Memoir

March

/ crbfay / Leave a comment

IMG_0308

…in which the author attempts to figure out where he fits on the spectrum, er, rainbow.

New York City

I insist that I had an awful Pride Parade that year. Sure, we were all supposed to be happy about the Supreme Court striking down DOMA. But the ruling came down in the middle of the week. That Wednesday afternoon, I had a Stoli Oranj and soda at Stonewall on Christopher Street and then a burger and another Stoli at Julius, a gay bar even older than Stonewall. Got my gay history on. But by the time the Parade rolled around on Sunday, it seemed all the DOMA decision meant was that “couples” –the kind that always have to remind you that they’re a “couple” –could make out with a leaning impunity, slurring things like “Our love is legal.” Because before Wednesday, the feelings you felt for this person were subject to a $50 fine and a summons. I, in turn, made plans to die alone in a bizarre DVR mishap.

Not everything was bad. I did get to boo at that mayoral candidate I disliked as she rode by looking like Cleopatra on her way to open a PathMark in Luxor. And I got to boo at that other mayoral candidate for his inability to take a decent junk shot. But after a while, it just felt like I was being pandered to by politicians and corporate outreach programs.

And the centerpiece of the Chipotle float was a skinny twink in a cowboy outfit riding a bucking foil-wrapped burrito. That appealed to many of my baser instincts involving jack cheese and bucking. But on every other float, the standard issue twink was provided with a whistle with which he could toot along to the Katy Perry vibrating out of rental loudspeakers.

And, it’s always nice hanging with friends at the Parade. My friends and I have a great place that’s not jammed up against a building, goes into the shade early, and is only a block from Julius where it only costs you the price of drink to use the bathroom. But one of the things about hanging with people is punctuality. People all need to be at the same place at the same time in order to hang. Texting does not count. Two friends, a “couple” crashing their way quickly from casual acquaintances towards being blocked on Facebook were over two hours late because of “train problems.” We all have “train problems,” but when I have “train problems,” I don’t answer a “getting close?” text with “stoped 2 get a beer.” No, you better show up winded and apologizing profusely for ruining the gay.

When a drunk Lesbian-of-a-Certain-Age tried to choke me with my Pride beads, I decided it was time to go.

Budapest

But at least I got to actually watch the parade, which is a far cry from what was afforded me when I showed up in Budapest in September 2009 on their equivalent of Pride. In NYC, we like say our parade is a “march,” with all the attendant meaning that goes with that word, but twink riding burrito. In Budapest, it’s so much a “march” that they don’t call it a “march” –it’s the 14th Gay Dignity Procession! Two years earlier, in 2007, far-right unfortunates attacked the 12th Gay Dignity Procession. Police then tried to cancel the 13th Gay Dignity Parade in 2008, citing “traffic.” The gays sued. They marched. Far-right unfortunates attacked the 13th Gay Dignity Procession. So for the 14th Gay Dignity Procession, the police came up with the perfect plan….

Berlin

Now you need to understand at this point that I prefer to travel alone. Continue reading →

121 More Valedictorians Than Dalmatians

/ crbfay / 1 Comment

The high school from which I graduated just named 222 valedictorians; this former valedictorian is mildly chagrined.

This is NOT going to be an

This is NOT going to be an “everyone gets a trophy” rant, but…

On June 3, 1984 I spoke at my graduation from Dublin High School. At that time, Dublin had less than 4000 inhabitants, there was only one high school, and the sole traffic light on Sawmill Road south of I-270 was at Rt. 161.

That's my inspiration face.

That’s my inspiration face.

That day, my co-valedictorian and I gave what has been described as “an inspiring, well-prepared valedictorian speech” to a crowded set of football bleachers. Now Dublin has over 43,000 residents, there are three high schools, and driving on Sawmill frightens me down to my Shamrocks. My high school is now called Coffman, and the bleachers I spoke before are now the visitors’ seats at the shiny bajillion-dollar football “complex” they built on the other side of the school. Moreover, the school I went to is now invisible behind masses of additional wings.

Oh, and there are also 111 times as many valedictorians. From the Columbus Dispatch on June 3rd of this year:

Graduation ceremonies might still be going on if Dublin schools had asked all of its valedictorians to speak.

There were 222 of them.

That means two out of every 10 graduates at Dublin’s three high schools received top honors this year. Dublin Scioto had 44 valedictorians, Dublin Jerome had 82, and Dublin Coffman had 96.

Or to put it another way, the Dublin City School district now has 40 more valedictorians than it had graduating seniors in 1984. Yes, the district now has over 1100 grads, but at that same ratio, my class of 182 would have had 36 valedictorians.

Or yet another way, 121 more valedictorian than Dalmatians.

Even The Today Show’s toothy people who populate the show’s misbegotten third hour, had a laugh at Dublin’s expense. My alma mater is now a laughing stock.

This isn’t going to be some lament about how “everybody gets a trophy.” If you look at the comments section of the Dispatch article, a quick scansion shows approximately 850 mentions of that phrase. And, yes, I know I used “scansion” incorrectly. Would anyone but a valedictorian know it’s used incorrectly? I don’t think so.

No, my lament is about how this development cheapens one of my better cocktail-party lines. For some reason, mentioning this fact elicits a very pleasing “Well, isn’t that nice, but, again, please tell me what that has to do with Caitlyn Jenner?” Now I’m scared that dropping this tidbit will now only brings a cascade of “Me too’s” from the entire room. Continue reading →

For Lori: Follicle Muse and Cootie Shot Rationale

/ crbfay / Leave a comment

[A Valentine’s Day installment in the ongoing series “Really Kinda Gay Things I Did Before I Was Really Kinda Gay.]

 Brown Horse Galloping Wide Desktop Background

By the spring of third grade at Manasquan Elementary the boys vs. girls mentality was beginning to break down. Cootie shot technology was available to all who were willing to walk around for the day with a ballpoint circle and dot on their forearm. Cootie tech allowed one to have physical contact with the opposite sex for the rest of the school day without having to worry about contracting the cooties.

The cooties was a highly contagious disease with no agreed-upon symptoms. I think today we’d call it a “syndrome.” A social I.B.S, if you will.

Shots were necessary because the playground was evolving. In the Fall, the schoolyard game of “Girls Chase the Boys” involved actually running at top speed to avoid being caught. Yet, in the Spring, the boys somehow got slower, and the girls got noticeably more aggressive in their pursuit. And it wasn’t just tag, it was “accidentally” tripping and some aggressive tackling. Then I began to notice that certain girls were chasing certain boys, and certain boys were angling to be in the path of certain girls. Instead of running in straight lines, the would run serpentine until the right girl caught them. They all were starting to change.

I milled about at the edge of field.

I figured I had best allow myself to be caught, and I knew exactly who need to do the catching: Lori Townshend. There were only two flaws to my plans. First, I was peripheral to her world. I existed only when dittos needed to be handed back to the person behind you. She, like everyone else, just sort of tossed the papers over her shoulders so she could get to sniffing the sweet, sweet ink that gave us the energy to get thru whatever dullness Miss Volpe decided to ditto that day. Second, if she were to chase me, then I couldn’t see her hair, which most certainly trailed behind like a herd of wild mustangs answerable only to her.

But I lie. Hair was too mild a word for what Lori possessed. From my perch behind her, I would hold crayons up to it in an attempt to determine its exact color. We weren’t just dealing with long brown hair. Chestnut waterfall maybe. Or a russet cascade. Maybe an auburn tsunami. I was kid with a 64-box of Crayolas and a thesaurus; I could go on all day. Continue reading →

Last 1973 a D.J. Saved My Life. [Part #1: Introduction; Dad]

/ crbfay / Leave a comment

Recently I made what I trust is a correct decision and opted against that suicide I was planning. [Don’t worry; everything’s great now, even if everything still sucks.] I cannot possibly overstate to you one factor in my decision: I have serious reservations about the availability of popular music in the afterlife, be it as cherub or as wormfood. I would miss music too much.

This close call has led me to think a lot of grateful thoughts about how music got to be such an integral part of my life.

It always knocks me slightly off kilter to walk into someone’s place and not hear music. Why don’t they have music on? They’re just walking around their apartment in silence? Is their version of silence actually silent? They have to have voices like everyone else, right? I would kill to swap the voices in my head with the voices in their head for five minutes. How can these people walk around not wanting to have the voices in their heads silenced? Do their voices tell them things like “You’re lookin’ swell today, Greg! Keep up the good work!”? When they close their eyes do they see one of those old Successories™ posters from the 90s? Do they recite to themselves that “Footprints in the Sand” tale?

My voices say things like, “You know you’ll be first on the conveyor belt when they start up the Soylent Green factories. Let better people snack on you.” I could try to drown that out with “Footprints in the Sand,” but that story just reminds me that the middle toe on my left foot has been hurting for weeks now. I assume it will need to be amputated. That’s why I always have music on whenever I can help it. Right now it’s the “Mellow New Years” playlist and The Posies’ version of “O-o-h Child.”

As a lot of bipolar folks will tell you, our minds tend to wander. Music is a low fence that keeps me from sauntering out of the yard and into dark traffic. Eventually I get back to the task at hand.

As soon as I got a radio in my room around the age of 8 or so, it went on, and it stayed on. The only reason I ever turned it off was I was leaving the room, and I only did that grudgingly because President Ford told us to. I would lay awake at night tuning in far away AM stations, feeling an electricity whenever I tuned in a station that began not with a boring W, but with the exotic K or even the weird-tingly-feeling causing C. Even in far away Canada they listen to the same music we do. Somewhere, some other kid was listening to “Kung Fu Fighting” at the exact same time. I’ll take connection where I can get it. Continue reading →

Rockstar Christmas (Complete with Pyrotechnics)

/ crbfay / Leave a comment

tumblr_mf19kfaPgj1rb6o14

[Two years ago, I devoted a Tumblr called $1.98 Advent Calendar from the C-Town to the cause of taking the Baby Jesus on adventures thru the City… plus what was going on back at the manger… plus what candy I got that day… You should check it out.  In addition to these regular features, which will remain there, I am moving a few longer essays over to this site for safe-keeping.]

In the past few days, people have begun posting all sorts of Christmas music on to the Facebook.  I hide them from my feed.  Not that I don’t like Christmas music; I just don’t like other people’s Christmas music.  Christmas songs hit me right in the lizard part of my brain stem.  They are tied to some of my earliest memories, so it’s really hard for me to accept anything new into there.

A lot of the ones in my feed seem to fit a Venn Diagram mapping the overlap between “gay-ish icon” and “carol.”  I’m sure that YouTube clip of Klaus Nomi doing something to “Silent Night” is neat, but it pollutes “Silent Night” to me.  “Silent Night” is the sound of my music box bell; it is the sound of my brother-in-law, the Rev. Larry, asking the congregation if “we might hum a verse.”  I do not want Klaus Nomi in my brain stem.

One song that is forever lodged in my brain stem.  It’s “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” not just any version.  It has to be the version found on the 8-Track of Vol. 6 of WT Grant’s “A Very Merry Christmas.”  (This was one of 4 8 Tracks we had —the others are a Ray Coniff Singers compilation, “Tapesty,” and “Catch Bull at Four.”)  To me, it wasn’t Christmas until I saw that chubby girl on the front look longingly at the shiny bell.  It strikes me now as foolish to let a toddler play with glass ornaments, but, hey, nothing bad ever happens at Christmas.  The 8 Track format was perfect for my small hands; put the peg in the hole, and you have music…

And when “Twelve” came on, my sisters and I would go into action.  We danced about, re-enacting each of the days.  By day 12, it was a cross between The Supremes, Fosse, and The Chicken Dance.  I was a transcendent Lord-a-Leaping.  Day #1 was the best because we all got to be Partidges.  Not the fat bird —real honest-a-goodness Partridges.  We all would stand there and shred air guitars like The Partridge Family was Sabbath.  Added bonus:  I was not forced to “play” drums like my namesake on the show.  We all got to share in the Yuletide joy of being rockstars.

One time, our parents were out at bowling, so it must’ve been a Monday.  My dad, who worked in the restaurant business for WT Grant, where we got the tape, would sometimes receive “experimental” kitchen appliances.  One such contraption was an avocado green vertical broiler/toaster.  We slapped some bread in there, hit the button, and the bread started to broil.  But our song was coming on, and as everyone knows, it’s a pain in the ass to “rewind” an 8 Track.  So we HAD TO DANCE.  We were on Day 11.  I had just executed the complex transition from leaping to milking when we smelled smoke.  We ran into the kitchen to see flames shooting out of the experimental vertical broiler/toaster and licking the cabinets above.  I took charge of the situation and continued running through the kitchen, into the dining room, then past the tree in the living room, and out the front door to the opening strains of “Joy to the World.”  I did not stop running in my bare feet —and screaming —until I got to the hydrant.  Then it was just screaming.

But even that cannot dampen my enthusiasm for that song.  The order of the days may be non-standard (our Lords are at #9), but it’s my Christmas song.

Jesus is a Race Car (Christmas Throwback)

/ crbfay / Leave a comment
[Two years ago, I devoted a Tumblr called $1.98 Advent Calendar from the C-Town to the cause of taking the Baby Jesus on adventures thru the City… plus what was going on back at the manger… plus what candy I got that day… You should check it out.  In addition to these regular features, which will remain there, I am moving a few longer essays over to this site for safe-keeping]

Over the course of the past few days I have put our Lord and Saviour, the King of Kings, Wonderful Counselor, Emmanuel in tater tots, a burrito, and a meatball parm sub.  Surely I’m going to hell for this almost Cromwellian disregard for icons.

Baby Jesus and I go way back.  He is the main character in the only nativity scene I have ever known.  These are not fancy priceless heirlooms; the older shepherd has a price of 88¢ written in wax crayon on his base.  They are mismatched —the older shepherd and the headless camel clearly come from a more rustic set.  My parents, therefore, saw no reason to keep me from playing with the nativity scene.  Or as it was known by me:  Adventure Team Manger.

It’s not like they could keep me away.  I was starved for action figures.  All mine sucked.  I asked repeatedly for a GI Joe, but I got something called an Action Jackson.  First of all, Action Jackson was two thirds the size of a classic Joe and lacked his flocked facial hair.  Jackson was as smooth as a rent boy in Bratislava.  My friends would announce the arrival of “Joe!” in practice deep voices.  Try saying “Action Jackson” without lisping.  Joe had all sort of camo and gear.  Jackson had a singular blue jumpsuit and a parachute that came out of a hole in his back.  The only way he could execute a proper jump was if he was stripped naked so his back-hole could properly function.

So you can see why plaster Magi were more enticing.  Also, I was comfortable playing with Catholic iconography.  Over my bed hung a large crucifix with a special compartment that contained all the supplies needed for Last Rites.  The holy water contained within was an integral part of the fire safety brigade/death cult I had going on with my stuffed animals.

Christmas decorating was never complete until the manger came out.  It couldn’t come out until the tree skirt was in place, which didn’t happen until the entire tree was decorated and plugged in.  As soon as the front of the manger was folded down, the Magi, both shepherds, and the Blessed Parents went on adventures that took them all over the living room and sometimes into the dining room.  Control Base Manger was manned by the animals because, as we all know, they “kept time.” Action Jackson was not invited.

How did they get to their adventures?  They rode in the Baby Jesus.  Baby Jesus fit perfectly in my small hands, and His flat bottom surface made zooming him along on the carpet a breeze.  I would shrink the Magi and everyone down with the power of my mind, and they would crawl into the Baby Jesus.  I would then drive Baby Jesus to the designated adventure coordinates.  That I actually had to carry everyone over to the designated adventure coordinates in an off-season sand pail should not be noticed.

One day while Baby Jesus was racing against some Hot Wheels, I noticed that His underside was approximately the same width as a Hot Wheels.  Then I set up my Hot Wheels track, the one with the loop-de-loop.  I tried sending Him down by Himself, but he got three inches and fell off the track.  But when He was rubber-banded to a Hot Wheels Batmobile, He could make it all the way down the track’s incline and halfway through the loop.

So, I think Baby Jesus will be just fine with a bunch of tater tots.

Five existential horrors found in this Halloween picture…

/ crbfay / Leave a comment
1971, Long Island, Exit 50

1971, Long Island, Exit 50

#1)

That is not a Road Runner costume; that is a THE Road Runner costume. At this point in his life, the boy is waking up at 7am in order to make sure he is in position for The Bugs Bunny Show to start at 9am. He knows what Road Runner looks like, and he has a yellow beak. This THE Road Runner looks like a radish. “It’s says ‘Road Runner,’” says anyone who will listen. Even if one buys the argument, Mom, that there are probably lots of different road runners, the use of the definite article, THE, implies that this road runner on the boy’s blouse is Road Runner from the cartoons he watches. It is not.

All interaction is deceit.

#2)

The blouse itself… Even if it was Road Runner, which it’s not, there’s no way Road Runner would wear a satiny blouse proclaiming he was THE Road Runner. As it was once said by those far more learned than the boy: “Disco Stu doesn’t advertise.” A five year old shouldn’t have to worry that his costume is too meta. “Trick or Treat. Smell my feet. My costume is dialog about the nature of the signifier.” Besides, Road Runner is naked, free, and fast. THE Road Runner pictured on this blouse doesn’t even have a body to be naked with. Again, he is a radish.

Culture is a ravenous ouroboros that feeds off the assimilationist dreams of children.

#3)

When were these pumpkins carved? Labor Day? This child has not yet learned to delay gratification. Now all is decay. The child wonders, “How long before my teeth rot and fall out and I die?” Culture gives him candy as an answer. The candy is called Life Savers. The boy clutches them because he is pretty confident he understands irony.

Entropy will eventually rend asunder even the bonds between the molecules in your face.

#4)

The price tag is still on the big pumpkin.

All joy is commodity.

#5)

The flash of the camera’s un-blinking eye also illuminates the back inside wall of each pumpkin, giving each gourd a two-dimensionality that masks the trauma they underwent weeks before. They scream, but no one hears. They are now just images of pumpkins, trapped in a chilling rictus. A child can only ape their frozen grins as he, too, has been flattened by the gaze. Also, his hair looks stupid, and it will look stupid forever.

Guy DuBooooo-ord put it best: “…Imprisoned in a flattened universe bounded by the screen of the spectacle, behind which his own life has been exiled, the spectator’s consciousness no longer knows anyone but the fictitious interlocutors who subject him to a one-way monologue about their commodities and the politics of their commodities. The spectacle as a whole is his “mirror sign,” presenting illusory escapes from a universal autism.”

Did you really expect faking amnesia would get you out of this?

/ crbfay / Leave a comment

For the roughly five years after my mom passed away, from junior year of high school then through three different undergraduate institutions, a quick tally comes up with at least a dozen trips to the emergency room. Of course, some of these were for bona-fide emergencies, but way too many times I ended up in the back of an ambulance because of –for lack of a better word –“escalations.” In this case, at the 1983 Buckeye Boys State at Bowling Green, I had run into a doorjamb… Continue reading →

The night I sang “The Night My Dignity Died.”

/ crbfay / 3 Comments

The white cassette tape with no writing came from that particularly messy corner of my bedroom. I knew exactly what was on it without playing it: Me singing Paper Lace’s #1 hit from 1974, “The Night Chicago Died” in a karaoke bar. In Burbank. With seven vodka tonics in me.

It’s not perfect.  It starts late and drops out once or twice.  Also, I suck.  Come, discover why my brother-in-law wouldn’t allow me to sing the “Please don’t eat all the morsels” song to my future-niece in utero:

 

But, you have to admit, those voddys sure gave me some stage presence. Continue reading →

Why ORNAMENTAL ILLNESSES?

/ crbfay / 3 Comments

I’ve actually managed to convince myself there’s some meat on these flippant wordbones. First of all, the word “ornamental” isn’t completely accidental. There’s a reason that word in all its forms was the base for a whole mess of handles on “dating” sites in the first few years after I came out. I’m a bit of a design geek, and by far my favorite architect/designer is Adolf Loos, an Austrian who worked at the turn of the 20th century. He is probably best remembered for his 1908 essay “Ornament and Crime” in which he declared –he was always declaring things –“The evolution of culture is synonymous with the removal of ornament from objects of daily use.” In his eyes, all extraneous ornament does is render an object subject to the whims of fashion; the crime part comes in when you think of all the labor that went into a thing that’s only going to wind up in the trash because folks stop liking tassels on their shoes, big-ass carved eagles on their breakfronts, or acid washing on their Z Cavariccis. You could say that one of the purposes of this blog is to get people to look past the extraneous illness and focus on the sturdy, well-made individual underneath.

Interior of the The Villa Müller in Prague.

Interior of the The Villa Müller in Prague.

Of course it’s not entirely accurate to say that whatever’s going on in my brain, or anybody’s mental illness, is an extraneous part of them. I was born with this, so naturally my personality developed and matured under somewhat different conditions than someone with “normal” chemistry. There’s not enough room here to go into what proportion of myself was shaped by this chemistry or by my environment or by an environment I perceive through a distorted lens because of the stupid chemistry.

Yet, there is one way that the “illness” can be seen as “ornamental.” I think sometimes I’m faking it. I know I’m not faking the underlying ailment, but I know sometimes I selectively emphasize and announce symptoms for my own purposes. I am not above using my reputation for claustrophobia as an excuse to leave a boring party or bar where all I’m doing with my life is shouting small talk over bad techno. Or there was the time when I got out of being arrested small-town Georgia deputy by staging a panic attack complete with wheezing and purple face. You could just see the visions of paperwork should I die passing over the deputy’s face. And I was voted Class Clutz of my senior class in high school, but don’t think for a second all those stair-dives were due to slippy TopSiders. Concern can be a powerful aphrodisiac. I have no illusions that my illness has made me a saint. I plan on exploring the ways I have used the bipolar to shape my surroundings to my liking. Whether that is a good thing or, shall we say, suboptimal, is open for debate.

It’s still Christmas if the tree is bare, but it’s a helluva lot more Christmas if the branches are dripping with glass balls and tinsel.