Tiny but Mighty June 14, 2023

When we left Venice, everyone was gathering portside, where cocktails were being served in colorful acrylic glasses. And even though the beautiful old city was glowing gold in the evening sunlight, most of the men on this gay cruise were chatting and flirting and ignoring the gleaming facade of St. Mark’s, and they barely noticed the pointed tower on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore.

My friend Ron was occupied with someone half his age, so I wandered up to the bow where I could be alone, a rarity on a cruise ship, and noticed the thick cable attached to the tiny tugboat below. Though they are problematic in so many ways, what I love about being on a cruise is that you feel the immensity of the machine beneath you; it’s hard not to feel awe at the engineering feat of such huge ship. But at that moment I was equally aware of the tough and powerful little boat below that was safely guiding us—pulling us, actually—out to the Adriatic Sea.

I’ve read that tugboats are often driven by a single captain, and that person can spend entire days without interacting closely with another human. In other words, it’s a fine line between solitude and loneliness in the day of a tugboat operator. Perhaps that’s why the man driving this tugboat looked up at me; even from a distance, I could see his head turn toward me and nod. 

It was one of those times in my life when I was fully in the moment, when I felt the beautiful connection to a stranger that always feels spiritual to me, inexplicable. Those little moments that remind me how humans are connected in ways we often cannot put into words.

My love for this tugboat, and this tugboat captain in particular, was wrapped up in my love of tugboats in general: tugboats crashing through the ice to create a safe pathway in the Arctic; tugboats pushing a ship 180 degrees, or backwards; tugboats bright red and waiting in the harbor below the Oakland Bay Bridge ready to fight a fire on any ship. They are, I think, heroic.

As a child I remember Little Toot being a favorite story, because as a diminutive boy, I was always drawn to stories about something small that made itself known as strong and capable, like the tiny people who live inside a dust speck in Horton Hears a Who (A person is a person no matter how small). Tugboats feel like more than a metaphor somehow. They embody something I want to believe about the capability and the strength of what may seem like small, insignificant people, places and things.

Anyway, that moment in Venice is etched into my memory forever, because when the cable was released, and the ship was safely out of the harbor, just before the tugboat turned back, the captain waved at me and blew the deep, throaty horn of the little boat below and I squealed with delight. I clapped with glee, just like a child.

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The prompts for this piece included the attached Google doc (“Tugboats: Tiny but Mighty”) and the Google slideshow, “Tugs.”

Slideshow: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/13ddqLm_IN6VKtEIdlsKTspyDfSVg69mxbwc4zNTNcUM/edit?usp=sharing

Google doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/10YVlf2tHGoUaqcAdoAnIrF-KAUXpjFGSCu4Vv1JF1YA/edit?usp=sharing

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.

Second Home December 7, 2021

I want to live somewhere where it still rains. In Puerto Vallarta, it rains a lot, except in winter. From November to April, barely a drop (except for those rare rainy days in February, which the locals call febrero loco, crazy February). I fantasize about living in Puerto Vallarta, and not just because the men there are beautiful and seem to like me, but because I feel alive and at peace when I’m there.

“That’s because you’re always on vacation when you’re here,” my friend Erick says. “You should try living here for a few months to really get a sense of what it’s like.”

“And then I wouldn’t like it so much?” I ask him.

“Not at all!” he says, “Then you’ll know you really love it.”

“PV es tu casa,” my friend Oscar always says (Puerto Vallarta is your home). “Don’t cry when you leave this time,” he told me a few years ago. I always cried on the airplane, or in the taxi on the way to the airport. I never wanted to leave. “You’ll be back,” Oscar said. “You’re going to live here someday.”

I went back in June for my first time in two years. Before the pandemic, I visited at least once a year, usually twice. I led writing retreats there for six years, had two different lovers there, lost one of them to cancer; the other one still writes me and sends me shirtless pictures occasionally. He was only twenty-five when we met fourteen years ago. “I’m old now,” he wrote the last time. “I’m too fat for you now.” But his dad bod realness only made him hotter. “No,” I wrote back, “Tu eres un hombre ahora,” (No, you’re a man now).

PV has changed a lot since I first visited in 2007. Modern high rise condos now populate the hillsides, and the Malecón (the boardwalk) is crowded on one end with loud, huge discos. But the city hasn’t lost its charm: the cobblestone streets, the restaurant patios strung with tiny amber lights, the mosaics in the central square. I was relieved to know that most of my favorite restaurants and bakeries had survived the pandemic (including the exquisite French bakery, which is just a refrigerated case in a tiny doorway filled with gorgeous pastries). The sidewalks and the sewer systems have been upgraded.

“You’ll be back,” my favorite vendor at the airport told me, as she wrapped my gifts: beautifully decorated matchboxes and journals made by local artists. “You belong here.”

The taxis are all air-conditioned now, and new. I miss the old ones, with their worn vinyl seats and manual transmissions. It was always a hot, windy ride to the airport in those old taxis. It was the perfect place for a good cry.

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The prompt that inspired this piece was the five word free write, and the five words were: Foxes, Pomegranates, Orange, Rain, and Breathing. You can read a detailed description of that prompt here.

To Dream or Not To Dream? (That is never the question.) February 8, 2021

He’s dreaming of Italy again. A seductive CNN video and a Forbes article recently revealed that in Biccari, a small town in Southern Italy, houses are for sale for 10,000 Euro, about $12,000 USD. Biccari is in the mountains of Northern Puglia, and is a two-hour drive to the closest city and major airport (that would be Bari: population 325,000). Biccari itself only has about 1,200 residents, and is surrounded by mountains and lakes, where the residents like to picnic on local artisan wine, cheeses, meats and bread. Except for a short, sometimes snowy, winter, Biccari looks like a fantasy.

And that’s just what it is: a fantasy, though he could actually borrow the money from his retirement fund. (He’s always been better at fantasy than reality.) Still, it’s a long shot. He knows this, even as he cuts and pastes the mayor’s email address, composing a letter in his head. Senore, I am sure you’ve had thousands of inquiries, but I wonder, how does one go about acquiring a beautiful little casa in Biccari?

He remembers the trip to his grandparents birthplace in Corleto Perticara, how he took the train to Potenza, (not far from Biccari, really, nothing is very far away in Italy). How he rented a car and wore that cute new jacket with the hood, the one he had purchased in Amsterdam the year before. How he and his third cousin somehow managed to communicate, though his Italian was rudimentary at best, and her English was non-existent. They could have been siblings: the same light eyes, the milky skin, the wavy light brown hair.

He met the only other gay person in town (the florist, of course, it was a cliché made for an old movie), and he remembered how on his way back to Potenza he stopped to let a flock of sheep cross the windy road, led only by a dutiful border collie; in the distance he could see the nearby hilltop towns. Why would anyone ever leave here? he wondered. But then he remembered this rented Fiat, and his little jacket, and for the first time he understood that his grandparents had wanted more for him.

He thought of what it would be like to actually live there: six hours to Rome, one gay friend, his cousin’s beau working the swing-shift at the plastic bag factory. There was fresh pressed olive oil; they sent him home with that, and a big bottle of homemade limoncello, but how long could he be happy in such a place before getting bored or cynical, or becoming the subject of salacious gossip? Back then, he had wondered and worried over this, just as he did now, dreaming of Biccari. The quiet streets and the campanile with those dependable bells, the ubiquitous old men in the square, the promise of a quiet world with less traffic, less technology, less stress. Maybe a garden with a lemon tree. A little dog. And a cat who is good at catching mice.

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The writing prompt that inspired this post is the poem, “Odessa,” by Patricia Kirkpatrick

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.

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.

Second Home October 25, 2017

The prompt this time was the 5 x 5 prompt. Click here to read how to do that. What I wrote is below.

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Paris and Rome hold memories and regret, a longing for past lovers, a deep loneliness. I love those other cities, but I feel lost in them too. But in Berlin, if I had to help you get from Tegel Airport to the Hauptbahnhoff, I could navigate those bright yellow subway cars, and a few major bus lines too. I know how to get around. I know how to work the bread slicing machines in the grocery stores, how to order kuchen at a café (sit down first, order a drink, then peruse the case). I’m free in Berlin like I am nowhere else.  

Berlin is the only place I don’t feel guilty or haunted. In Rome, I got stood up by a lover who was supposed to hop over from Paris, and I cried into my gelato in the Piazza Navona. In Paris I sometimes felt sad, knowing how Mama had wanted to visit, but never had the chance. I’ve walked the streets of Paris and Rome feeling guilty and sad about who I’ve left behind, but never in Berlin. And it feels good not being haunted for once.

There are things Mama wouldn’t have liked about Berlin: too gritty, too dark in the winter, too hot and crowded in the summer. But she would have loved the Turkish market, the cosmetic section of the Bio store on Bergmannstrasse, and Museum Isle. I can imagine her laughing with me at the Bode Museum café under the dome upstairs, flirting with the Iraqi waiter, like I did, while enjoying a cup of black tea with milk and sugar.

Berlin is the city that rose from the ashes to meet me that first time in May. The peach sky at sunset in Tiergarten, my strong legs pumping the pedals. I had just turned forty and suffered a broken heart, but Berlin reminded me how we remake ourselves again and again in this lifetime, how we heal and mend, how we forgive and try to learn from even the worst mistakes. Berlin reminds me that good actually prevails over evil; it’s not just a nice old saying.

Berlin is the place I allow my tongue to twist out the number of beers I want to order in German, while I bat my eyelashes at the furry bartender from Armenia. It’s where I shed my clothes in a dingy bar because the heat is on too high, where I let myself sleep in, finally wandering out at 4:30 p.m., or ride a bike in the snow, in the pouring rain, or home from a club at 5:00 in the morning, past the Landwehr Canal, swans floating on the surface, their heads tucked under their wings in sleep. Berlin is the place I went to a New Year’s Eve party even though I didn’t know a soul, where I smoked cigarettes and drank warm vodka in Roses Bar sitting in front of a framed image from Madonna’s Sex book, her legs splayed open, the head of a leather biker nestled between them.

Berlin is the place I cried at the Jewish Museum when I saw the map of concentration camps—the enormous, overwhelming number of them in Poland alone—or read the Pink Triangle memorial at Nollendorfplatz and realized that hundreds, probably thousands, of gay and lesbian people were forced to board trains right there at that station, trains bound for concentration camps, trains that sent them to their deaths.

But can you see the neighborhood now? Gay clubs and sleek cafes, hip clothing stores. See all the young gay men living here again, finally free after fleeing countries like Chechnya and Egypt? Here is a neighborhood brought back to life, vital and elegant, a microcosm of the city itself. City of rebirth, artistic expression, freedom of thought. A place that’s been vilified, feared, and attacked, beaten to the edge of life. Look at it now, vibrant, teeming with life, healthy and strong again. A place to live out loud.

Little Big Man July 6, 2017

   

The prompts this time were:  

Dingy, but functional

Something is calling to me

His life was big, too big

 

What I wrote is below.

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Sometimes he thought about a road trip. A ride in his trusty car to the Four Corners or Monument Valley. Yellowstone. The Grand Tetons. Glacier National Park. New Orleans. Something about the fantasy of being behind the wheel of his own car was satisfying in itself. Not a rental car or a bus, but his own car.

“You can fly to Vegas and rent a car from there,” friends said when he told them he hadn’t seen the Grand Canyon. But he wanted the long hours in his own car, the air conditioner blasting, or in the evenings, just the roar of the road with all the windows rolled down.

The busier his life became—the emails negotiating next semester’s schedule, the conference at the end of the month, the dental appointment in May, the tax accountants quarterly reminders—the more he fantasized about the open road.

At one point, he started eyeing tiny wooden campers: cool, modern pods with kitchens in the trunk, or refurbished Airstreams, even a VW Vanagon with a convection oven and a pop top roof. They all made him think about cashing in his 403B for a life on the road. Canada. Mexico. New Brunswick. There were whole worlds to explore.

Would he become one of those sixty-something hippies living in the moment, depending on his Social Security direct deposit and the kindness of strangers? Could he shower in outdoor stalls and have his morning movement in a composting toilet? Would he have a long, gray ponytail and well-worn river sandals, cargo shorts, and—God forbid—a fanny pack?

Maybe. Some days it sounded great. Better than student conferences and curriculum meetings with the Dean. It sounded better that choosing one corporate evil over the other so he could escape to Netflix without the interruption of a frozen, spinning rainbow wheel. It sounded better than trying to find a less expensive apartment with more storage and quiet neighbors. Why not live on the open road? Why not tune in and drop out? It was something to think about, at least. It was something to think about.