet it was a really freeing moment for the drone.
I watched it again and again, following the individual reactions of the drone’s co-workers during the flipout. Some made a run for the door, but a large number stayed. With their camera phones. They didn’t intervene; they just… documented. The drone’s breakdown became more explicable- He worked with assholes. It’s the little things that really define your day, you know? Then you hit the tipping point.
“I’ve figured out what causes a nervous breakdown,” I tell my sister Shannon on the phone.
“That’s a hell of an opening statement,” she says. “Go on.”
“Everywhere I turn, people tell me I’m not doing enough. No matter how hard I work, something gets left out or overlooked, and then people say I’m letting them down. Preppy says I don’t clean the house enough, my boss keeps finding things I didn’t do, I gotta raise money for Cotillion… last night I decided to stay in to get some sleep, and two people called me from the bar all pissed off. Even drinking is an obligation now. And I really want a miniature cow! And the batteries in the TV remote are dead, but every single time I go to CVS I forget to buy new ones. For three months!”
“And that’s what causes a nervous breakdown?”
“I think a breakdown is just your brain saying fuck it all,” I say. “Forget work, cleaning, batteries, just go to the nut hut, sit in a padded room and play Connect Four.”
“They wouldn’t let you play Connect Four in a psych ward. Choking hazard.”
“Oh, great, Shannon. Way to ruin my breakdown.”
“I don’t like all this conversation. Are you planning on having a breakdown?”
“It’d be too much work for Preppy. And I could never schedule a psychotic break.”
“Good for you,” says Shannon. “You figured out two things. Breakdowns are caused by constant nagging, and prevented by schedule conflicts. Now, if you really think you’re about to go on some sort of Tatum O’Neal downward spiral, say so. Otherwise, I gotta wake up my kid or he’ll nap all day.”
“Go. I’m fine.”
So she does. I’m not fine.

For the rest of the day, I wonder if the little things just add up, the demands and e-mails and voicemails under the general heading of “Not good enough”, until one cannot help but throw a fax machine for a little release. I wonder what you’re supposed to do keep that from happening.
That night, Preppy and I go out for drinks, and he tries to make me laugh, but I’m too close to my tipping point to let go and have fun. So on the drive home, he removes his shoes. Followed by all of his clothing.
“What are you doing?!”
“I’ve been trying to make you smile all night, but nothing’s worked. So when we get home, I’m going to jump out of the car and run around naked until you get the front door open. And if that doesn’t make you laugh, there’s no hope for you.”
He’s as good as his word, and I try to unlock the door, but I can’t stop laughing long enough to get the key. As I cackle, I feel myself tipping back in the right direction. Like I said, it’s the little things that define your day, and this day is no longer defined by everyone barking demands at me. It’s defined by the image of my fiancée’s ass in the moonlight, and me wondering if the neighbors are up.

Nesting

2008-06-04T00:01:00.000-04:00

My fiancée Preppy and his best galpal went to a house party in Smyrna, where Preppy learned that he may never become a Guitar Hero. It was his first time visiting the house where the party was held, and apparently he took exhaustive mental notes. When he got home, he had grout on the brain.
“You know, between the tiles in the bathroom,” he said. “Their house is just as old as ours, but their bathroom had beautiful grout. So I asked about it, and she said they’d re-grouted the whole thing right after they moved in. I was really jealous of their grout.”
He’s telling me this while sitting on the edge of the tub in the master bath, examining the floor, which was just fine yesterday but now is dingy, embarrassing, and simply won’t do.
“All you need is a little saw and a chisel and you’re in business,” he says, surveying the expanse of tile in front of him. “Why aren’t we doing more stuff like this? We’ve had the bedroom paint picked out for two months. We could crack stuff like this out in a weekend.”
“Because we rarely have weekends. We’re busy people. I’m proud when we manage to fold the laundry.”
“We’ve been in the house for six months. We need to nest more. Help me nest, Topher.”
“If I agree to help nest, will you let me have Clarabelle?”
“No.”
Clarabelle is my fantasy pet. She is a miniature cow. I caught less than a minute of a segment they did on Animal Planet about exotic pets, and since then I’ve been desperate for a miniature cow. I keep a picture of one on my Blackberry, so I can show others unfamiliar with, as far as I’m concerned, the greatest animal ever.

It’s a cow the size of a German Shepherd.

They’re very loving and come when you call them, and they produce up to two gallons of milk a day. We’d never have to buy milk again! I’d build one of those cobblestone walls, like you see in the rolling hills of Ireland. She’d live there. Sometimes I’d walk her in Piedmont Park, beaming with pride as everyone ignored Dalmatians and bulldogs, fawning over Clarabelle. Even that guy with the pig would be jealous. I could charge for photos.
“She’s no trouble,” I’d say. “She’s a contented cow.”
At Christmas, I’d send pictures out of Preppy, Clarabelle, and me, all in Santa hats. Cute. I know, I used to say the same thing about dogs until I had to live with two of them while we were closing on the house. But this is totally different from that. A dog is just a dog, but a miniature cow is… well, there are no words. Plus, they live outside.
“I love that you claim not to have time to fold laundry, but somehow you’re going to build a wall and work daily milking into the schedule.”
“I could do it before work,” I said. “It’s just a few gallons.”
“Topher, you grew up in Mississippi. You know what cow pastures smell like.”
“That’s if you have lots of great big cows. But Clarabelle is just one tee-tiny perfect cow. And she can learn tricks.”
“Really? Can you teach her to keep you warm at night? Because you’re gonna need someone for that if I come home and find a goddamn cow in the yard.”
“Okay fine. But if I don’t have time to take care of Clarabelle, I don’t think I have time for grouting, either.”
Later, Preppy was online, Googling various home improvements. Just to tempt me, he went to a site that sells truckloads of rock.
“Ooh,” he said. “Those are pretty rocks.”
“Stop teasing me.”
“What if we buy your rocks, and build that Irish rock wall you want so badly? No cow, just the wall. And in exchange, you help me with a few projects around the house?”
I could live with that. I agreed to assist in painting a few rooms, and to do my part in chiseling away at the bathroom tile. He would help me lift rocks on Sundays, building my wall. It served as further proof that we could both budge a little and compromise, which was satisfying. Especially to the part of me that could still hear a faint cowbell in the back of my mind.

Let Me Do It

2008-05-28T23:21:00.000-04:00

The phone is ringing, and I don’t know what to do. I try pushing what I think is the “Talk” button, but somehow that opens my e-mail. When I try to go backward, I start a game of Brick Breaker. The call rolls over to voicemail, which is worse, because I don’t know how to check that either. Last time I tried, I took three photos of my hand.
I got a Blackberry. It seemed like such a good idea at the time- so sleek and stylish, filled with little technological wonders that would change my life in unexpected ways. And it has. I am no longer capable of answering the telephone, a skill I guess I’ve just taken for granted for the last quarter century.
Last night I came home, and apologized to my fiancée for not returning his call earlier in the day.
“Oh, you did,” he said. “You just didn’t realize it. About an hour later I got a call from you, but you were driving and singing along to the new Madonna. I kept yelling your name, but you were really into the song, so I just let you sing for a while and then I hung up.”
That is really distressing. I can’t have my phone calling people without my knowledge. It’s one thing for Preppy to catch me warbling about the four minutes I have to save the world, but what if it decides to call my mother while Slutty Mandy and I are swapping sex stories?
“Just lock the keypad,” says Preppy, a Blackberry veteran.
“Um, yeah, I have no idea what that means.”
“Didn’t your phone come with an instruction manual?”
“Well of course it did, but really baby, who has the time?”
I hate instruction manuals. They feel like school. When something new is introduced to my life, I want it to integrate seamlessly, without any hassle. I always report that I learn best by doing things on my own, which is true. There’s just usually a lengthy period of humiliating failure before I actually learn how to do it.
I’ve been attending an Episcopal church of late, which is similar to my own Methodist upbringing, so I can generally play along without much trouble. The prayers they recite are slightly different, so whenever we get to a part I don’t know I just mumble. I’ve been offering up eloquent tributes to our Creator like:
“I believe in God the Father Almighty, ma moo hum hooba Earth, and in Jesus Christ, hee hidey ho la la.”
I know God understands that my heart is in the right place. They offer classes at the church where they apparently teach you the intended words, but I haven’t gone. There’s an actual book right there in the pew with every word printed, but nobody else is using the instruction manual, so I feel like I’d stand out. I really wanna do this on my own- just last Sunday I figured out how to perch my behind on the pew when on the little kneeling thing so I wouldn’t fall into the person next to me.

It was a major breakthrough.
Last night, after Preppy stopped impersonating me singing “I’m outta time and all I got is fo’ minutes… fo’ minutes,” he showed me how to call my sister, who I hadn’t talked to in two days because I didn’t know how. She was doing laundry.
“Which is ALL I do now,” she said. “We’re trying to potty train Jack and he’s not really cooperating with the process. He’s going through like five pairs of underwear a day. I am not amused. All the books say this is supposed to be a natural process, take away the diapers and he’ll get the hint. But all he knows is that when he goes like he used to, he ends up with wet underwear and gets all pissed off. Then he just does it again a few hours later. I try to teach him, but he doesn’t want my help.”
My nephew is learning a lesson I’ve picked up on myself lately- introducing new behavior can be very messy and frustrating. If you insist on doing it all on your own, you gotta accept the mess and stick with it until you know what you’re doing.
I tried to tell my sister that, but I accidentally hung up on her and took another picture of my hand.

Pomp and Circumstances, Part Two

2008-05-21T23:03:00.002-04:00

“Where’s your life partner?” asks the headmaster of my old high school.
I’ve never been a fan of that phrase, “life partner”. It’s such an antiseptic expression, like how you’d describe your relationship to a homo-nervous loan officer.
“Under that tree,” I say. “He promised my Mama he’d take pictures.”
“We’ve got someone for that,” says the headmaster. “Bring him over! There’s a place for him at the head table.”
I was asked to come to Idyllwild, California, to give a speech to the graduating class about what life is like as a grownup. The most distressing aspect of that request is the implication that I am a grownup, which totally flies in the face of how I see myself every day. I’ve spent weeks thinking I’m in absolutely no position to tell them anything. I’m still questioning my presence as Preppy leaves his grassy knoll and takes his seat next to me. And then the Class of 2008 begins filling the amphitheatre.
“Oh my God,” I say. “They’re babies.”
This makes me very anxious. Whenever I have an attack of nerves before facing an audience, I become absolutely certain I have a booger in my nose. This thought invariably hits as soon as everyone is looking in my direction. I become utterly obsessed with checking for it, but because everyone is looking I have to do a series of brushes with my hand and modest twitches.
“What are you doing?” Preppy asks through clenched teeth as the program begins.
“I’ve got a boog.”
“No you don’t, you’re just panicky. Stop doing that. You look like you’re on coke.”
So I switch my interest to shuffling my notes and inspecting the crowd. In the front row there’s a cluster of girls sitting with rapt attention. Behind them are the cool artsy guys, sketching in their little books and occasionally glancing up. And in the very back, there’s a lanky boy in overalls and green nail polish whispering to his companions, who are all stifling laughter.
Ah, yes. There I am.
I was expelled from this school when I was seventeen. Afterward, I got a job and my own apartment. I didn’t even know how to balance a checkbook. I just did what I had to do, figured things out, and I kept working. And now, looking at these kids, I wonder how on earth I did that.
“So, please welcome our guest, playwright and columnist Topher Payne.”
Scattered applause. I stand, twitch my nose again, and walk to the podium. I tell them that everyone will say this was the best time of their lives, but that isn’t always true. I hated my teens. My early twenties were no picnic either, but things started looking up around twenty-five. I tell them they should enjoy the last few years of their parents paying for stuff, and try not to fuck that up. I warn them about bad relationships, credit cards, and coming out of the closet on Mother’s Day. I reveal they don’t have to go to college to succeed, but trying to do without it is much more nerve-racking.
I tell them high school provides them with skills, but they have to provide themselves with opportunity, and if they don’t there’s plenty of people who are hungry for it and more than ready to pass them by. So be ready to fight for what you deserve. That one took me a long time to learn. I hope they listened.
Afterward, a bunch of the kids come up and shake my hand, including the one in the overalls and nail polish. I compliment his color choice. I watch them go- kids released into the wild. And then my “life partner” and I head back to the bed and breakfast to drink beer and watch Desperate Housewives in our underwear.

I wish I’d told the seniors to value the moments when you get to do stuff like that, because eventually careers and life make it harder to take time for doing nothing with the people you love. I still don’t feel like a grownup, but I’m aware of the time that’s passed, and I’m learning to appreciate what I have. What I shared today didn’t feel particularly like wisdom, just notes on hard-earned experience. But heck, that may be all wisdom is.

Pomp and Circumstances, Part One

2008-05-14T22:59:00.000-04:00

“Alright Mister Payne, we’ve got you booked in the Oak Tree Suite for four nights,” says the woman on the phone. “We call it that because of the beautiful view of an ancient oak tree outside.”
“Clever,” I say.
“There’s a delicious breakfast every morning, which we can pack up to go if you’ll be hiking to the summit while you’re here. Have you stayed in Idyllwild before?”
“Yes, but it’s been a little while.”
Last year, as some sort of grand cosmic punchline, I was asked to deliver a speech at a New York fundraiser to the alumnae of the boarding school in California that expelled me at age seventeen. Theresa, the Director of Alumnae Relations, had followed my writing career with interest, and had determined I would be a wacky choice to address the crowd. I figured chances like that don’t come along that often, so I just let it all hang out at the podium. I said the school was training brilliant artists who were unprepared for the world in so many ways. No one bothered to mention what a FICO rating was, in case we ever wanted to buy a house. No one mentioned we’d better make sure you have health insurance, in case you come down with a bad case of cancer at age twenty-one. But boy, could we ever talk about some Shakespeare.
The response was extraordinary. Afterward, my former classmates were shaking my hand, saying what I did was brave and unexpected. Theresa asked for a copy of the speech to share with the faculty back in California. And the headmaster of the school presented me with a diploma. That night, my pal Erica took great delight at announcing to bartenders that I’d just graduated high school. I felt a little more legitimate as well, coming back and showing my boyfriend my diploma.

He was no longer dating a high school dropout. I was Class of 2007, baby, with the paper to prove it.

I framed it above my desk.
And then, about a month ago, I got a phone call from Theresa again.
“When you said someone should be telling the students what to expect in the real world, did you mean it?”
“Of course I did.”
“Good. Then you’ll be happy to hear this...”
And that’s how I ended up being booked as a speaker for the Class of 2008 commencement exercises at Idyllwild Arts Academy. My fiancée Preppy just got a promotion, so he’s been living at his job lately, occasionally coming home to shower and sleep. There was a question about whether he’d be able to get the time away from work for the California trip.
“You’ve got to be there,” I said. “I can’t do this without you there.”
“That’s silly. You did the New York speech by yourself.”
“I had Erica in New York, and I was talking to people my own age! This is me standing in the amphitheatre in front of a bunch of kids in caps and gowns I never got to wear, trying to tell them what the world is like without terrifying them! Not to mention, I hate teenagers. I try to avoid talking to anyone between the ages of thirteen and seventeen because they give me that LOOK. I hate the LOOK.”
“What look?”
“Oh, you know the damn ‘I’m sixteen and I know everything, you’re old and know nothing’ look. I didn’t even know who Miley Fucking Cyrus was ‘til that drag queen did her at the Ruby Redd show.”
“Darlin’, these are not normal teenagers. These are freaky artist teenagers like you were. Just be real with them, and chill out.”
“But you’ll go?”
“Yes, I’ll find a way. I’ll be there.”
So it’s official. I’m off to California to shape the minds of tomorrow. Fancy that. Not bad a guy who just graduated a year ago. I begin compiling a mental list of pointers, like that guy from the “Everybody’s Free to Wear Sunscreen” song. Credit cards are not free cash. Don’t get a gym membership if you’re not going to actually go. Don’t come out to your parents on Mother’s Day. Don’t name your children after objects or U.S. states. Buy real pasta, not Ramen noodles. And most importantly, when a chance in life comes along that absolutely terrifies you, DO IT.

The Topher's Crown Affair

2008-05-07T22:52:00.002-04:00

Dawn may not have been the prettiest girl my Mississippi hometown- that honor went to Sheri, a cheerleader who drove a red Trans Am with T-tops and married at a very early age. But there was something compelling about Dawn’s beauty, which seemed to have been achieved through sheer force of will. She’d done pageants her whole life, walking runways all over the state in hand-beaded gowns made by her florist father.
When I was in sixth grade, Dawn managed to work her way into the Miss Mississippi Pageant. The whole town was buzzing about it- Miss Mississippi had managed to snag the national title a few years prior, and with Dawn now in the running, Kosciusko was basically two steps away from being the hometown of an honest-to-God Miss America.
At her farewell party and "trunk show" in the Methodist Church Fellowship Hall, Dawn modeled all of her outfits for the upcoming week: Luncheon, interview, and of course evening gown, with her father at the podium providing commentary and insightful tidbits on his careful construction of each ensemble. Then Dawn sang some opera and we all had cake. It seemed so strange, watching Dawn taking delicate bites of cake and shaking hands in a bugle bead strapless gown, her face a mask of Mary Kay and her hair teased within an inch of its life. There wasn’t exactly a surplus of glamour in Attala County, so having this momentary insight into the life of a beauty queen was all rather exotic. There was a look in her eyes I’d never seen before- sort of a glazed expression of sanguine contentment which I now associate with all pageant girls and people tripping on mushrooms.
Sadly, Dawn was not destined to become Miss Mississippi. She had the will, but at the end of the day she lacked the genetics. Miss DeSoto County (who was freakin’ gorgeous) grabbed the crown, and went on to place 4th Runner-Up in nationals, but nobody was allowed to talk about it around town. The wounds were still too fresh, us having gotten so close and all. But even years later, after Dawn was working for the post office and her pageant days were behind her, she was forever cemented in my mind as the girl who might have been queen.
Dawn’s been on my mind lately, as I’ve accepted an invite to throw on a pair of size fourteen heels and work the runway as a debutante for this year’s Atlanta Cotillion. It’s a tremendous fundraiser for AID Atlanta, with a half-dozen fellas hosting events all summer long to raise money. There’s a ball in September, where Preppy has to put on a tux and escort me down the aisle, like a practice run for our wedding only I’m in a big dress. Then they announce who raised the most dough, and YOU GET A CROWN. Not a little tiara from Party City, mind you. I’m talkin’ a proper, glittering crown that Dawn from Mississippi would tackle me and try to steal.
I’d initially signed on as kind of a lark, thinking it might be a fun story. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized… I want that damn crown. How many times in life does a big awkward gay guy have the chance to be crowned anything?
“You realize you have to host big fabulous events, darling,” said my buddy George when I told him of my debutante status. “Like pool parties with DJs. You have to host events you wouldn’t necessarily be fabulous enough to attend.”
“If I show up somewhere in a swimsuit, people will start taking their money back. How do non-fabulous people raise money?”
“How on earth would I know what the non-fabulous do with their spare time? Cake walks and tag sales, from what I’ve seen on television. It’s not pretty.”
George was right. I’m not fabulous. Semi-fabulous at best. I don’t know what DJs people like, or enough guys who look good in Speedos. If I’m gonna win, it’ll take some serious creativity. Because I’m not just doing it for me. I’m doing it to send a note back to my hometown paper letting them know one of their own finally scored a crown. And following Dawn’s example, I will do it by sheer force of will.

Upgrade

2008-04-30T11:52:00.000-04:00

“George, I just made a serious impulse purchase,” I say on the phone, driving back to my house.
“You’re supposed to call me before that happens. How bad is it?”
“I went out for salmon and came home with a bed.”
“How? Where were you? What store sells fish and bedroom furnishings?”
“I pass this flea market every time I go to the farmer’s market, and today I was on my way to get salmon for dinner, just decided to stop by… long story short, I bought this big giant bed, and now it’s tied to the roof of my car.”
“What about the salmon?”
“George, the salmon is so not the point of this story.”
“I’m just wondering what you’re going to eat for dinner.”
My last bed was a hastily acquired when I left The Ex and moved into my own place three years ago. Actually, it was just a mattress and box springs I kept propped on cinderblocks. Very post-frat house bachelor pad. I might as well have had a poster of Jenna Jameson above the damn thing. After stubbing every toe on those damn cinderblocks, I went and bought one of those little metal frames on wheels. It felt like a step in the right direction.
But I’m approaching thirty. I’m getting married next year. I’m a homeowner. Hanging on to what was intended to be a temporary fix isn’t doing me any favors.

It’s really time for my big boy bed.
A few days later, I give a furnishing update when George calls again.
“Our mismatched nightstands looked so wrong with the new bed. So I replaced those too. But now I need new lamps. It’s Pandora’s freakin’ box, George, I’m out of control.”
“Well, darling, introducing a new item into décor can be a slippery slope. Next it’ll be new drapes and pillow shams.”
George is an expert on the subject. He spends his days clad in Prada and Gucci, hawking high-end Italian sofas to the wives of professional hockey players. The job pays well, but I’ve never known him to be particularly excited about going to work. I don’t think you’re allowed to be excited when you’re wearing Gucci. You might break a sweat. Better to be bemused and just leave it at that.
I don’t think George ever expected to be at his job as long as he has been. For months, he’s flirted with the idea of leaving and just starting over- a fresh start. But those aren’t as easy to pull off as countless made-for-television films would lead us to believe.
It’s a tricky thing, figuring out which things in your house, or in your life, are in need of an upgrade. Even more of a pickle can pop up when you try to determine when and how that change needs to happen. Because if you remove the temporary fix before the replacement is ready, it leaves a gaping hole.

And we all fear the hole.

We’ll hang on to the wrong job, or boyfriend, or bed on cinderblocks because it keeps that space filled and we don’t have to deal with the hole. What we fail to see is that it really delays the joy of finding something better.
“You know,” I say to George. “Now that you mention curtains, I’m really not crazy about the shades in our bedroom. You should come over and help me figure out window treatments. I need a professional’s touch.”
“Then you’ll have to ask someone else, darling. I’m not going to sell furniture anymore. Beginning next week, I am moving the designer wardrobe to the back of the closet and starting work at a cupcake bakery.”
“You’re kidding. Cupcakes?”
“Picture it, Topher. The worst thing that could happen in the course of my day is ‘Oh my stars! We need more cupcakes!’, or ‘Someone burned the cupcakes!’ Either way the solution is still just baking more fucking cupcakes. After three years of stressing over ten thousand-dollar end tables, that sounds like the Promised Land.”
“I’m very proud of you, George.”
“Well, we’ll see if it turns out to be a temporary fix or my big boy bed, but for now it’s an upgrade, and that’s good enough for me.”
“My sentiments exactly,” I say as I lie down on my new bed, picturing all the free cupcakes I’m gonna score.

Can I Quote You?

2008-04-23T11:56:00.000-04:00

It was around eleven, and I was sitting on my bed looking at paint samples when my phone rang. It was my pal Slutty Mandy, who was supposed to be on a date.
“Well, this evening was a complete waste of my Arbonne skin care products,” she said. “That shit isn’t cheap. If I’m going to go to the trouble of having silky touchable skin, I expect to get touched.”
“So the date with the sports writer didn’t go well?”
I’m useless in setting up my girlfriends on dates, because I don’t know any straight men. So one of Mandy’s gal pals fixed her up with the sports writer for a local paper, and apparently she was underwhelmed by his company.
“It wasn’t that he was just a sports writer, it was that he’s a sports FAN. And I’m not talking casual, oh look, there’s a game on. I mean the crazy, screaming, make a drunken ass of yourself at a bar and ignore your date kind of fan. I was not amused.”
“So what’d you do?”
“What the hell do you think I did? I grabbed my purse and went home. I’d rather be ignored by my cats than by some inebriated jackass. I don’t even think he noticed I left. Lucky me.”
The next day, Sporty sent an e-mail ASKING IF HE’D DONE SOMETHING WRONG. Tee-hee. Silly man. Seldom are we afforded the chance to give a date the bad review they deserve, and Slutty Mandy seized this rare opportunity to make her displeasure known. She sent him an e-mail detailing his actions the previous night, and closed with:

“I’m all for being silly and a bit eccentric, but there is a far cry between that and just acting a fool … unfortunately you fell into the latter category.”
Zing!
I was very proud of her. Moments like this remind me that “Slutty Mandy” does not in any way mean “Indiscriminate Mandy”, or “Treat Me Like Shit Mandy”. Also, “Ball-Busting Mandy” is more than happy to make an appearance when the situation warrants. Sporty was very contrite. He even sent flowers to her office, which I thought was a courtly touch.
Then on Sunday morning, my phone rang at some ungodly hour, like ten.
“Wake up,” Mandy said. “Get on the internet. I’m in the motherfucking paper.”
And sure enough, in the Sunday sports column, was a picture of Mandy taken on National Talk Like a Pirate Day, swiped from her MySpace page. She was wearing a little pirate hat with the appropriate “Arrgh” facial expression. And below was the following:
…regularly featured in Topher Payne’s weekly column in the local gay publication David Magazine, “Mandy’’ ain’t afraid to tell you like it is, and she did so last week in an e-mail describing my previous weekend behavior among friends…
And then he printed the text of her e-mail. He also said she was “like a lava lamp; fun to look at, but not all that bright.”
Slutty Mandy was livid. Pissed about being outed as “Slutty Mandy” in the sports section of a free weekly. Furious about the lava lamp business. And beyond words about the pirate picture. I really was truly angry for her, I was just unable to express it until I stopped laughing.
“Damn it, Topher, this is not funny.”
“Oh, darlin’. Ask me twenty years from now. This shit will STILL be funny.”
The fact is, when Mad Mandy makes an appearance, most straight boys tend to tuck their little tails between their legs and make a hasty departure. The traits I find fabulous in her tend to be viewed as intimidating or castrating by my hetero counterparts. But Sporty actually showed a little backbone, and fought back. I thought the pirate picture was a masterstroke.
“I’m sorry, baby,” I said. “But this is the first guy I’ve seen you date in a while who might actually be able to keep up with you. I am very impressed.”
“Well. I will take that under advisement. But come on, can’t I make a single move without it being reported by some local columnist?”
Here she paused, her tension rising.
“Oh crap,” she said. “You’re not going to write about this, are you?”

Dry Spell

2008-04-16T12:01:00.000-04:00

My sister Shannon’s got a broken husband, and I have a broken fiancée.

Preppy was at work last week and managed to fracture a rib while moving a shelf. Meanwhile, Shannon’s husband injured his shoulder at work, then waited too long to see the doctor because he’s a guy and that’s what we do. Now her husband’s scheduled for surgery, followed by a three-week recovery period at home.
“I’m worried,” Shannon says on the phone. “I can only play caregiver to someone for about two days before I lose my patience and just start demanding they get better.”
“But you used to work in an intensive care ward,” I say.
“I know. That’s why I quit. Those people would stay sick for like weeks, you had to do everything for them. It was awful.”
I pause to say a silent prayer for the people in ICU who were subjected to my sister standing over them demanding they get their own damn pills and stop bothering her.
“How’s Preppy?” she asks.
“He says his rib pretty much hurts all the time, it’s really a matter of getting used to the discomfort.”
“Our poor men. They’re strugglin’.”
“I know,” I say. “I just want him to feel better.”
There’s a long pause.
“You’re not getting any sex either, are you?” she says.
“No. Not at all.”
It’s really a very simple thing. I will agree to absolutely anything and accept any scenario as long as I’m getting laid consistently. But if you remove that crucial aspect of my existence, things start going downhill with startling speed. If I find myself in a particularly pissy mood, all I have to do is take a moment and count the days in my head, and there’s your answer. I know people talk about “settling in” with relationships, when you reach some comfort level and the sex suddenly drops off , sending you into lengthy dry spells. Well, so help me Baby Jesus, I will fight tooth and nail to prevent that from happening.
What I didn’t realize is that this is a family trait.
“I am a very creative woman!” Shannon says. “I can think of sixteen different ways to contort myself that don’t involve him moving his shoulder at all! I know it might hurt a little, but he went to war! He’s tough!”
“We are horrible, hateful, evil people. They deserve compassion right now. Our men are bruised and broken. You and I are going to learn how to be sympathetic.”
“I know, I know,” she sighs. “But I don’t get it. I had a broken collarbone once and I still wanted to get laid.”
Shannon and I were both in lengthy relationships prior to meeting the men with whom we settled down. Incidentally, we were both with gay men, which she didn’t know at the time- she just knew she wasn’t getting any and that sucked. When I was with The Ex for five years, I knew we were in real trouble when the sex went away. So it’s possible that we connect having sex consistently with everything being okay. Conversely, a dearth of nookie spells destruction and doom.
Or maybe I’m just pissed because I’m not having sex… but my cousin Nelson is.
After going through endless fix-ups courtesy of Preppy and me, and being subjected to the E-Harmony profile created without his knowledge, my straight boy housemate managed to find a lady all on his own. She’s English. He loves that.
“It’s so cool hearing her passionately say my name with a British accent,” he told me.
I asked him not to tell me things like that.
“Maybe it’s some sort of cycle,” says Shannon. “We’re not getting laid, now Nelson is. It’s like there’s a finite supply of sex in the world, and everybody has to wait their turn.”
“So, if I can stop someone else from having sex, the supply will replenish and I’ll get to go?”
“That sounds like dangerous karma. I think our best bet is just waiting this one out and letting our husbands heal.”
“But what do we do with all that free time?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “Charity work, maybe? Or we could just bitch about Nelson getting laid.”
“You always have the best ideas.”

The F Word

2008-04-09T12:07:00.000-04:00

I was checking my e-mail this morning, and discovered I’d gotten a note from Mama. There was no file attachment, which meant it wasn’t pictures of my nephew. That was odd. The only reason my mother has internet at all is to send people pictures of Baby Jack.
What follows is the letter she composed.
My Dear Son:
It is that time of year again, when your Mama tries to "guilt" you into doing my will. Yes, Mother's Day is approaching, and even though I’m batting a thousand in getting from you what I want, I thought I would try one more time.
My wish for this year is simple: I would like for you to remove the “F” word from your vocabulary.
The only time, and I mean only, this word was deemed appropriate, was then that f***ing duck ran into my car resulting in thirteen hundred dollars worth of damage; but that is another story. Trust me on this, Son; no Mother of a heterosexual, homosexual or even bi-transgender wants to hear that word! I know in your obstinate way, you think you can justify saying it but I ask you... Have you ever had a duck attack your car?
If at any time, I can help you with substitute words please give me a call. I know in my heart, that my son the Motivational Speaker, Actor, and Writer can find another one.
Remember this is just a little advice from your #1 fan. I love you. And remember not to leave dirty dishes in the sink at night. It attracts bugs.
Love to Preppy and Nelson.

Mama

I loved the wording on “duck ran into my car”, instead of the other way around. Mama’s version of events was that a duck the approximate size of a German Shepherd appeared out of the blue, maliciously dive-bombed the hood of her car, and sacrificed his own life just to piss her off. When I was a kid, a horse snacked on my mother’s Maxima, leaving gaping holes she struggled to explain to our mechanic. She’s got odd luck with animals and cars.
But I’m digressing.
You remember when you started saying fuck? It was so liberating! The standard-bearer for all dirty words, the one with absolutely no chance of appearing on broadcast television. A word that would scandalize goody two-shoes classmates. A word that, when used properly, can draw shocked stares and stop all conversation. I remember being thirteen years old, when Will Albee slammed me into the lockers for, I don’t know, looking in his direction or breathing, calling him a “Redneck Fuckface” under my breath and feeling quite pleased with myself. The forbidden word was an instant relief. (Will’s in prison now, by the way. How awesome is that?) We place “having sex” with someone and “fucking” someone in separate categories. The former implies that you engaged in intercourse and everyone had a nice time. The latter conjures up images of screaming orgasms, broken furniture, and complaining neighbors. It’s not just a dirty word.

It’s a filthy, raunchy, glorious word.
But now I use it a dozen times a day to describe everything from deadlines to traffic. I think over time, I became so enamored with the power of the word that I’ve subjected it to severe overuse. Nobody raises an eyebrow when I say it now, and I don’t have any words left in the vernacular that have the same level of impact. That’s kind of a shame.
As much as I hate to concede Mama has a point, I’ve decided to try and honor her request… in part. I’m not eradicating it entirely, but I am going to make an effort to return “Fuck” to its former place of rightful glory. It’s the big gun I’ll keep tucked away for just the right moment. That way, when I choose to fire it off as I yell at the people from the bank, or start unbuttoning Preppy’s pants, there will be no question I mean business.
Also, of course, if I happen to cross paths with a suicidal giant duck.

TOPHER ON TOPHER

2008-04-02T12:10:00.000-04:00

The cover of the April 2, 2008 issue of David Magazine was devoted to the "3 by Topher Festival" at Process Theatre Company. To celebrate the event, the magazine decided to have Topher Payne be interviewed... by Topher Payne.

Q: So, Topher. Beginning April 10th, Process Theatre Company will be presenting the world premiere of three of your plays in the 3 by Topher Festival. I’m sure the question on the minds of all our readers is: What makes you so fucking special?

A: I’m glad you asked. I’m not really special at all, other than doing a fairly decent impression of Rick Astley. You know, the guy who sang Together Forever?

Q: I always liked that song. But come on, three plays? Somebody must think you’re a great writer.

A: Not a great writer, just a prolific one. I pay attention and take careful notes. I like how people talk. But I haven’t premiered a new play in two years. After I saw the production of my last one, The Attala County Garden Club, I decided I’d better take some time off.

Q: Because it was terrible? Were you humiliated? Did you drink?

A: No, it was a good show, a good production. I saw it maybe four times during the run, and then again when it was produced in Mississippi. I realized I had all these people paying to hear the story I’d created, but what was I saying? After seeing the play, did they understand the world, themselves, any better? If I’m not really using that chance to communicate with people, then it’s a sadly wasted opportunity. I think the new plays are a lot closer to that goal. The material’s tougher, raises some real concerns.

Q: Oh. So you’re not funny anymore.

A: I am too! Every single harsh moment in my life has some funny story attached to it. That’s how life is. Last week my fiancée Preppy and I went to his grandmother’s funeral. And it wasn’t easy, you know? But then, at the visitation, these two old ladies were standing at the casket paying their respects, and this crazy spinster sneaks up behind one of them and goes, “BOO!” And our jaws just hit the floor. You don’t frighten the elderly while they’re looking at a dead woman! I started laughing, and I could not stop. Had to leave the room. And I’ll never ever forget Grandma’s funeral because of that. If you really want to leave a lasting impression, all you need is a good laugh. That’s something I always adhere to as a writer.

Q: You mentioned Preppy. What’s it like for him, or Slutty Mandy, or the other people you talk about in your columns? Are they okay with you using their private lives as popular entertainment, or do they secretly hate you?

A: My loved ones know that for me, nothing is off the record. I’ve got a column to do, people. But the plays are where I work out the big stuff- the things you can’t wrap up in 700 words. There are things I’ve always wanted to say to someone, but can’t. So I let a character say it in one of my shows. I think my characters are a lot braver than I am. I know they’re a lot smarter.

Q: Are any of the characters in 3 by Topher based on your life?

A: Even though each play is inspired by events I was in no way a part of, who these people are comes from the crazy voices in my head. Perfect Arrangement is about that point in your life when you decide between staying comfortably closeted or living out in the open, despite the inherent dangers. Every gay person has to make that choice, and I was intrigued by making that internal struggle public. Above the Fold came from whenever I see a reality show, and wonder what life is like for their spouses, their coworkers. So we follow a woman after she loses a plastic surgery beauty pageant, then goes home to West Virginia with new face and finds nothing else changed. And in Don’t Look at the Fat Lady, I wanted to force the audience to examine someone they would normally ignore. So I put them alone in a room with a 500-pound woman and make them listen. Now, I’ve never weighed a quarter ton, but I’ve been around shirtless guys on a dance floor who made me feel like I did. It’s just that sense of being too much, yet not nearly enough. I think we can all relate to that.

Q: Thank you, Topher Payne. Playwright, Columnist, Rick Astley impersonator. This was the best interview I’ve ever done.

A: Yes. I like that I was able to do it in my underwear while lounging in bed.

Q: Isn’t that how you do all your interviews?

A: Oh, yeah. Actually it is.

Label Maker

2008-03-26T12:55:00.000-04:00

It is stunning to me that this far into my relationship with Preppy, we’re still introducing each other to significant people in our lives. A few nights ago we met up with old friends of his from out of town to grab a few beers and maybe play some pool. Everyone else was already in a booth when we arrived. After the girls squealed and the guys gave Preppy firm handshakes, he introduced me.
“Y’all, this is my fiancée.”
This was followed by more squeals and handshakes, but my head was already elsewhere entirely. A few months ago, I proposed, gave him a ring, he said yes. That means I’m a fiancée. Shit. I didn’t change his label. I’ve still been calling him my “boyfriend”, which sounds like we’re going to prom together, not like we have a mortgage and are currently planning a wedding.
Over the next few days I tried to use the new label, but every time it sounded like I was trying to awkwardly drop a foreign expression into my speech, like when Madonna says she and her family were “On holiday” instead of “On vacation”, like any other woman from freakin’ Michigan would say.
I’m a very pro-label person. I know that’s not a popular standpoint, because labels box you in and all that stuff. My buddy Scott, the transgendered performance artist, has built an entire career writing on the subject of how you can’t label him. I tried to be open-minded about that, but in the end I’ve just labeled him “Scott, the transgendered performance artist who doesn’t like labels.” He has become defined by his resistance to definition. That’s heavy stuff.
Preppy and I have been trying out churches, to see if we can find a good fit for both of us. I fell in love with an Episcopal parish that was very polished and ornate. That sense of formality happened to be what I liked about it. I don’t want a just-folks minister who tells everyone to “Just call me Debbie.” When it comes to who has Jesus on speed dial if I need some answers, I’d prefer someone I call Reverend or Preacher over Debbie. It just sounds wrong to me, like when I hear a nine year-old call his parents by their first names. If I’d ever tried calling my father “Cleve” when I was a kid, there would have been dire consequences. Authority figures have labels, like “Dad”, or “Senator”, or “Mistress of Pain”, as a sign of respect and a nod to tradition. And darn it, I think it really helps clear things up for people if you can give them a few keywords to associate with you.
For example, I label myself as “a writer”. That lets you know I spend a lot of time in a room by myself transcribing imaginary voices, that I probably smoke and/or drink lots of coffee, that I’m a little narcissistic, and I have no money and bad credit.

All of these things are true.

I am also “gay”, which is different from saying “queer”. I called myself “queer” when I had sex with women too. Eventually I retired from that, so I updated the label. I recently acquired a car and had to stop calling myself “a pedestrian”, which marked a huge change in my life, more significant in my mind than giving up that whole sleeping-with-ladies thing, because I actually miss being a pedestrian. The ladies not so much.
And now, another label is updated. I’m a fiancée, which doesn’t quite roll of the tongue because it’s this totally unprecedented event in my life. As we set a budget, and begin making plans about locations and attendants (did I mention my wedding is going to be fucking huge, or did you already guess that?), the label begins to feel more real. It’s very likely I’ll get used to it just in time to switch again and start calling him my “husband”. And when people hear that label, it’ll tell them something very specific about the two of us and our life together, and I like that. Just like “writer”, or “gay”, or “Southern”, it’s not really a label. It’s a TITLE- proof of who I am, and what I demand the world recognize.

Like a Good Neighbor

2008-03-19T14:02:00.001-04:00

“You’ll never guess what happened,” says my mother on the phone. “You know that big old scary house out off Highway 80 in Edwards? Someone bought it.”
“Who? The Munsters? Gomez and Morticia Addams?”
“Even better,” she says, delighted. “We got gays!”
Edwards, Mississippi is the nearest “town”, and I’m using that term loosely, to the little lakeside retreat where my parents now reside. It’s got around a thousand people, so statistically they’ve probably had a few gays silently peppering their Podunk for a while. But these gays are different. They’re out and proud, they’re from New Orleans, and they’re apparently interested in restoring stately old homes in the middle of nowhere.
“Two of the girls from church saw them at the Stop-and-Shop the other day. One of them’s older, looks American, the other one’s younger. He’s Spanish or possibly a Latin person, and he wears those tight t-shirts like your friend George. Why do they do that? It can’t be comfortable.”
“Did the church ladies actually speak to them?”
“Well, no. The girls didn’t want to bother them. We all assume the gays are just going to keep to themselves.”
“Now, Mama. If it were any other new couple in town, you’d be over there with a housewarming gift before they signed the closing papers.”
“I suppose that’s true,” she says. “But I’ve never visited any gay people outside the family. You know, you and Preppy, or one of your cousins.”
“Come on, don’t you wanna be able to say you were the first one to meet them? And at the very least you can find out their names and stop calling them ‘The Gays’, which is really tacky.”
“Well, I could do a little basket. I have some pear honey put away, and there’s homemade bread in the freezer…”
Preppy and I have lived in our house since November, and nobody’s stopped by with a freakin’ bread basket. When my next door neighbor had a tree cut down in her back yard last month, Preppy and I did stand on the back deck and watch. Preppy also gave her a nod of greeting, which is something. The small-town boy in me cries out for neighborly interactions- borrowing of cups of sugar or various forms of yard-related equipment, or checking in on household pets while someone’s visiting their sick aunt in Delaware. My parents helped their next door neighbors capture fifty or so feral housecats which had taken up residence in the neighbors’ renovation-in-progress. My sister’s neighbors brought over heavy machinery to get her yard ready for a vegetable garden.

I want stories like that.
But after a decade of urban living, I’m just at a complete loss on how to get that ball rolling in the suburbs. I briefly consider the possibility of putting together my own gift basket and knocking on doors, but come on, y’all. That’s REALLY gay. I mean, like Clay Aiken-level gayness. I just don’t know if I can muster that kind of energy. I remember once when I was living in Midtown all the neighbors came out when a house caught on fire, and we all introduced ourselves. Someone showed up with beer, and it was a pleasant evening.

But I think my boyfriend would frown upon me resorting to arson just to get a block party started.
So basically, barring some sort of unifying disaster, I’ve gotta wait for a motivated lady to come knocking. I wish there were some way to get the word out to straights that it’s better for them to make the first move.
The next day, Mama calls me again.
“Well, get THIS,” she says. “Rodrigo, the one in the tight t-shirts, is an actor and model, though I don’t know what in the world he plans on doing with that in Edwards. Our entertainment industry isn’t exactly thriving, but I did tell him about the community theatre in Clinton. And they couldn’t have been sweeter, said they’d wanted to meet the neighbors but couldn’t decide how to approach it. And the other one, Frank, is a famous landscape architect. He designed Ann Rice’s private garden, and he’s coming over to look at our yard! I’m so EXCITED!”
“Well,” I say. “That sounds downright neighborly.”

This Is Woman's Work

2008-03-12T15:26:00.000-04:00

We’ve seen Obama's “Hope for a brighter tomorrow” campaign before. Our very own Jimmy Carter was another idealistic Democrat who ran a campaign based on optimism and dreams for America’s future. Carter’s election was part of America’s recovery from Watergate- a complete changing of the guard in Washington. Carter didn’t play those political games. He was a plain-spoken peanut-lovin’ God-fearin’ sweet Southern gent who was gonna shake things up.
It didn’t work out that way. Those political games continued to be played, only he wasn’t qualified to participate. They handed him his ass and he was out of office in four years.
Idealism is all well and good, but we need someone who can do the damn job. I mean come on y’all, anyone who’s ever had fumbling, awkward sex with a virgin will tell you: experience does matter.
This year, we have the option of an experienced candidate: Senator Hillary Clinton.
Hillary has been stigmatized for her years of public service as First Lady. The comparison has been made that by Hillary’s standards, Laura Bush would be ready to lead our country on Day One. Well, no. Hillary used her position to further public policy, including broadening our reach internationally and her attempts to revolutionize the American health care industry. Laura has spent eight years sneaking Parliament Lights in the Rose Garden and perfecting an expression of glazed compliance Pat Nixon would have envied.
Hillary’s not perfect. No politician is. Hell, no person is. But she’s an advocate for us, and for so many other Americans who have spent the last eight years being completely ignored.
And then there’s Barack.
In one of the first Democratic debates, back when there were still like sixty people onstage vying for the nomination, the moderator brought up the subject of AIDS. Senator Joe Biden stressed the importance of everyone being tested, as both he and Barack Obama had done. Obama jumped in, clarifying that he had been tested for HIV with his wife, not with Senator Biden. Everyone onstage had a good chuckle at this, except for Hillary, whose face seemed to mirror my primary thought: “Was that really necessary, dickwad?” I mean, was there an actual risk of anyone thinking Barack and Joe had a little something kickin’ on the DL? Is it not okay for two straight guys to get tested together?
Oh, I get it. He was kidding. One of those little “gay panic” jokes which give people permission to laugh at us. I remember those from junior high. They’re an expression of fear and ignorance. Ha fucking ha.
Hillary Clinton has been the punch line of an endless number of dyke jokes over the years, and yet she doesn’t treat them as insults. Childish and pointless, but not hurtful. She still marches in our parades and defends our community. Plus, her fundraisers don’t include entertainment by a gospel singer who preaches about God delivering him from the “curse” of homosexuality, unlike Senator Obama’s tacit approval of Donnie McClurkin.
Like many of the straight people in her generation, Hillary’s still learning about us, and acknowledging mistakes of the past. Based on analysis from military advisors, her husband enacted the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy in our armed forces during his administration. The result was a disaster, and Senator Clinton is the first to admit it. It is far past time to honor the patriotism and sacrifice of gays and lesbians serving our country.

As Clinton herself said, “Soldiers need to shoot straight, not be straight.”
I don’t think Obama’s The Great Satan. I think he genuinely loves this country and has a lot of good ideas. But I fear that’s all they’ll ever be. We need a woman of action, with proof of her dedication.
Hillary fought to extend the Victims Compensation Fund to the partners of those who died in 9/11, an unprecedented act recognizing the lives we lead together have value. She piloted the mission to stop Republicans from writing discrimination into the Constitution. She intends to grant full federal benefits to same-sex couples (while leaving marriage laws up to individual states), and will assure nothing stands in the way of us adopting children in need.
She respects us. She represents us. And if all goes well, she’s got my vote.

Match Game

2008-03-05T15:37:00.000-05:00

I’m sitting at my desk, on the phone with my sister Shannon.

We’re both reading personal ads on the internet.
“Ooh! This one sounds perfect,” says Shannon. “Stephanie likes NPR, Red Stripe, and Gators games.”
“The Gators are football, right?”
“Yes, you big mo, Gators are football. I like Stephanie. Go look at her picture.”
I click on Stephanie’s picture. She has 80s mall bangs, like Joan Cusack in Working Girl.
“Shannon, I refuse to consider any woman whose bangs require a round brush and a half hour of Aqua Net application. Just on principle.”
“I think you’re being too picky.”
“I liked Monica better,” I say. “She’s a single mother. That means lots of dates at her house. And Stephanie doesn’t smoke. Nelson smokes.”
“Wait, let me go back and see if anyone responded to our flirt messages.”
My cousin Nelson, who lives with my boyfriend Preppy and me, has been treading water in the dating pool for the last few months. I’m not sure what happens when he goes to a bar by himself, but lemme tell ya what doesn’t happen: fucking. Preppy and I figured that since all of our gay friends have at least one straight girl on speed dial, we’d have Nelson paired off with a hot chick in no time, but no such luck. So Nelson’s been spending a lot of time at home going stir-crazy, asking Preppy what he’s doing every thirty-five seconds and preparing elaborate sushi dinners at nine in the morning.
It’s not his fault. He went to an all-boy’s school, which my buddy Zack says sounds just heavenly, but did little to improve his game with the ladies. He’s a nice guy who happens to struggle with the initial approach.
So, inspired by my Aunt Trish’s recent foray into online dating, Shannon and I have opened a personal ad in our cousin Nelson’s name. I know I’ve said I’m against matchmaking, but the situation called for desperate measures. We answered the questionnaire as honestly as possible, determining how Nelson would describe himself, and then improving that statement ever-so-slightly. I also edited his profile pic in Adobe Photoshop. Nothing on the Mariah Carey scale, I just fixed the lighting a bit and gave him a tan.
A few nights later, I report our efforts while I’m out having drinks with the boys.
“Hi, my name is Topher,” says my buddy George. “And I have serious control issues.”
“I do not! I’m trying to help him meet people! Preppy will tell you, Nelson needs to get out more.”
“It’s true, he does,” says Preppy. “But not if he’s gonna be hanging out with chain-smoking single mothers from E-Harmony just so we can have a night alone. And what will these girls do when they find out all the great e-mails they’ve been getting are really from you and your sister?”
“We’ll work it out. It’ll be like Cyrano.”
“Darling,” George concludes. “You can’t assign a plotline to Nelson’s life.”
“Damn it George, I’m not assigning a plotline. I’m just introducing new characters.”
Back at the house, as I inspect the desperately eager faces of the girls who’ve responded to our carefully-constructed personal ad, I begin to feel a small pang of guilt. Maybe Nelson should be getting a girl on his own, even if it takes a little longer and I’m apprehensive about the results. Plus, if I remember correctly, both of the guys in Cyrano wound up dead at the end of the story, and that’s not promising.
Unless…
What if I found him a girl, and TOLD her that we’d created a fake profile for him? And then I could introduce her to him as some friend of mine, whom I’ve never mentioned before for a reason I can’t determine just yet.
“Dear Stephanie,” I write. “I know this will sound strange, but I’m not the man whose picture is posted on this profile. I’m his cousin. But you seemed really nice…”

Like a Prayer

2008-02-27T15:16:00.000-05:00

For about four months in sixth grade, I was in the school band. I played the clarinet. Badly. I was encouraged/forced to join the band because I didn’t participate in sports, and my parents felt it was important I be part of some sort of extracurricular. I eventually stopped going to band practice, and spent that period sitting in Mrs. LeVert’s classroom, writing stories. That was the real bitch of it all: I actually had an outside interest, it was just one that involved me sitting by myself and transcribing the voices in my head.
After the failed band experiment, I was led to the school chorus, which was made up entirely of students who had displayed no ability with musical instruments or athletics.

Our first concert was held at the same church where my sister would marry a gay man just a few short years later.

During a medley of Disney’s movie hits, I fainted. Marie Osmond passing out on Dancing with the Stars may have led you to believe that everyone gracefully wilts to the floor when they lose consciousness. Not so. My thirteen-year old pudgy body fell face-forward in to a display of potted mums. It was broadcast on local cable access, so I was able to relive it several times.
Having exhausted all after-school activities with humiliating results, I turned my attention to the Methodist Church. I did Sunday School, Wednesday night fellowship, mission trips, youth retreats to exotic locales like Camp Lake Stephens and Biloxi, and pretty much anything else they were up to when the doors were open. First Methodist was MY church. I’d explored every inch of it and knew where everything was, so if I ever needed a snack I’d help myself to the grape juice and tasty wafers they kept in the downstairs kitchen for communion.

Yes, I used to snack on the Body of Christ.
Church was the only place I really felt comfortable being myself. I believed in what I was told and found solace in the acceptance of God and The Church. As a teen I considered the possibility of one day becoming a pastor, if I could get over that passing-out-in-front-of-crowds thing. I loved the idea of spending my days helping people love and support each other. Aside from those stolen communion wafers, I’d thought I was on pretty good terms with God.
So color me surprised when I found out I’d grown up to be a sinner, or at least a tragic error. Don’t get me wrong- I was never actively dismissed from my hometown church, and still maintain close ties with a few people there. But I could never be fully embraced, because their doctrine made it quite clear that who I feel compelled to be is just plain wrong. My boyfriend Preppy had the same experience with his Southern Baptist congregation (where he was, I kid you not, the head of their puppet ministry), and we both made the same decision:

Love the sinner, hate the sin was not good enough. We walked away.
So for the last ten years, it’s just been God and me. It’s a more casual relationship, and much like the other people in my life I can go long periods without communicating. But since I proposed to Preppy, I’ve had church on the brain again.
“I want a real minister for our wedding,” I said the other night. “Not somebody ordained on the internet, I mean a real live person of the cloth who visits sick people in hospitals and stuff.”
“We can do that,” said Preppy. “I can Google gay-inclusive churches.”
Preppy just got a new laptop computer. Now he likes to Google everything.
“You know, if you find one that looks interesting, we could go to a service. Put on our Sunday best and check it out.”
“Aw, darlin. You wanna go back to church?”
“Yeah, I guess I do.”
Old feelings begin to stir- that hope of belonging to a community again. It feels a little like a homecoming.
God, I hope I don’t pass out.

Leader of the Pack

2008-02-20T12:29:00.000-05:00

The first problem is just the mere fact that I’m driving, which always leads to trouble. My brain isn’t wired to process information while traveling at high speeds. I was meant to experience the world on foot. But here I am, driving Preppy’s car, completely lost in Buckhead on a Sunday morning.

My parents have one of those GPS thingys that tells you where your next turn is and how close you are to a Piccadilly, which they refer to as “The Woman”. Driving with them is really entertaining since “The Woman” entered their relationship, as my mother views her as an ally, and my father believes the disembodied vaguely British voice is in cahoots with his wife to undermine his authority.
“Cleve, take the next exit,” Mama will say. “The Woman said there’s road construction on I-55.”
“Will you just let me drive? I know what I’m doing. (long pause) Well, damn.”
“We told you, Cleve. Why won’t you listen to The Woman?”
“Hush up, both of you.”
I could sure use The Woman right now. Barring that, I go with my next best option and call my pal Slutty Mandy.
“For God’s sake,” she says. “Do you have any idea what time it is?”
“It’s almost noon.”
“Topher, there’s a little something single people enjoy called Saturday nights. Think back and you’ll remember.”
“I’m lost in Buckhead, and I’m gonna be late for a birthday party. Can you MapQuest an address for me?”
“If you must know, I’m not even at my house. Just follow Peachtree ‘til it turns into something else, I’m sure you’ll be fine.”
“I can’t be late. It’s an eleven year-old girl I used to babysit, and a bunch of girls from Morningside Elementary got bumped from the guest list so I could be there. And if I don’t find it soon, all the Jesus People are gonna clog up the road and I’m screwed.”
Slutty Mandy heaves a great sigh.
“Preppy really shouldn’t let you drive alone. Tell me the next intersection you see.”
With Slutty Mandy’s reluctant assistance, I make my way to Atlanta Rocks, an indoor rock-climbing facility nestled in the back of an office park. I enter to the strains of a dozen squealing preteen girls rappelling from the ceiling, which is really quite startling if you haven’t braced yourself for it.
“Mister Topher!” says the guest of honor. “You’re gonna climb, aren’t you?”
I’m fitted for my harness, and take my place in line, looking quite conspicuous amongst my fellow party guests. The pecking order within the bunch is quickly obvious- all the girls are following edicts issued by a red-headed girl named Brantley. She keeps casting me furtive looks as she whispers to the other girls. I think she’s wearing lip gloss. I instantly dislike her.
One of her minions runs over to me.
“IS YOUR NAME GOPHER?”
“No. It’s Topher. Mister Topher.”
“Brantley said your name is GOPHER.”
“Sweetie. Don’t listen to Brantley. In fact, just make that a rule for living.”
She goes back to report this encounter to her queen. I knew a Brantley when I was eleven- the girl who always had the latest clothes and was French kissing boys in Junior High before she hit her teens. Theirs is a much more indirect form of bullying- a quiet, calculated delight in other people’s misery combined with an unerring sense of stylish superiority. What the Brantleys of the schoolyard fail to realize is that the sissies they make fun of are carefully studying their behavior, in order to emulate it in gay bars a decade later.
I couldn’t stand those little girls when I was a kid, and I don’t much care for the bar bitches they inspired. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that I’m always dubious of the leader of the pack, seeing as I’m the son of a man who doubts the wisdom of his GPS navigator. But there’s a lot to be said for breaking rank and following your own path.
“You’re only supposed to climb on the red ones!” Brantley shouts at the birthday girl as she scales the wall.
“Shut up, Brantley, I like the yellow ones!” she hollers back, and continues climbing.

I beam with pride.

Smart girl. I’ve taught her well.

Playing Cupid

2008-02-06T12:41:00.001-05:00

My Aunt Trish recently shed three hundred pounds in a single day. She got rid of her absolutely worthless husband. And by “got rid of”, I mean she divorced the son of a bitch, not that she killed him. Although if she had killed him, I would have happily driven to Mississippi with a shovel and a tarp to take care of that body.
You know those people you really, really hate, but you have to be polite because they’re married to someone you love? Well, her husband wasn’t one of those people. He was an ass, and I was never shy about making certain he knew that. He’s one of those straight guys who are so completely terrified of gay people that it has festered into a powerful hatred. I knew this, and I delighted in and took advantage of his fear whenever possible.

Ours was a relationship of mutual distaste.
And now, like a bad dream, or a bout with Chlamydia, he’s gone. Poof! Ding Dong! Every time I think about this, I do a little dance inside. It will take a while to completely erase him from my memory, but I’m more than happy to work at it.
Aunt Trish called this week because, suddenly sixty and single but still sassy, she’s decided to delve into the world of internet dating. After discovering most men won’t talk to a woman without a photo to offer, she enlisted my aid.
“I wish I could put a picture of Sigourney Weaver. She’s very attractive,” she said.
“True, but it’d be awkward explaining that when you actually meet.”
“Well, do you have any good pictures from Christmas? Something where I look young? The men my age all date women in their forties. I guess I’m supposed to date men in their eighties. They won’t be any fun.”
“It’s a Viagra world now. Everyone can still be fun.”
“Well, I don’t the bastard to die on me before I’m finished.”
Isn’t it neat when you’re grown up and you find out which of your relatives talk dirty?
Trish has turned to the internet because she has no interest in the widowers and divorced men her Mississippi matron friends have been suggesting. I’m always doubtful of people playing Cupid. Matchmaking is inefficient because we’re all unwilling to admit whatever it is we’re REALLY looking for in a mate. My sister Shannon was attracted to her husband because he seemed like a jerk on the outside, but turned out to be a big softie. She wanted a man who was unafraid to tell her “No,” and she’d respect enough to listen. But how do you tell that to a friend? “Jennifer, go find me an asshole who bosses me around.” I liked Preppy instantly because he knew what he wanted (in that case, me), and was direct in getting it- we kissed before even exchanging names. But if you told me you had a friend for me, and that was how he introduced himself, my inner Julia Sugarbaker would be appalled by his lack of social decorum.
Maybe you want a spineless type who will fulfill your demands without question, or a fella who’s a little less attractive than you so you’ll always feel pretty. These are not the traits you’re going to list when a friend asks, “What kind of guy are you looking for?” And that’s why matchmaking usually doesn’t work.
But in Aunt Trish’s case, we have a glorious opportunity. There’s no risk involved in being forthright on an internet chat, and none of your friends have to know what you’re into. I tell her she should go ahead and be very clear on what she’s looking for when she writes her profile.
“Very clear in what way?”
“Well,” I say. “I’d definitely put it out there that you expect them to survive sleeping with you. If there’s doubt there, you’d wanna know.”
“Oh! That might intrigue them, let them know I’m a hellcat.”
That’s something she’s unlikely to share with the Mississippi matrons. I like her style: Just throw some dirty talk out there and see if any healthy boys bite. Sometimes the tried and true methods really are best.

As You Like It

2008-01-30T12:40:00.000-05:00

Preppy and I are dining out, having a fine time. He’s having pasta. I went for the duck. As I’m going on about the week in celebrity tragedies, I notice he keeps glancing at my plate.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“Remember that time we went to Piedmont Park and fed the ducks? Remember how cute they were?”
“Eat your pasta.”
“I’m just sayin’. You think your dinner knew those ducks? Maybe they were friends.”
“I wonder if his friends are this savory and delicious.”
I return to my meal. Until Preppy starts throwing pieces of bread at it.
“Quaaaack.”
I threaten him with my fork. We return to the meal.
When I first met my boyfriend, he described himself as a “pretty much vegetarian.” I found this compelling, as I was unaware there were varying degrees. I thought it was like being “pretty much pregnant.” That is to say, you either are or you ain’t. But Preppy explained that after many years of being unable to order anything at fast food restaurants, he’d amended his vegetarianism to allow for creatures of the sea. So these days, he just doesn’t eat anything with feet.
Years of working in restaurants left me mystified by people’s requests. When I was a server, I’d get the occasional vegan asking what their options were on the menu. I’d offer them a refreshing glass of water. Or people asking if there’s dairy in the mashed potatoes. Of course there is. Why on earth would you think otherwise? No self-respecting potato below the Mason-Dixon Line would allow itself to be mashed without copious amounts of butter and milk. And swear I never even heard of anyone allergic to gluten until the mid-nineties. Is that a new thing? How do you create a new allergy? Gluten’s been around as long as there’s been food. Why the sudden trouble?
This is why I wasn’t a very good waiter.

Because when I’d encounter such people, I was unable to suppress my need to know more, and I’d ask them to explain themselves. And then I’d offend them by saying something like, “Why does it matter where the chicken was raised? It’s a little late to worry about its quality of life now,” and they’d get offended, my manager would have to give them a free dessert, and I’d get a stern lecture about not interrogating the customers.
Preppy’s diet left me deeply troubled when we were first dating. Why fish and not pork? Is it because it’s easier to picture a mammal having a personality? I saw “Finding Nemo.” Fish are very droll and observant creatures with extraordinarily eventful lives. And for that matter, look at those “Veggie Tales” characters I keep seeing on posters at bus stops. You can anthropomorphize anything if you put a pair of googly eyes on it and give it a few witty lines of dialogue; I see no reason to let that ruin your dinner.
Living with him has been a really healthy development for me in this arena. My attachment to Preppy forces me to defend his self-imposed dietary restrictions, despite the fact that were it anyone else, I would consider it patently absurd. When I first explained it to my mother, who would kill a cow with her bare hands if it was the only way she could make brisket for Sunday dinner, it just blew her damn mind.
“But why?” she kept asking, and no explanation would suffice.
“Because that’s what he likes, Mama,” I said finally, and she had no argument for that.
Actually, “Because I like it,” is a pretty solid justification in any awkward scenario. Picture it: “Why do you only eat raw food?” “Why do you smoke?” “Why did you paint this room orange?” “Why do you have sex with other dudes?”
“Because I like it.”
Sure, they could exhaust themselves with inquiry or implore you to change your mind, but when it comes down to it, if you stand firm with that simple explanation it’s a tough one to topple. As I finish my delicious duck, and my boyfriend flaps his arms and quacks at me, I decide to use it more often. Feel free to do the same.
Try it, you might like it.

Shut Up and Drive

2008-01-02T13:07:00.000-05:00

I’m in a parking lot, on the phone with Preppy’s mother. I’m enlisting her aid in some undercover work.
“Oh, Topher darlin’, I just don’t know,” she says. “I know his shoe size, I used to know his waist size, but this… I just don’t know.”
“Well, there’s no way I can ask him without him knowing exactly what I’m doing.”
“Just let me think, honey. Okay, I can tell him we’re going through some of his Granddaddy’s things, seein’ if there’s anything he might want, and work it into the conversation. I’ll be real subtle.”
There’s a tap at my window. A humorless, boxy woman stands with a clipboard, looking impatient.
“Gotta go, Mama B. Make me proud.”
I hang up the phone and roll down the window.
“Please turn on your left turn signal,” she says, and I oblige.
I’ve spent a thrilling day at the Department of Driver Services, which was called the DMV the last time I was here. They changed their name, I’m assuming, to distance themselves from the DMV’s less-than-stellar reputation for customer service. Well, they could call themselves the Department of Unicorns and Blowjobs if they wanted to, but they’d still be a big pain in the ass.
I stopped driving several years ago, in part because I lived a block away from work and the hassle just seemed silly, and in part because of my belief, and this is an actual quote, that “Nobody in their right mind would pay $1.75 for gas.”

Silly me. If only I’d known.
So for roughly six years, I’ve walked or caught MARTA, or bummed rides from friends if we were going somewhere out of the ordinary. This worked just fine until our adventure in homelessness last fall, when Preppy and I stayed with friends in Smyrna, and he had to cart me back and forth to Atlanta every day. And he began to go a little crazy, like my mother when she’d tell my sister and me that her name was not “Taxi”. It was then that he suggested it might be convenient if I joined the ranks of licensed drivers once more. I resisted.
“Atlanta drivers are out for blood,” I said. “I don’t know if I have the stamina to keep up anymore.”
“I know it’s scary, darlin’,” he said. “But you’re brave and bold and you can do it, now I'm gonna need you to go get your fucking license.”
I want to make something very, very clear: I do not want to drive. The whole image of the open road representing freedom and possibility? It does nothing for me. I don’t think cars are sexy. The whole enterprise just feels unsafe and expensive. But I cannot deny the appeal of a twenty-minute trip home by car, versus two interminable hours on MARTA. Besides, I can still convince Preppy to do most of the driving when we’re together- he just wants the option of not always being behind the wheel, maybe occasionally having a designated driver on a night out. But I know what this will lead to.

I’ll get the license, and then I’ll end up getting a car. And then I’ll have insurance to deal with, plus gas, which I think is like sixteen bucks a gallon now.
I can stress about it, or I can go with the flow. It’s a small concession I’m more than willing to make if it removes a little hassle from Preppy’s life. And that’s how I choose to view it: I’m in the car with this very stern woman, attempting to parallel park without wetting myself, as a gift to the boy I love.
That night, as I stare in slight disbelief at my driver’s license, my phone rings. It’s Preppy’s Mama.
“His ring size is ten and a half,” she says, delighted. “Did you already pick it out?”
“I saved a picture of it on my computer. I look at it ten times a day.”
“Are you nervous?”
“A little. But we did just buy a house together, so I feel like it’s a safe bet, you know? I guess tomorrow I’ll drive over and get it.”
“Aw, you’ll DRIVE. That’s exciting! Things are certainly changing for you two!”
As I look at the ring with which I plan to propose, I realize Mama B has just made the understatement of the New Year.