I may have been recently single on Valentine’s Day, but that will not deter me from passing along to my coupled readers opportunities like the following, where you could assist the academic community in figuring out what makes your love tick. The researcher emailed and asked if I would share this, and who am I to stand in the way of scientific progress?:

Engaged volunteers needed!

I am looking for volunteers for a study of attitudes towards marriage and parenthood among engaged couples. The study consists of a 25-30 minute online survey. To qualify for the study, you must be 20-35 years old, live in the U.S., and plan to marry or have a commitment ceremony within the next 365 days. You and your romantic partner must not have children, and this must be the first marriage for both of you.

You can:

-Help a doctoral candidate;
-Increase the pool of scientific knowledge;
-Support research on marriage and families; and
-Spend some time thinking about your relationship!

I am working with Dr. Charlotte J. Patterson, a Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia. This study has been approved by the University of Virginia Institutional Review Board #2009025800.

If you and/or your romantic partner are interested in participating or want further information, please email me at survey.couples@gmail.com. I will send you a link that you can use to access the study.

Thanks!

Cristina Reitz-Krueger
Doctoral Student
University of Virginia
(434) 243-8558
survey.couples@gmail.com

I received the following touching email yesterday:

Hi, dear

Think of me always and dream of me often I am here heartsinadore.net/waityou/
You don’t know how much I really do miss you. I’ve opened up a door for love I thought I locked a long time ago. You are always in my heart and on my mind. I know we are so far apart. I can’t explain how all this distance and time apart has made my love for you grow. I don’t think anyone understands the burden I carry in my heart day by day … until I will be with you. I will be hopelessly in love with you, devoted to being with you. May God reunite us very soon. I am very hopeful that God will lead me to you. My love, I hope you feel the same, because it would be so much worse if I will be lost in this feeling alone, without you to share it with and to share the thought of us being together. I want to make up for all our time apart.

See you
J.S.

Naturally J.S. made me feel very special, until I saw that the email was also addressed to dogpile99@mailinator.com and dogpoop@mailblocks.com. I now feel slightly less special.

So January pretty much sucked. That’s as articulate as I can be on the subject. I don’t know why I was surprised at how tough that month turned out, considering recent heartbreak. But surprised I was, and while nursing a mildly annoying cold I logged more hours on Playstation 3 than I’d care to admit. Makes sense though; for a while you can be a different person, in a different world, working towards concrete, clearly delineated goals, all in the comfort etc, etc.

Playstation 3 also distracted me while I waited a few weeks to hear back from friends who were reading my book. Fortunately the feedback was all I could have hoped for, more or less, and now comes a fresh round of waiting. Today I mailed my book to the first literary agent on my list of potentials.

These days the big publishing houses won’t even read manuscripts unless they come from an agent. You could go the self-publishing route, an option that’s become much more viable in the past couple of years. But I’m a writer, not a businessman, and I could use somebody on my side to navigate the industry.

When looking for an agent, they suggest casting your net wider than one at a time. But for this first guy I’m going off my gut. One of the fringe benefits of getting my MFA at Columbia was its proximity to the publishing industry, and I met more than a few agents at horribly awkward cocktail parties. Imagine seventy desperate, insecure, socially awkward writers pitching their books to six agents. It was like six chunks of meat dropped into a shark tank.

But this guy I liked. He had a great reputation, a good sense of humor about the industry – which seems almost necessary these days – and he said he’d like to read the book when I was ready. I’m about as ready as I’ll ever be.

I sent him the first 50 pages, standard practice, with a letter that attempted to condense my 300-page memoir into a couple of sentences. And now I wait as my envelope works its way through the pile on his desk. We’ll see if he likes it enough to request the rest of the book, in which case more waiting…

I can’t quite begin to express the significance of this moment. I’ve been writing this book for over five years, and over that time I have gradually transferred all of my eggs into this one basket, fueled by little more than daydreams, blind hope, and the conviction that this is the only thing I’m really cut out for in this world. I’ve done what I can, now the rest is out of my hands.

So I’ve been a little quiet around here lately. I started this blog over nine years ago, and I only seem to grow less inclined to share my every thought with the internet as the years go by. Whether this is due to getting older, or due to all the work I’ve poured into the book instead, is not entirely clear.

But all things considered a little recent silence makes sense. No easy way to say it; after three and a half years together the Manly Fireplug and I decided last week to end our relationship. We started out as friends, several years before, and we both feel that might have been a better fit for our very different personalities. And that’s all I’m going to say about the reasons why. Some things aren’t meant for internet consumption.

And after the decision comes regret, relief, second thoughts, sleepless nights, skipped meals, reheated meals, meals picked up from a drive-thru window. An overwhelming urge to hide. Friends and families to inform. Desktop photos to change. Bad TV and Playstation 3. Sad songs in the car on repeat. A disappointed dog. The many ties to disentangle. Occasional conversations with very hot boys that only make clear what you’ve just given up. The break-up is about as amicable as one could hope but as a friend put it, amicable doesn’t mean easy.

With him I saw Philadelphia, Tahoe, Palm Springs, and Minneapolis. We slept in a hotel in Los Angeles. We ate at shrimp shacks on Oahu and noodle shops in Japantown. We bought Carhartt shirts in Manhattan and sun tan lotion on the Jersey Shore. We walked the manicured streets of Disneyworld and drove the narrow roads of Ireland.

He taught me confidence. He taught me to pay people more compliments. To hold apologies for only those things that require apologies. To take pride in what I’ve accomplished. To be more forgiving of my family. To ask for the kind of sex I’ve always wanted. He saw the best and the worst in me. He charmed my friends and my fathers and he cut my hair every damn week for free. He sat beside me in the ER when my lung collapsed. He never asked me to give it all up for a normal job. He urged me to finish the book, and with his support I did.

“I’m glad we tried,” I told him.

“We would have been crazy not to,” he replied.

I’m back from Thanksgiving in Philly, where I managed to wish Merry Christmas to like three Jews. You could blame this on my Minnesota upbringing, but really I just temporarily lost my mind.

I’m not very sociable. No good at cocktail parties. But I spent an entire week with the Manly Fireplug’s enormous, garrulous, and enormously garrulous Irish Catholic clan. Not one of them is an introvert. All of them love to talk. Nonstop. At high volume. At the same time. Get eighteen of them in a room, feed them booze and turkey, and measure the oncoming decibels. I now refer to them, collectively, as THE WALL OF SOUND.

Since I rejuice my batteries by hanging out alone most days, a full week of the WALL OF SOUND was a psychological experiment which my brain more or less failed by the fourth day. That night we went to the Fireplug’s 30th high school reunion, where I attempted to make small talk and act the charming trophy husband for three hours, all without the aid of seven shots of Jack Daniels. By the end I could only offer the same three or four sentences to each schoolmate, one of those sentences being, naturally, “Have a Merry Christmas.”

Day seven my motherboard shorted out completely, and I sat quietly drooling at brunch with THE WALL OF SOUND. Fortunately this was the kind of high class all-you-can-eat buffet type brunch, where everything looked like it was made on Top Chef, and so I just stumbled like a zombie from pork belly to paté to pineapple bursts without drawing too much attention to myself.

The Fireplug read my book on the plane, there and back. I hadn’t let anyone read it in two years. Just a few more small changes and I’ll let a few others read it too. So friggin’ close now, after 5-7 years of toiling over the damn thing, depending on your definition of starting point. Hopefully after a couple of days of solitude my brain will work again. If not the Fireplug can just stick me in a nursing home and sell my book to pay the bills. Or at least next month’s gas bill.

Come to the Barbershop and see how December’s readers and musician take on the theme of incredible and improbable impossibilities. Enjoy an eclectic creative mix in an irreverent, unpretentious setting. As the Examiner described a recent Barbershop event: “For only $5 at the door, this event, which included endless amounts of wine, cupcakes, and beer, was a bargain so outrageous that when it ended we milled about and congratulated ourselves for having been witness to it.”

Our full line-up:

JIM PROVENZANO’S résumé reads like the history of gay media since the 1980s, mixed with that of a typical dancer- actor-waiter -stage carpenter-wrestler- dot-com survivor. His 1999 debut novel PINS also became a successful play. He’s penned two more novels – MONKEY SUITS and CYCLIZEN – and short fiction for a few dozen anthologies. The former nationally syndicated sports columnist also curated and designed the world’s first exhibit about LGBT athletes. He recently returned to writing and editing at the Bay Area Reporter, where he often considers starting a “How to Write a Press Release” Boot Camp.

HELENE WECKER will be reading from her novel in progress, THE GOLEM AND THE DJINNI. Helene received her MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University in New York. After a dozen years of moving around between both coasts and the Midwest, she is finally settling down in the East Bay, where she lives with her husband and works an increasingly odd series of freelance gigs. You can find her online at www.helenewecker.com.

MEGAN KEELY is a local singer-songwriter, homegrown here in the Bay Area. She plays with an everchanging roster, often including her father and brother, but can be found playing solo shows here and there with her banjolele and various other small musical instruments. Megan loves any opportunity to play in atypical venues, including woodshops, plant nurseries, and of course barbershops. Every day she is awed and inspired by the incredible, the improbable, and the impossible.

HOLLY PAYNE is a novelist, screenwriter and writing coach who serves on the faculty of the MFA writing program at California College of the Arts. She is the author of THE VIRGIN’S KNOT (a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers book) and THE SOUND OF BLUE. Her latest novel, KINGDOM OF SIMPLICITY, set in her native Amish Country, was written as a response to a drunk driver who left her unable to walk for nearly a year. She has lived and worked in Hungary, Turkey, England and Croatia and continues to travel the world to research her stories. She is the founder of Skywriter Series writing workshops and Skywriter Ranch, a summer writing retreat held annually in the Rocky Mountains and is currently at work on a new book of historical fiction set in medieval Europe.

Details:

Joe’s Barbershop
2150 Market St (between Church and Sanchez)
Saturday, December 5th, at 8 pm.

We suggest arriving early if you want to kick back in one of the barber chairs. Other seating, without footrests or armrest ashtrays, will be available.

Our awesome bookselling parter in crime, BOOKS, INC will be on hand with copies of our featured author’s books. Buy one or three and get them autographed.

SUGGESTED donation: $5 (everyone welcome)

That donation helps to cover our expenses and buys you highly addictive Kettle Salt and Pepper potato chips, baked goods, cold beer, and a Diet Coke or two.

We can always use volunteers to help set up and clean up afterward. Volunteers pay no cover and earn good karma. If interested, email Michael McAllister

November’s readers will tackle the theme of literal and metaphorical journeys, so make a special trip of your own to the Barbershop, where you can enjoy an eclectic mix of genres and styles in a casual, irreverent, unpretentious setting. As the Examiner described a recent Barbershop event: “For only $5 at the door, this event, which included endless amounts of wine, cupcakes, and beer, was a bargain so outrageous that when it ended we milled about and congratulated ourselves for having been witness to it.”

Our lineup:

ROB ROSEN will be reading from his brand-new novel DIVAS LAS VEGAS, which one reviewer called a “cheerfully cheeky romp through the boys and beds of Las Vegas…Fierce sexy slapstick.” Rosen is the author of Sparkle: The Queerest Book You’ll Ever Love and has contributed to over sixty anthologies including Cleis Press’s Truckers, Best Gay Romance, Best Gay Romance 2008, Best Gay Romance 2009, Best Gay Erotica 2009, Hard Hats, Backdraft, Surfer Boys, and Bears. His erotica is often found in MEN and Freshmen magazines. He lives in San Francisco with his husband, Kenny, and you can find him online at www.therobrosen.com.

In addition to its usual roster of excellent and experienced authors, The Barbershop is committed to presenting the fresh voices of emerging writers. JOSHUA KLIPP is a transgender artist primarily known as a singer/songwriter who’s been featured on the Tyra Banks Show and MTV’s LOGO, and in 2008 he hit the Billboard Dance Charts. As one of the L WORD producers put it, “He makes every gender swoon!” He debuted his literary skills at the 2009 National Queer Arts Festival’s “Transforming Community”, and is currently working on a book of essays titled, THIRD PERSON. Check him out online at www.joshuaklipp.com.

SHANTHI SEKARAN will be reading from her first novel, THE PRAYER ROOM. She was born and raised in California, and now splits her time between Berkeley and London. A graduate of UC Berkeley and the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, she was first published in Best New American Voices 2004 (Harcourt). Of THE PRAYER ROOM, the New York Times said, “Sekaran is a master of cadence, and as she displays her intimate knowledge of India, England and America, there’s jazz on nearly every page.” You can find her online at www.shanthisekaran.com.

Details:

Joe’s Barbershop
2150 Market St (between Church and Sanchez)
Saturday, November 7th, at 8 pm.

We suggest arriving early if you want to kick back in one of the barber chairs. Other seating, without footrests or armrest ashtrays, is available.

Our awesome bookselling parter in crime, BOOKS, INC will be on hand with copies of our featured author’s books. Buy one or three and get them autographed.

SUGGESTED donation: $5 (everyone welcome)

That donation helps to cover our expenses and buys you highly addictive Kettle Salt and Pepper potato chips, baked goods, cold beer, and a Diet Coke or two.

We can always use volunteers to help set up and clean up afterward. Volunteers pay no cover and earn good karma. If interested, email Michael McAllister

My tenure on the blogroll of the New York Times came to a hilariously abrupt end after two days.  One day Dogpoet was there, the next day not. With no explanation given, I can only hazard a guess that it wasn’t so much due to my coy mentions of hot man-on-man action, but rather one of categorization. They had listed me under “Arts and Entertainment” for the San Francisco Bay Area, a clumsy fit at best. Since the Times has no “Personal Blogs” section, no “Stubborn, Cantankerous and Somewhat Misanthropic Writers” section, Dogpoet just fell through the cracks.

Thus the woeful story of my life as a writer, never quite fitting into the right category.  I’d like to earnestly believe that a guy could fashion his own category, and let the accolades follow.  But until then I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing, now that I no longer have to worry about offending the cultivated sensibilities of the Times’ readership. Like boring you with photos that the Manly Fireplug and I took at the top of the tramway in Palm Springs, looking down at the Coachella Valley from the San Jacinto Peak.

I’m smiling because I hadn’t seen the Fireplug in two weeks. Also I’m afraid of heights and my balls felt funny.

I am hiding in the desert, staying in my gay dads’ empty condo in Palm Springs, where the 1984 International Male catalog models have all retired and let themselves go. I am finishing up a two-week stay, revising and polishing my book in relative solitude, though I do drag myself to the gym  occasionally to keep up appearances.

After a couple of work-outs I’ve realized that there are a few qualities that act, for me, as immediate disqualifications in matters of sexual attraction:

1. Frosted hair on any guy over the age of 22. Scratch that, frosted hair on any guy period.

2. Fine-mesh tank tops, which haven’t aged well since the 1984 International Male Catalog.

3. An enormous, deeply-tanned bicep around which is strapped a tiny pink iPod.

However, if you can leave the house sporting ALL OF THE ABOVE, then you have bigger ones than I could ever dream of growing.

I’ve been talking about this damn book for several years now, and I realize I’ve tested the patience of many friend, reader, and family member. I wish I were faster than I am. But I just can’t compromise on this thing. It has to be as great as I can possibly make it. Fortunately I’ve worked my ass off here in the desert, revising 200 pages in two days. I think of the thing like a diamond necklace or something; each scene, each section, needs to be finely polished. But the whole thing needs to hang together real pretty too. I’m trying to cover thirty years of a family, and I have a whole lot more respect now for anyone that can even bang out a coherent book-length narrative, let alone a really good one.

I worry that I’m piling all of my eggs into this tiny, unpredictably-constructed basket. And that if I fail at this I will have nothing else to show for my life. Not that I’m ever, like, melodramatic or anything.

Two weeks is the longest that the Manly Fireplug and I have ever spent apart, and I sense a combustible reunion when he comes down to retrieve me on Sunday. An explosion at the end of the tunnel, and all that. I would happily share the details with you, but thanks to local lit man Kemble Scott, my blog is now listed in the San Francisco Bay section of the New York Times, and I have to consider these new readers’ delicate constitutions.