Heads up

I know, know for sure, I’m going to alienate some friends, family, maybe even a paramour or two with this blog.

But, HELLO!!? Can we please eat with our heads up? (more…)

Sarasota: nearly seventh heaven

Who knows, really, what that phrase means anyway? But whatever it is, I think I’m entering it.

Yup. Today is the first day of my seventh year back here in Sarasota — and also the beginning of my seventh year of being in business for myself.

When I left Boston six years ago, I really didn’t have any idea what was ahead for me. I just knew that the city I’d loved — and the man I’d loved in it — had kind of beat the stuffing out of my heart. It was time to leave. With no expectations beyond surviving and carving out a little life for me and my cats, I arrived in Sarasota at the height of humidity and with the skies fraught with the maelstrom that would be Charley.

I slept on the floor that night; furniture not yet arrived from Boston (and wouldn’t show up for another two weeks). Einstein and Coco weary from their 30-something hour sojourn.

I bitch a lot about Sarasota — my hometown, really, and that of my family — but I’ve grown to love it, warts and winds and wackadoodles, all.

I still haven’t reconciled myself to the superficiality of what passes for relationships in this town, though; — god how I’d love to have a real conversation with someone that didn’t become something regretted or ignored or discounted later. Every now and then someone speaks something really real — but then they quickly withdraw and it — whatever that real thing was — is never mentioned again. And that continues to trouble me. Everyone in this town keeps everyone else at a considerable arm’s length. People dance around their emotions here. In my experience, nobody really says what they really think. It’s hard to get to the real person. If I ever leave it will be for this reason. Oh, and rising sea levels.

But, there are some genuinely lovely, nice people in this town, too. Men and women with whom I’ve shared drinks and walks and kisses — I just wish I could say I knew any of them better. What makes their hearts beat. What makes their hearts skip a beat. What their fears are; what made them fall in love and what makes them think they’re falling out of love. What makes them feel as if they’re breaking into a million little pieces and how they somehow pick all those pieces up again and get back in the game. I know they do it. They just don’t talk about it.

Want to know what makes my million little pieces stick together? I went on a drive over the weekend and captured just a few of the parts of Sarasota that have become my heart’s glue. I think this is going to be my best year yet.

Circle Books -- one of the first places to sell my book!

The view from the pier under the Ringling Bridge.

The fairy at the intersection near Florida Studio Theatre.

The catcus garden in my yard. I planted one tiny cactus that first August and now there are probably ten or more offspring. I actually love these plants.

The quiet place in my yard where lizards lounge on the Buddha and the jade plant seems to know all.

The view from my yard, late in the evening; not yet night.

Helen Mirren Dear’n

I’ve waxed rhapsodic about Helen Mirren before. I’ve gone on record as saying she’s kind of what I’d like to be like as I get older.

Photographs by Juergen Teller.

So, it was with pleasure that I heard she was going to be in New York magazine (a weekly pub that I subscribe to). I was a bit shocked, though, by seeing Dame Mirren in nearly the full Monty. (Well, okay, only half a Monty, but still). (more…)

Cappuccino chez MC

One of the best things I’ve done for myself lately is when I shelled out $125 bucks for a cappuccino maker. Now, in the world of capp makers I know a sawbuck+ is not a lot of money. But for me, actually, it is. Still, I broke my little piggy bank and splurged because I wanted to begin my days with more sense … and in the long run, more cents.

You see, for years, ever since leaving the North End of Boston, I’ve been drinking (and I know how lame this is, believe me), either a bottled Starbucks cold coffee (with a staggering 32 grams of sugar if I recall correctly), or I’ve been actually walking or driving to a local Starbucks and shelling out three to five dollars at a time for coffee that wasn’t all that great and which, the purchase of, was actually contrary to all that I believe in.

So you see, every day, I was starting off — beginning my day — with activities that weren’t really at all in alignment with my philosophies and/or the way I want to live and/or in ways that treat my body and my wallet and my planet well.

Driving a car to get a cup of coffee? Could there be anything more self-indulgent? (more…)

Show & Tell — give “don’t ask/don’t tell” the bum’s rush

Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is such a dumbo, lowest-kind-of-thinking (or rather unthinking) policy, there are, literally, no depths to plumb on the issue.

I mean, I’m sure I don’t really have to say this … BUT if you’d let a gay guy save your life in the hospital emergency room (yes, gays perform surgery!) or if you’ll let a gay woman pilot that next flight to Detroit — taking your life in her very hands — then why would you stop at letting gays put their lives on the line for this country? And, anyway, WHO CARES WHAT CONSENTING ADULTS DO IN THE BEDROOM?! (more…)

“Stand-In” Dads helped me make my life

The Sarasota Herald Tribune published one of my columns today — “Stand-In Fathers Show What Makes a “Real” Dad”

It’s on Page A18 of today’s paper, or you can read it online by clicking the hyperlinked text above.

Happy Father’s Day to all fathers — the biological ones as well as the ones who nurture young people whether they were their “real” Dads or not.

Lee C., and MC’s most beautiful day

A guy named Lee — and yes, he knows who he is — gave me one of the best moments of my life … ever. I remember it like a dream, but it was real. We were in his car, driving on a gorgeous, clear, fresh-aired summer day in New Hampshire.

We were driving on a highway headed toward a mountain. We were going to hike together. He said he had something he wanted me to hear and he slipped in a bootleg, not-yet-in-release copy of U2’s Joshua Tree. (more…)

Beethoven rocks my world

I wish Beethoven could be my lover. I’m sure he smelled bad, had yellow teeth, and was probably a difficult man, but still … he gets me. Or at least his music does … and it’s certainly spent enough time playing in my bedroom.

While I’ve written in the past about being in bed with the Bard, I have to say, if I had to choose, I’d choose the other bad boy of the arts and make my lover Ludwig von Beethoven.

In fact, I did quite a long time ago, (more…)

New changes to “Abortion Bill” unfair to men say outraged House Repubs

As most of you know, Governor Crist received some amendments along with the health care bill he received on June 7th. The amendments have people referring to the bill as the “Abortion Bill” and essentially would require that women who want an abortion during their first trimester of pregnancy be required to pay for, have, and look at — or hear a real-time description of –a live ultrasound image of the embryo or fetus inside her womb, before having an abortion.

But what hasn’t been reported in most mainstream media is that an amendment to those amendments was received late last night in the Guv’s office. Thus this breaking (balls) news:

The revised amendments, require — essentially — that all men — seconds before they put their penis inside any women’s vagina (doesn’t count if it’s a man they’re schtupping or if it’s oral sex, for um, obvious reasons you should have learned about in grade school) be required to view pictures of used baby diapers, as well as happy smiling babies, listen to soundtracks of screaming, as well as cooing, babies, and sign a contract stating that they will a) pay for the pregnancy tests if the women freaks out because her period is late while offering calm reassurance that it will most assuredly be negative because he was, um “really careful”; b) pay for the ultrasound if the woman they’re knocking boots with gets knocked up; c) pay for the abortion if there is one; and d) pay 50% of all costs incurred in bearing, birthing, taking sick days or maternity leave not paid for by employers (because most of them don’t anymore), as well as pay for child care for working mothers, and half of all costs of raising the kid up through and including four years of college.

Sources in Tallahassee (I drove up there when I heard of this new development so I could get a first-hand report on the situation) told me that the bill is now being referred to as the Stop Look Listen & Sign Before You Fornicate Bill, though others, for simplicity’s sake, are just calling it the Pre-Sex Bill.

Over coffee this morning, most experts around the capitol were saying there’s little chance that Crist will oppose the bill now that it carries this new, clarifying language — since everyone knows men already desperately desire to be more fully informed in the moments just before they get their rocks off and have been searching for years for ways in which they could more wholly participate, emotionally and financially, in every precious post-coital moment that follows — from the seconds-later “Baby, you were great” whispers to the weeks later “Crap, my period’s late” screams.

In an unexpected and somewhat odd turn of events, John Edwards reportedly has already called Crist, urging the Florida governor to ink his approval on the new bill good and fast, saying “I wish this kind of legislation had been in effect when I was running for President — it would have been a game-changer!”

House Republicans held a press conference this morning stating their unified objection to the revised bill saying it “just isn’t fair!” Many said that such stringent requirements would unnecessarily cause men to have to make informed decisions before “dipping their swords” (I’m quoting here) and, as one House Republican said, “What good would that do any of us?”

Others pointed out that the Think Before You Sink bill (as some of the randier Republicans were calling it) would be unconscionably emotionally unfair to men, not to mention potentially create a severe financial hardship for them in both short and long term.

One Republican lawmaker speaking only on the condition of anonymity because as he said, “I wouldn’t want people to think I could have this problem,” pointed out that forcing men to see pictures of babies, even happy ones, “or God forbid, dirty diapers”, could also have the emotionally devastating effect of causing men to “lose their woodies” at the very moments when they need them most.

Crist has until June 22 to weigh the pros and cons of all the amendments included in the health care bill and in a leaked memo he indicated that he plans to give the issue his full attention in between his appointments at the tanning salon.

Remains of the day

What happens when our lives are not quite what we expected? When the moment arrives that we see not just what we have become but regrettably, we see, with a glaring, growing, discomfort, what we might have been and now most assuredly are not?

What do we do then, when we’ve reached the moment where future intercepts present and past is just that — in the past? Is it better to remember the days of believing, recall that naivete, reach back with a slightly clawing hand toward the effortless sexual, sensual, emotional, inundation of days gone by?

Is there an alternative?

The thing is — you must, whether you want to or not — remember that time when touching the skin along your lover’s back … running your thumb down the back of the one you thought you loved was in itself a kind of worship at the altar of, yes, of course, a kind of eroticism, but more than that, a kind of exclamation of alive-ness, a cri de coeur for feeling, of feeling, of being felt.

Just the thumb. Against the skin. Slowly running with an irresistible pressure, trailing lackadaisically along the spine, and erotically in every other perspective, heading south with no particular hurry. The luxury of time we had in those moments would have made a mockery of the experience — if we’d had had even the slightest inclination of the paucity of time to come.

That thumb. That skin. All that stillness and moving. All without pretense. All without illusion and/or remembrance of other things past. All without a wish desiring to be fulfilled in some future moment 30 seconds or 30 days forward. All done, all felt, all wordlessly acknowledged without an acknowledgment of the hour, or of the lateness of the day.

Just that twilight moment from day to night; when all that existed was that weighty, weightless, dizzily exquisite feeling of someone’s hand moving along your spine and coming to rest on the small of your back. With no word. No comment or question; no expectation of what comes next; no acute awareness of what does not.

Those — and all the other moments of mundane and super-fabulous and silly and sophisticated moments of loving and working and living and breathing without question— are the remains of the day.

And I want them back.

“A butler of any quality must be seen to inhabit his role, utterly and fully; he cannot be seen casting it aside one moment simply to don it again the next as though it were nothing more than a pantomime costume.” from the novel, The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro and if you haven’t read it, I can’t imagine what you are waiting for.