Deep Waters: My Last WordPress Blogpost January 24, 2024

Dear Readers, I am proud to have had this space to share my work and my writing prompts since 2009. And I thank you for following me here, for all of your wonderful comments and likes, and for taking the time to read my work.

I hope you will follow me to my Substack account, The Writing Catalyst, where I will continue to post my writing and the prompts that inspired them. I’ve subscribed you to the new newsletter free for three months. After that, you can continue to subscribe for free, or pay for a subscription; you can also unsubscribe. The new Substack site allows me to offer virtual writing workshops, podcasts, and so much more. I hope you’ll follow me there.

Thank you for being here with me all these years. Keep writing. Keep reading. And please, keep in touch.

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(The prompt: This piece was written in response to Adrienne Rich’s poem, “Diving into the Wreck”)

“Don’t write about her again,” my inner adolescent says, and he sounds like he’s almost pleading. “Nobody wants to hear about our dead mommy anymore. Especially me.”

It’s too early for a visit from this boy: 8:00 a.m. at the kitchen table. My journal is open in front of me, the pen is poised above the paper, my arthritic hand still stiff from sleep. Not you again, I think, with your full, dark eyebrows and your messy head of wavy hair.  

“Are you just going to ignore me?” he asks. He’s in that baby blue Disney sweatshirt, the one with the peeling white silkscreen of the castle on it. The sleeves are too short for him, but he never takes it off, even in the summer, because it brings out his eyes. Someday, I want to tell him, you’ll visit that castle in southern Germany, the one that inspired Walt Disney, and you’ll be so sick with food poisoning, and so filled with sorrow for the lonely gay king who built that place, you’ll never want to return. But at his age, it’s still a poster on his wall with a Hallmark cliché at the bottom; at his age, that castle is still a beautiful dream.

“I’m trying to write in my journal,” I say.

“I know,” he snaps back. “And I’m telling you not to write about her again.”

I’m remembering now the journal from our sophomore year in high school. Notebook paper bound by a simple green cover. We spent 15 minutes writing every period in my Psychology of Literature class. It was our private work; we didn’t have to share anything we didn’t want to share. I wrote a lot about John Lepsin, about his ice blue eyes and black hair, his big beautiful nose. I wrote tortured unrequited love poems that vacillated between raw desire and fantasies of revenge. But I never wrote about Mama. Only once. Something like, “Things have been pretty weird around the house. Mom has this memory disease and…I don’t want to write about this.” And so, I never did. Until my senior year, when I plagiarized the ending of a piece from the NYTimes Magazine my brother had shared with me. And then again in college, when I couldn’t write about anything else.

“I’m your scribe now,” I tell my younger self. “I’ve filled volumes of notebooks with sorrow and longing, with guilt and shame.”

“I know!” he’s says, slapping his pretty young hands down onto the table. “It’s too much! Stop already. Enough! Basta!” He sounds just like her when he says that, and I giggle a little. “What?” he says, suppressing a giggle himself. We are on the verge of busting up, like two kids in church.

“C’mon!” he says. “I mean it.”

But I am already writing. Mom would have been 100 today. He groans. If she would have lived this long, she probably would have been a mess.

“A beautiful mess,” he says out loud.

“Like you,” I say.

“Like you,” he says.

And then we dive down into the wreck together. It’s my job to shine a light for him. He closes his eyes, holds his breath, and down we go.

Finding Hope in the Rubble March 10, 2023

I’m trying to get used to this new world.

“Can we postpone our call?” my friend in Seattle writes. “I need to go to the gym and get some exercise; I couldn’t go out for a walk today; the air isn’t safe to breathe.” Fires? I write back. She sends a thumbs up emoji.

Later, on my own walk, I spot several giant green parrots sitting in a Cypress tree behind my neighbor’s apartment building. They have red cheeks and are softly cackling to one another as they preen. I love seeing them there, and I also feel the world tilt: these birds are not native to the Bay Area. They are descendants of escaped pets, birds that were smuggled in from Central America.

A few of my closest friends have a “You can’t control everything,” kind of attitude, but it feels like they’re really saying, “You can’t control anything,” and we can argue semantics all day long, but it means something, doesn’t it? That they’ve given up, or that they might prefer to just get stoned and binge watch a new series?

“I won’t pay for Netflix,” another friend says. “It’s too expensive.” Meanwhile, he’s finishing an eighteen-month remodel on a multi-million dollar house in the desert, while I’m trying to pay off the Visa card I used for my new desk chair. Everything is upside down. Comedians make fun of Margery Taylor Greene as they show footage of her latest campaign ad: she’s shooting wild boars from a helicopter with a semi automatic weapon. I don’t think it’s funny.

What you can do? (sic) my brother’s Italian tailor used to say. That question resonates with me. Because doing nothing just isn’t acceptable, as far as I’m concerned, but I also know that you can’t save everybody (or anybody, really) and you can’t, as my sister used to say, bleed for everyone either. You can’t save the world all on your own. But I am not willing to accept this dystopian narrative as set in stone—or silicon, as the case may be—as awful as it might seem. I refuse to give up on this one precious life on this one precious planet (but please, by all means, reserve your spot on Mars, with a layover on the Moon).

I have absolutely no idea how to live into the future when at times everything already feels like it’s crumbling around us, or is so covered in graffiti that we can’t even read the freeway exit sign beneath it. And yet, surely these fifty-seven years must have delivered me some sense of wisdom, some gut feeling about participating in community gardens, and frequenting farmers’ markets, and reading thought provoking stories, articles, listening to lectures. Some part of me knows that you have to seek out the teachers, the lessons, the opportunity to move beyond sleazy erotic massages or horror themed Hulu originals, or loud motorcycles, long lines at fast food chains. You have to find the homemade falafel stand in the corner or the parking lot, the one with the handsome man who is willing to tell you his story of survival. How he beat the odds, how he fled everything he knew and loved for freedom. How he never gave up hope.

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This piece was generated in my writing workshop at Laguna Writers. The prompt was the five word free write (see a detailed explanation of that prompt here), and the five words were, Wild Parrots, Avocados, Grey, Fire, Reaching.

Magical Thinking June 20, 2022

My sister recently shared a modern version of Disney’s Cinderella trailer from 1950. What I imagine was originally a corny 1950’s soundtrack for the two minute trailer was replaced by a modern remix, no doubt to reach a more contemporary audience. “They ruined it,” she said. Earlier, we had serenaded her fiancé with an a capella version of “I know you (I’ve walked with you once upon a dream)” doing our best to harmonize. “Very nice!” he said.

If you’re not familiar with it, the narrative of the song is love at first sight, with a kind of 1950’s emo set of lyrics that confirm the person of your dreams can literally appear before your eyes, and so you should trust your gut when it comes to that first hello.

After another glass of wine, I soothed my sister’s soul by finding the original version of the trailer, complete with a late 1940’s choir singing that very song and nailing the crescendos, as only those hired to sing on a Disney soundtrack can. “That’s more like it!” my sister said, then busied herself with the dishes.

I watched it again, with the volume turned down, and remembered how fantastic that film was to me when I was just a little baby gay boy. The magic of the fairy godmother, the rags-to-gorgeous-gown transformation, the sweet mice as friends, all that pink and blue, and the gleaming white castle in the distance. It’s the prince of course, who steals the movie, with his broad shoulders and thick dark hair. The prince, who really says nothing except, “May I have this dance?” and then literally sweeps old Cindy off her feet.

You know how it ends: the glass slipper, the evil stepmother and selfish stepsisters outdone by kindness and courage, and of course, happily ever after. Boy was I stuck on that one my entire life. My sister—who is planning her third wedding—doesn’t like it when I get academic and psychoanalyze fairytales. She detests the violence of the brothers Grimm, and prefers the sanitization of Disney to the real thing. Any argument I might have made in the past about the meaning of the story—that sleeping Beauty and Cinderella are allegories about young women growing into sexual beings, who can only be awakened by handsome young men—were dismissed as too serious or no fun. And she’s right, of course. I am too serious, and sometimes, at least when analyzing narratives, I am not much fun at all.

I’m still waiting for a Disney movie about a same sex crush and ends with the main characters going off to separate colleges in the end (like real life). But no matter how much Disney disagrees with Florida’s conservative governor, I don’t think that’s going to happen.

What I want to say is this: Cinderella fucked me up. It fucked me up. Because I grew up believing in love at first sight, and happily ever after, and that big one: a man will come along and sweep you off your feet and take care of you for the rest of your life. I spent my 40’s with someone completely ill-suited for me because we were both convinced that fate kept bringing us together (and maybe it did, but now I know it was trying to teach me something very different from what Cinderella taught me).

I much prefer films like Pixar’s Up . At least that one is more like real life: grief and broken dreams and the willingness to love again, to keep your heart open, to go on another adventure. To not become a bitter old man because you have loved and lost. Let’s sing the theme song to that movie, shall we? Let’s all harmonize to that one instead.

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The prompt that inspired this piece was a music prompt: Orla Gartland singing, “Why am I Like This?”

Love was blind, but now I see March 3, 2022

The idea behind this prompt was to freshen a cliché and have some fun with it. The original phrase is “Love is blind.” But I thought it would be fun to take out the word “blind” and try filling in the blank as many times as possible.

Love is _____________(not blind:, but what other ways might it be disabled or challenged/challenging?)

We all came up with lists. We read a few from our lists, and then chose one and ran with it. We wrote for about ten minutes.

Here are a few from my list:

Love is a cry baby

a gutless bully

an old porn star

a one note wonder

a night of bad karaoke

a prude with coffee breath

a pile of dog shit on the hot pavement

a terrible rash 

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What I wrote is below.

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Love decided to go into hiding, at least that’s what I tell myself. But maybe I’ve stuffed Love in a box in the attic and am hoping he won’t be able to get out again. The last I heard, Love got run over by an SUV; it was a hit and run, and Love broke several bones, was in a wheelchair for a while. When we last spoke, Love was limping around, but was driving again, running errands and healing bones.

Just to be clear, it wasn’t I who ran over Love and just kept driving, but sometimes I wish it was. Don’t think poorly of me, it’s just a metaphor. Love was always so good at taking away my agency, my personhood. Love loved to call me a bitch and a little girl. Love was toxic masculinity in the flesh, and I let him rule me with his deep voice and big dick. Love is really just an abused little boy, watching his father throw his mother through a sliding glass door. Love was only three when they left him in daycare all day at the casino, and he had to pretend he was four (because that was the minimum age). Love was almost saved by a social worker when he was 14, but then his mother said she was abused when she was a child, and Love fell under her evil spell and decided to feel sorry for her.

And now you probably feel sorry for Love, don’t you? See how insidious Love is? Even though he took my youth and splattered my romantic dreams all over the windshield, you still feel sorry for him (and not me). That’s okay, though. I know the real story, and Love wasn’t worth saving. It was either Love or me: there was only room for one of us in the lifeboat. So I pushed Love into the water. Don’t worry. Love can swim. He’s already on another shore destroying another island. Love is relentless, that’s what Love is, but at least he’s not my mine anymore.

Sweet Dreams February 1, 2022

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926-2022)

This piece was prompted by a quote from the late Thich Nhat Hanh:

“Because you are alive, everything is possible.”

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“Here’s how I imagine it,” Ricky says. We’re talking on a screen with 6,000 miles between us. “You move to Italy and settle into your own little stone house. I head over to Paris to pick up Eddie, and we get on a train to meet you in Italy.”

Eddie lives in London; Ricky is in Berlin.

“Why Paris?” I ask. Ricky can’t stand Paris. Dog shit and rude waiters. Those are his main complaints.

“I don’t know. Because I want to meet him when he arrives on the Chunnel?”

“Okay.”

“We take the train to Rome, and then transfer to wherever you are in Italy.”

“That’s a long train ride,” I say, knowing it’s over 11 hours. “Why not rent a car?”

“This is my fantasy, okay?” he says, a little annoyed. “In your fantasy, you can rent a car.”

“Okay. The train is better for the environment,” I say, trying to smooth over my annoying interruptions.

“Exactly,” he says. “When we arrive, you have a beautiful spread waiting for us: local cheeses and meats, local wine from the winery where your Italian boyfriend works—”

“Oh, I like the sound of that!” I say.

“Well, I know how you are,” he says. “And bread of course, which you’ve baked yourself.”

“Nice. What about dessert?” I ask.

“We’ll bring dessert from Paris.”

“Ooo la la!” I say. What I really think is, After a whole day on a train, even the sturdiest eclairs will be soggy. But I don’t say anything. This is his fantasy about our reunion, and in his fantasy, we all live in Europe, and travel at the speed of light.

Home Sweet Home October 1, 2020

The prompt this time was two lists. For a detailed description of how this prompts works, see this earlier post. The two headings this time were, “During the Pandemic,” and “When the pandemic is over.” See a few highlights from my lists here (what I wrote in response follows the lists):     

                                                                                                               

During the Pandemic

Madonna offered no solace

Horny every day

I try to exercise and feel defeated

I baked like someone on speed

Some nights the loneliness was unbearable

When the Pandemic is Over

I’m going to hug everyone, but not shake hands

I’ll have you over and you’ll eat brownies from my dining room table

We’ll look back and talk about it like people talked about WWII when I was a kid

I will dance to house music in a sweaty club

I will never complain about going to the gym again

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For the first time in twenty-one years, I’m not sharing my apartment. Though I’ve lived alone since 1999, I’ve been sharing my space with writers two nights a week, and on Saturdays and Sundays for day long workshops and retreats. On those nights and weekends, I sometimes scrambled to make it home on time to vacuum, to wipe errant hairs from the white tiled bathroom floor, to heat up the forty-two-cup water urn for tea, and to make sure that whatever I baked was ready to go onto my dining room table alongside some snacks. With the chairs in a circle, and a poem on each chair, I’d rarely have a moment before my doorbell would ring and a group of eight or ten people—some whom I’d written with for years, and traveled with on retreats, some I’d just met—would enter my space and take their shoes off.

The pandemic put all of that to a full stop, just as it did my dinner parties and my annual Pink Pride party (something I’ve been doing for 15 years). It also froze my sex life, and forced me to be more disciplined about watching exercise videos and taking daily walks, since turning my living room into a gym with a weight bench was one place I had to draw the line.

For two decades I’ve shared my home with others, and ironically, when that was no longer an option, I began to seriously nest. Oh, I still fantasized about selling everything and moving to the Costa Blanca in Spain, or finding a little house in Boca Tomlatán, but the longer I had my space to myself, the more I seemed to be settling in. I chose paint colors for the living room, hallway, and bedroom. I ordered fabric swatches and chose a sleeper sofa from Crate and Barrel. I reupholstered a few chairs, bought a vintage footstool, replaced the broken blinds in my bedroom, planted salvia and rose geranium on the deck, repaired my desk chair, and de-cluttered my fridge of old photos and silly notes.

I want to say I did all of this because the place was mine and only mine, and that for the first time in my adult life, I was making choices about my living space that served me only. But the truth is, I was preparing the place—setting the stage as it were— for a time when everyone could safely return. I even decided on a larger, more expensive couch than any lonely bachelor would ever need: three cushions and 90 inches—because I knew it would be more comfortable and fit more people when the time came to open my doors again. Change is coming, I told myself—even when I wasn’t sure I believed it—and you better be ready.

Happier Times June 22, 2020

 

The prompt this time was Sinead O’Connor’s song, “In this Heart.” You can click on the YouTube link above to hear it.

What I wrote is below.

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I arrive for dinner, and he’s a gentleman, as always, his face lit up like a child.

“Some wine?”

We sit on the sectional, and in about three minutes, I’m climbing on him like a puppy, some fire ignited that’s impossible to control now.

He’s so long. His thigh is longer than my entire arm; when we’re lying together, I trail my hand down, down, down, and I still can’t reach his knee. I feel like I’m climbing a mountain, or trying to stretch the canvas sails on a huge boat.

“I know,” he says. “It’s a lot.”

We’re two men in our fifties, but when his glasses come off, and I look into his eyes, we’re both fifteen again, all limbs and hormones.

“I thought you wanted to talk,” he says, while I’m lying on top of him.

“I did,” I say, “but I can’t keep my hands off you.”

I keep thinking he’s going to have bad breath or stinky armpits, but like a grownup, he has always showered, and he’s rinsed with mouthwash before I arrive. Wiped down the counters, straightened the throw pillows on the couch. Even his beard smells like soap. “You shampoo it, of course,” he says in his soft Egyptian accent, and then we’re kissing again.

I’m lost in his limbs in a way that’s unfamiliar, yet strangely comfortable. It’s easy in a way I don’t question. The little mole on his left side, the dusting of soft hair on his shoulder blades, the curls of silver in a cloud of black at his hairline. You would think I’d be humping him like a chihuahua, but I’m content rolling onto my back, or having him pull me on top, simply because I’m flooded with Oxytocin. Pillow talk, solid, wet kisses. I dare not tell him I’m trying to get as much as I can in case this ends soon, fizzles out. Tomorrow’s boytoy could easily distract this hairy, hunky giant lying beneath me.

I tell him it’s so good, but I won’t say that I’ve been starving for years now. That erotic massages and cheap sauna sex can’t fill this chasm I carry around, this nagging ache to be touched. I’m at the buffet now, loading up plate after plate, filling my mouth with everything delicious. I feel insatiable. I’m not moving, except for the occasional breath, or long sweet gaze, then I’m back again, back again, I’m back again for more.

 

Just Another Day at the Office February 9, 2020

The prompt this time was the bizarre clothes catalog, Shinesty, with a tongue-in-cheek holiday theme that I still can’t  figure out. Just as we approached the winter holidays, each writer took several pages from the catalog and wrote in response. I still don’t know how to describe the clothing in this catalog; it could be consumerism at its worst, or it could be a clever joke. Either way, it looks like Shinesty is here to stay. You can check it out for yourself here.  

I focused on this cover image. What I wrote it below.

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As usual, Ben was not cooperating. I knew from previous photo shoots that he was a prima donna. Not that he wasn’t beautiful to look at: the thick cocoa-brown hair, those long eyelashes, the silky beard. His legs were solid muscle, and even though his nose was wide, it was luscious. Edible, really.

“He’s sniffing under my skirt again!” Jasmine screamed. I had only looked down for a minute, and there they were: Ben (looking sheepish) and Jasmine, both of her hands trying to push away his huge head. “Can’t you just photoshop him in later?” she pleaded.

“Carl!” I hollered. “Would you please do something about this?”

Carl walked over with an apple, and Ben, 2,000 pounds of Bison beauty, started towards him, looking excited.

“Watch your feet now, everyone,” my assistant, Kareem announced. “Big hooves are moving!”

It was one of those perfect windswept days in the Central Valley. The backdrop was golden grass, shorn to a few inches, a low line of trees in the distance, and a blue sky painted with wisps of cirrus clouds. Cool, but sunny, the shadows perfectly composed. It was a photographer’s dream.

“Sorry, Don,” the handler said. “He’s extra feisty today.”

“He’s feisty alright,” I said. “Okay, everyone. Let’s take ten and regroup. Makeup?” It was time for a touch-up. Jasmine needed to be de-shined; Ben got his apple and a thorough face brushing, to which he groaned with pleasure, the god damned beast.

It was my third time working with Ben and Carl this year. Apparently, Bison models are all the rage. Ben even has his own Instagram account. Comments on Ben’s posts range from, “Vegetarians against Buffalo beef!” to “We love Benny!” to “WTF? How come I’m sort of in love with you?” to “Ben for president!” It seems everyone is in love with the idea of a catalog cover featuring this handsome ox, but in all honesty, I think it sets a bad precedent.

“Don?” Jasmine was suddenly over my shoulder. “I can’t work this way! He’s freaking me out.” She had tears welling up in her eyes.

“Jazz,” I said, “Don’t do this to yourself. You’re a professional. You’ve worked with much worse. Remember the monkey in Nepal?”

“That little asshole,” she said, and as she laughed, two big tears popped out of her eyes.

“Makeup!” I yelled again. “For Christ’s sake: Makeup!” Jasmine laughed again and wiped her eyes.

“It’s a crazy business,” I said. “Isn’t it kid?” She nodded.

It was going to be a long afternoon.

Wise Guy September 2, 2019

The prompt this time was to begin with a list of five cities you are familiar with, then to write about one of them.

First on my list was Mexico City, but I also had my inner adolescent on my mind. What I wrote is below.

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My inner adolescent is on the couch reading when I arrive. He looks up as I struggle through the door with my gym bag, school bag, and lunch bag. “Hey, bag lady,” he says. “Need some help?” He’s wearing white socks, tight Levi’s, and a red tank top; with his 30-inch waist and bulging crotch, he looks like a Blue Boy Magazine model: oozing sex and yet totally unsure what to do with it. I ignore his offer, knowing he’s only being polite, and heave my book bag into the corner by the printer. 

“What are you reading?” I ask, bracing myself for his naive criticism. He only likes National Geographic or Vanity Fair. Quite frankly, I’m not in the mood for him today.

“Something called Saveur,” he says, surprising me. “A special edition on Mexican cuisine. Pretty delicious.” His eyes are darker blue, more like Mom’s, and the whites are bright and clear. Young eyes. His hair is curlier than I remember, from getting caught in the rain, perhaps, or a working up a good sweat.

“I’m just wondering why you’re here,” I say, heading to the kitchen to put a kettle on.

“Beats me,” he says, leafing through the magazine, “I figured you needed to see me.”

“Tea?” I ask.

“Gross,” he says, then catches himself. “I mean, no thank you.”

We volley this way sometimes. That lovely boy I once was who plays cynical now, but really lived in a world with a sense of wonder and spontaneity, two things I have to get high or travel 1000’s of miles to tap into now.

“Actually,” he says, “I was wondering when you were going to buy that ticket to Mexico City.”

“You want me to go, is that it?”

“You’re awfully bitchy today,” he says. “I mean, more so than usual.”

I sigh. He sighs.

He looks so earnest. I want to tell him that forty years from now he will sometimes be driving home in the rain so filled with a sense of melancholy that he will want to drive to a bar instead and get good and drunk. That some days, his work will feel like helping countless young people with their whole lives ahead of them, while he feels stuck in his own life, fearful of chronic illness. That he will feel bone-tired.

“Anyway,” he says, “have you bought your ticket yet?”

“I don’t know about Mexico City,” I say.

“Why not? You’ve always wanted to go there: Casa Azul, the museums, and now this hot guy you’ve met online—”

“I don’t think living in a fantasy world is healthy for either of us,” I say. He laughs then, that shotgun laugh we get from Mom.

“Oh, please!” he says. “You’re a writer. We’ve always lived in a fantasy world.”

What could I say in response? He claimed me as a writer, and the kid had a point. Has always had a big heart too. Had no qualms about saying no to dissecting a fetal pig in Biology class because it was “disrespectful to the poor, dead, baby piglet.” (His words exactly.) I knew his love for flowers—roses, jasmine, violets—was a reflection of this big heart, and an attachment to romance.

“What do you have to lose by going to Mexico City?” he asked.

“About $1000,” I said.

“Just charge it then.”

“And my dignity, if I contact that beautiful young man.”

“Your dignity?”

“Yeah,” I say, taking the screaming kettle off the burner. “Once he sees what I actually look like in the flesh, he’ll run for the hills.”

“You underestimate how beautiful you are,” he says.

“So do you,” I say.

“You’re better looking than I am,” he says.

“You just have low self-esteem.”

“I’m serious,” he says. “You need to own it.”

I want to tell him that I only feel beautiful when I put eyedrops in my eyes, when I haven’t eaten very much, when someone I love looks at me and I can see myself through his eyes. Or when I am dancing. But I don’t dare. I don’t want him to feel this kind of sorrow yet. I feel protective of him.

“Oh, I know sorrow,” he says, reading my mind. “I stayed home and took care of our dying mother, remember?”

He’s right, of course. Back then I didn’t have the mindfulness I have now. I didn’t have the vocabulary or the lifelong friendships to talk my way through a bad day, a big worry, or the tug of grief when it came in waves. I have options now; I have the freedom to make my own choices.

“If I meet him in Mexico City,” I say, “it’s probably just going to be a sexual thing. Nothing more.”

“Sounds good to me,” he says. “It’s only $366 round trip if you buy the ticket today.”

We look at each other for a moment, and then he just smiles that big white smile. I want to smack him, but I also want to thank him. Instead, I just smile back.

Auntie’s Lament August 7, 2019

This character piece came from a writing prompt titled, “Breaking the Rules.” Each writer made a list of unspoken rules of social etiquette, then we read them around and wrote about one of them. I chose, “Don’t talk with your mouth full.”

What I wrote is below.

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Well, frankly, I don’t know what she sees in him, I really don’t. I mean, sure, he’s tall and handsome, I suppose, if you like big muscles. Personally, I find them unattractive. All those veins?! He does have good skin, but otherwise, I’m at a loss here, I really am.

I mean, he dresses in baggy shorts and oversized t-shirts; I’ve never seen him in anything but tennis shoes—high-tops, I think they call them—he rarely makes eye contact, and perhaps worst of all: he talks with his mouth full.

“Great lasagna, Andrea,” he said, with a globby first mouthful of a meat, cheese and noodle so huge, I was surprised to see that there was still some food left on his plate.

“As I told you before, dear,” I said, smiling at him, “all the kids call me, Auntie.”

“My bad,” he said, “Auntie.” And then he smiled a tomato sauce smile, and I cringed, I tell you, I cringed.

“I think he’s going to propose,” Sarah told me later, when we were alone together in the kitchen. I was wearing my red and white hibiscus muumuu and only rinsing dishes, but I was still sweating like a little piglet, I tell you, what with the summer storm building up outside the window, and now this awful news! My blood pressure skyrocketed, it really did.

“What makes you say that dear?” I asked, handing her a plate. She loaded the dishwasher beautifully: there’s an order to it, you know.

“Well,” she said dreamily, “we’ve been talking about it a lot lately. We both want a bunch of kids.”

In this mixed up world? I wanted to say, but I bit my tongue.

“Well, there’s no hurry, dear,” I said. “You’re only twenty-two—”

“You already had two babies when you were twenty-two!” she interrupted, giggling.

Precisely,I thought, and look at me now! Living on Henry’s pension—God rest his soul—and a great-great Auntie left and right. Oh, why are we so fertile in this family?

“Well,” I said, “keep me posted, dear,” and I winked at her. I wanted to say, Please use birth control. But I have never spoken to any of my nieces or nephews about sex, a rule I am reconsidering now, since they all seem to be popping out offspring like rabbits.

“Time for ice cream!” he said, his large frame filling the doorway.

“Grab a spoon, ” Sarah said. “You can get started on the Kona Coffee Crunch; Auntie and I prefer Coconut.”

“Okay,” he shrugged. And—would you believe it?—he grabbed a dirty spoon right out of the dishwasher, opened the freezer, popped off the top, and dug right into the pint. I kid you not!

“Mmmm,” he moaned, his mouth full of coffee cream. “It’s dericious.”

And I thought I would drop dead right then and there, I really did.