Pride Promenade 2008

I was lecturing a few of my boy-toy friends yesterday about how fortunate they are to be of the generation they are (they are in their 20s and 30s) because when I was their age a lot of my friends were getting sick or dying. There was a point in the late 80s and early 90s that I developed an aversion to a ringing phone. It seemed like every day there was more bad news, more people I knew getting sick then finding out they were positive, then they quickly got sicker, and at the time, it meant death, certain, swift and agonizing. It was a terrible dark time. Being a theatre person I think I was more tuned in to what was happening than my straight non-art-ish friends. It was very isolating in a way too -- like living through a terrible, roaring plague while most of the population seemed to ignore it as they blithely went about their lives. It was surreal.

Anyway, enough of that. The Pride Promenade in my town gets bigger every year and this year, like last year, was the best ever (so far). It made me smile until my face hurt. It was a good day to be in the world.

the lover

My girlfriend, Ellen, is one of those salt-of-the-earth, no-fuss kind of gals who lets most stuff roll off her back, puts up with a lot of other people's shit and when they take her for granted the most, she is still totally there for them, every step of the way. Ellen has not had the most ideal of relationships with her mom and I suspect that her mom, a steel magnolia, would have preferred that Ellen had chosen to lead the sort of life she no doubt had in mind for her--you know--marry a dentist or lawyer (with deep Southern roots going back to the Federalist days) she met while an undergrad at Tulane, have a great house in Charleston or Chapel Hill, and a summer home in Maggie Valley and raise her strapping golden-haired sons to be quarterbacks and/or dental/law students in between Junior League meetings and hosting teas for the Episcopal churchwomen. That would have been just right. But, no, El dropped out of college to marry Roberto, a dude from the Dominican Republic, and they moved to Florida where they reared their two hell-raising, swaggering Dominican boys who did stuff like steal cars and set up a meth lab in the garage. They are good boys now, of course.

After much hyperventilation and drama, mama finally accepted El's life was what it was and they got on with it. It was a fine truce for a while, until Beulah took sick. She suffers from some sort of dementia with a special name that is the last name of the physician who managed to differentiate it from some other dementias but tragically, sort of sounds like what is actually wrong with her. I think it's Looper's dementia. Or something like that. The point is that Beulah now spends all of her time--and I mean every waking fucking minute--fully immersed in a gauzy make-believe world that occupies her as if she is watching a never-ending movie starring Fred and Ginger.

Ellen calls it dementia but it doesn't sound all that demented to me. I think it sounds like being on some pretty damn good drugs. Beulah lives in a fantasy world that comes complete with a 24-7 soundtrack of nothing but Italian opera music. And it seems that Ellen is one of the stars of the opera. Yes. Beulah is having a fantasy/delusion that my dear Ellen is having a wild illicit affair with a sweaty, smarmy Italian tenor. El finds that the most disturbing factor in all of this is that her mom really rags her ass when she visits her in the nursing home about how awful she is being to Roberto via her unfaithful and whorish behavior with The Tenor. Beulah is just appalled. So is Ellen.

"Can you believe it?????" she asked me the other day. "After all these years of treating Roberto like shit, NOW she decides he's the poor wounded party because I am allegedly screwing a hallucinogenic opera star!"

I asked her if Beulah listened to such music when she was coherent. Ellen said she didn't think so. But she's not sure. She doesn't remember.

If I live to see the seven wonders...

I'll make a path to the rainbows end...

...and here are the seven wonders per the smooth waxings of dearest eb.

Watch yourself, there is some frankness and what some may consider racy, even pornographic. It's also all true. Every. Damn. Word.

And as you ponder the wisdom of the great and powerful eb, check out these here seven wonders of good ole down-home southern cooking. It was the fare at Kimmie's all-girl St. Paddy's Day chicklit party (except for her husband, Gary, who had to endure being called "Mangina" all night--a small price to pay to bask in our collective loveliness without having a vagina--a condition of admission to our partays).

So here's what we et: (clockwise, let's start with the bowl at the bottom, shall we? Chicken wings, tossed salad sprinkled with bacon and scallions, crackers and home made hummus, collard greens, potato salad, Kimmie's special cheddar creamed corn bread (Oh, YES), and in the center, the requisite ribs. Heaven. We had Key lime pie for dessert. And people, real native Florida Key lime pie is NOT green. It is yellow.

dear god,

I confess that I don't believe in you, at least not in the way that they taught me in Sunday school to...but at this very moment, right when Kip was snapping this picture, I was thinking, "Thank you, God, for my bodacious girlfriends. I love every one of them and would be lost without them." But I guess you already knew that.

I think we're gonna have a lot of fun in the pool with this baby this summer.

If it lasts that long. It sure took a beating last night. Um, Yeah.