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Archive for the ‘Personal’ Category

Manners

Posted in Personal, tagged , , , on July 26, 2010| 7 Comments »

I mourn the passage of manners.

This age of selfishness has precluded the necessity.  We are diminished by the loss.  I’m hardly the most formal of people.  My vocabulary would offend a sailor.  (Is that really true I wonder? Are sailors really that foul mouthed?)

But I miss the simple niceties of making the effort, however sincerely felt.  I miss the act.

I have a friend who has cancelled on me three time in the last few months each time because “He has a friend he needs to catch up with.” I assume that he is unaware that he is in essence telling me that I’m not a very important friend, but still.  Why not actually honor the invitations you accept?

Another friend, on cancelling an invitation he had previously accepted said “I never said I would come.” He had, in writing.  It was a minor social event and only an irritation that he’d cancelled.  Why call me a liar? Needless to say, further invitations have been curtailed.

California, my wonderful home that I love, is a bit challenging in this area.  No invitation or acceptance of same here are deemed final until one actually arrives at the event.  It is the land of the better offer.  That is, all invitations are accepted conditionally and honored only if there is not something better on offer.  Not my style.  But it is the unwritten rule here.

It was hard to take at first.  I actually changed my outgoing voicemail message to “At the tone, please leave the time and date of the engagement you’ve called to cancel.”  I’ve gotten used to it, not okay with it.  I’ve simply stopped making plans with people who can’t show up.  Instead, I enjoy spending time with the flakier members of my set when chance dictates.

But my social life is only a speck in the eye of dignity.

We are drowning in bad manners.  At a movie the other night the ushers had to announce more than once to get people to stop texting and blinding others, and then there was an attitude.  Traffic has become a competitive arena where people cut each other off and generally behave as if there is no one behind them or anyone else on the road.  This of course leads to gratuitous horn honking, bird flipping and obscenity shouting (I’m doing better, okay.)

“You lie.” An elected member of the US Congress shouted that at the President of the United States, while he was speaking to a joint session.  Even if he had been lying, which in fact he was not, how have we arrived at a place where that is okay?

I’m not even okay with referring to the President of the United States by his last name.  I think it is derisive.  It is President Bush or President Obama, not Bush this or Obama that.  Whether I agree with their politics or not, they are President, and for as long as they live.  We would hardly refer to the Queen as Windsor or worse, her original last name, Saxe-Coburg-Gothe.  There is reverence for the office that has nothing to do with the man or the woman.

Vulgarians, liars and brutes have taken over the airwaves.  Leaders in the field of crudity like Howard Stern have made it okay to simply say anything you want true or not, rude or not, to or about whoever you feel like saying it.  His popularity has directly given rise and permission to Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Reverend Fred Phelps and Timothy McVeigh.

The price paid is not that my delicate sensibilities are offended.  I have come to wonder what someone would actually have to do to shock me.  I am not devalued by your crude remarks and boorish behavior.  You are.

The Presidency is a the perfect example.  We all choose the President, even the ones who vote against him or her.  Even those who don’t vote, vote by their abstention.  So the Presidency is us.  If we have or show no respect for the President or at least the office, then we have no respect for ourselves.

I am but one driver on the road I share with others.  If I don’t respect the other drivers, then I don’t respect myself.  Or the other movie patrons.  Or my fellow gym members.  Or the shoppers at my local grocery, my neighbors or simply the friends I stand up.

Manners are how we show respect for others, but mostly they’re how we show respect for ourselves.  If I treat you as though you are worthless, then what value, as your equal, do I have?

If I have no manners, I have no self-respect.

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On Writing #3: Not Writing

Posted in Personal, tagged , , on July 23, 2010| 3 Comments »

I wrote my first book on Saturday mornings.

Between the job I had at the ad agency, the one I had writing a column for a local alternative newspaper and the job I had shooting, writing, producing and hosting my weekly television gig, Saturday morning was all I had left.  But above and beyond the tight schedule, there was a nearly insurmountable obstacle to my novel.  I was new and naive and had no idea what I was facing.  As time has passed though, I’ve come to understand a truth that all successful authors have mastered.

Writing is really boring.  No, that’s not it exactly.  EVERYTHING else is more interesting than writing.  That’s the only way I can explain it.

In order to write on those long ago Saturday mornings, I had to complete a vast and intricate ritual to make it possible.  The apartment had to be clean.  And I don’t just mean the bed was made  and the books were all shelved.  I mean it had to be photo shoot ready.  The floor waxed, the furniture polished, the laundry done, the dry cleaning delivered/picked up, the sock drawer sorted, the grout bleached, the porcelain gleaming and the dishes washed and put away.  Otherwise, disaster.

Here’s how Not Writing happens.  You sit down at the table with your coffee to write.  You light a cigarette (I used to).  You open the pen.  You leaf through your most recent scratchings.   You take a contemplative sip.  You review any notes you’ve made and begin to ask yourself “What’s next?”

As you stare thoughtfully into the middle distance, you see a dust bunny peeking playfully out at you from under the sofa.  And you’re done.  You don’t realize it yet, but your work day has ended before you’ve committed a single word to the page.

With the intention of getting right back to what you were doing, you go get the vacuum cleaner to chase that pesty bunny away.  You discover what a state the hall closet is in.  You take everything out of the hall closet to reorganize it, as you’ve been meaning to.  Amidst the detritus, you discover that iron you had meant to give your sister.  You call your sister to see if she indeed wants the iron.  You’ve never once used it yourself and can’t recommend it, but she did that time she visited and you remember she really seemed to like it.  She has no recollection of the incident but did you hear what happened last night at the Astor Bar? We should meet. Why not there?

When you finally get home, the guts of the closet are still spilled all over the floor and “What are all these papers doing on the kitchen table?”  The dust bunny, long forgotten, haunts the recesses beneath the love seat, poised to destroy another Saturday morning’s writing.

I never stood a chance.

Before I could write the book I had to master Not Writing.  The first step is admitting that Not Writing is infinitely more fascinating, seductive and satisfying than the Pulitzer, the Man Booker and making the Times best seller list all rolled into one.  Those things are great but they only might happen.  Once the socks are paired and sorted by color you will know peace and satisfaction every time you open that drawer.  Well, the first couple of times anyway.

Once I had made this admission the only possible solution was abject surrender.

Of course, all work on the three other jobs had to be completed and filed and the next week fully scheduled.  I did the marketing.  I repainted the living room.  The plants on the balcony thrived for all the attention.  There was no dust in the crevices in the base boards or under any of the furniture.  I retiled the entire apartment, even the closets.  I covered each and every dingy yellow tile in the bathroom with a gleaming square of malachite vinyl and carpeted the matching dingy yellow floor.   Everything that could be framed was hanging.  Every DIY scheme I ever had for the house was completed.

I spent large blocks of time thinking of all the Not Writing tasks I could imagine and got them all done by Friday night at bedtime.  It was even necessary to act preemptively.  I made plans for Saturday evening and booked Sunday so that I would not have a reason to pick up the phone.

Saturdays I got up, put on the coffee and hit the shower.

Breakfast was coffee and cigarettes in those days.  Since that was also the first step in my writing process, they happened simultaneously.  I sat down before the yellow pad I had placed on the table the night before – looking for things is a very dangerous prelude that can easily lead to Not Writing.  I unsealed the Pilot Razor Point, one of a multitude I had stolen from work for just this purpose and placed within arm’s reach well in advance.  (I’m certain any number of pre-laptop manuscripts languish in dusty, forgotten drawers around the world for want of ink in the favorite pen.)  At last, with a self-satisfied sigh and a desperate glance around the apartment for a loose thread or wilted leaf, I touched pen to paper and began.

And that’s how I came to write my first novel.

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Next

Posted in Personal, tagged , , on July 21, 2010| 4 Comments »

I once read, I’ve no idea where, that the quality that most successful people share in common is that they know when to quit.

It seems a brilliant notion to me.  But it is a perilous idea to have in my head.  Everything since has become an exercise of balancing results on the scales of persistence.  When do I give up?

It is not my nature to just give something a try and then move on.

I have stuck with the worst prospects for relationships in my life and am single to this day almost without exception.  I have stood by bad friends who’ve stolen from me, lied to me, betrayed me and ditched me for better offers.  I’m getting better with the friends thing, mostly by getting out of it.  I’ve adopted a policy of making time only for people who make the effort – I want only to be with people who want to be with me.  No sign on the boyfriend front yet – ouch — but I’ve a much better group of friends.

Professionally, I’m wondering how to apply this same idea.

It took ten years to get my first novel, Say Uncle, published.  It took nearly three just to write it.  I had three other jobs at the time and wrote it in long hand — personal computers were just the wet dreams of Jobs and Woz and Bill back in the before times.

Once I was done writing I faced a tough market.  The idea of a book about a single gay man raising a child was not well received by the very conservative publishing world in the 80’s.  It wasn’t a daily effort, but I persisted.  In the end, the book was published.  While it was not a big success, it changed my life and set me on a new course.

It’s fifteen years later now and I wonder, is it time to quit?

I wrote a sequel to the first novel, centered around the idea of gay marriage but that was too much for the still more conservative publishing world of the mid-90’s.  Ironically, Say Uncle was pushed out of print by the memoir of a gay man adopting and raising a child.  My controversial idea had become the banal musings of some journalist.  I have written and published several other books since, though none original to me.  Despite the success of those, I’ve had no other writer for hire offers either.

Still, I have persisted with my writing.  There is now a stack of novels and other works.  I keep trying to get this to work as a career, but it doesn’t seem to want to work for me.  I have thought to walk away.

I worked for a medical professional organization for a time.  I was fired because my work was too good – no kidding, that’s actually what they said.  There was a stint on a little TV show, Game World, working as a script coordinator.  It was cancelled because the new guy in charge of the network didn’t think of it.  You could tell he cancelled it for his ego because he replaced it, not with another show, but with infomercials.  Each time one of these doors closed, writing came back to me as the thing to do.

Yet my writing career is a bit like the chase sequence in a Scooby Doo cartoon.  You know those scenes where the characters run randomly in and out of the many doors lining a long hallway? Like that.

1.  The villain chases the gang into the hallway and everyone disappears behind a different door.

The offer of the Queer as Folk novelization series arrived the day I cashed my last unemployment check from the doctor’s group and came with the promise of work on the show.  The production of Say Uncle as a movie brought a period of financial independence and presented itself following the cancellation of Game World.

2. Velma and Shaggy run out of doors on opposite sides of the hallway than the ones they entered.

Then QAF “decided to go another way”.

3. Shag and Scoob emerge from the same door.

The studio that was going to make the movie was bought just as we were ready to go into production.

4. The villain backs into Shag and Scooby and everyone runs into the nearest door.

Most recently, the spectacular success of the Star books that I developed as a series with Pamela Anderson was destroyed without explanation by Ms. Anderson.  She has not offered any reason or returned a phone call or even made any effort to find out if I’m okay after ending the project just before it made me any money and leaving me destitute.

5. Daphne and Freddie collide with Velma, Shag and Scoob.

So here I am again, in a heap in the middle of the hallway.  I keep writing and persisting, but I’m faced with that little habit of the successful? Should I quit? And if I do, what to do now?

I know the ending of everything is the beginning of everything else.  I think the real talent is knowing and recognizing when the end has actually come.  Am I there? Or am I just waiting in the hallway for the next door to open.  Will it be another villain or the hero this time?

What’s next?

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In Defense of Marriage

Posted in Personal, tagged , , , on July 19, 2010| 4 Comments »

I’m really worried about the sacred institution of marriage.

Recent court rulings, relying on liberal notions like the bill of rights and the US Constitution, have ruled that the Federal Government and ballot initiatives cannot be used to effect discrimination.  That’s right, the United States Government cannot compel Massachusetts to discriminate against its own citizens.  What’s more, a minister from Maryland does not have the right to call for a vote to bring discrimination back to the city of Washington, DC.

Can’t they see that these people are only trying to defend marriage? This sacred institution is the foundation of civilization as we know it – and look how well that’s going!

I think that something needs to be done at once to preserve this blessed bond, this holy contract.

The problem in keeping marriage as it is seems to me to be the laws.

Marriage has become entangled with all these legal rights and privileges.  As a result, the courts and the laws get all involved.

So, here’s what I think we should do.  I propose founding the Society for the Preservation of the Sacred Institution of Marriage.  Our organization’s primary focus should be to divest marriage of all these legal entanglements so that the courts will be powerless to deface this hallowed union.

It all begins and ends with death and taxes, it seems to me.  Taxes are particularly insidious where marriage is concerned.  There are so many so-called tax benefits attached to marriage it’s easy to miss the government intrusion.  To keep the union of one man and one woman sacred, we must do away with all tax law impinging on marriage.   No more joint filings, everyone files separately.  The benefits of having the option to file jointly do not apply.  Who cares that the majority of married couples save money by filing jointly?  Paying higher taxes is a small price to pay to preserve marriage and keep the courts out of our homes and bedrooms.  Why shouldn’t spouses be taxed individually for their share of business income? Who needs child tax credits? It’s all just a way for the government to get their fingers on marriage.

Of course we would do away with notions of the rights to inheritance, joint property or the transfer of pensions and Federal benefits.  Bereaved spouses will find the extra taxes at the time of the loss of their loved one a comfort that further consecrates their marriage vows.  What is the shared work of a lifetime and financial security in old age compared to the peace of mind gained from the certain knowledge that marriage is only between one man and one woman? Widows and Widowers of federal employees, office holders and veterans will be able to hold their heads up proudly in the breadline, knowing that their marriage was pure and sacred and totally not gay.

Certainly we’d want to keep the INS out of marriage vows.  The promise of spousal citizenship is just another clever trap to bring legal encumbrances into marriage and allow the courts to dilute this sacred rite.  Deportation is such an ugly word.  Living separately has led to the long term success of many marriages.

And Divorce? This one seems the most obvious.  Divorce is a boondoggle to the legal profession and a real stumbling block to keeping marriage sanctified.  The bible really only makes divorce available to men and then only when a wife has been unfaithful, so who needs the courts involved in that? Let’s keep it consecrated.  Let the church do it.  Let the Pope or Oral Roberts or Jimmy Swaggart or the Ayatollah decide who gets the house.  And custody? If we can’t trust a priest to do what’s best for the children, who can we trust?

Sure the GAO says marriage confers over 1100 specials rights, benefits and privileges to those who invoke those blessed vows, but that’s a GOVERNMENT agency! We want government out of the business of telling us who we can and can’t marry, right? So who needs the rights of joint custody or the adoption of children? They’re God’s children, let Him take care of them.  And as a man and a woman, united by God, it’s always possible to have more.

The rights of next of kin are really only good for getting in to see your spouse in the hospital, but hospitals are so depressing.  You might catch what your loved one has.  True, it might seem helpful to be able to make decisions regarding the health and well being of a wife or husband who is ill or incapacitated, but isn’t it more important to make sure that not just anyone can get married? I mean, you may lose the right to decide where or how your beloved’s remains are handled after death, but they’re dead anyway.  They can rest in peace knowing that the blessed, sacred bond of marriage is only available to one man and one woman.

And game show contestants.

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Poor

Posted in Personal, tagged , , on July 13, 2010| 4 Comments »

The problem with poor people is that they just don’t have a good lobby in congress.

Why should law makers pass unemployment benefits for people who are not going to be able to contribute to their campaigns? And who wants to give healthcare to people who don’t have any money to begin with? Where are the Senator’s free trips and the Congressional golfing junkets? Missing are the lunches, the awards, the gifts.  How do the poor and the unemployed ever expect to get ahead if they don’t pull themselves up by their bootstraps and put together their own multi-million dollar PACs to fund educating Senators and Congressmen?

It is so irritating that elected officials are burdened with the needs of those who cannot take care of themselves.  Who is supposed to take care of our elected officials?

You need a majority to win, so why help minorities? And you need millions to buy advertising, hire campaign consultants, build war chests and acquire retirement property.  Why help poor people? Clearly they can’t help congress.  As if someone goes to all the trouble of getting elected to office, just to help people.

Senate candidate Sharron Angle points out that the unemployed in this country are just spoiled.  Senator Orrin Hatch reminds us that extending unemployment benefits, is just enabling their drug use.  It is no surprise that Senators and Congresswomen too numerous to mention individually think that making conglomerates like BP put aside money to pay for the damage they’ve caused through their reckless practices and fraudulent oil lease applications only provides money to the poor and unemployed.  This kind of “slush fund” “shakedown,” they tell us, deprives those elected to office of the vast pools of special interest money that make America what it is today.

Thank goodness the Non-Activist judges on the Supreme Court have used their royal powers for more than deciding national elections.  Their Highnesses have not only pointed out our old constitution is  “dead,” they have amended it to make sure that giant corporations and wealthy individuals can provide members of the US Senate and Congress with the unlimited contributions that might otherwise be wasted on the poor and unemployed.

Washington’s advice to the poor and unemployed in this country?

“Get a PAC or start drilling for oil.”

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Prayer

Posted in Personal, tagged , , , on July 12, 2010| 5 Comments »

I am a man who has never yet had a single prayer answered.

I have had a wonderful life so far, and I look forward with excitement and anticipation to what’s next.  But none of those wonderful things so far have been anything I worked or prayed for.  Not one.

It challenges my faith.  I’m gay so I’m not even welcome to be a Christian, which has kind of spoiled any sort of institutional faith for me.  Still, I cannot look at the majesty and genius of creation without seeing some divine force behind it all.  I cannot look at the nature of life objectively and see this period of consciousness on this plane as finite.  Everything that science has discovered only makes me believe more.  In this way I do believe in God.  I do believe that there is more to life than my limited senses can perceive.

While I think faith is believing without need of proof, I find that life is filled with all the evidence I need.

And then there’s prayer.

The power of prayer is much spoken of.  “Ask and ye shall receive,” “pray without ceasing,” may God bless America from the likes of Abraham Lincoln, President Obama, Celine Dion, on and on.  I see people who’s lives have actually unfolded along the lines that they have endeavored.  By simply having faith, so many seem to have found their way to at least a portion of their heart’s desires.  I honestly think that prayers are answered.  My strong faith makes me believe that my prayers are heard.  That almost hurts more than if I did not believe at all.

But then there’s my experience of prayer.

(more…)

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Minority Report

Posted in Personal, tagged , , , on July 9, 2010| 3 Comments »

Depending on which poll you ask at least 60% of Americans are okay with the new Arizona second class status for Hispanic Americans law.

I know, blah, blah, it’s about the National Government’s failure to deal with the immigration “problem” blah, blah and NO racial profiling is allowed.  But we all know that no one involved with the writing or passage of that law is interested in chasing down wayward Canadians.

My point is the 60%.  The majority favors discriminating against the minority.

Duh.

That’s how they got to be the minority in the first place.

If you’d had a referendum on desegregation in Alabama in 1961, there would probably still be segregation and Jim Crow laws there and many other places — not all of them in the south.

Why is it that idiots like Lisa Lingle the divorcee Governor of Hawaii and the Governornator of my state, think that we should ask the majority whether or not they believe that the minority should share the same rights and privileges they enjoy?  We asked the majority in my state and they said no.  I am officially a second class citizen here.  Thanks Arnold.  Hope all your kids turn out to be gay.

It seems to me that if we want a different answer, we need to start asking a different question.

Do you believe in equal rights for all Americans? Period.

John McCain does not believe in equal rights for all Americans.  Arnold Schwarzenegger does not believe in equal rights for all Americans.  Barack Obama does not believe in equal rights for all Americans.  Hilary Clinton does not believe in equal rights for all Americans.  Try campaigning on that instead of “I’m morally opposed to gay marriage” as our current president did.

I honestly don’t care if other people believe I ought to have the right to get married.  That’s none of their business.  If you don’t believe in same sex marriage, then don’t marry someone of the same sex.

The real question is: Do you believe in equal rights for all American?  Not just the ones we like.  Not just the ones we agree with.  Do I really believe in equal rights for ALL Americans?

Do you?

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Fear Less

Posted in Personal, tagged , , on July 7, 2010| 8 Comments »

If I could send a message to myself from now, to when I was younger, the message would be simple.

“Be less afraid.”

A huge part of my life, maybe second only to sleep, has been wasted on fear.

All through school I was afraid of what was accumulating on my “permanent record.”  I was too afraid to really try when it came to colleges and afraid of not going to a good one.  I was afraid I wasn’t smart enough even to take the advance placement tests that would have skipped me past a lot of introductory coursework.

And dating? Don’t get me started.

(more…)

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Independence Day – July 5th

Posted in Personal, tagged , on July 5, 2010| Leave a Comment »

No independence is won without a struggle.

The signing of the Declaration on the 4th was only the beginning of what it would take to bring those ideals to bear.  So, July 5th was really day one of this on-going struggle we’ve been in to make our dream of “freedom for all” a reality.

July 5th has always had an odd significance in my life.  After college I moved to New York, because I had no idea what else to do.  I loved New York.  Still do.  It was not as crazy about me.  July 5th was the day I moved home to my mom’s to regroup.  I’ll live in New York again when I’m rich.  I’m just too big a princess to do day to day in Manhattan otherwise.

The 5th has continued throughout my life to be a day of beginnings for me.  Today, I observe the 16th anniversary of the single most noteworthy beginning for me so far.

April that year, I had met someone when I was in Austin for a friend’s wedding.  It was something special.  It was love.  I said good-bye at the airport but I could not live with that for long.  We talked constantly on the phone.  His life in Austin was at loose ends and I could not wait.   Soon, he was in Los Angeles and I was, for the first and only time in my life, actually living with someone who was there, just because he wanted to be with me.

My first book was due out that summer.  I was writing the screenplay for the movie deal that I’d already made for the book.  And I was in love and living with someone who said he loved me.

It was at last, I thought, the moment when my life would finally begin.

(more…)

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July 4th – The Power of Words

Posted in Personal, tagged , , , on July 2, 2010| 1 Comment »

July 4th celebrates an idea.  I love that.  No battle was fought or lost and, aside from a possible quill sharpening incident, no blood was shed.  A group of men got together and set down principles they felt were worth standing for.  And, on the 4th, they signed their work and affirmed an idea.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

I think that’s the coolest thing ever.  A day set aside to celebrate an idea we believe in.  We became, that day, the world’s great experiment.  If we can pull this thing off, if we can live by this ideal, there’s hope for humanity.

Despite our belief and all the backyard barbecue, the goal we signed that day is yet to be attained.  We have made a lot of progress.  Women, who were not in the room that day, now have the vote and a lot more rights, though equality? Well, ask a woman.  Black Americans are no longer slaves and are moving toward a greater and more equal participation in our society.

There is progress and change.  That’s where the hope part comes in and is what I think this grand experiment is about.  Keeping things the way they were is not what we celebrate on July 4th.

I hope one day, that I might have equality and the same rights as all Americans.  I hope one day to be a citizen of this country.  Not just in words, I am that, but in deeds and in fact.

There’s the hope and the power of words.  Until then I can:

Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free.

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