D O G P O E T

Today’s fortune cookie: “You will be advanced socially, without any special effort.”

I’m in my father’s living room, or rather the television room. Truth be told, there are several rooms on the ground floor of their Alexandria townhouse that contain couches and televisions. I’m in the farthest room from the kitchen, which is where his partner Fred is making dinner, and quite honestly I need a break from Fred and Fred’s opinions, which are strong and plenty and are often given in dramatic pronouncements in a voice that could, with minimal provocation, rise more and more shrilly into higher octaves for maximum effect. Fred, who had extolled the racial diversity of their church but says mildly offensive statements about certain neighborhoods. Who sat in the pew nodding sagely during the minister’s sermon, but who later, in the car, said “He’s great eye candy but he needs to find another job.”
“I thought he was okay,” I said.
“Ugh. God help him, he stumbles and fumbles over every sentence and you CANNOT follow a WORD he SAYS.” Fred’s screeching fills the car and for the second time he passes the turn-off and my father says, nearly inaudibly, “Fred, you were supposed to turn back there.” The opinions only strengthen with age, and the voice only gets shriller, such that I’ve begun wondering about his mental faculties. I don’t know why I always forget this about him, only to be reminded within the first ten minutes of our reunions.

I’ve gone for quiet relief into the farthest room, eyes scanning their bookshelves for escape, but I’ve seen all the videos and the shelves only contain travel books of every country they’ve visited over the years since I left for college; places I’ve never been. Above the books is a map of the world littered with push pins indicating every single accomplished destination. Their collection seems like one of Fred’s pronouncements; look at all the places we’ve been. But their external travels take them further from themselves, I tell myself, from the rumblings of their hearts. Yes, you’ve been everywhere, I think, but your insides are dry and fossilized. Fred knows everything already; there are no surprises left in the world for him, and my father is the quiet companion whose silence allows it all to continue, unchecked, unexamined. Or so I’ve come to believe.

“Are you okay?” he asked me last night, after we had returned home following a harrowing two-hour dinner experience in downtown D.C. which involved a forty-five minute car ride with Fred at the wheel. We had circled the same five streets endlessly, Fred convinced a parking meter would open up, unwilling to pay money for a spot in a garage, the tension rising with each turn and each missed stop light, Fred slowing for a woman in a crosswalk but spitting “Bitch” at the windshield as she passed unknowingly before us. He laughed at his joke and turned to me but I looked out the opposite window, biting my tongue till it bled.

“It’s not you,” I later told my father. “I just…I just find that I get tired when I spend a lot of time with Fred.” I’ve never ever said anything like this to him.
My father’s brow creases. “Has he done something?”
I shake my head. “No. He just, well, has a lot of really strong opinions.”
There is a flicker of humor in my father’s eyes. “Fred likes to say things to get a reaction. I’ve just learned to ignore him.”

In their living room I turn on their television and channel surf my way into a painless vacancy. My shoe-less feet curl in upon themselves: I stretch out the cramped arches, my feet sore from walking earlier for several hours through the streets of Georgetown with my father. Fred had stayed home, said he’d been to Georgetown more times than he cared to remember. I had felt such relief at his words.

The hours alone with my father were perfect in their own way; his quiet and mine walking together. He followed me into several stores as I hunted for a decent pair of sneakers. My steel-toed boots had set off the metal detectors at the airport and I wanted to avoid the strip search on my return flight. I settled for a trendy pair of Steve Madden’s, then I pulled him into Urban Outfitters.
“They have an interesting variety of products here,” he said.
I dug through a pile of Adidas t-shirts and turned to find him sitting in a lounge chair, waiting patiently, a middle-aged man surrounded by loud music, loud furniture, loud boys and girls. Later in Banana Republic he brought me over to a sweater display. “This is the only thing I really like in here,” he said, pointing to a black v-neck with white stripes, “but do you think it’s too young for me?”
I laughed at first but then stopped short. I saw him clearly then, a good, hesitant man in strange surroundings. I saw that I had grown bigger than him, in shape and size. I saw that I had been handling him gently, to avoid hurting him, and I saw that I would continue to do so. My heart broke a little and I told him, “No.”

Later when the sales boy at Diesel asked him “Is that a Members Only jacket?” I whirled and glared, sure that the trendoid was trying to pull an insult in sheep’s clothing over my father. I wanted to protect my father, I wanted to spit at the boy but the boy said he keeps seeing them in thrift stores and I watched him carefully, unsure if he was genuinely interested or dissing my Dad. I watched for the joke but then turned away, not wanting to know the answer. We left the store.

Back in their house now I need peace, solitude. I sit in the dark living room, pressing the remote’s UP button over and over. I don’t hear my father enter, only glimpse him from the corner of my eye; his hesitant, apologetic posture registering in me as a burning, cruel affront. Because the resentment is familiar, it finds its way back to me, again and again. What does he want now?

“Is there…” he says in his soft voice, the one I inherited from him, the thankless gift. I should tell him about speaking from the diaphragm. I have to turn down the volume to hear him. “Is there anything else you’d like to talk about?” he asks. Fred is safely distant in the kitchen.

No, I think. I don’t want to talk about that, about my resentment, about the incident. I don’t want to talk about you and me. “Uh,” I say. “um…not really.” I pause as he stands there, waiting for my answer, and I know I should give in, I know we should talk. I offer a smile to cut the edge from my voice. “Well, maybe a couple of things.”

Fugitive

Oh my God I saw your slice of Heaven and really, I’d like to stay there for a little while. Will you commit crimes with me and run away? Oh, yeah, you have a girlfriend. Well, next time maybe.

Won’t someone out there commit crimes with me and run away?

I was pulling out of the Best Buy parking lot yesterday when a car of boys pulled up nearby. The two hotties in the front were checking me out. It was five pm; beer bust time at the nearby Eagle. They were going out, I was going home. This has been my life. I am currently spending too much money on home electronics, DVD’s and searching the Internet for movie posters. Also spending lots of time with women classmates and co-workers. I will soon be in the “gay” Hollywood Square, making you laugh while desperately covering up my sexually neutered status. And failing. I will live vicariously through all your sex lives while pretending not to understand what “punch my kitten” means. I will write closeted “fan mail” to various San Francisco Giants, hoping they might want to “hang out” during this difficult time. Also I will build a shrine to Paul Wellstone in my bedroom and hang roses upside down from the ceiling so that they dry the right way. At the grocery store I will hide the Enquirer in my underwear while buying lots of frozen dinners and making inappropriate remarks to the bagboy who won’t understand English anyway. I’ll channel surf for Law and Order reruns while wearing a flannel bathrobe and fall asleep before eating the vegetable portion.

Unless you become my partner in crime.

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. It’s the first time we’ve seen each other since he read my site, since he unearthed my resentment, since we talked, haltingly, about the memories we’d rather forget.

Several years ago my younger brother and I were at our father’s townhouse in Minneapolis. He and his partner had just returned from a trip to Japan and we were standing in their stairwell admiring a print they had brought home. A watercolor of cherry blossoms or something; along the side were Japanese letters.

“What does that say?” I asked him.
He wrinkled his brow. “I don’t know,” he said.
There was a brief pause.
“‘Kill Whitey!’” my brother said.

We still laugh about that. Or, at least, my brother and I do.

///

Having gay parents means everyone thinks you had an AMAZING childhood and that they’re hip and funny like all your friends and well, um, no.

They’re still my parents, people (or, at least, my Dad is…I don’t know if I can say that about my dead mother…can you say “she’s still my mom?” or is that, like, past tense?) Meaning that they weren’t cool and they had taste in furniture that I thought was funny. Especially my father and his partner. Really, you would expect questionable taste from lesbians, but from the men, too? YES, like, who ARE these people and who told them that a cityscape made entirely out of mirrors and hanging over the white couch is a viable aesthetic decision? (Dad, you said you wouldn’t read this anymore, but if you lied then you can’t blame me for speaking the god-honest TRUTH). And wardrobes from J.C. Penny and American cars and lots of casseroles for dinner. Cool Whip in the fridge, always (I know, I like Cool Whip, too) and no pets because that would mean hair on the furniture and gay RSVP cruises and buying toiletries in bulk and buying groceries from the cheapest store in the neighborhood and FAKE bonsai trees and bathrooms decorated so they look ASIAN (whatever that means) and no, we never went clubbing together but yeah, sometimes we cruise guys together and I still love them.

I spend $3.60 for a coke and a pack of gum at the gift stand in the Minneapolis airport. The coke for the caffeine, the gum to clear the coffee paste from my tongue. I’ve been up since 4 am, hovering uncomfortably on the edge of sleep ever since. The cashier doesn’t acknowledge me. She’s at least 60, blonde and pale like almost everyone here. I wait with my wallet in my hand while she fishes a pack of kleenex from her purse. Her fingers pluck at the corners of one tissue, tugging it away from the pack. She wipes her nose, sniffs, balls the tissue and tosses it out. Then she rings me up. “Thanks”, she says, in that false nasal pleasantness I’ve come to associate with my hometown. I turn away, watch a studly little daddy marshall his wife and kids away from the candy counter. I watch him almost wistfully, force myself to look elsewhere. Exhaustion intensifies my sex drive.

At Gate C4 I’m surrounded by more families. A plain-faced woman with breasts that lay like a broad pillow across her chest examines the food her husband’s brought to her. “The Cinnabun looks good but it’s awfully messy,” she tells him.
“That’s why I brought a fork, dear,” he replies. Their son reaches for the vanilla shake. He’s dressed up in a black button-down shirt and slacks, shiny loafers and a maroon tie. He wears a bright red baseball cap. His father, in a three-piece suit, stands as their rows are called. He pulls on a cowboy hat as his wife struggles to her feet, wiping frosting from the corners of her mouth. I follow from a distance, pull out my driver’s license, hours from my own family.

Miss me?

I didn’t get shot. But let me catch my breath.

Sigh

I’m in a bit of shock and very, very sad…my boss was laid off today; a warm, generous, intelligent, compassionate woman who has quite simply been the best person I have ever worked for. Period. I don’t think the Board of Directors has any idea the amount of work she’s done for this department. I don’t know what we’re going to do without her and really I wonder how long I’m going to stay. Not that I have a lot of options for jobs that will support my writing habit, but you know.

I guess I’m glad I’m going out of town tomorrow, even if the sniper killed someone two miles from my father’s house. I’ll take my chances.

Control: Or, no my name ain’t baby

“I really admire your strength; two years of sobriety, that takes incredible will power,” he says.

But will power is the red herring; sobriety isn’t about will power or control; it’s all about the opposite; the surrender, the release. Two years of will power is doomed from the start; a crack, a hairline fracture will spread; the whole affair will come crashing down.

You don’t build it up, you tear it down, day after day. You strip away your will, you strip away expectation and control. If you don’t you’ll die. You’ll get fucked up again, and you’ll be taken (no control) to the edges of life; jailed, hospitalized, homeless. And it’s either kill yourself quickly or do it slowly, gutlessly.

There’s not much we can control. We can’t control lovers, parents, bosses, presidents, public transportation. We can’t control their approval, their acceptance, their love. We can’t control corporations, traffic, disease. (Manage, maybe, if we’re lucky, but not control). We can’t control editors, publishers, arts councils. We can’t control people with guns or bombs.

We can kill them, sure, but do we wipe them out? What about their friends, their children, their lovers? Don’t we just welcome revenge? I don’t think killing stops killing; I think it begs for more. You can’t stamp it out like a fire; it’s more like water, running, dripping, pooling. It escapes confinement.

All I have are my actions. Naive as I may be, I choose negotiation. I choose olive branches and compromise. I choose who are you and how do we get this to work. If you don’t want that, guess what, I can’t control you.

I started this with a mission, a message. A thesis statement supported by facts and figures. But it’s come out forced, clunky, self-conscious. All I know is to try and learn how to love more. And to strip away everything else. To love and then surrender. To screw it up one day and try harder the next. To look for the spark and sugar in others. To scratch my dog more often.

And yet, in spite of all this it feels okay to take a break from the Love Bomb this week. I don’t know what to tell you except that I’m spread thin and I couldn’t do a target justice; it would sound half-baked. Ultimately though the Love Bomb is not my creation, not really; it’s more than the sum of it’s parts. It’s also all of you who participate; that’s what makes it a bomb. So choose your own; someone in your life, perhaps, that needs to know they’re loved.

I’m off for a few days on Wednesday to D.C. to visit my Dad and his partner, to dodge sniper bullets and to hopefully connect with at least two other bloggers while I’m there. There’s much to be done before I leave; I better get moving.

Dear Mister Latino Daddy:

Finally! How long have I been working out there? It’s about time you fastened your gaze on me. Your sweet smile when asking how many sets left is today’s happy pill, and I do appreciate the boost. Perhaps one day I will be able to do 160 on the seated row instead of 120 but at least it’s more than 100 which is what I was doing. Perhaps you can spot me next time on the incline, I wouldn’t mind looking upside down at you and your chest and the slick gold chain around your neck. No, I wouldn’t wear one but you can certainly pull it off. If that was your boyfriend with you last month buying groceries then we’ll have to talk, perhaps over a Peenya Colada Jamba Juice with two protein boosts that we’ll sip overlooking the Safeway parking lot and the swooping flocks of pigeons. Perhaps Ray the Jamba barista will upgrade you to Power size for free, like he does for me. If you haven’t noticed, the Human Bullet’s super mutant powers are growing stronger, and people can’t help but give me things for free.