Sneak Preview II

Here's the next section of the story I've been working on. I've titled it "The Beginning of Everything." Feedback would be cool, if you've got some.

There was this woman, Sheila, and she was diagnosed with cancer. She worked in research, so I never saw her very often because her door was always closed. We’d see each other sometimes in the ladies’, but you can’t really talk in the ladies’. Or, rather, people shouldn’t talk in the ladies’. It’s frustrating, because I’m a talker, I like to talk, I like talking to people, and I don’t like talking in the ladies’, but then so many of the gals at work seem to want to have these tantalizingly short conversations in there, and I can’t really participate because. I just don’t want to talk to people while I’m, you know.

People always checked on Sheila after her diagnosis. You’d hear them in the restroom: “How are you?” And that emphasized “you” meant so many other things than just how Sheila was right at that moment. They wanted to know all about Sheila, and they seemed greedy; they wanted to be the person showing Sheila the most empathy and the most concern. Sheila didn’t seem to care, though, that they were leeching off of her diagnosis. Sheila would smile and say, “Fine, thanks.” But not in a curt way. She really meant it. If I’m ever diagnosed with cancer, I’ll say “fine, thanks” the same way that Sheila did.

Sheila died. That would be one reason why I wouldn’t necessarily want to be diagnosed with cancer the way that she was. And it was really frustrating, because to be honest, I got a little tired of all the attention everyone paid to Sheila. For instance, Craig brought in some candles his partner Mike made, aromatherapy candles he called them, to help calm Sheila down, he said, and it’s not like Sheila was suffering from nerves; she had cancer. And with Sheila out so much, what with going to the doctors and the chemo, I had to pick up some of her slack even though I’m in marketing and she’s in research, and with all that extra work I’m really the one who needed some soothing candles to help with stress. I had even hinted around many times when Craig had brought in those candles, how they were awfully pretty and they smelled fantastic and that it would be nice to have a couple on my desk because it can get a little stale smelling in there late in the afternoon; our windows don’t open. And then, when Craig got my name for the Secret Santa, I thought for sure he’d give me some of those candles. He got me Dilbert stationery instead, and I don’t even like Dilbert. Is it supposed to be funny? Because I don’t get it.

Sheila died, and it was like she never died, because no one seemed to be moving on because even though she wasn’t there, everyone still asked, “How are you?” “How are you?” Which would make sense if the people asking were asking other people with cancer, but they weren’t. Scott didn’t have cancer, even with all those moles he has, yet because he sat in the office next to Sheila’s, everyone really seemed to care about how Scott was doing. And Scott was fine; we were all fine. I was fine, but nobody asked me “How are you?” so I couldn’t tell anyone. But they’d ask each other because they couldn’t ask Sheila, I mean they could ask Sheila but that would be pretty weird. After my mom had her stroke she’d stand in the kitchen and talk to my stepdad who’d died a couple years earlier.

I didn’t realize so many people knew Sheila because like I said, she worked in research and her door was always closed, but I saw a lot of people really weepy around the office. We even closed for her memorial service. I went, but I left early, because it was a Friday and I didn’t want to get caught in traffic. Besides, it seemed like everyone only cared about how people who knew Sheila were doing, and I didn’t know her all that well because her door was always closed and I didn’t want to chat her up in the ladies’ room, but if someone had asked me how I was, I’d have told them. It would have been nice. “I’m hanging in there,” I would have said. “Each day is a little easier than the one before.”

Reading: Oryx & Crake

Sometime in 2002, someone must have bought Margaret Atwood a DVD player and a DVD. "This, this is surely the future," Ms. Atwood most likely muttered. She then wrote the pretty aggressively mediocre Oryx & Crake, where DVDs and CD-ROMs make several appearances.

Atwood wants to be a futurist in the way Tom Wolfe wanted to be an anthropologist of early-adult sexuality in I Am Charlotte Simmons. Both fail, because both are 200 years old and stopped being especially relevant when they saw the new century on the horizon. Wolfe tried to warn us, breathlessly, that freshmen in college were having sex -- in case you didn't know or weren't paying attention or were currently fellating a 19-year-old frat boy and couldn't be bother to stay au courant. Atwood wants us to know that she's got her fingers on the pulse of the new technology: DVDs, CD-ROMs, websites, and online pornography.

This would be fine for both of them, were they writing their respective novels in, say, 1985. However, it's 2006. DVDs slipped into the mainstream in 1999. And as far as poor Tom Wolfe: if you haven't had sex with a 19-year-old, it's because you haven't tried.

Oryx & Crake is another dystopian novel from Maggie Atwood, one that, according to the front cover blurb from The New Yorker, "does Orwell one better." It's insights like that that could push The New Yorker into the ranks of Atwood and Wolfe if it isn't careful (especially if it doesn't tell Anthony Lane that snarky comments are witty and fun when you're drunk, gay, and Truman Capote filling in for Oscar Wilde; however, maybe you could just review the fucking film and save the bon mots for the Dick Cavett show). The only way Atwood's novel does Orwell one better is in page length. Orwell ends his morality play at 336 pages. Atwood keeps chugging along for about 40 pages more.

It's the future, and it sucks. Lots of genetic modifications have created new animals like pigoons and rakunks and whatever, Mags. Also, it's a time of cynaicism because too many companies are too interested in too much profit, and they do a lot of questionable things. There's a guy we meet at the beginning who calls himself "Snowman" who is really this guy named Jimmy. Jimmy, as a teen, befriends some kid named Glenn, who later calls himself Crake. And then, eventually, they all tuck into a tidy love triangle with a former underaged Asian whore named Oryx.

There are moments that are interesting, especially when Atwood describes the rationale behind some of the genetic modifications, and how these efforts bite everyone in the ass when there's no true infrastructure to keep track of who's done what to whatever. But mostly it's a plodding novel that shows how out of touch Atwood is with the current state of technology.

For instance, back to the DVD/CD-ROM thing. Ostensibly, when the novel deals with Snowman as a boy named Jimmy, it isn't 2003 (when the novel is published) -- it's much later. In this far-flung future, though, DVDs are still the cutting edge rave, even though DVDs as we know them are in serious trouble from DVR technology. Likewise, Jimmy thinks of CD-ROMs as old-school ways of getting information; however, again: no. At the rate technology is expanding, it would be like a kid from today preferring to get his info from papyrus scrolls or the occasional stone tablet. And it's those moments of technological disconnect that pulls the reader (and by "the reader" I mean "me") out of the novel.

And y'all? I'm a technological retard. For serious. When I feel smarter than a sci-fi novel? And I don't really understand how to program my cell phone? Then yeah: you've got some problems, Maggie Atwood.

In comparing Oryx & Crake to Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go -- it's no contest. Ishiguro, who has said in different interviews that he had no real interest in getting the science "right" in his novel, is a better futurist than Atwood could ever be. And he does this primarily by not over-explaining the future at all. By leaving the vagaries of the technology to the reader, he can instead focus on the interpersonal dramas -- which, as Tolstoy said, are both all alike and completely different for each family.

To remember back when Atwood was relevant and good, I recommend the following:

• The Handmaid's Tale
  
  
• Dancing Girls
  
  
• The Robber Bride
  
  
• Alias Grace
  

Reading: Never Let Me Go

I was going to love living in the villa.

I was going to wear a lot of casual linen separates in warm earth tones that never wrinkled, or wrinkled artfully, but mostly never wrinkled. I was going to teach knitting on the veranda, and have a torrid affair with a young Italian who spoke no English and never wore shirts. I was going to take up painting, appreciate opera, finish my novel, and pretend my days in America were all an uncomfortable dream.

I was truly going to love living in the villa. But for a while it looked like I wasn't going to get to. Because I wasn't liking Never Let Me Go.

Then, I read the last 10 pages.

I don't know that it's a great novel. It's not better than his first novel, A Pale View of Hills, or my personal favorite, The Unconsoled. And seriously, up until those last several pages -- I wasn't loving this book the way I was expecting to.

But man, those last pages.

Reading: I Am Legend

Actually, I'm reading something like four books at the moment -- something I rarely do. I get too easily confused, and can't for the life of me figure out what the Podsnaps from Our Mutual Friend are doing in the Oblonsky's household.

In high school, I wrote a paper once about how the treacherous Arabella was a far more sympathetic character than Jude Fawley or Sue Bridehead. This would have been fine if we weren't supposed to be reading The Mayor of Casterbridge at the time. Too many books confuse me.

And yet, here I am, ankle deep in too many books. I'm at the exact middle of Our Mutual Friend, and have taken my own advice. Dickens and I are on a little bit of a break. It's not that the novel isn't good; it's that the novel is a little too much Dickens all at once. I've started not caring about the characters all that much, and that's a bad place to be with Dickens, since he's short on shortness, and I'll be with these folks for a while longer. In the hopes of absence making the heart grow fonder, I've jotted some notes down on my bookmark about where I am and what I've read and have set it aside for a book or two.

Next up is White Teeth by Zadie Smith. This is our June book for my book group, and it's great. However, my memory's like a sieve, and since we're not meeting until June 14 (PS: in the area? Want to talk books with a bunch of wicked smart people in the comfort of the Bethesda Barnes & Noble? You should totally come) I figured that I'd put it aside for a moment, next to Chuck, and save it for closer to the book group so that it's still fresh in my mind when I have to argue with Karen "Au contraire!" L.

Then Doppelganger over at 50 Books wrote about Kazuo Ishiguro's newest book, Never Let Me Go, and mentioned that "our chances of all retiring peaceably together in a villa in Florence are resting on" my liking the book. And since I love Doppelganger, villas, Florence, and the idea of retirement -- I figured I'd better give it a go. It's no The Unconsoled; but I keep reminding myself that The Unconsoled was no The Unconsoled when I first started reading it. It baffled me and bored me in frustrating ways until I realized what was happening, and then I spent the rest of the novel feeling uneasy and a little disoriented. It's now one of my favorite books.

And finally, because I'm in a weird spot right now with the Ishiguro, I found myself breaking -- yet again -- my "Mike Buys No New Books in 2006" rule by buying a new book in 2006: I Am Legend. If you're going to buy it -- and I think you should -- do so now, before the movie tie-in covers start showing up. They've cast Will Smith.

I love vampire novels. Really. I mean, yeah, I love the Victorians more, and my desktop at home is an image of this guy and my desktop at work is an image of this guy -- my secret love, though, is a good novel of the blood-subsisting undead.

Let's be clear up front, though: I don't like Anne Rice. I may have enjoyed Interview with a Vampire -- but that was back when I was in 7th or 8th grade. I find her too rococo and baroque; she's the unbearable lovechild of Charles Dickens and William Faulkner. There's also a woman out there writing vampire slayer novels with an urban kick and I've read the first chapter of one of her novels and again: no. That's not what I want. I want vampires. And I want it to be good.

Here's a list of the vampire novels I've read thus far. Or, at least the ones I remember reading because I've read a lot of them. They're in no order:

• Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu
  
• Dracula by Bram Stoker
  
• The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova (I'm not linking to it because it's awful)
  
• The Journal of Abraham Van Helsing (again: not linking)
  

And now that I've listed them, I guess there haven't been too many. I've read three of the Anne Rice books -- but there is bitter enmity between Anne Rice and me, so I'm not listing her either. Still, I do love them -- and I'd like to read good ones.

Can anyone help a British Adventuress out? What are some good vampire novels you've read, or know about? I like I Am Legend for the most part. I think he ended it too soon, and I didn't really understand what happened at the end until I'd re-read it a couple times over. (There's a lot of confusion over a virus and who, exactly, is infected and who's undead.) So, I'd like something in the same vein (ha ha) as Legend. I don't want the vampires to be sexually ambiguous, or metaphors for queer identity. The vampires can be the heroes or they can be the antagonists, or they can be all the characters and there's infighting. I'm just looking for a good, solid, vampire novel. That shouldn't be too much to ask for.

Not Kissing

I didn't kiss Zach this evening, on the corner by the Original Pancake House. I was walking to Barnes & Noble and he was going to the gym and we had just watched The Celluloid Closet and it was too public somehow and I didn't kiss him when we parted ways.

Zach and I have been together five years; well, five years this July. Through sickness and through health, through mini-meltdowns and through petty triumphs, he's my guy and I'm his and all it takes is something like a corner on a busy street to make us part like buddies. "Catch you later, friend." "You, too, pal." "We'll catch that game sometime." "Splendid."

D'oh!

What makes it keenly ironic is how much I was marveling over how far the gays have come. We're on the television, now, fixing up straight guys and hosting American Idol. We're in movies and we have our own magazines -- magazines that don't even come in plain brown envelopes; real magazines these are with those awful and ubiquitous subscription cards that come fluttering out like desperate confetti: "TIME'S RUNNING OUT!!!" "JUST THREE MORE ISSUES!!!" "Don't you like us any more?" We've come so far, and my mom made me a rainbow flag blanket, and sure we can't marry but even the Red Staters like their hair done well -- so it's not like they'll get rid of the gays all together.

And yet, I still sometimes don't feel safe kissing my boyfriend on a street corner before we head off to do our different things.

And it's not like I was even going for one of those inappropriate kisses. There was going to be no tongue. No open fondle and manic grind. A peck on the lips is all; something that says, "Hey, I'll miss you, but in a totally healthy way." A little more than a kiss-your-mother, but not so much where we'd need a fluffer standing by.

I feel guilty sometimes, complaining like this. Time was, no man could kiss any man who wasn't his dead father any time any place. Time was, it was you and Randy Quaid up on Brokeback Mountain, keeping secrets that become more impossible and more important to keep (because let's face it: cowboys never look like Jake Gyllenhaal or Heath Whatever -- cowboys do look like Randy Quaid, and it's him spittin' in his palm before stemming your rose in the real world of Wyoming and sheep and tents that sleep two). Time was, we lived lives of quiet desperation or furtive loathing -- unloved and untouched.

I'm just frustrated that I can't kiss my boyfriend on a street corner. And this frustration is, to use a phrase Susie Bright used in the documentary, like having fleas poured over me: the irritation is too much. We've progressed, but to where? We've made important strides, but where are those strides taking us? We live in a different world, they tell me, but so much of it still looks pretty familiar. We've come so far -- but we haven't mapped the country we're trying to get to.

And in that country, I'm sure, there's a street corner by an Original Pancake House and I'm on my way to Barnes & Noble and Zach is on his way to the gym and it's public and people can see us and some of them look and most of them don't and none of them care or if they do, they only care that on that street corner I stop, hold Zach's face, and give him a kiss.

T-[!@#$]-Mobile

Like most patriotic Americans of non-Latino extraction, I spent Cinco de Mayo drinking nine margaritas, doing shots, and then taking pictures of necking Koreans on my way home on the Metro.

¡Viva la Revolucion! Seriously.

In the process, and after the photo shoot, I lost my phone. Only, not so much "lost" as much as "drunkenly left it on the seat beside me, laughing at my subterfuge" because I totally thought I was teh sneakness in snapping pictures of the unwitting kissing couple. Oh, and PS: they were the weirdest kissers ever. Play along:

Take your right hand, make it into a fist, and that's the guy. Now, tilt your head back and close your eyes. That's the girl. Now, place your fist-head against your lips (remember: head tilted back and eyes closed) and remain absolutely still. Then, remain absolutely still for, like, 8 minutes.

Anyway, I get home, realize that I don't have my phone when I try to show my Ansel Adams mad-skillz off to Zach, and call T-Mobile customer service. They turn the phone off. They tell me I have a month in which to find my phone or get a replacement, or terrible things will happen because I'm in breach of my contract or something. I'm drunk. I say, "Whatever." (It comes out, "Goddammit, do you even get how much I love you right now?") Zach makes me drink many glasses of water and I go to bed.

The next week, I go to the Metro site, I fill out a lost-and-found form, and am utterly unsurprised when I get an immediate message back saying that nothing has been reported that matched the description I gave. And I was embarrassed in leaving the description, because the screen that shows up when you flip open my phone? Zach, giving me the finger. And this might be funny and cool when you're, what, 19? But I'm 33 years old. I should never have to type the phrase "my boyfriend flipping me the bird." We're not even supposed to know what the bird is anymore.

I gave the report a week, though, in case someone turned it in later. I suppose I could have actually gone to the Metro Lost and Found -- but I have no idea where that is, and Metro isn't too free with sharing that information. Besides, lost-and-founds just depress me. "I bet you someone really loved that Confederate flag belt buckle." I entertained a slivered hope that maybe I'd be on the train that I was on when I lost the phone, and there it would be -- dim from the lost charge, but mine. And of course, that didn't happen.

So today, I call T-Mobile. The guy confirms that yes, my phone has been reported stolen. He then asks me to -- and I am not kidding -- take a look at the phone and tell him the make and model. "I'm sorry?" I said. "It's to identify the phone, and make sure you have the right phone for the account."

"Yeah, I get it. Do you think, though, that if I had the phone in my hand so's I could look at the make and model number, you and I would be having this conversation?"

"Well, sir, it's just-- ooh."

"You with me?"

"Yeah."

Yeah.

Then, before he'll transfer me to the Lost Phone department, he wants to talk about how my plan is working. "It's a great plan you've got," he said.

"I bet you say that to all the boys."

"No, our 700 minute Family Plan is very popular. With families."

"We've never even come close to using our 700 minutes."

"Oh."

"Yeah. It's not a great deal for us at all."

"Have you thought about calling more people on your phone?"

"I'm sorry?"

"You know, it just seems like you're not using your phone to its full advantage."

"Are you suggesting that it's not my phone plan that's failing me, but that I'm failing my phone plan?"

"I--"

"Just transfer me to Lost Phones."

So I'm transfered to Lost Phones. I have to wade through a morass of button pushing to get to the right department. Finally, I get to press 1 for lost or stolen phones. Then, I'm asked to have my police report handy. "That must be for the folks who have had their phones stolen," I think. Then I'm prompted to press 2 if I don't have a police report. And since it was my own drunken stupidity, and not, say, the nefariousness of the criminal underworld that caused my phone to go bye-bye -- I pressed 2.

I was given instructions on how to file a police report. I was offered those instructions in Español. I hit # repeatedly until I got a live person on the phone. He asked my name, and he was helpful right up until he asked for my police report number.

"I don't have one."

"Oh, well, Mike Bevel, I can give you some information on how to go about--"

"But my phone wasn't stolen."

"Oh, I know, Mike Bevel."

"So, why would I have to file a police report?"

"Because it's missing."

"But I don't know that we have to get the police involved."

"It's not a problem, Mike Bevel. You'll just need to call the non-emergency number for your local police, and then file a report. They'll give you a badge number or they'll give you the report number. Then you just ca--"

"Are you serious?"

"We take this very seriously, Mike Bevel."

"Please stop saying my name."

"I'm sorry Mi-- sir."

"So, rather than just sending me a new phone and honoring the insurance agreement I have where I pay you guys $5 a month, you want me to call the police, file a report because I lost something, get a badge or report number, and then call you back?"
"You can probably take care of all of this today."

I hung up. I called the police non-emergency number, and she told me to call the Metro police, and the Metro police were not available then, but if I wanted to go to one of the Metro stations, they'd call a Metro police officer to come and take my statement.

"You can't just--"

"No, sir."

"Because all I need is--"

"No, sir."

"Okay, then."

And that's where things are left.

Man, Knitting

Guys, patriarchy sucks. No, seriously.

I forget, sometimes, about patriarchy because I'm kind of part of it. The gay thing keeps me from being an MVP in the club -- but because of a decided lack of fabulousness in my life, I'm not often pegged for queer right off the bat. I'm an unwitting beneficiary of a pretty crappy system.

That is, until I pull out my knitting.

I'm never been more aware of my gender than when I've been somewhere public and started working on my stockinette stitch. All of a sudden, I feel like I'm breaking every rule, only not in a cool way with Europe blaring The Final Countdown (which, PS, has the longest intro ever and just when you think the over-permed lead singer is about to belt out the opening lyrics he totally fakes out, purses his lips, and makes you wait a little longer. He'll definitely be part of my thesis) in the background. I feel exposed and a little unsafe -- which is another side-effect of patriarchy because hi: I'm just a guy with some yard and I feel unsafe? Try being a woman walking to her car at night, Mike, and then come talk to us all about this "unsafe" of which you speak.

But there it is. I feel my masculinity challenged when I'm sitting in public, knitting one and purling two. And it's not like I'm all that aware of my masculinity to begin with, especially after sitting in the living room last night with Stephen Sondheim's Finishing the Hat on auto-repeat. I have to do that kind of music listening alone and in secret, lest Zach hear it and fly into a Sondheim-induced rage. And maybe that's the trick: public vs. private in regards to "masculinity" and "femininity." For the most part, I'm very careful, even without really thinking about it, with my perceived masculinity. Zach and I aren't terribly demonstrative in public; I wouldn't ever blast Sunday in the Park with George loudly from a boom box at a bus stop. I was breaking my own self-regulated rule, thus breaking the much larger patriarchy-induced rule. And it made me anxious.

This means I have to knit more in public.

Gloria Steinam said she believed that an army of quiet, gray-haired women would quietly take over the world. I expect those quiet, gray-haired women are going to need things like hats and scarves. We'd best get started.

Reading: Our Mutual Friend

I have been reading Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens for the last 27 years. You'll say I'm exaggerating, but seriously: every time I try to think back to a reading memory, it's me and 800+ pages of people who skim the Thames for dead bodies from which to pilfer.

Some misconceptions, first, to clear up about Little Chuckie Dickens:

• He didn't get paid by the word. It's fun to gripe about in 11th grade English when you're wading your way through Great Expectations and you want to sound like you know something about literature -- but it's just not true. He wasn't paid by the word; he was paid by the installment. And fine: you say tomato, I say tomahto.
  
  
• Dickens wasn't meant to be read in one sitting. He wrote serially. The best way to read Dickens is probably in the installments they were published as. One of the reasons Zach and I won't watch 24 is because we tried to catch up on season 1 via DVD and found it all too thrilling. First, there were no commercials; then, there was nothing stopping us from watching five episodes in a row. "I can't do this anymore," said Zach, shakily wiping the film of sweat that had appeared on his forehead. "He's gonna have to save the world without us." It's similar, though with less Kiefer, with Dickens. Each installment is an episode, so when you try to read the whole thing is a few sittings, you'll start to notice some of the weaknesses of serial writing. The writing and storytelling can seem baggy and unstructured -- and in some cases they are. Reading and enjoying Dickens means developing a sense of patience.
  
  
• Dickens is both as great and as frustrating as everyone has told you. I'm not saying that settling down with Bleak House or Dombey and Son won't take you eleventy one years to finish, or that you won't find yourself reading anything other than Dickens in the middle just to give yourself a mini-reprieve (ask me anything about Honey Nut Cheerios -- anything). But give him a chance and he'll charm you, make you laugh out loud, make you fall in and out of love, frighten you, overwhelm you, and make you remember why you love reading. He's not fortified with 9 vitamins and iron, though. But that's not his fault.
  

This is the last conversation Zach and I had about Our Mutual Friend:

MIKE: I don't know. I think the little dwarf girl, Fanny Cleaver, who calls herself Jenny Wren, is up to no good.
ZACH: If I leave you, please know that it's your books that drove me away.
MIKE: She makes clothes and funeral shrouds for dolls.
ZACH: Tell the kids...tell them I love them. I'm off for a pack of cigarettes.
MIKE: Oh, she's also a hunchback.

Sneak Preview

Here's the beginning of a short story I've been working on:

No one asks me where I was that day. Mostly because I live in Bethesda. Well, North Bethesda. Really, it’s Rockville; and it’s not even really the North Bethesda part of Rockville, it’s the Rockville part of Rockville. I don’t know why I tell people Bethesda.

I was home. I work. Of course I work. I wasn’t working that day, because I thought I deserved a break and the new girl we hired – she’s not really a girl, I guess; she’s in her late 20s and I’m in my mid 30s, but it’s not like we’re going to be best friends ever because, well, she’s my assistant and I guess she wants to keep those boundaries clear. Anyway Nancy has been there long enough that she could handle anything that came up, and it was just going to be the one day. I wanted to take this stolen vacation around the weekend, turn a Monday or a Friday into a three day weekend, but Mark didn’t want to take the time off because wow, I mean, his career? It’s really taking off. I guess.

Kirsten doesn’t work. She stays at home because she and Tyler have cats. They’re show cats or important cats, or they’re cats that can’t really be at home alone and she stays there and Tyler works and I think she even administers suppositories. Like, one of the side effects of being these kinds of cats is that they can’t poop right. I’m not really a cat person, but those cats make me a little sad. It’s like, forces beyond their control only wanted them to be pretty and not to be, you know, functional. And now they can’t poop when they want and there’re four of them, and none of them can poop when they want, so it’s not like they can get encouragement from a working cat. And then, they’re stuck home all day with Kirsten. She’s also awfully quick with those suppositories.

Kirsten called because her husband works in the Pentagon, and he had gone to work that day, and she said turn on the TV, and she sounded tinny and distant. She used to come over for coffee on the weekends, a girls’ coffee klatch, and we’d talk about our husbands but mostly she’d talk about the cats and I guess I may have said something unkind about the cats or I don’t know. I can’t hear about those cats every time. I’d like to talk about me for a change, you know? Mark says I need to give other people a chance.

I was going to go to one of those Paint Your Own Pottery places. I wanted to paint a pitcher, and I was going to paint it a color that wouldn’t necessarily match the kitchen because I think it adds drama. I was going to paint it red, maybe, glossy red, or some of it red. And then I’d get a salad from Cosi. I think it’s such a treat, painting your own pottery. But then the phone rang and it was Kirsten and Tyler had gone to work and she said turn on the TV so I did and we both wondered, but didn’t ask, if Tyler was going to be coming home. There was so much smoke.

Actually, I did ask. And Kirsten started crying. And I got really annoyed with Kirsten because she already takes up so many of our conversations with those goddamned cats that if she also gets to be a widow? I didn’t say that part aloud.

Mark works in Baltimore. He sells real estate in Baltimore. There was no danger of Mark not getting to come home, because he doesn’t even sell real estate in the sketchier parts of Baltimore. I would think sometimes, at work, what it would be like if Mark were killed in some kind of freak accident – like a drug deal gone sour, not that Mark would be the one with the drugs, but he’d be the unfortunate victim. Innocent victim. Then, you know, people would want to have lunch with me once I came back to work. And maybe they’d stop by for a bit of a chat. Everyone is so busy lately. I’m busy, too, but I don’t think anyone should ever be so busy they can’t stop and, you know, connect with another human being. If Mark were dead, people would wonder how I was.

The List

You know how couples have that list, right? Of people you can sleep with because there's no chance in hell it will ever work out that you'll be alone in a room with Stanley Tucci, say, or Lior Ashkenazi.

MIKE: So, who's on your list?

ZACH: I don't know. These games are kinda, you know, gay.

MIKE: Whatever. Who would you sleep with.

ZACH: Alive or dead?

MIKE: Sure.

ZACH: Jake Gyllenhaal.

MIKE: Seriously?

ZACH: Yeah. He's hot.

MIKE: That's, like, the least imaginative answer ever.

ZACH: Did you start this game just so you could berate me for my choices?

MIKE: I bet even the Reverend Fred Phelps wants to sleep with Jake Gyllenhaal.

ZACH: So who's on your list?

MIKE: What?

ZACH: Your list? Who's on it?

MIKE: Oh. You know. People.

ZACH: Okay. Which people?

MIKE: [mumble]

ZACH: I didn't get that?

MIKE: The Pre[mumble] of Ir[mumble].

ZACH: The who?

MIKE: The Pres--

ZACH: The President of Iran?

MIKE: He's kinda ho--

ZACH: No. No, the President of Iran is not kinda hot. What the hell's wrong with you?

MIKE: I have a thing for angry Persian mayors-cum-wackjobs.

ZACH: At least my unattainable crush hasn't called for the total extermination of the Jews.

MIKE: Yet, my love. Yet.

Knit One, Purl Two

So, I'm taking this beginning knitting class. This will be the second beginning knitting class I've taken, the first being the one I took with my old roommate, Bridget the Knitter. We were both supposed to be novices; this was supposed to be some fun roommate time, doing something crafty together. Instead, by the end of the first day, Bridget had already knitted 17 scarves and 6 weeks later, by the end of the class, she'd created an entire fall line of clothing.

I made a hat. Kind of.

Anyway, this class. It's all right. I'm taking it with my friend Talley from bookgroup, and it's Bridget the Knitter all over again. It took me the entire first class to (re)learn how to cast on (and PS? After taking the entire class to learn how to cast on, all it took was the walk home from G Street Fabrics to completely forget how to cast on). Talley, on the other hand, was answering questions from the other knitters, giving pointers and generally being supportive:

"That's a great stitch there."

"Oh, look how fast you're learning!"

"Who's my little knitter? Who's my little knitter?"

The class is taught by an older woman named Helen. She's very efficient, personable, and has the breath of death. I've learned to save my questions for desperately important things. Helen likes to get right down next to you, and she likes to exhale, and this combination is lethal.

Oh, Helen also makes weird gay jokes that are thisclose to being homophobic. But maybe she gets a pass because she's my mom's age and there's that generational homophobia that gets a pass for some reason that I don't really remember except I guess maybe because she's old and old people get to do whatever the fuck they want because when you're old, every day's a Make-a-Wish-Foundation day and you do what you want. Who's going to stop you? You're old.

The first day of class, she talked about some friend, and somehow the story was related to knitting or something -- but then she had to throw in the fact that the friend's husband recently came out as gay and left her for another man. She made this disgusted face and said, "And none of us even knew. That he was gay? None of us. Even. Knew." Which, okay, whatever -- and had that been the only thing offputting she'd done then you could call me reactionary and I'd totally have to cop to it. But then, later in the class, she told this really long and involved story about an $8,000 sewing machine, but she was going to get it for $3,000 because it was used, and she justified it by saying that it wasn't so much that she was spending $3,000 as she was saving $5,000 -- and then she said, in this faux-Asian accent, "Ah, it's my Chinese accounting." Complete with little bow. I looked around at the other people, to see if anyone else was outraged, but they were all busy ignoring Helen and counting stitches. I did give Helen a quizzical look; I wish I had done more.

So this past Sunday, we're starting on our project (a hat) and we're at a point where we can sort of have conversations without too much worry about dropped stitches, or purling when we should be knitting. So this very, very, very young girl named Holly (she's something like 19 or 20) was talking about how she wanted to be a fashion designer, but that the closest reputable schools are all in New York, and that she couldn't afford to live in the City itself, and she was afraid of living in one of the "slums" because she'd be kidnapped and no, I don't really know where she got that idea, either, since it's not like there's a lot of white woman slave-trading going on in the outer burroughs but whatever. Then Helen pipes up with, "Well, honey, the safest place for a woman to live in New York City is Greenwich Village, if you know what I mean."

Holly didn't. "You mean because it's a village?"

Kendra looked up, rolled her eyes (I love Kendra a lot), and said, "It's because Greenwich Village is gay. And you're a woman. And Helen thinks that means you'd be safe." Kendra has as little patience with Holly as I have. Holly's pretty; and Holly generally seems kind and nice; but the last think that girl read had a perfume insert -- and I'm using the word "read" in the most general way possible.

Helen nodded, pleased. "I mean, I don't think Mike here would be all that safe in Greenwich Village, would you Mike?"

I didn't say anything. There were a lot of things I could have said. "I can only dream about being cruised in the Village." "I prefer the bath houses of San Francisco to the faux-boho of New York." "Helen: I suck cock." Instead, I just felt mildly uncomfortable and wondered why, again, I was mistaken for heterosexual. I mean, for one thing, I'm a guy in a knitting class. That's gotta mean something, right?

On one hand, it is my fault. I don't present as gay as I should, I guess. I don't dress well. I steer fairly clear of hair styling products. I'm not a fan of any of the following: Madonna, Cher, Judy Garland, Liza Minelli, Bette Midler, Barbra Streisand, Kylie Minogue, et. al. On the other hand, though: shut up, Helen. I hate feeling like I'm the one out of line -- that coming out to you after you've made some stupid-assed homophobic joke is somehow bad manners on my part. Because it's not. But that's usually how I feel, though. I don't want to embarrass the other person at all, make them feel as uncomfortable as I'm feeling right at that moment.

What's that about, anyway? Why am I protecting those people?

So I'm trying to come up with a way to let Helen know, in a way that won't cause either of us too much embarrassment, that I'm gay. And that maybe she could not make so many gay jokes. And, while we're already working on her humor, maybe she could tone it down with the racist shit, too. Knitting and purling are hard enough without putting up with that bullshit.