We were just saying we would volunteer to be fluffers for this scene,” says Bob. He and the art director are standing in the kitchen drinking Cokes.

“I don’t think it would make a bit of difference,” I say. “This has to be the most un-erotic environment possible. I could never do a porn.” I choose to deflect the implied compliment, moving over to the counter where three delivery pizzas lie waiting. It’s nine-thirty p.m., we’ve been filming the sex scene since five-thirty and we’re nowhere near done. The guys on the crew are coming down the stairs behind me. I grab a slice and head out onto the back deck, into the cool night air. All weekend I’ve been looking out over the amazing view of the city from the deck, during quiet times between scenes. I never get tired of looking at this city.

The cameraman takes his slice halfway down the stairs leading to the backyard, where he can be alone. He calls someone on his cell phone. His quiet words drift up to me. “Hey, I’m going to be late…I don’t know…okay…bye.” The director and the rest of the crew have joined me on the deck. We all stand silently with our slices of Marcello’s, all of us facing the view of downtown, the Bay Bridge extending beyond the skyline into the night, towards the dark hills of Oakland. There is only the quiet noise of men eating. From the houses on the hills above the Castro there is the sound of traffic and Saturday night parties. Music echoing over the hills, voices, laughter. Hearing them reinforces the sense of dissociation I’ve carried since the filming started; caught up in a strange little world outside my normal customs; the normal hours of my day job, my usual AA meetings at night, dinners with friends; everything has fallen away as I go about the work of pretending to be someone else in this house on 19th street.

I’ve been at the house since 10 am. The lead actor, the kid, sits behind me on the deck, munching his pizza. Both of us are introverted and we’ve had only the briefest of conversations. There are other actors and crew members I’ve known for awhile, from plays we’ve done together. Their presence is comforting. The director seems to believe in me, and has given me the role despite my complete lack of on-camera experience. I’m learning as I go along.

“Let’s get back,” the director says.

I eat a banana to clear some of the pizza taste from my mouth, out of respect for the kid, whom I have to kiss repeatedly during the scene. I keep my tongue in my mouth. Besides, he’s a smoker. I chew a piece of gum as I walk back upstairs.

Upstairs the bedroom is lit up like a ballpark at night. They’ve positioned three floodlights outside on the upper deck. They shine through the windows, across the bed. The bedroom still reads as dimly-lit on camera, where it counts. As the crew settles on the other side of the room, I perch on the edge of the mattress. I look at the floor, away from the harsh lights. The kid lies on the other side of the bed. We’ve removed our clothes six or seven times by now. Fortunately they’re only shooting us from the waists up. We can keep our underwear on. I look over at the others. I can’t help but notice there are more people watching than usual. The director, the cameraman, the lighting man, the sound man, the art director, the continuity girl, the director’s boyfriend, and the owner of the house we’re using.

“Nice sheets,” I tell the art director.

“Yeah, just don’t get anything on them, I have to return them.”

I laugh.

“I’m not kidding,” he says.

During the filming I open six or seven condom wrappers with my teeth. The first couple of wrappers take at least two or three bites. One small corner gets trapped under my tongue. I am feeling very un-smooth, a failed Lothario captured on camera for all eternity spitting tiny pieces of foil condom wrappers onto the floor, doing my best to avoid the sheets at all times. The director is kind enough not to yell “CUT!” in the middle of my fumbling. The kid lies patiently beneath me. I’d say he has the easier acting job at the moment. After one or two takes my fingers are coated with a slight film of lube, which only aggravates the problem. Somehow I manage a couple of good takes. By now I’ve accepted that whatever the mostly straight crew thinks of all this is totally beside the point.

Later, after our attempt at fucking fails, the script calls for me to roll over, sigh, and light a cigarette. Being an ex-smoker and someone who can become addicted to anything, anywhere, I’ve asked for some herbal cigarettes without nicotine. It’s my only high-maintenance movie star request. Somehow I only get two of them, so for the six or seven takes of me lighting a cigarette, I have to re-light each about three times. They certainly smell just like cigarettes. I don’t think the owner of the house is too happy with the air quality of his bedroom by now, but again that is beside the point.

Despite the lights and the quiet audience and the new sheets and the camera and my Midwestern modesty, the sex scene is my favorite, if only because my character, a morally ambiguous asshole, gets a second or two where the real guy underneath all the crap is revealed. And that’s why I love acting.

The director is happy. He comes over to my side of the bed, lies down next to me and puts his head on my chest. “That was amazing. That’s gonna be the most beautiful scene in the movie.” I can only take his word for it. He gets back to his feet. “Go home,” he says.

I put my clothes back on for the last time. The crew is out on the deck smoking. The director’s boyfriend is bringing beers up from the kitchen for everyone. A beer sounds so amazingly delicious right now, but I don’t do that anymore. Now that the scene is behind me I am exhausted, all the tension leading up to tonight is spent. I can barely manage a wave good-bye to everyone, but that hardly matters. I have to be back in the morning.
He’s fearless. He’s rich, made himself rich. He’s the kind that walks into a room and he’s all you can see,” the director says.

I stand with my script in hand in another actor’s living room. I’ve been in this room many times, have spent hours, weeks here, rehearsing for plays. Tonight I’m rehearsing for a film. In 36 hours I’ll report to a house in the Castro, where for the next three days I will work 12 hours a day, pretending to be someone else.

I nod so the director knows I’m listening. I stare at the floor near his feet, imagining what fearlessness looks like, what fearless people have I known? A man I dated awhile back, Mr. Type A from that night at the Stud a couple of weekends ago. The way his chest led the rest of him as he entered a room. His unwavering eye contact.

“He knows the game, he’ll play the game if that’s what it takes, but he doesn’t really care.”

I really need to get these lines down. I won’t own them till I know them. And until then, it’s all fumbling.

“Let’s take a break.”

In the kitchen Scott fills a bowl with the soup he’s made. White beans and carrots and slivers of ham. It’s a little too hot, I lift spoonfulls to the surface of the soup, turn them over as the steam rises. The director and the kid are out front smoking. All I’m thinking about is the next half hour, the scene waiting.

The director and the kid are back. “I want to show you guys a scene from Querelle,” the director says.

Somehow I know which scene he’ll show. We gather in the back bedroom, he has it on DVD. I make a mental note to get a copy. I sit in a chair next to the bed. The kid stands next to me. The director presses a few buttons on the remote, cues the scene. Sure enough, it’s that one. Brad Davis the sailor losing a bet to Nono. The sailor getting fucked on a table. I wonder if the kid is straight, and what he thinks of all this. The scene makes me sweat, every time. I kind of wish everyone would just leave the room.

The director points the remote, the TV darkens. “No nudity,” he says. “All that heat, no nudity, just the connection between them.”

The kid hasn’t said anything. Then again, neither have I. I check his profile, his bright blue eyes blinking behind his glasses. We clutch our scripts in our hands. I’ve taken off my shoes.

I sit with my back resting against the railing at the foot of the bed. The kid sits on the edge of the mattress while the director pages through the script. He settles into the chair. “I’m still trying to figure out how this is going to work,” he says. This makes me a little nervous. I thought he had this all story-boarded or something. “For the purposes of rehearsal, when the script says “kiss’, just touch your cheek to his, Michael.”

“Okay” I relax a little.

We try a few positions on the bed. Sitting side by side on the edge of the mattress. Sitting, one of my legs curled around him. Lying side by side.

“That works,” the director says. Okay, so you kiss him, he resists. It’s too much for him, too intimate. You get him to roll over on his stomach.” He pauses. “Now, how do we get his pants off?”

We try a few maneuvers; settle on one that’s a little more fluid than the others. I pretend to take my shirt off, back to the camera. I reach over and pretend to take his pants off. I climb on top of him.

“Here we’ll frame you as you grab a condom from the nightstand, waist up. Tear it open with your teeth and spit it out.”

Then the failed fuck. He turns over.

I sigh, roll over, grab a cigarette from the nightstand. I motion and the kid settles against me, my arm wrapped around him.

“Okay,” the director says. “Let’s save the rest for the camera. Unless you guys want to run it again?”

Nope, we’re fine. Let’s call it a night.

The night air is cool, the lights of the restaurants on 16th street washing over the sidewalks. I roll the script up in my fist as I walk to the car.
the neurotic artistic type

I really should have picked the piece about the go-go boy I think, all day Saturday I should just entertain, that’s all they’ll want. But it’s too late, I’ve already told my instructor what I’ll read, and the class has expressed their opinion; read the piece about your mother and the restaurant, the piece with the box cutter and the fucked-up therapy session. Oh yeah, they’ll love that piece. Just call me Killjoy.

After the gym I have a few hours alone, to read it through, to clean it up. I resist. I open the lap-top, walk away. I come back, read it once, walk away. Come back, tinker a bit. Open a book. Compared to her I suck I think. Mine’s so simple, where’s the rich descriptive language that she has?. I put the book down. Back to the lap-top. I read it again, clean up a few sentences, tighten a flow of words. I think back to the night I read the piece to the class, searching for the questions the instructor asked. “Why is he so scared to come out of the closet if both his parents are gay?” she wanted to know. I type a few more lines here and there. I open another book, scan a few pages, put it back. Take another. He’s so intelligent, I think, so literary. I can’t catch half his references. I put it aside. I come back, read it again, clean it up a little more. The sentence I added is clunky, tighten it up, delete a few words. Read the section over and over till it flows right. Then read the whole thing. I walk away, draw a bath. Let the dog outside. It’s a beautiful day, sun on the warm wooden deck just out the backdoor, but I need to stay in here and get it right. I take the first book with me to the bathtub, but I only read three pages. Time is slipping past. I flip the drainswitch with my toe. Too early to get dressed for the reading, so I put my sweats on, back to the glowing screen. Read it aloud for the first time, timing myself. I’m reading fast and I’m three minutes over. Read it again, forget I’m timing myself and tinker with another sentence. Stop, start over. You get the idea.

I’m twenty minutes early to the bookstore. I’m always early, to everything. I walk among the broad tables with piles of books facing up. I scan them, marvelling at their colors and their clever designs, all the stories everyone has. I pick up a few, scan the back covers, set them back. Try to remember the author of that book about the middlesexed charater. Too stubborn to ask the guy behind the counter, I play a little game, I’ll just wander and try to find the book myself and kill some time. I stand by the new hardcover fiction shelf, my head tilted to the right, scanning the spines of the books. Oh, she has a new one. And there’s the one that one the Pulitzer. I pull it out, open the book and read a few words. That’s so clever, I wish I were that clever. Maybe I should exchange earnest for clever. I imagine myself a published author, what it would be like to see my book among the others; would there be a sense of satisfaction, or would I worry it’ll end up on the sale table in a few weeks? I never find the middlesex book. I wander to the back of the store where they’ve set up about twenty-five chairs in front of a microphone. The store is so quiet, won’t it be obnoxious once we get up there and start reading? Luckily Bearbait is there, browsing as well, so I can escape my head for a bit.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hey,” he says.

Back to my brain. I stake out two chairs in the third row. Bearbait seems tired. What if he doesn’t really want to be here? He blinks slowly, tells me about his day. Other students come, bearing wine and bags of chips, eyes shinging, laughing a little too high and loud. Everyone looks nicer than they did on Wednesday nights. Bearbait heads for the refreshments while I stay seated. Then a voice at my shoulder.

“Is this seat taken?” It’s Richard. We hug and I move in another chair. I feel so flattered people are here. And nervous.

“I should have picked the go-go boy story,” I tell Richard. He lets me babble nervously, nodding patiently at my ten-minute long disclaimer about how I don’t want to be too heavy and bring everybody down by reading a piece about cutting up my hand with a box cutter.

My instructor stops by, “You’re reading sixth,” she says. A little more than half-way through. How did she decide that? I wonder. Is there some sort of hierarchy here? I let that rattle around inside my head along with everything else. A lot of people are showing up; more chairs are pulled from a back room. I look behind me at all the unfamilar faces.

“This looks like a Marina crowd,” I tell Richard. He agrees. Bearbait comes back. “This is Richard, he keeps a website, too.” Bearbait smiles. “And this is ____. I call him Bearbait on dogpoet.” They smile patiently at my clever nickname. I tell Bearbait to start his own weblog, as a way of luring more bears. He smiles patiently at me and sips his Pepsi.

The reading starts. The woman’s head in front of me blocks my view of the podium. So I listen, staring at her neck or at the bright colors of the children’s book section behind the podium. There is a clock cut out of construction paper hanging on the wall, its hands stuck eternally at seven o’clock. It’s very disorienting. As the fifth student walks to the podium Bearbait leans over and tells me to breathe. Apparently I had stopped. I lean back and take a couple of deep breaths, test my eyesight by reading the titles of books several feet away. I was expecting the intermission but the instructor calls my name. I reach under my chair, grab the four sheets of paper waiting there. Richard moves his legs and I squeeze by, hoping my jeans look good as I walk up to the podium.

“’Michael McAllister used to write a lot of poetry,” the instructor reads from my hastily-written bio. “Lately he’s been writing little stories from his life.’” She pauses and looks at me. “Maybe not that little,” she says. Everyone laughs. “’He lives in San Francisco and keeps a website.’ She looks at me again. “Should I tell them the website?” I shake my head. They’ll ask if they want.

The reader before me was short. I pull the microphone up a bit, set the pages down, take another breath to calm my nerves.

“My mother has a good arm,” I read.

They’re laughing by the end of the first paragraph, laughing at all the appropriate jokes. They’re quiet in the other parts. As I read I remember this feeling, the feeling I used to get when I’d read my poetry in Minneapolis. The feeling of a room full of people listening intently to the words I’ve strung together. I remember how I loved it. What was I so worried about? I wonder. It’s a good story. When I finish there is warm applause that carries me back to my chair between Richard and Bearbait. I sit, my adrenaline pumping, as the intermission is announced. The women in front of me turn around “that was great,” they say. I smile and say thanks. The instructor stops by. “Bravo,” she says, “that revision is wonderful, it brought it all together.” She shakes my hand. “I tried to remember the feedback,” I tell her.

A woman with bright red hair and a commanding presence comes up to me. “You have a website?” she asks. I nod. “Is it a blog?” she asks.
“Yes,” I say.
“We have blogs too!” she says, indicating her boyfriend. As she searches through her purse for a pen, a familiar face walks up.
“I recognize you,” I say. It’s Chad. He introduces himself briefly, then slips away, late for a dinner party. I exchange URL’s with the couple.

The rest of the reading is great, everybody sounds so good. There is another student who I love, someone who’s lived a rough life and is writing about it in a vivid, humorous, heartbreaking way. I think she’s the best writer in the class. She was so nervous about reading, didn’t want to do it. “You have to read,” I told her at the last class. “You’re too good.” She reads and everyone eats it up, they adore her. I want to write as good as she does.

Later Richard, Bearbait and I grab dinner at Max’s Opera Café. A waitress sings “Killing Me Softly” over by the piano. Richard orders a “BIG! BOLD! SALAD!” and we order cheeseburgers. We talk about art and life, and living the lives we want. It’s a good night with good people. The anxiety is behind me. I dip my fries in ketchup and horseradish.

The Cala lilies are in bloom again…

I could have said that as I stepped onto our back deck, into the sun. I guess I did say it, to myself, marveling at the flowers blooming at the edge of our shoddy, uneven deck. To a kid from Minnesota the sight of white lilies uncurling in the bright midmorning sun in February is just another confirmation that I won’t be moving back to the Midwest any time soon.

It’s President’s Day and I’m home from work, writing on the back deck for the first time since I moved in last summer. There is the sound of hammering and buzz saws echoing over the hills, from the houses of people rich or lucky enough to afford construction in this economy. There are birds singing, a dog barking, two hummingbirds dueling or flirting among the branches of the tree off the deck; the sound of their wings like a hand flipping quickly through the pages of a book.

///

This morning I pick up the Stanislavski book on acting from the corner of the bathroom sink, where I had left it the night before. Something falls from its pages and I look down at the envelope addressed to me in my mother’s handwriting. I can tell from the shaky edges of the “M” in Michael and the “C” in CA that it was written after the onset of her symptoms. And by the postmark, September 2000, I know it was when we still thought she might have Parkinson’s. In six weeks, at the end of October, we’ll know she has ALS instead.

It’s the size of a small greeting card, and certainly not heavy enough to warrant the two 33 cent stamps stuck in the upper right hand corner. One stamp shows a lacy pink heart, a Victorian valentine with pink roses blossoming along its edges. The other is a child’s drawing; a bright red rocket in a dark blue sky, headed for a pink moon. Below the rocket the child has scrawled, in yellow lettering, “Mommy, are we there yet?” On the edge of the stamp, in tiny letters, it reads “Morgan Hill, age nine”.

I carry the card and the book and a cup of coffee back with me to bed. I throw the comforter over my cold feet and rearrange the pillows, and then open the envelope. Simple gray cardstock with a line of silver letters: “Wishing you wonders great and small”. I open the card and there’s a silver star shooting across the surface of the card. It takes me a moment to realize that the card is backwards; the star should be on the front, the greeting inside. The back cover, with the card company’s name etched in silver, is folded against the front cover of the silver shooting star. Above the star, in her handwriting that has just begun to unravel, it says ” Hi Michael, I’m really happy you’re in the play and working two jobs. Love, Mom”.

Short and terse, unlike her usual cards and letters, which were always full of weather updates and travel plans and training schedules for the marathons she and Lee used to run together. Today, years later, I realize that it was probably Lee who urged her to send the card, perhaps even bought the card. As the illness progressed my mother withdrew from me, and from others. Of course, we didn’t know much about the dementia then, either.

The play she refers to is “The Collected Works of Billy the Kid”; not really a play, actually, neither a novel nor a collection of short stories. Written by Michael Ondaatje, the author of “The English Patient”, it read more like a collection of dreams and nightmares and images, written in Ondaantje’s vivid, visercal prose. I had been cast in the lead role, Billy, and she and Lee would visit me soon and see the performance.

It’s funny to still feel the kick of resentment, the phantom pain of anger towards her. It was just like her to talk about work all the time. Towards the end, the only question she’d ask me on her own initiative was “How’s work?” As if some shitty job title; the organic grocery store stock boy, the coffee shop barista, the paid-under-the-table office clerk; as if any of those mattered to me then. “Fuck work,” I wanted to say, “You’re dying.” I wanted her to say something, anything, about the important shit. Just a few words that weren’t about work. Something about illness, about the sudden shift in priorities, about the value of love and friends and family. I wanted wisdom, I wanted what everyone thought I’d get when they recommended that fucking “Tuesdays with Morrie” book to me. I wanted golden afternoons with my dying mother in which we talked about life’s most important lessons. But Morrie didn’t have the rare type of ALS that included dementia. And the author of that book spent an hour a week with Morrie, he didn’t have to wipe up drool or help Morrie cough over a sink when food got caught somewhere among the weakening muscles of the throat, like I did with my mother. Also, as she once pointed out, “Morrie was in his goddamned seventies already. I’m fifty-three.”

I didn’t get golden movie-of-the-week moments, I didn’t get a thin strand of her pearls of wisdom. I got a mother who answered every question with one word and who could only ask of me, “How’s work?”

Caught somewhere between the dementia and the stoic German work ethic of her father and the Catholic guilt of her mother, my mother seemed to feel that as long as she kept moving, the disease couldn’t catch her. When she lost her job over the illness, she’d never let herself relax. She’d wash loads of laundry everyday, run the dishwasher half-empty, dust the spotless living room. She’d grasp the broom in her weak fingers and sweep the back patio. Afterwards she’d sit with me for a minute at the window, until one leaf would detach from a tree and fall gently onto the perfect patio, and she’d go for the broom again. It all made me very tired.

///

I haven’t acted since Billy. After the play ended I moved back to Minneapolis for a few months to be with her. Even when I came back to San Francisco I avoided auditioning, knowing that any day I could get an urgent call from home. None of the small companies I performed with had the budget for an understudy. But now she’s been dead for a year, so I can’t use her as an excuse anymore.

Billy was very tough. I was very very raw, sober for like thirty seconds, taking on a role that one critic said had more lines than Hamlet. I was very unsure of myself. I was out of shape and dreaded the scene where I wore nothing but a towel onstage. Our boots walking across the floorboards of the set echoed all over the converted gymnasium in which we performed; the audience would sit forward and strain to hear us over the noise. The reviews were mixed. I remember one review in paticular, from a free weekly newpaper that everyone in San Francisco reads. The critic said I lacked the charisma for the role. That morning I wanted to drive around to every kiosk, steal all the papers and burn them in my fireplace. But I didn’t.

Looking back I understand the criticism. I didn’t feel charismatic then. I was thin-skinned and overwhelmed, and even the wonderful reviews I received couldn’t change that. It was such a relief when the play ended, and I guess you could say that I haven’t wanted to be that vulnerable since.

Recently one of the crew from Billy asked me to read the script of a short film he’s directing. The character he wanted me to play was an asshole, but that didn’t bother me much. I like playing assholes. That’s why they call it acting.

But there is one scene where my character has sex with the lead character, an underage boy. More partial nudity, this time on camera. I’ve never acted on film. But really, I asked myself, how many people will ever see a 30-minute film? At least, one that’s not a porno? Also, I look better naked now. I said yes. It’s scheduled to film next month. One scene will be shot in the bar where I used to work; the one I call the gateway to my own personal hell. It’s where I pick the kid up and bring him home. I find that very funny.

///

The first time I auditioned for a professional acting job, I was fresh out of college and didn’t even have a head shot. I got the part, beating out 100 other guys. They paid me $300 a week just to act. I worked with one of the most brilliant directors I’ve ever met at a great little theater in Minneapolis. The play ran for three months; I performed six shows a week. I played Martin in Fool for Love. For my entrance I would run onstage in the dark and tackle the leading man as he fought with his sister. Then the lights would come up, catching me as I held his collar in one hand and cocked back my right fist for another blow. One day we punched a hole in the plaster wall of the set. It was great.

A year later I auditioned for a part in a dance/theater piece with a very funny, very talented choreographer. After her first choice was deported over visa issues, she gave me the role. I got paid again, and at the end of our run she was invited to bring the show to New York. We got paid to dance and act crazy at DTW off of Eighth Avenue. Before we left Minneapolis she told me that she was happy I got the part.

During the day I would wander around Manhattan, returning each evening to Chelsea, where I would meet the others and warm up in a cramped dressing room backstage. The choreographer was also presenting a piece that featured just the women dancers. I would watch from the backstage, as three women in Catholic school uniforms prayed reverently in a spotlight to “Ave Maria”. Slowly, as the song played, something poked from between each of their lips, and then dangled lower and lower over their throats. They were rosaries, drenched in saliva.

///

I was feeling a little apprehensive about this whole film thing, so I decided to re-read my books on Meisner and Stanislavski, which helped get me into the groove a bit. It’s nice to be old enough to know that I don’t have to believe everything I read, either. Then later I turned on the TV and Bravo was having a marathon of Actor’s Studio, so I watched Michael Caine and Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore and Martin Scorsese. And that helped, too. And I daydreamed about what it would be like to be Meryl Streep’s best friend. And then Julianne Moore’s friend, the one she takes the subway with to the gym or whatever. As if all that acting karma would sorta rub off on me by osmosis. And I will admit that sometimes I picture myself in the chair opposite James Lipton, and he’ll have a stack of blue cards all about my life, and I will pretend to be amazed at the thoroughness of his research, and humbled by his proclamations of my acting genius. Then I will also pretend not to expect the famous quiz invented by what’s his name for whatever that French place is at the end of the show, so that all of my answers appear hilarious, deeply moving, and completely spontaneous. Then, in the intimate question-and-answer session with the students I will be very generous and spend lots of time with them so that they’ll think I was the coolest actor ever.

What, like you don’t daydream about this kind of shit?

It sucks being your own worst enemy, letting fear keep you from the things you love, letting it tie you to mediocrity. Haunted by ghosts who only value work. But the ghosts are dead. I’m alive. I don’t need a lot of money, or my name in flashing lights. I just want to do what makes me happy. I want to write and I want to pretend like I’m other people and I want to get paid a little money for it. Is that so wrong?

That winter I write in my journal: Nobody else’s story is good enough anymore.

Here but not here. Here but elsewhere, too. My body, half my head in San Francisco, the other half somewhere else. Not where you live; no, you’re beautiful but I don’t picture walking the streets of your city. But if it came to that, sure, why not? Why wouldn’t I give it a shot? How many shots do we get, anyway? My mom died at 55. That’s not enough shots for me! I’ll always want more…and ain’t that the kicker? I want more rain-slicked streets and the smell of wet eucalyptus trees on my street. I want more notebooks filled with crap, with fumbling therapy-scrawlings springboarding me towards the land of the living. I want more evenings where the entire city outside my window is colored a pale blue. And nights like tonight, where the rain smudges the lights on the hills, the red pinpricks of tailights driving home, reflected in the wet asphalt. I want nights where I don’t sleep alone. I want more five-page e-mails and t-shirts soaked in sweat. Somewhere between here and there we meet; some ethereal territory where our dreamed-up arms and legs lock in WWF smack-down moves, and where our imaginary lips engage in heavy make-out sessions, when not telling goofy jokes to make the other laugh. Where I go when I read your words, where you go when you read mine.

climb

There is the sense of language trapped like dank water caught in an old tire, or a swamp stagnating in the harsh sun….no mystery or energy rippling beneath its surface…and it will stay there unless you dig a small trench, with a shovel or even a thin, sturdy stick, from the pool towards a descending curve of the earth, gravity drawing the water gently, incessantly through the channel you’ve dug, a trickle turning to a steady stream, leaves caught in the current, turning one direction and then another, their green and yellow edges twisting, spinning, revealing the water’s intentions that flow beneath its surface.

There’s the new job, of course; the phone calls and the registration forms and the credit card numbers scrawled at the bottom of handwritten faxes. Vaccination records and adoption certificates copied and stapled. And then the names, all the names: Luna and Lulu and Marley and Tulley and Sammy and Jake and Booyah and Kayla and Titan and Oscar. Classes and dates, scrawled, crossed-out, underlined, last-minute pleadings we’re having an obedience emergency, please please can we get into the class tonight and Excel spreadsheets with fields copied, cut, pasted as the capricious nature of people and their dogs and their schedules demand.

And I’m tired; every new job leaves me tired, my worry of the small details, the folders and the receipts and the waiting lists and the voice mails. It takes time, to adjust, to streamline the chaos left by the former coordinator, to page through stacks of unreturned calls and expired credit cards and letters of complaint. To steel myself for each call, each voice a little world of worry or privilege or frustration. Every employer I’ve ever had has been damn lucky to have me.

But I’m happy when I’m busy…the laws of physics propelling me forward a body in motion stays in motion but to write I need to sit still, to have a few moments of silence.

And the doubt. Reading the words of other online journals, just one or two, here and there, the cynicism and the posturing…I absorb it, take it too seriously, too personally…like a drug injected, humming with the blood rushing through my veins. And one or two ruin it for me, just one or two detract from the brightness and the generosity all the others pour out. Resolution #1. Stop reading the one or two. Or better, don’t take it personally. Instead, go back, read the ones I love, and see in them their singular human flawed sacred life, all their own, see them write it down, see them try, each day, to say it, say their lives, their private vocabularies spinning language, sewing one word to the next, raising the tattered cloth on flagpoles that sing as the cords strike the metal and bounce back towards the sky. “All I can say” the emerald-eyed poet wrote, snapping pictures of the lights flying past her on the bridge.

You either get it or you don’t, the atomic monkey boy said, his voice brushing my ear though several states separated us. He meant, I think, that at least the two of us get it. I hope I get it, I hope I always get it. I hope I always have in my life those that get it.

But I do. And I will.

Tonight, stepping out of the cabin and into the dark; moonlight glowing across the snowdrifts, I hear…nothing. Silence; no hum of motors or city life. My ears buzzing with the absence of sound. My footsteps on the wooden staircase, the slush squeaking under my boots. I stop, stand still for the first time in days. I listen to the silence, drinking it in, pulling it around me. Then wind rushing through the tall pines and, in the moments of calm, the sound of wet snow falling in a clearing, a hundred feet away.

///

Three years ago, when my mother was still alive, when I had moved back to Minneapolis for a few months, I was talking with her partner, Lee…someplace, in some room. The kitchen (the warm center of their warm house)? Or a waiting room at the hospital? There were two surgeries during those six months. When the muscles that controlled her swallowing failed, she had a stomach tube implanted. Yes, that was it. I was still staying in their house, a week or two before I moved into the little studio apartment on Franklin Avenue. Mom had stayed at the hospital the night before, and Lee and I were to join her in the morning, and wait through the surgery. I woke early; a dark, cold, winter morning, and I could hear the shower running in the bathroom down the hall. And I could hear Lee crying in the shower, her sobs not quite covered by the water, and the sound filled me with dread.

Later, in the waiting room; the florescent lights buzzing overhead and the orange-upholstered chairs we sat in; old copies of People and Reader’s Digest piled on the table beside me. Lee told me about the previous year, when she first knew. They were in Orlando with friends. In the hotel room on the morning of their departure, Mom had started to pack her bag for the return trip to Minneapolis. But she was packing her clothes into Lee’s bag.

“What are you doing, Susan? That’s my bag,” Lee had said.

My mother stopped for a moment and stood there, her face empty. Lee could see the machinery of my mother’s thoughts groan and shudder.

“And my heart just fell,” Lee told me.

What may have been just a small incident to anyone else was, for Lee, a dark omen of the terrible future rushing towards them. Lee, a retired nurse and my mother’s companion for twenty years, knew it meant trouble.

///

I had wanted to be alone for the weekend, to fulfill the romantic notion of a writer in a cabin, surrounded by snow and trees. But Tahoe isn’t cheap, and the cabin is shared by five of us for the winter, and at the last minute my former boss’ boyfriend asked if he could tag along. I was disappointed but said yes. After all, I’m learning, or trying, to accept what life offers, rather than say no when my expectations aren’t met.

During the four-hour car trip I realized that I hadn’t been around a straight man in a very long time. Everyone I know in San Francisco is either a gay man or a woman. But we managed just fine. We had Veronica in common, and there were movies to discuss. The traffic was slow but steady. Rain showers fell the whole way, and though I expected it to turn to snow as we neared the lake, the rain only flirted with the cold; a few fat, wet flakes struck the windshield as the light drained from the sky. I was grateful for my Subaru and I was grateful for Mike as I drove us around the curves in the dark; he knew where to turn, and where the cabin sat waiting for us. He also knew where to find the light switch as we stumbled in with our bags and groceries.

“As you can see,” Mike said, gesturing to the living room, “It’s decorated in Early Butt-Ugly.” Indeed. Brown pile carpeting, strangely-shaped orange couches, a clock fashioned from a piece of varnished wood. I took Louie back outside. He hadn’t seen snow since we left Minneapolis over five years ago and he trotted nervously along the snowbanks in the driveway, unsure of where to pee.

He was a different dog the next morning. Mike and I strapped on snowshoes and set off on a trail that led from the back of the cabin up into the woods, and Louie charged ahead, his tail wagging, alert and excited. The trees were frosted with snow, and some were covered in a pale green moss that grew despite the cold. It was a mild winter morning; I stuck my gloves into my back pocket and shuffled after Mike, who was much better equipped with appropriate hiking gear. He had one of those backpacks with a plastic tube that snaked out of the zippered enclosure and over his shoulder, offering a cool supply of water. He even had two walkie-talkies, in case of…well, just in case.

The only sound in the woods was the muffled crunching of our shoes along the trail, and the snow melting and dripping from the branches around us. I shuffled along, as Veronica had suggested. My inclination was to raise my feet high off the ground, but the raised lip of the snowshoe’s toe seemed to thwart any potential face-falls. We followed the trail up the side of the hill, pausing to snap pictures here and there. After an hour or so we reached a spot that offered views of the mountain peaks and the pale grey surface of the lake. Mike was ready to turn back, but I wanted to climb higher. We parted company, and I promised to call on the walkie-talkie should I get lost.

Louie and I continued up. The trail was thinning out; fewer hikers and skiiers had come this far recently. The snow grew lighter and my shoes plunged through the powder. Finally, after another thirty minutes, we reached the top of the ridge, and I turned to see the panorama of Lake Tahoe and the winter woods below us. It was good to be alone, just me and my dog, and to have accomplished something. I followed the ridge till all traces of the trail vanished and it was just fresh, deep powder ahead. Louie lay in the snow, ears cocked, scanning the horizon like a king surveying his land. I stopped to listen again to the silence, the air still, the trees dripping. My breath was shallow, under my clothes a layer of sweat clung to me. I looked around at the surrounding mountains and the low clouds hanging just across the way, no higher than where I stood, panting.

Rough drafts

I swallowed fistfuls of ibuprofen and lay on my back for most of the last week. Some back muscle and some faulty move at the gym, I guess. Didn’t feel it at the time, just woke to pain that got worse; that dug at my spine as the hours passed; no sitting, no standing. Stress? Oh God I can’t go there, isn’t everyone stressed, always, everywhere? It’s a given now.

Laying in bed watching a NYPD Blue rerun. Inexplicably I’ve only seen the show twice this year, and both times it’s the episode where Jimmy Smits dies. Me bawling in spite of myself; yeah, shit it’s your birthday, the first one, and I’m still pissed. All those little set-backs, the gradual, incessant decline, the lines in the sand crossed again and again, the expectations adjusted to every-worsening developments. Your bed wheeled out of surgery and the sight of your tracheostomy slamming me like a sack of rocks; a hole the size of a baby’s fist in your throat, some horrible plastic necklace blowing steam on the wound to keep it fresh. Fuck I hated everything at that moment; God, yes, and everyone else’s normal lives and the pile of empty whiskey bottles in my kitchen and the loss of hope. That night I ran around the lake in the dark, my hate driving me forward, skimming over the potholes and the half-frozen puddles.

I’d take you to church every Sunday, early, the service in the small chapel. I sat beside you, hung-over, my arm wrapped around you as if I could squeeze it out of you. Your tears running when the music began, when those around us sang. Every time. The pain and confusion in your eyes; yes, yes, you’re a good person, no, you’re not a bad mother, no, He’s not punishing you and if He is He fucking better watch out. Wanting to punch everyone, the polite and distant Minnesotans, the minister’s concern, everyone always telling me I was a good son. Fuck that, I just wanted you alive.

You’re with me, I know it, there’s no question there. But still. I put up pictures of you around the room. One in the bathroom, when I brush my teeth in the morning it reminds me what you looked like, one summer day in your backyard, before everything. Your dog and your cat under each arm, you laughing. It was like that once, wasn’t it? Sometimes I forget. When I moved to San Francisco you told me that you couldn’t drive past my old house. I won’t ever shake that one.

Confession

I’m telling you right now, I never pretended to be a grown-up. Just so we’re clear.

From some secret e-mails and comments I received yesterday, I get the impression that I’m not the only one having trouble with friends. The difference is that I will stop at nothing to embarrass myself publicly by airing such immature, gaudy-colored laundry on my proverbial clothesline. But if you can live vicariously through my humiliation, it’s all worth it. After all, I have this candid, ugly-truth-telling reputation to fulfill.

I’m like that spoiled little princess who can’t sleep when there’s a pea under her pile of mattresses. I tongue the tooth-ache, pick the scab. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

Okay, you get it.

I told Bearbait yesterday that I’m dreading tonight. I’ve been asked again to “tell my story” at an AA meeting, a meeting with a special focus on those with HIV. It’s a rather small meeting, maybe 20 people, and my very very close friend goes there every week, as I do. Of course, he’s HIV-negative, which isn’t the issue at all. The issue for me is that I’m pissed at him but I want to appear calm, wise, and super-well-adjusted. I want to sound, at the end of my story, like I have all my shit together and that I am a sparkling pool of serenity and inner-peace. Which I’m not.

My very very close friend was so crucial to my success in early sobriety, and I usually mention this when I tell my story. But guess what? I don’t want to mention that tonight. Because I’m pissed. Because he’s playing a game and I hate games. And because even in the structure of the game he is breaking his own rules. Not that I’m playing the game. I’m not, I tell you, I’m not!

Isn’t that silly? Don’t you just want to pat me on the head and tell me “awww, that’s a cute DogPoet. Evwything is gonna be alwight. Now go take a nap.”

When I tell my story I usually talk about what’s going on in my life now. You know, the joys and the challenges. I can’t really talk about the challenges tonight, without sounding bitter and vindictive and passive-aggressive. Not that I would ever be any of those. Not me.

Actually, I think that testing positive was a milestone in more ways than one. At the time, my mother was still alive; it was another 7 months before she died. When I was actively using drugs and alcohol I often gave her tearful confessions, trying to elicit as much sympathy as possible in the hopes that revealing all of my problems would somehow explain and excuse the mess I was making of my life. When she was diagnosed with ALS I tried to get sober, mostly on my own. It would be another year before I became demoralized enough to slink into an AA meeting and ask for help.

I look back and wince at the spectacle I made of myself during that year. It was my way of seeking help, I suppose. But I was blind to the effect such confessions had on my mother, until her partner became exasperated and wrote me a very terse e-mail asking me to keep my confessions to myself, because my mother would get so upset that she couldn’t sleep at night. I still remember filling with hot shame as I read that e-mail. “Fuck,” I thought, “I am such a fucking loser.”

But I was also angry. If I couldn’t tell my mother the truth, who could I tell? Although she would live for another two years, I lost my mother in stages. I lost my confidante, and I lost my parent. She became, slowly, someone who needed my care. I lost my mother’s voice when the muscles that controlled her speech stopped working. The dementia wore away her sharp intellect. Her written sentences became shorter, and after many months, nearly incomprehensible. She’d get one word stuck in her head and she’d write it over and over. No amount of questions or gentle prodding could push her from that stuck spot. The woman who was my mother was changed beyond recognition, but she was still my mother, and she still needed us. And even at the end she was, at her core, the same generous, warm, funny soul she had always been. She gave everyone hugs, several a day. If you happened to glance her way she’d raise her arms and you’d lean over her in bed, wrap your own arms delicately around her, and accept her hug.

Man, I miss her.

At six months of sobriety I broke up with my partner of five + years, and I didn’t tell her. At nine months of sobriety I tested positive, and I didn’t tell anyone in my family. For once I could see that sometimes the truth hurts more than it helps. I finally had enough sense to see that I needed other confidants during that time.

And my very very close friend was my confidante, and I miss him very much right now. Oh, I know we’ll be okay. Enough time will pass and this will look in retrospect like the tiny bump in the road that it is.

Funny, I started out writing about him and I ended up writing about her. Who knows what it is; her birthday on December 21st, or this being the first Christmas without her. There’s nothing quite like losing your mother. In many ways the world becomes a colder place, but without her I’ve had to grow up. I’ve had to make my own family, with a rag tag bunch of queers and alcoholics. Like any family they sometimes drive me nuts. But I need them, I love them, I can’t get by without them.

feliz cumpleanos

I’m looking for a way into this and I can’t find it.

Sitting down to write an “important” post is an exercise in futility. And if there’s anything I’ve learned over the last year, it’s that it’s all about the process, baby. Just write, and let the rest take care of itself. So, write. Right.

A year ago I was a little less happy than I am today. I was living in a flat in the Mission with three other guys, three other dogs, two cats, no privacy. One of my roommates, who was also a co-worker, was an emotional black hole who sucked the energy out of every room he ever entered. We didn’t like each other much (he actually got fired yesterday for time card fraud or something and I can’t say I’m torn up over it). Those of you who’ve been stopping by this little campfire for awhile know the rest of my litany of pain and trouble: i.e. early sobriety, HIV diagnosis, my mother’s terminal illness. She was clearly near the end. I was depressed and out of shape. I hadn’t written much in the last six years.

Then I received an email from a friend with a link to his new online diary. Though I had read, off and on, the blogs of two other men for the past couple of years, it was my friend’s email that inspired DogPoet. With Blogger I didn’t need to know HTML or how to build a website. When Blogger asked me for a title, I put two odd words together in the hopes that no one else had a blog called DogPoet. To be honest, I have only one poem about my dog, but I guess that’s enough.

And so it began. Back then I would get two or three hits a day. I remember the first day I got thirty hits! Most of them were people in Saudi Arabia who didn’t know how to spell the word “lesbian” when Googling. Jonno graciously linked me when he saw that I intended to stick with it. I figured out some basic HTML, linked to a few blogs. Maybe four or five. A couple linked back. And it grew from there.

DogPoet, you saved my butt last winter. You were there when my mom died. You went with me to Minneapolis for Christmas and then later for the funeral, and you kept me company. You let me write some stupid shit sometimes, and helped me grow up a little along the way. It was always you, my constant companion, and to you I cried and laughed and threw tantrums.

And it was you, my gentle and perverted reader, who kept me coming back. I couldn’t let two or three days pass without a post. And many of you linked to me (oh, how giddy I got, each and every time) and many of you wrote to me and encouraged me. I met some of you in real life, and I know I’ll meet some more. I get many more visitors than email, though, so if you need a reason to say hello, you’ve got one. Say hello.

During this year I moved into a wonderfully quiet apartment with my own bathroom, a view, and plenty of street parking available. For much less money than I was paying in the Mission. I started working out again, lost some fat, gained some muscle, went out on a few dates. I celebrated two years of sobriety and recently started sponsoring two men in AA, which basically means they call me everyday and I listen for long stretches of time, saying “uh huh”, “right”, and “you’re doing great.” I signed up for a writing class through Berkeley extension that I will finish on Monday. I somewhat gracefully handled an unrequited attraction for my friend Ski. I’ve made some great friends along the way who keep me company, make me laugh, and challenge every single notion I have about being a grown-up. I bought a car. I paid off my credit card debt. I kept my job through four or five rounds of lay-offs. My t-cells are high, my viral load is low. I’ve successfully handled depression, with a lot of help. And damnit, DogPoet, you got me writing again. Yes, I can look back now and I have a year’s worth of posts, some stupid, some not so stupid. It’s helped, more than you’ll ever know. I have this feeling, no, fuck that, it’s faith, that life is just getting better and better.

Today DogPoet turns one. Which is, like, eighty-four in blog years. I hope you’ll stick around.

It’s clear we’re above the East Coast. Sprawling green farms dotted with white farmhouses and honest-to-God red barns slide below us. Everything’s lush; it’s like looking down on the broccoli section at Safeway. Thick emerald tree cover and drizzly wisps of cloud slowly burning away in the rays of the emerging sun. I press my nose against the glass; eyes devouring the architecture of another world.

If it weren’t the closest airport to their house I might have avoided the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (“Everyone still calls it ‘National’”, my transplanted barber told me earlier). I stand with my bag in the D.C. dusk, waiting for my father who is unusually late. I call his partner at home.
“Where are you?” he asks.
“I’m at the airport.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I’m looking at the sign now. It says ‘National Airport’”.
“Hmmm.”
“Actually,” I say, “There’s kind of a new shiny building over there that looks more like an airport.”
“Oh! Oh, you’re at the old terminal.”
“It figures.”

My father is waiting for me in the baggage claim of the new terminal. I see him a hundred yards away; a hesitant figure scanning the crowds for my face. He’s never had the natural ease of other fathers, other men in the world. He’s always seemed stiff, reserved, pleasant. Like there’s a layer between him and emotion. His unease reflects mine; my emotions constrict in his company. When my mother would get angry with me she’d say “You’re just like your father”, knowing it would sting. I am quiet like him, shy like him. But I was her, too…, her passion and her temper and her selfless abandon. Her generosity and her need. I am both of them, but her death has made me value the part of me that is her more than the part that is him. In missing her I seek out what she left in me. When my father told me he wanted us to be closer because she was dying and soon he’d be my “only support”, I ducked my head, resenting his presumption. I didn’t want his support; I’d done well enough without it. I am here under obligation but driven by something else. Three weeks ago he had dreamed about her, dreamed they had been going through papers together. The next morning he had searched for her name on the Internet, and found me instead, found my site. I know my mother is orchestrating forgiveness. She’s pushing us together and because I love her so much I’m letting her push.

He sees me coming; his eyebrows raise and he smiles nervously.

And the moral of this story would be….uh…um…

I blame my mother. But then again, who doesn’t?

It was a Google search on her name that brought family to my little site. I think she’s trying to have a little fun. Touched by an Angel? Uh, more like Bitch-Slapped, thank you.

So. (awkward silence that stretches on for a few hours)

So this happens a couple of weeks before I’m supposed to visit the father figure (which reminds me, if you want to show me all the scary places in D.C. from October 16-20th, let me know) so it’s like all fateful and shit.

I’ve grown accustomed to dishing out the junk in my cortex here, and now, well, there’s an urge to codify all my language and speak in fable-ese. (Secret Agent Fuzzy Kitten aka Pop-n-Lock Deep House Dancer here, you must enter your ID and password to access this campfire. Press fingerprint to screen NOW)

MUST FIGHT….MUST BREAK FREE…MUST SAVE WORLD…ARGH…

In other words, my normal clarity of language may be slow coming. But it’s been helped along by you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, and you. Who needs a thousand points of light? You got me lit like a Christmas tree.