Monthly Archives: February 2003
February 18, 2003
Last night, for the first time in my life, I was stood up by a date.
Drip Café had set me up with the zany guy who responded to my profile; we were scheduled to meet there at 8:00. At 8:40, by which time he still hadn’t arrived, the Drip people called him at home.
Where he was.
It’s not clear to me whether he thought Drip was closed because of the blizzard, or just assumed I wouldn’t get through the snow, or what. Writing “theatre” instead of “theater” is one thing; not calling to let anybody know he wasn’t going to make it, however, is a far more serious offense. But the Drip woman on the phone with him told me several times that he felt really bad and that he said he would make it up to me. (She also told him, when I came up to the counter once they’d gotten him on the phone, that I was really cute, too, and he’d have to make it up to me big time. So I owe her one.)
Luckily, my friends B.N. and D.R. were already there, having come to Drip to spy surreptitiously on my date, so I just went over and sat down with them and vented and had an Oreo milkshake.
I’m willing to cut him a tiny bit of slack because of the blizzard. We’ve rescheduled for next week. But he damn well better bring chocolate and flowers.
February 17, 2003
After writing yesterday’s post about my father, I realized I haven’t mentioned him much in these pages. This morning I dug up a letter he sent me six or seven years ago around the time of Yom Kippur (the Jewish holy day on which we atone for our sins against God and against other people) that makes it clear why, despite his unfairness with the peanut butter, I hope someday to be half the man he is. (It’s a long letter, but worth the time.)
Dear Faustus,
I want to write to you about Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.
Actually, the story begins a week earlier, when I was in the synagogue during Rosh Hashanah this year. On the first night I was going through the confession of sins in “Vidui” and “Al Chet.” I was focusing on the two alphabetically adjacent sins of “neglect” and “oppression.” They will come back into the story soon.
I also found myself thinking about the process of atoning for sins against other people (as opposed to sins against God), which is a 3-part process–repent, make it right, and seek forgiveness. In particular, I was thinking about how hard it is to make it right when the injury is deep and long-lasting–like the terrible wrong I did to you by trying to reject your homosexuality and trying to force you to reject it too.
I wandered out for a library break, and happened to pick up a book called The High Holy Days, where, in a paragraph about seeking forgiveness from the person one has wronged, I found this sentence: “If the injured party is dead, then confession must be made at the grave in front of ten witnesses.”
Not to be too melodramatic, but I was suddenly struck with the realization that I did a terrible wrong not only to you, but also to Mom.
I often relive my behavior in those days, wondering how I could have behaved as I did, when, as I tell myself, I did not have the feelings of hostility that Mom did. At first I used to talk about Mom’s and my behavior as “we,” either “shielding” her from some of the blame, or sharing some of my own. Then last spring with [the therapist you and I saw together], when I acknowledged that she was the driving force, your reaction of “how could you” really rocked me. For, if my behavior was not a reflection of my feelings, that didn’t make my conduct any more excusable, but less so, because I should have known better.
In those conversations you talked about the fact that Mom couldn’t help herself because of the way her upbringing formed her personality. And that is where, in failing you, I failed her. Instead of passively following her lead and shrinking from arguing with her, I should have been struggling with her for your sake and for her sake, to help her do the right thing which I knew she could not do by herself.
These thoughts didn’t come all at once. They started with the sentence I quoted above, but the next impetus was another book in the synagogue library–one that I picked up by accident.
I had looked at some books and picked one up to take home that first night of Rosh Hashanah. When I got home I saw the book I had was not the one I had picked out, but quite another one. It was by an author named Faye Kellerman, and was called Day of Atonement. It is a type of Jewish detective thriller, a genre like the Friday the Rabbi Slept Late books (Jewish pedagogy mixed in with the plot).
Anyway, at home I started reading it and couldn’t put it down, and it started hitting home. Without going into the whole plot, one theme involves a young Jewish mother who abandons her baby son because of pressure from her parents, and the guilt she feels. I started crying and kept on crying, especially when I read about her “stern, unforgiving father and a passive, bewildered mother.”
The book, and its title, started crystallizing some things for me. With a couple of gender switches, I saw myself in the mother who abandoned her son, and in her mother–the “passive, bewildered” mother who followed the lead of the stern father. At that point, the two sins of “neglect” and “oppression” came back to mind. My sin of “neglect” (“passivity”) was compounded because I then joined in “oppressing” you, a teen-ager trying to stand up against a united front of two parents.
It’s strange how the rabbis may actually have been pretty smart. The first book I mentioned, The High Holy Days, had a paragraph (after talking about how remorse is the key to atoning for sins against God):
For one type of sin no amount of remorse will help: the sin of one man against his fellow. In the case where damage has been inflicted, it must first be repaired. Even after making amends, God will not forgive until forgiveness has been obtained from the injured party.
I have never asked you for forgiveness, and I never could put my finger on why, except that I didn’t feel ready yet or entitled to yet. I still don’t feel entitled to yet, and I think it goes back to the rabbis’ three steps, and while I have been racked with enough pain to feel that I have been working on step 1, I also know that what I did to you has not yet been undone, so my wrong has not been repaired.
And that brings it full circle. I have to help repair the injury I did to you, and the injury I did to Mom. And perhaps the way I make it right to Mom is to help do what she can no longer do, which is to make it right to you–which is what I didn’t do before, when I could have prevented so much of your pain.
I don’t know if this makes much sense. Next week is Mom’s yahrzeit, so maybe I’ll “talk” to her about it.
Faustus, I love you so much.
Dad
Half the man?
I’d settle for a tenth.
February 16, 2003
Once, when I was little, my father was going grocery shopping and asked my brother Y. and me what kind of peanut butter we wanted. My brother said he liked Jif best but also enjoyed Peter Pan. I hated Jif and loved Peter Pan, so I said as much and asked him to get Peter Pan.
Upon his return from the grocery store, my father said, “Faustus, since Y. was willing to be flexible and compromise and you weren’t, I got Jif.”
When I protested that this wasn’t fair, he said what he always said whenever either one of us thought something wasn’t fair:
“Well, it’s like Jimmy Carter always used to say. Sometimes life just isn’t fair.”
Life has grown much fairer to Jimmy Carter than it was–what with the Nobel Peace Prize and all–and my father, perhaps in subconscious sympathy, has grown much fairer to me. But there’s a small part of me that has never been able to let this go.
Now I eat Skippy.
February 15, 2003
I have spent the entire day alternating between despair and shock.
Despair because the actor who was my houseguest for a week and whose mere physical presence rendered me almost incapable of spelling flew back to Los Angeles this morning, where he lives.
Shock because someone has actually responded to my Drip personal ad. (For the story behind the ad, click here; for the text of the ad itself, hieroglyphs and all, click here.) I had pretty much resigned myself to the idea that, for whatever reason, my attempts to write a witty, charming, and insouciant ad had produced a document that caused gay men to flee me as they might flee a pair of plaid golf pants or Anita Bryant. And yet someone had read my ad and found it intriguing enough to respond to.
So I went down to Drip and looked at his ad, which was totally charming and funny. His grammar was impeccable, as was his spelling (though he did write “theatre” instead of “theater,” but I’m not prepared to write him off yet, since that is his only evident flaw, at least so far). The first word in his self-description section was “zany” and among his biggest turn-offs was “braying pretention.” Plus he listed Marshmallow Peeps among his interests.
At the moment, however, Mr. Zany is an unknown quantity and the actor is thousands of miles away.
Thank God I have a dog or I would be so fucking lonely I would die.
February 14, 2003
For those of us who are single and bitter on this Valentine’s Day, I have compiled a very short list of activities:
1. Make a submission to the Valentine’s Day haiku project [link no longer active] (run by east/west [link no longer active]), in which one writes haiku to (or at) one’s ex (or exes). Here are my two entries:
Saint Valentine was
beaten with clubs, head chopped off:
Fucker deserved it.
Remember when I
said I disliked oral sex?
I meant just with you.
2. Buy and read How to Heal the Hurt by Hating by Anita Liberty. Here is an excerpt.
Feel free to add to the list.
February 13, 2003
I just sat down to write a long and funny post about how the first time I ever came out to anybody (at age fifteen) I was so nervous that I couldn’t do it in English, so I did it in French instead, but as I was starting to craft the post, my houseguest, the actor I made out with the other day (and have actually been making out with daily since), returned, and since my huge crush on him has intensified tenfold since last night, when I tried to push things further and he said no, sex is something really important that ought to be shared between two people who have decided to share something really important, his return to my apartment has rendered me completely incapable of concentrating enough to construct a sentence (as this post makes clear), much less an amusing story.
And now I’ve given away the punchline of the coming-out-in-French story, so there’s no point in saving it for later either.
Okay, he’s sitting on my couch reading and now I can barely spell.
Excuse me while I go gaze longingly.
February 12, 2003
Not too long ago an oxygen tank exploded in the apartment building across the street from me, killing an old lady and starting a fire that gutted the fifth floor. It got me thinking about fire, which in turn led me to write the following lyric.
Sitting by the fire
That’s supposed to warm my chill,
I wonder if it ever
Will.
And I think,
Fire, burn me.
Turn my faults to ash.
Destroy
Whatever I can’t smash.
Fire, burn me.
Char my sins to black,
‘Til I remember nothing,
And don’t ever bring me back.
Fire in the winter
Should keep the cold outside.
Whoever called it cheery
Lied.
And I say,
Fire, sear me.
Burn my past away.
Have mercy
On this muddy clay.
Fire, sear me.
Crack me ’til I break.
Oh, rob me of my memory
And never let me wake.
Purify me,
‘Cause I’m drowning in my flaws.
Test and try me.
Kill the person that I was,
Because
He haunts me.
And I pray,
Fire, melt me.
Wash away my sins.
Consume me
Where the flame begins.
Fire, melt me,
Pitiful and frail,
‘Til no one here remembers me
Who ever saw me fail.
Hmm.
I wonder if it’s time to go back on Prozac.
February 11, 2003
I have gained nine pounds since Thursday.
I feel that Job’s wife had the right idea when she told him to curse God and die.
February 10, 2003
Today is the one-year anniversary of the day I started this blog (with this post). My bloggiversary, as it were. (Bloggaversary? Blogiversary?)
In preparation for this momentous occasion, I registered my own domain name. I’d hoped to have the web site up and running in time to unveil it today, but, as we all know, the best laid schemes o’ mice and men gang aft a-gley.
Nevertheless, I feel very grown up and proud.
Let’s see if I can make it to two.
February 9, 2003
Those of you who live in New York City should make every effort to attend the following show:
Reasons you should attend:
1. He is a brilliant songwriter.
2. The centerpiece of the show is a shriekingly funny mini-musical about the disintegration of my relationship with my ex-boyfriend, called Poodle Rescue.
3. I will be in attendance at every performance, so you’ll get the chance to see me, even if you don’t know it’s me.
In other news, last night I made out with an extraordinarily cute movie and TV actor. He lives in Los Angeles, so there is no real soul-mate potential here. But this is the first time I’ve ever made out with a movie star, unless you count the time I had sex with the guy who appeared in his own documentary about Jesse Helms, which I don’t.
And besides, the guy from last night is much cuter.
