Moving

My chest tightens and my stomach lurches when I see empty cardboard boxes with the three inevitable questions on them: whose box is it, what’s in it, and where does it go? And yet, as much as I hate moving, I’ve done it all too often. There were those three apartments in Philadelphia when I was at Penn for grad school. There were two condos in Center City after school, when I was working in King of Prussia. Then there was the townhouse in New Hope, the rental house in Boca Raton, the ranch in Fort Lauderdale near the beach, and the Four Seasons condo. Now there’s another rental house, this time in Atlanta, and I’m contemplating the next step – buying a condo in Atlanta, but snow-birding it with Florida.

And I still open those boxes and pack things into them. What am I thinking, each time, when I willingly pick up and leave? It means packing all the china (three sets) and glassware (137 pieces), not to mention packing the artwork (45 pieces) and having the piano moved. And packing up all the books (657, half hardback, half paperback), plus videotapes, CDs, DVDs, etc.

And when haven’t even gotten into the kitchen, but you get the general idea. I’ve got lots of shit, can’t really bear the thought of standing up and moving again from point A to point B. Why can’t I just sit still, long enough to get settled and breathe in place for more than just five minutes?

Thanksgiving

“I’ll be upstairs for a few minutes. I’d like to rest,” Jeremy said to the group gathered in the living room. Greg had a fire going, and they – Greg, Janet, and the two kids – were playing Pictionary. Janet had announced that dinner would be in an hour. It would give Jeremy enough time to see what he needed to see.

It was a pretty enough house for Denver, hardwood floors and dark walls which seemed to be all the rage. Jeremy had graduated to the guest room whenever he visited from San Francisco. It used to be that Jeremy slept on the pull-out in the basement, when Greg and Janet were in the larger house and Mother and Dad were always present at holidays, which was loads of fun because he’d been with Mark at the time, and they’d slipped into the hot tub and fooled around. But this house – no hot tub, and certainly no Mark. And no parents.

He walked up the stairs slowly, one step at a time; with his arthritis, it’d be disaster if he fell. But when he got to the top, he didn’t turn into the guest room. He crossed the hall, tip-toed to the office door. He looked down the stairs, no one to see, opened the door, and closed it behind him. He took off his shoes and tip-toed over to the closet. Must be in here, no other place. He’d checked all the other closets.

He fanned the closet doors open, and they creaked, but so loud as to attract interest. Yes, what he wanted was hanging on the rack in front of him.

Jeremy recognized the purple terry-cloth bathrobe with the white lace collar. Oh, he’d seen that so many times on Mother, sitting in that chair in her den, watching Fox News or Jeopardy, yelling at the television at something the Democrats did, calling out Jeopardy questions. “What’s the Louvre Museum, Alex?”

And next to it was the lilac blouse the nurses had put on her that day – when Alex had accompanied her grandmother to Boulder for the funeral. Oddly enough, the blouse she wore to Dad’s funeral was the same one the nurses put on her the day she died herself. Exactly one year, to the day, after Dad died. And it had been Jeremy’s birthday.

He felt the clothing. Same soft feel to it, same texture. No indication that the owner was no longer here – was no longer. Jeremy felt warm and comforted by the clothing, his mother’s blouses, the bathrobes, the slacks. Somehow, he felt as though Mother were there, celebrating Thanksgiving with them all.

Easy

First thought from the writer, this’ll be a fun write. I get to write about someone who’s easy. Or something that was really easy to do. Or taking the easy way out when the going gets tough. Like choosing clichés over well-thought-out pearls of wisdom, including: the going gets tough, pearls of wisdom, taking the easy way out.

My whole life is a cliché. So let’s get back to that person who’s so bleepin’ easy. I’d like to tell you about him. Okay, so I divulged he’s an easy guy. And if you live in San Francisco, that person would have to be gay, right? Because all of the easy guys in the City on the Hill are gay, right? Well, you’d be half correct. This guy is so easy that he’s saturated the entire market of Market Street, male and female. They even named a gutter after him. He’s so easy that rabbits look on him with jealousy. He’s so easy that New Orleans has sued him for trademark violations. You get the idea, must I wrack my brain trying to conjure up stupid puns so I can think I’m smart?

Let’s face it, I’m not that smart. Yes, I can spell and I can write with correct grammar. And yes, I can even vary my writing to give that informal, cool, kinda-trendy tone that writers like. And I can write a believable sentence that ends in a proposition, because that’s where it’s at.

But writing about someone who’s easy in San Francisco, the easiest easy town in the easy state of California, in the easy U.S. of A.? Hell, it ain’t easy.

In the clouds

I’d quote Greg in this write, but it’s just too nauseating to put that down on paper.

All the religious mumbo-jumbo, reading from that idiot work of fiction, some book they call “The Bible.” It was translated 4,723 times from the original Hebrew and, somewhere along the way, they reversed the text from leftward to rightward. And when they translated the Bible to the real language of God – English, with an American accent somewhere between Cleveland and Detroit, but not too Midwestern because those people are kind of dim in a goody-goody sort of way – they gave us a dose of reality, the hard way.

Alternative reality, the nauseating way. Technicolor-yawn-into-porcelain variety.

So here was Greg, reading something from the Book of John (I guess that’s one of the Gospels, isn’t it) as our mother lay dying in the nursing home. Greg’s always been something of a religious fanatic, ever since he became a Presbyterian after marrying Millicent the Dental Hygienist. Poor Mother, raised a traditional Episcopalian to believe that religion was something you didn’t wear on your sleeve, especially during cocktail hour. Martinis and cheese dip, yes – that good ole’ time religion, no. Here she was, unable to communicate, breathing about three times per minute, and having this hocus-pocus forced on her.

I’d say something to get the idiot to stop this, but I long ago gave up on talking to Greg. You see, Greg doesn’t believe in the resurrection. He knows – and no, I don’t just mean he believes intensely. He really does know. He’s got proof on file that God is a really old white guy with a long gray beard who wears white robes and has a really bright halo around his head. And that his son Jesus got resurrected on the third day after being crucified.

Of course, "proof on file" has as much meaning here as it does for a porn producer and all those "proof on file" ages for actors sporting nothing more than peach fuzz above their upper lip.

My mother just breathed her last, so I’m bringing this one in for a landing so I can go have a good cry. But first, a question. If Jesus saw his shadow when he rolled away the stone and came out of that cave, did spring come early to the Holy Land that year?

Wind

“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

Sally always cried when Rhett Butler walked out into the fog. Something about his exit just released the floodgates, especially that rainy November evening. It’d been cold in Shadyside since Wednesday, but that was typical for this time of year in Pittsburgh. Sally could hear cars driving by the building on Forbes Avenue. So depressing, not even seven in the evening, and pitch black outside.

Thank goodness for the terrycloth pink robe her mother had gotten for her last birthday. She’d curled up with it and a cup of jasmine tea before slipping the tape into the VCR. She’d resisted all her geek friends cajoling her into getting a DVD player. No, she told them, she was perfectly happy with a VCR.

After all, she’d spent her hard-earned money from the library on all those tapes. Far as she knew, she was the only person in Western Pennsylvania who had every movie that had won the Best Picture Academy Award, up to and including the most recent one. Though she grimaced when she had to buy “Gandhi” to make her set complete. No one would remember that one, not even a year later. That’s what her mother had said, too – no one would remember “Gandhi” any more than anyone would remember that lousy, stinking excuse of a father who walked out all those years ago. Poor Mama, still stuck on Daddy’s deserting them.

“After all, tomorrow is another day.”

Sally always felt a glimmer of hope when Scarlett uttered the last line. There was this tone of hope in the “after all” part of it. Sally had tried to reproduce it when she was reciting movie lines in the shower. But she could never get the same tone of sad hopefulness that Vivien Leigh conjured up. But Sally felt a little lift. Maybe Rhett would come back to Scarlett in the end.

Socks

The time machine kicked up when Aaron turned the nob to 1535. Smoke poured out from the bottom, the machine lurched up, down, left, right, forward, and backward, and Aaron felt vibrations muddle his torso, legs, arms, and scalp. And then he was off in a bright white light. As always, he felt the silent surrender into the black vortex, following the white light.

He felt the usual thud on landing. Dust rose up into his face and he coughed. He immediately felt the cold, damp air – and when the dust settled, he looked around. Clear weather, but cool and damp. Brownish-gray fields everywhere, a forest of trees in the distance, and a castle of brown stone and turrets at the foot of the forest, from which he heard music coming. Atonal, soprano, sounded like lutes. Boring shit, he despised that Medieval music. Give Aaron a Beethoven symphony any day!

Yes, he had made it. He was in the court of King Henry VIII. Or was he?

He stepped out of the time machine and looked down at himself. Not too bad – as usual, the machine had transformed his clothing to the suitable wear of the day. A green and white smock over a kilt of tartan plaid. He was wearing white stockings and black slippers – oh, how he hated the stockings. He felt like a girl!

That reminded Aaron of his last conquest. Jennifer had been riding him like a horse while Eric sat on his face, wearing a pair of socks. Ah, how he loved switch hitting. But enough of fantasy, back to the Tudors –

“Sir, who goes there?”

“It is I, Aaron Aardvark of San Francisco.”

“I know no Aardvarks or Franciscans. Protestant or Catholic?”

“Jewish.”

“Ah, the chosen people. Are you an emissary from Palestine?”

“No,” Aaron said, eyeing the time machine from behind the tree, a hundred feet away. “I’m a bisexual from California.”

“A sorcerer, clearly we must take you to the tower.”

Aaron made a dash for the time machine, but fifteen feet away, he tripped on his slippers and fell into the marsh. The man pinned him to the ground instantly. Shit, Aaron thought – why couldn’t he have been closer to the machine when he needed it?

The pressure

Life had been going to shit ever since Mom died. And it’d been only two months. Why, everything was going against Jeremy since September. He even remembered the moment the phone rang. He’d been having lunch with his damned sister on her damned birthday, and the damned nursing home called his sister’s damned cellphone to tell her our mother had breathed her last. Oh, well, I said – I’m relieved after all these years of suffering, etc. etc. she had gone through so much etc. etc. while underneath I was etc. etc.

And then it started to rain. And it didn’t stop raining for two solid weeks. And during those two weeks, when I walked the dog, he got the floors totally dirty. I mean, I couldn’t keep my beautiful hardwood floors with the expensive oriental rugs clean, now how shitty is that? And when I came back from the funeral where we buried Mom’s ashes next to Dad’s (he died last year – exactly one shitty year to the shitty day before she did) the damned pet-sitter had allowed the damned dog to jump up onto my damned sofa and get it damned dirty. I nearly popped a blood vessel.

But that would’ve gotten me into the same situation that Mom got in. Her blood pressure rose and rose and rose until five years ago she had that cerebral hemorrhage. But the damned doctors at the damned hospital had guilted my father into allowing the damned surgery to proceed that saved Mom’s life – though the damned doctors didn’t tell my father what the damned consequences of the damned surgery would be: total disability for the rest of her life. And hundreds of thousands of damned dollars into the pockets of the medical establishment. All those dollars coming out of my parents’ life savings. You know what I’m implying, don’t you?

We were screwed. And after all these years of suffering, it was over. I’m relieved. Now if only this damned rain would stop and I could get that damned sofa clean.

Paris

Jeremy rolled his eyes at the football players running down the field, carrying the French flag. What fickle hypocrisy! It’d hadn’t been that long ago, not really, since those same pasty-white “you’re either with us or ain’ us” Republicans gave freedom kisses to their girlfriends and at freedom fries at McDonald’s. But the terrorists plant some bombs in the City of Lights, and all of a sudden, France is back to being our greatest ally.

In a perfect world, France would thumb its nose at the United States. But Jeremy knew it wasn’t perfect, that France needed the American muscle (in other words, bombs and money) to fight back.

Jeremy rolled his eyes again, thinking about it that quiet evening, alone in his Shadyside apartment overlooking the Buicks and Fords and Dodges driving down Ellsworth Avenue in the rain. How he wished he were still living in Manhattan rather than in sleepy old Pittsburgh. Sure, he might be safe from the Isis attacks, but New York was worth the risk of twenty Isis attacks. Jeremy sighed and went back to his bowl of jelly beans.

He had a fondness for jelly beans, the little ones, he meant. Oh, what flavors – his favorite were the fruity ones, tangerine, cherry, lemon, lime, red hot cinnamon, peach, white coconut, watermelon, and bubble gum. Jeremy had a technique for eating them. He’d grab a handful, then pick the beans of a single flavor (let’s start with all the cherries) and work his way from darkest color to lightest color. But he always saved the bubble gums for last – his favorite.

And when he got bored with this technique – he called it the round robin – he’d just grab a small handful and put the whole thing in his mouth. The amalgam of all flavors was too scrumptious to resist – until he reached the point of no return.

He’d reached the point of no return on quite a number of occasions, that point when his stomach told him, “you’ve eaten to many of these. Another bean, and I’m just going to toss them all out at you.” He remembered that time, flying home from Kansas City, Kansas, eating a ton of jelly jeans, then having a diarrhea attack when his mother picked him up from the airport, running into an Arby’s and heading straight for the toilet.

As for Paris, he had a fondness for it, too. But nothing like jelly beans.

Tree bark

Albert snatched the rake up from the back yard, laying against a cord of firewood next to the leaf blower. That damned leaf blower, the engine wouldn’t start up even with a hundred cranks. And if it did, it wasn’t strong enough to blow leaves off the grass. Sure, it could get leaves off the driveway, but the grass, totally incapable.

Like that quack dermatologist who didn’t find the misshapen mole in the middle of Albert’s back. But he’d fight it, been fighting it, and knew he’d be fighting it awhile.

He walked up to the front yard. Boy, did it feel good to get outside after all those months cooped up in the house, wearing grooves in the rug from the bed to the bathroom toilet. He could smell the crispy leaves of fall, feel the cool air rush down from the branches onto the grass, hear the rustling of the branches in the fading wind. Ah, fall – how he’d missed it.

Thirteen years since he’d had a real fall. San Francisco didn’t really have a fall, just a dreary winter and a chilly summer. But those cool fall days, walks on city sidewalks hearing the crunching of leaves under penny loafers – those were not for California or Florida. They were for Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and even Georgia – yes, Atlanta had crunchy leaves, too.

Albert began raking and started to feel the cardio work-out take its effect. But something was different this time. He felt a squeezing whoosh in his esophagus, a grasping tightness in his chest. Albert began to wheeze and then cough. Covering his mouth, he felt something liquid and salty come out with a cough and, looking down, saw the crimson red of his own blood.

Albert sat on the porch steps, put his head down, and cried.

Unmanageable

The 3-year old boy cried by the side of the street. Thirty, forty, perhaps fifty neighbors stood on the grass, watching the tow truck pull the light blue 1964 Bel Air wagon out of the driveway, where it'd crashed into the stone wall. The boy sobbed and moaned. When Daddy pulled him out of the driver's seat, he'd fallen onto the pebbled driveway as the car went by him, careening down the hill. Daddy was painting the garage and when the boy had released the brake, he let out an “Oh, shit!” heard all the way from McCall Road down to Shakespeare Court. The little boy cried because the burns from the pebbles hurt his knees and he was bleeding.

Daddy stood with his head in his hands, complaining about how much it would cost to have the Bel Air towed to the Chevrolet repair shop. Where was Mommy? The boy wanted his mother, but she was doing something with his brothers and sisters. But all the kids and all the adults in the neighborhood stood by, gawking at them. There was Lynn McCarthy with her long red hair, Dusty Anderson with her dark brown ponytails, and even Ernie Whiting had wandered over from Springer Road.

Mrs. O’Malley picked the little boy up. "Come with me, Timmy Lane. I'll wash you up and put a bandage on that knee. Everything's going to be okay –“

“What has that boy done now?” Timmy heard his mother say, her voice a crescendo from one word to the next. “Sally, give me that boy. You’re in big trouble, Timmy. No ice cream for you for six months. Come with me.”

Pure bliss

Dustin checked around the office one last time. Keys, cellphone, laptop, notebook, water bottle, coffee mug, reading glasses, jacket – check, all there. He was always forgetting something and cursing himself somewhere on the way home, usually when stuck in gridlock on the Santa Monica Freeway.

Finally convinced that he had everything, he headed to the kitchen to fill his water bottle for the long drive to Manhattan Beach. As always, he felt the burning sensation when the bottle was half full. Pavlov’s dog, of course. He began stepping in place, trying to stave off the urge. Ah, full! He headed to the rest room and made it ... in the nick of time. A minute later, he’d saddled his backpack onto his back and pushed the down button for the elevator.

The doors opened, he got in – silence, utter silence. Oh, what joy after the long day of ringing phones, questions from junior architects, complaints from the managing partner, and the inevitable prairie dogging, “Hey Dustin, come over here, question for you.” He breathed in the silence, long and slow breaths in through the nose and out through the mouth. It felt good. And his sinuses were clear, too. He could feel his blood pressure dropping, his heart rate slowing. Ah, pure bliss.

The elevator stopped on 11. In came a tall woman with long legs, platinum blonde hair to her waist, a beige, skin-tight dress and matching high heels, fire engine red lipstick, blue eyes with dark, dark eyelashes that gave her a Barbie look. Her neck was bent to the right with a Smartphone stuck between her ear and her shoulder while she rummaged through a Louis Vuitton purse. The elevator doors closed.

“We’re meeting at Johnny’s Café on Sunset. Six o’clock. But first let me tell you about Cameron and Melody. They had a fight last night about the guy with the nose ring at Starbuck’s. Barely talking, so keep them on opposite ends of the table. You never know how long –“

The air suffocated Dustin in the elevator. He could feel his brain pushing against his skull – oh, what a headache – and had a hard time breathing. Only ten floors to go ... he would make it, and then be free ...

“And don’t tell anyone I mentioned this, but she has a yeast infection. Been seeing the doctor since last week about it. And Cameron doesn’t know. I mean, can you imagine? Her own daughter, and she doesn’t –“

Dustin felt his head explode. “Hey, lady,” he said with a flat tone, loud enough to cut through the gossip. Times like this, he sounded like a Republican – a good thing, in the moment.

“You think I enjoy listening to your crap in the elevator? Can the phone, or I will.”

She looked at him with the whites of her eyes for one second. “—and Darla’s going in for collagen injections and a breast lift. Her boyfriend Samuel’s a tit man, so she’s doing it for him of course. And ...”

The droning continued right out the elevator doors. Dustin followed her out to the parking lot. There was one, special item he always kept in his backpack. Calm returned to his head, knowing he’d hurt her.

Annoying

Ever get one of Jane’s prompts that is perfectly suited to the day at hand? I’m spending the weekend with one of the most annoying, persnickety people I’ve ever known. How I got roped into spending a weekend at Asheville, North Carolina with Arnold Schmaetzle, I don’t know.

No, I do know. I invited him. It was one of those moments where I forgot how he complained about the air in the hotel room being too cold (unless it was too warm), the color of the walls being too mauve (just what is mauve, anyway), and the food at the restaurant too stale (except when it was too soggy). And that doesn’t even include comments on my appearance – Walter, what’s with the nose hairs? Walter, what’s the little red spot on your forehead? Walter, you’re not wearing that shirt with those jeans? And Walter, don’t you think you should shower before we go out to eat?

Calgon, take me away. Lying here in the bed, with Arnold beside me, I just wonder how I ever made it through those fifteen years before we split up. When was it – oh, yes, twelve years ago. Hard to imagine, living with Arnold Schmaetzle. At least he didn’t cheat or drink – unlike Marshall, who made a career out of bedding every available man in Atlanta, and guzzling down bottle of vodka after bottle of vodka.

“Walter, where’s the toothpaste? Why’d you get such crappy toothpaste?”

Wet

Jeremy looked down at the toilet after he finished. He really needed to clean it before Robin came to take care of the dog. There were those two nasty little poop specks just on the north side of the drain, after all. Jeremy hiccoughed. The Dubonnet and Gin had taken their effect.

He simply adored the Queen. Jeremy made a special visit to the nursing home on the ninth of September, the day Elizabeth surpassed Victoria’s reign. He knew his mother would be pleased. And why not? They shared a name. Mom had been pleased, so pleased that she expired herself fifteen days later. Yes, Jeremy had cried flowing tears that day, but mixed with a light dose of relief, after so many years of sickness. He treated himself to another Dubonnet and Gin.

Jeremy looked in the mirror. He wished the dermatology medication would wear off. He was getting on, after all, and fifty-two was an overripe age to be single in the gay world. But he certainly couldn’t go out to the bars now, looking like the Joker.

Give it a few weeks, old boy, he told himself – but kicked himself nonetheless. Two weeks after moving back to New York, and this had to happen. He couldn’t even go to the gym, he looked so horrible. What would all the Chelsea Bottoms say?

He flushed the toilet, and the specks disappeared. Robin wouldn’t be grossed out.

A glimpse

Chet and Leslie, together forever. Leslie saw it on their tombstones: Chet Anderson 1978-2049, Leslie Hope 1976-2081, together forever. Hey, let’s be honest, who wouldn’t want to live to be 105? And to be a grieving widow for thirty-two years? Leslie could just imagine all his black widow’s weed outfits. He got a hard-on over it, don’t you know.

He truly loved Chet, the cheat. Hell, he couldn’t keep his pants zipped to save his life. The cheat. Leslie sniggered at the case of gonorrhea back in ’06 that Chet tried to hide from him – please, he knew about it before Chet did. And then came the bad case of anal warts in ’09. Stiff upper lip and all that, Chet sat him own on the den’s settee and told him.

“We’ll start using condoms,” Leslie replied in as even a voice as he could muster.

Seriously, though, Leslie had gotten used to the idea of Chet cheating. That’s why the image of Chet dying earlier and leaving him a young, grieving widow (okay, so he’d be 73, isn’t that young?) had immaculate appeal to him. But immaculate appeal wasn’t exactly like the immaculate conception, was it? No, except they both had a little God in them.

So when he got Chet pulled up by the jeans from the post on Barbary Lane, he laughed to himself. Only 34 more years until he could play the grieving widow.

Dancing on the rooftop

Leslie put on his Facebook t-shirt, his Berkeley sweatshirt, finally his Abercrombie windbreaker. It was July in San Francisco, after all. He needed all the layers he could add to get through the fog, wind, and drizzle. And then he headed over to Chet’s place to hang out for the afternoon. It’d be a nice surprise, and he’d even packed a stash of marijuana in his backpack. Chet was good for a pot pipe.

He trudged his 250 pounds of Golds Gym muscsle up the hill to Barbary Lane and hung a right. The house was totally run down, rotted out cedar siding, faded window panes, peeling paint. But Chet said it suited him just fine, that’s how he liked it. He was faux artistique, Leslie told others about his boyfriend – Chet fancied himself an artist of the world. In reality, Leslie thought he was merely a competent painter, destined to be an elementary school art teacher, but only if elementary schools still taught art.

He opened the door with his key and walked in. No sign of Chet. But Leslie saw his banana-seated bike resting against the wall, so Chet was definitely there. Maybe sleeping in the bedroom – but no one lying on the mattress on the floor, nor was he in the bathroom. Must be up on the balcony. Too cold to be up there, Leslie thought as he double-stepped his way up to the top and opened the door.

“Oh, my God!” Leslie shouted across the deck to the two partly naked bodies connected in the middle, doggy style, up against the raised ledge. He saw Chet’s pimply ass, his jeans down by his ankles. The other guy faced the other direction from Chet. He had a shape reminding Leslie of the grinch who stole Christmas, had a sickle tattoo on his shoulder and thinning hair down to his shoulders.

“Jesus, Leslie, this isn’t what it looks like!” Chet said. “I’m … I’m helping my friend here with his hemorrhoids.”

“Oh, really, Chet? Well, let’s see if I can help.” So he went over to them and tossed both of them off the balcony. The hemorrhoidal friend lay on the ground forty feet below, his head askew from the body. And Chet’s jeans got caught on a second-floor post. He hung upside down by his jeans, screaming for help like a hyena.

Leslie did a little mambo dance. That’ll teach Chet to cheat.

The hills beyond San Francisco

“You need to adjust yourself to the idea,” Mac said. “You have no choice.”

Billy and Mac stood on the rooftop terrace of Sylvester’s house – yes, that Sylvester – with its vista of San Francisco, all the way to the Berkeley hills. The setting western sun reflected tiny star-like specks off hundreds of windows from houses in the hills.

“Of course I have a choice. It’s my apartment. I could ask you to leave.”

“You wouldn’t do that. It’s my place, too. I redecorated it, I picked all the furniture.”

“And just who paid for it?” Billy said. And then he paused, looking across the city toward the golden hills. “This isn’t about the apartment. It’s about going back into the industry. You haven’t done a movie since before we got together.”

“I need to do this. First of all, I need the money. And second, I love the excitement of it.”

“Can’t understand why. It’s not like I haven’t provided for you all these years.”

“That’s it exactly. I need to earn my own money. I can’t live on your charity forever.”

“Charity? Who said it was charity?”

“And that’s the other thing. I’m not a kept woman.”

“Can’t you think of another way to earn money? You’re a smart man, Billy.”

“No, this is what I do. I signed a contract already. We start shooting in a week.”

“Tell me this, I have to know. Are you a top or a bottom in it?”

The sun passed behind some fog, and the golden reflections in the Berkeley hills disappeared.

White

Pittsburgh turned out to be rather a lonely town for Jeremy. He sighed, looking out the window of his Shadyside apartment onto Ellsworth Avenue. Dreary as it always was, this early November day – and would remain so, until sometime in the middle of April. The weather would tease them in early April with a few crisp, cool days where the sun shone on brown-green grass, tempting them with hints of spring. But then it’d cloud over and be dreary until Mother’s Day.

Jeremy hadn’t thought about the pool of available men. When he lived in Manhattan, someone was always available if he woke up one morning, in the mood – morning, afternoon, evening, late at night. You named it, someone would come over and take care of business. But here in Pittsburgh, he actually had to work at it. Men didn’t just come over to play around. They went out for a drink first – not coffee, after all, since Pittsburgh wasn’t Seattle.

Jeremy sighed again. He didn’t feel like going out to Woody’s or Pegasus in the hopes of meeting some steelworker from Ambridge. So he put on his hooded jacket (it was raining, but of course) and headed to Liberty Avenue. And once inside the store, he asked the rail-thin, purple-haired, nose-ringed twinkish attendant where he could find the toys. Right over there, he said, dipping his hips to the right and pursing his lips.

He looked at the various models. Which one would work best for him? When in New York, he usually went after the Italian boys from New Jersey. But there were no New Jersey Italian boys in this store’s collection. There were the Ryan White, Jeff Stryker, Zeb Atlas models – and then Jeremy saw it. Raymond Dragon, his favorite New York escort. Well, he wasn’t really an escort, but hey – he’d been over to Jeremy’s apartment half a dozen times over the years.

So he bought the Raymond Dragon model, took it home, lay down on his bed, put a DVD in the machine, and got his fill of Ray. When he was done, he looked out the window, dreary as ever. And then he got sleepy and ended up dreaming about walking down Fifth Avenue on a cool, crisp, and sunny November day.

Where I live

No question plagued Jeremy more than this one, where do I live? For years, whenever he had to make a choice, he just couldn’t do it. He’d freeze up, make a random choice, regret it, and invariably, he’d change his mind.

These days, with a stiff lower back, a growing paunch in his stomach, and eyes that couldn’t read menus less than two feet away, he was trying to decide – do I move to Pittsburgh to be closer to my family, or do I stay here in New York with my lovely Central Park condo and my friends with benefits?

Jeremy suffered from dry mouth and went to the bathroom all the time. He woke up in the middle of the night, nauseated and his heart racing. He snapped at that pretty Starbucks waitress when she didn’t give him his mocha latte in less than five minutes. And he kept dropping things at home, like the container of dog food that went flying all over the kitchen floor. Chestnut went nuts over all the nuggets.

So Jeremy did what he thought best. He tossed a coin and resolved to make the decision that way. Pittsburgh won. But then he thought, perhaps it should be two out of three. Pittsburgh again. No, three out of five. This time it was New York. Ah, yes – but his family would be so disappointed. Better make it eleven out of twenty-one. Pittsburgh won again.

Okay, enough, Jeremy said aloud – several times. Pittsburgh won the coin toss. His relatives would be relieved, finally Jeremy made a decision and stuck with it. But just as he was packing his books and his condoms, he started to think – do I really want to move?

If this had been the Gore-Bush election of 2000, Jeremy would’ve been Florida.

Cold and hard

Ashley dabbed gel at his blonde hair. That damned cowlick, he thought. Oh, well. He was already 25 minutes late for his date. A date! He thought. Finally, after all these years. He’d finally met the man of his dreams, the perfect partner for all time, and a man whose destiny intersected with his.

A man named Rhett, with jet-black hair, a thin moustache, and sexy loins.

What could be more perfect? Ever since he first encountered Margaret Mitchell’s magnum opus, he’d longed for a boyfriend named Rhett, Brent, Stuart, Will, Alex, or Gerald. But not Pork or Uncle Peter, he was from Clayton County, Georgia after all – though he wouldn’t have minded a Big Sam or two in a pinch. And here he was – not one of the minor characters, but the big enchilada himself. And this one even came from Charleston.

Ashley made it to the Atlanta Starbucks and found Rhett on his cellphone to some girl named Scarlett. No, he was kidding – Ashley had no idea. But Rhett hung up after just a short time and said, “Where are my manners.” What a gentleman, Ashley replied. And they made smalltalk, all the while Ashley stared down his open shirt at the bronzed, hairy chest and up at the sharp, white teeth – sharp yes, but also even and in keeping with the crisp muscles in his jawline. Boy, did Ashley frankly give a damn.

And then the phone rang again. A co-worker from the bank, Rhett said. Ashley nodded and lip-synced, don’t worry – I’ll get a beverage. And then he looked at the counter, long line of gray-clothed millenials staring into their smart phones. Oh, well – Ashley was thirsty.

So after a while he got his ice water (hey, it was free – Ashley had no cash and his mother had cut off his credit cards) and sat back down. Yadda, yadda, yadda – so said Rhett on the phone for about fifteen more minutes – yadda, yadda, yadda. Ashley grew stir-crazy. What was this, he thought, a date or an appointment with the town’s busiest doctor? But ... he kept his cool.

Click. Finally, after fifteen minutes of Ashley’s waiting, looking at the beams in the ceiling, feigning interest in the trendy coffee mugs that Starbucks was pimping out, Rhett said his goodbyes. But no ... more conversation from the other end. Another five minutes passed, and then he hung up the phone.

“Sorry,” Rhett said. “That was kind of rude of me. I hope you didn’t mind.”

Ashley thought about it. He thought about what he was about to say, and wondered how Rhett would react. But he cared less about how this jet-black-haired, thin-moustached Rhett Butler look-alike responded than he did about being honest.

“As a matter of fact,” Ashley said with as calm and friendly a voice as he could muster, “I do mind.”

Rhett’s face froze in place, cold and hard. “I’m not feeling like dinner after all.”

One block away

It was a cold, gusty afternoon of grays and browns that greeted Dorothy Marshall as she stepped down onto the Forbes Avenue sidewalk. Two small steps, but even with her cane and sturdy shoes, Dorothy took steady, slow steps, one foot at a time. At 80 she couldn’t afford to break a hip. Her last visit to Magee Hospital when she’d broken her ankle last year had lasted a week – no picnic indeed, even with all the old doctors and nurses who remembered her from all those years she worked as Head Nurse in the maternity ward.

But she could see life had changed. Nowadays, people had VCRs and Walkmans, devices Dorothy couldn’t imagine learning how to use. She still used the antenna on her black-and-white television to get Channel 2, 4, and 11 so she could pick between Walter Cronkite, Peter Jennings, and John Chancellor.

She walked down the sidewalk on Forbes Avenue. Just ahead a ways was Carnegie Mellon, where Kay’s husband taught architecture, and across the street was the Synogogue, where Ida worshiped. Dorothy wished she still went to church, but she lost all interest after Kay and Ida died.

“’Xcuse me, Ma’am,” a middle-aged woman of olive skin and a smiling mouth full of teeth – how many, Dorothy had no idea – said. “Would you like to sign our petition to save the Soldiers and Sailors Hall from the wrecking ball? My name is Dorothy Marshall Jones –“

Dorothy’s mouth dropped open. “I beg your pardon, what did you say your name was?”

“Dorothy Marshall Jones, and I work for –“

“That’s a coincidence, my name is Dorothy Marshall,” she said and laughed.

“Just like that nurse in the maternity ward,” the younger woman said. “My mama liked her so much, she named me after her. Dorothy Marshall Jones. Well, it was Peabody but I got married and now it’s Jones.”

Dorothy put her head back and laughed, harder than she could ever remember – probably all the way back to seeing “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” back in ’63. “You born at Magee Women’s Hospital?”

“That’s the one. Why – you must be that nurse. Tell me what my mama was like …”

“Honey, I delivered five to ten babies every day for forty years. No way can I remember a Mrs. Peabody.”

All around me

I woke up this morning and looked at my nails. They badly needed trimming, but I didn’t feel like doing it. I wanted today to be a relaxing, stress-free day.

The tenant called me just before I was to walk the dog. The air conditioning handler above her Manolo shoe collection burst and water ruined everything.

I woke up ninety minutes earlier with a stuffed-up nose that made me feel like a giraffe had wandered up there overnight.

I went to work and found out our customers had filed twelve defects against the product overnight, nine of them critical, and each customer demanding immediate action.

My landlord wants to raise my rent two hundred fifty dollars per month. Increased property values, you see. My tenant wants me to lower the rent by one hundred fifty per month. Decreased property values, you see.

Half my face is covered in a rash owing to a dermatological treatment for pre-cancer lesions. It’s a one month treatment plan. So far, only eight days have passed.

On the way home from the office, I hit a traffic jam that lasted four miles. And then a Chevy Suburban with a cellphone-talking teenager behind the wheel slammed into my rear bumper. I’d just made the last payment on the car last month.

Today in the mail, I got my annual tax bill from Florida. Taxes rose $1,500 because I lost my homestead exemption.

Just before friends came over for a long-scheduled dinner, my tenant called with bad news that the air handlers had rusted out and would have to be replaced. Dinner went well, but the tenant called me twice again to give me a minute-by-minute account of it all.

My boyfriend’s ex is coming to visit and staying with him in his one-bedroom condo for about a week or so.

Donald Trump is still at the top of the Republican polls, I just read online. And Paul Ryan is issuing ultimatums at President Obama.

And did I mention that I lost my favorite water bottle at work today?

When we return

Just how fast did she need to zip the suitcase, when it would seem like then continuous hum of a mezzo soprano, she asked herself? It seemed to Georgianna that, no matter how quickly she zipped it, she could hear the discrete ticks of high-pitched sound, perhaps twenty per second, perhaps a hundred. Who knew? But at no time, did the zip take on the note of a smooth, mid-range soprano holding a note for three seconds.

Ah, to hold onto anything for three seconds – or for a lifetime. The last of the suitcases packed, the garment bag already in the car, her toiletries case resting on the back seat of the Hudson, all was ready to go. But try as Georgianna tried, her feet resisted the push toward the staircase, the living room, the front entrance, the doorway, the sidewalk, and the slight hop into the car.

“Mama, Mama,” little Allen said, when she finally made her way to the bottom of the stairs – Allen, so wide-eyed, such a soft, easily damaged, mouth; so tender and kind, not an evil thought in the seven-year-old mind, a blank slate really – his voice bold on the first syllable, trying to convey courage, but falling on the second syllable, surrendering to sad hopelessness. Little Allen held up a wooden carving that Georgianna recognized as a fleur de lys – a tribute to Grandma, who’d worn one on a necklace right up to her dying moment. “For you, I made it ‘specially for you, Mama!”

“Sweetheart, no one but my best baby could do it as nicely. I shall treasure it all the weeks I’m away. Even when I return, I’ll treasure it every day. Just like I treasure you, baby ... you’re Mama’s own sweet angel.”

“Georgianna,” she heard from the front yard. It was Harold. “Sweetheart, we have to be going. Your appointment is at noon and check-in at one. We don’t want to keep the doctor waiting.”

But

I love creative writing, but it involves so much work every day. I like to work every day, or I’d rather read a good book written by a repressed Southern novelist. I love the South, and I’ve been known to tolerate the racial attitudes that lurk beneath every Southerner’s bless your heart and how nice. Common courtesy is so refreshing these days, like a sock between the eyes by a gum-chewing Brad Pitt – James Dean wannabe. Those rebels with a cause arouse me ... as if I ever needed any help. I should tell you that I’m over forty now, as though it really matters to anyone. None of the guys really pay me any attention anymore, although this cellphone junkie with a twitch in his left eye and breath that smells like cucumbers and peanut brittle looks me in the eye way too often. To be honest, he bothers me with all this attention, because I have other things on my mind most of the time. I’m thinking about my next project, when I might sit down and write the great American novel. But I just can’t put any ideas down on paper, in spite of the fact that I love creative writing.

Cocktail hour

After dressing in Lucky Brand jeans and a Tommy Bahama floral print shirt (he put on his grandmother’s diamond engagement ring for effect), Robert laid out the hors d’oeuvres. Green olives, rice crackers, red grapes, a nice gouda, and roasted red pepper hummus. Can’t forget the cocktail linen napkins and the appetizer plates from Pottery Barn, he thought. And the cocktails, he’d stopped at Tower Liquor to pick up the Grey Goose, Tanqueray, Johnny Walker Black Label, and bottles of red and white just to round it out. Of course, he’d gotten the mixers. Now who’d forget the mixers?

He heard the knock on the door just as he finished setting up the hors d’oeuvres. William stood there, just as he’d expected. Inside his head, Robert let out a little gasp. Levis torn at the knees, black boots with thick metal spurs, a tank top that had Pitcher spelled across the nipples, and a silver nose ring. Robert notice matted armpit hair and a flesh-colored mole under it, the kind that looked like a spider sac before all the little babies were born.

“Hey Robert,” Williams said, walking right into the apartment and grabbing him by the crotch. “Nice package, know what we’re doing tonight.”

Robert groaned inside his head. “Why don’t you come in, we’ll have a drink before dinner. I’m preparing red snapper and asparagus.”

William winked, laughed, and looked toward the bedroom door. “I’ve got other ideas in mind. Let’s get comfortable.” And with that, William lifted his arms and took off his shirt.

Woah, Robert said to himself -- but now was the time to kick William out. And yet ...

“Hot chest,” he said. “I guess cocktails can wait.”