Jack Spade

I was wearing my new Jack Spade coat yesterday evening when I was stopped and searched by the police in the Fulton Street station of the 4, 5, and 6 trains. This isn't going where you think it's going - I actually am not sure why the police don't search me more. I feel so clandestine and cloak-and-dagger almost all of the time - surely some of that feeling must be part of my visible "look?" The officer took one look at my coat and then leapt up from his seat in a Long Island sort of way and started pointing his finger at commuters on their way to the turnstile, like "eenie, meanie, miney, mo," and I got "mo," of course. He beckoned me in a pseudo-fatherly way over to a rickety folding table while my face displayed the coil of an almost imperceptible rictus of a smile.

It is one of my worst nightmares that I'll wear some multi-colored, garish coat to work and then get fired, and have to try to hold my head up high, carrying a cardboard box of my belongings outside into the rain whilst dressed like a clown. An alternate version of this fantasy is that I'll be dressed like a clown while getting handcuffed by the police while a crowd of people gathers to watch, or while getting beaten up by some cherry-picking vagrant on the street. I used to dress like a clown all the time, but that was in the aughts, when I thought nothing of wearing avant-garde clothing to the bar, to work, wherever. Once I flew to LA wearing a see-through mesh shirt by Fendi and Alia and I lurked about Hollywood and were cold to passersby. Once I was wearing an enormous coat covered in Burberry plaid and the barkeep at the bar I was leaving said, "Girl, oh my Gawd you are leaving here alone tonight." I could only look at him sadly and think, But I am merely a harmless eccentric… Another time at a party, I coldly accused the writer Bret Easton Ellis of being a misogynist while wearing a beautiful, flowing wig I'd just purchased from Patricia Field. I peacocked long before Neil Strauss made the term fashionable in his douche-bag bible, The Game.

(Okay, I know, I know - Jack Spade is the ultimate douche-bag brand. But, grrrl, it was less than $200 on barneyswarehousesale.com, and I MUST HAVE A NEW COAT AND A NEW SCARF EACH YEAR even when I am not sure where my next rent check is coming from. It is my biggest revenge fantasy that, when I am finally ensconced in some sort of gay rest home, I will be able to dazzle the other old queens with an endless array of beautiful coats and scarves, like Diana Ross - and have the ability to say that I have seen EVERY MADONNA CONCERT [three, albeit, via DVD only :^( ])

The po-po, of course, found nothing in my bag. I am, realistically, far past middle age, and if I were to do drugs today, I would surely just immediately turn to ash like that blonde witch in "American Horror Story: Coven" last season. Sigh. Back in the day, though, I partied like a house afire. I will cling to that Gee and keep going to work and keeping it together and doing the best I can. I will cling to the Gee who, when given a copy of the AA Daily Reflections in rehab, immediately flipped to the last page in February and informed the doctor, "But, there is no entry for February 29th." She turned pale, and I continued: "How will your precious book save you then."

This one's hard

This one is going to be hard to write obliquely, but I'm up to the challenge, and it's Christmas, so here goes.

This was my outfit going to church last night. Back in the day, in my childhood, we dressed up for church, but in adulthood, I like to snub my nose at God a little with my fashion choices. Casual only, you know? But believe me, God has reciprocated in spades, and I am treated just as casually by the Almighty as I treat Him or Her. To calamitous effect.

Susan had invited me to her church earlier in the week, where she and her husband Nick were ushering for the Christmas Eve service. I got there late, fresh from some new sexual humiliation that I brought upon myself. I was greeted by Susan and Nick, and then seated myself in the balcony of the church. Immediately, two little girls came out and sang a carol and it was so sweet and sad that I began to weep, weep, weep, like I haven't wept since I saw "The Impossible" or "Lorenzo's Oil." I wept so hard that I had to go to the bathroom three times during the service to blow my nose. It was really gross. Susan held me at one point, when I was trying to find the bathroom the first time.

While I was watching the service, I started thinking about the many church services I attended as a youth, with my mother and father and brother. Like, every Sunday for most of my childhood. My mother sang those songs. Those hymns, and those rote prayers. And then I started thinking, of course, about visiting my mother's ashes in her funeral home with my father. Maxine forced me to, and I'm glad she did. In the funeral home, Dad started singing this hymn that I had never heard before. I stood there, astonished, because I had never heard him sing before, and I certainly never thought about him loving my mother enough to sing to her. You know, your parents are your parents, and you don't think of them as loving beings. The song that he sang was "And the Mighty Organ Played, 'O Promise Me.'" I looked at Maxine and thought, "Does this make you feel something, like it does me?" but Maxine was inscrutable as always. Hard as a jewel, really. Who was he singing that song for? Did it have any history for him and Mom? Who knows…they never SPOKE.

Tonight, I called Maxine at around 8 pm and told her that I'd just cried in church, that I just couldn't stop, and that I'd been thinking about Dad, and she asked me "isn't it a bit early for church?" That's what she asked me. Then she asked me what movie we were going to for Christmas. We always see a movie for Christmas, because we don't like to talk about our feelings (at least to one another). And it's usually a Hobbit movie. This time it will be the one about the five armies, or such. ONE MUST NEVER TALK ABOUT ONE'S FEELINGS TO MAXINE.

This has only happened once before in my life (shout out to Cherita!) but then a friend rescued me. Susan took me into her home and fed me and her parents were there and they were adorable. They held me there all night in their embrace and I left feeling incredibly changed. I do know that Susan knows how I feel about her, but just in case she doesn't, I want her to know that she saved my life tonight.

Kelly

What are your thoughts on Kelly Ripa? Do you have any? Weirdly, I do.

I don't mean to front. The character "Kelly Ripa," as it surely is a character, is among the most self-assured comedic portrayals in history. I rank "KR" up there with "Stephen Colbert" or "Jan Hooks." There is no moment on her stupid show where she's not ON. I could watch YouTube videos of her all day, I kid you not. But not HER insipid show. Just shows where she's being interviewed on, where she's letting the KR character out for popular consumption.

I kind of feel like Kelly Ripa, like me, is just a morbid depressive when she's not being filmed. Like, she probably goes home every afternoon and weeps and makes love to Mark Consuelos and then weeps again for good measure. She was probably born with a knitted brow. This has been sort of corroborated to me by people who know her. You can sort of tell, too, can't' you? Just look how she bad-mouths her own daughter in interviews! Who but a sad sicko would do that? But when she's on the air, she's on the f*cking show, she's a dynamo, she is taking no prisoners, damn you.

As for her show--I remember thinking that it was revolutionary when Michael Strahan was named as her co-host. It is revolutionary, probably unprecedented. Just 20 years ago, that could have gotten the show blackballed in the South. Just 20 years ago, that probably could have started a new political party. But that is as far as it goes, revolution-wise, on "Live With Kelly and Michael,"sadly. I tuned in a few months ago to see one of the Hemsworth brothers (does it matter which?) being interviewed on "Live" and practically fell asleep. Such soft-ball questions! I like the Hemsworth brothers as much as someone could like anything--like, hard, man. But I felt nothing watching that interview. Nothing up above and nothing down below. And, being that I'm a book publicist, I feel sort of slightly put out that Kelly and Michael never have authors on their show. I mean, f*ck them, right?

Here she is wearing a shoulder-less dress. Is she pretty? Is she plain? I can't tell anymore. She's like my mom, in that I can't see her objectively anymore, but I can't imagine a world without her.

This was a transitional post. Sorry, all.

The public gaze

When one is walking around the busy streets of Manhattan with a disfiguring injury to one's face, as I was today, one must prepared for the intrusive stares of one's fellow New Yorkers. I've noticed this phenomenon before. When I got into a bicycle accident in 1996 and had two black eyes, even the freaking freaks on the street were looking at me like I was the freak. Staring, even. I think that when people see a freak, they feel as though they are one rung up from the freak in life, and can thus take certain liberties in dealing with them. People gaze openly at the injured, the homeless, the people walking down the street helplessly crying. Like as though we are paintings, or small children. Give us a modicum of privacy!

When I was still in college, my friend Kristin had a binder filled with freaks. I think she curated the binder to include freaks from popular media, but she had also surreptitiously taken pictures of students around the campus whom she deemed subhuman. One that I remember was "Fetus Girl," who was a woman with soft, puffy skin, who did somewhat resemble a fetus who was born prematurely but lived in spite of that. Hers was an unfortunate lot, but I thought what I thought about her and moved on. No need for me to immortalize her like Kristin did! I wonder what happened to Fetus Girl? (She's probably dead by now.)

Whenever I see an unfortunate soul walking towards me on the street, I immediately look away. This includes people in wheelchairs, junkies partially levitating during some nod-out, and celebrities. (Although I did see Ewan McGregor on the street outside work today, and I looked at him - twice - with extreme curtness, just to confirm to myself that it was indeed him). I remember the writer Jean Rhys' book Good Morning Midnight, when the narrator, down on her luck, notices out of the corner of her eye that another woman on her train is staring at her. The narrator tries to stare her down, but the woman won't look away. The narrator wonders: What kind of person would continue to stare at you when you have caught them in the act? Her answer: The same kind who would have gone to a burning at the stake and locked eyes with the immolated as they were burned alive.

People at work kept coming up to me and asking me, "What happened?" I was tempted to reply, "I'm dating someone new. I guess this means he loves me?" But I knew that people would complain about me to my boss if I did that, so I told them the horribly simple truth: I was tripped. Towards the middle of the day, I had become so self-conscious about my near-mortal wound that I began to wish that I could go away to that place that I long for sometimes. The little white room in a hospital where I lie in bed and think about nothing, while nurses come and go, soothing my forehead with a cool cloth. But then I went to the gym and did abs, and then I didn't feel that bad.

Honey Boo Boo

Are you like me? Do you hate the phrase "white trash?" Ugh, it makes me cringe every time I hear someone utter it. We are obviously never going to achieve racial harmony until all the races stop demeaning one another. Plus, the implications in the word about class need to hit the scrap heap of history. True, the recent Honey Boo Boo scandal makes me pessimistic about the future of the human race, but maybe not for the reasons you think.

There is nothing about foolish choices that has to do with class. See: John Grisham. See: George W. Bush. See: Michael Jackson. Foolish choices happen because we're human, all of us. I can put myself in Mama June's shoes, I can see why she perhaps thought she had no other option open to her other than the vile man from her past. I can be horrified by her choice to resume dating him, but I can't pretend to be her superior in terms of morality, as I've made some pretty epically dumb moves in my day. (Including my recent wise decision to get involved with a "straight" man with a girlfriend, which I'm praying doesn't cause Jesus himself to throw me into the lake of fire). I can't so much sympathize with the Mama Junes of the world as empathize with them, you know?

I wonder why I know the names "Honey Boo Boo" and "Mama June" in the first place? I am a 41-year-old man who only watches perhaps a half-hour of television a day. (But a crucial half-hour! right at the twilight between laying in bed and having the Trazadone kick in). When I told my therapist recently that my psyche is being rocked by the sheer volume of television shows out there and available for my consumption, she suggested I blog about it. I hate it that she's discovered my blog! :( What's on here is automatic writing, stream of consciousness thinking in a zone of safety and whimsy, and certainly nothing that analyzation would limn.

Today when I go to the CVS to make my sometimes-alarmingly urgent self-beautification purchases, I gaze upon the magazines displayed near the counter and wonder at the "celebrities" depicted on the covers of US Weekly, People, and their ilk. "Kris rocked by paternity scandal." "Kate locked in bitter alimony struggle." Who are these f**king people? And is America really that familiar with them that they can now be identified by first name only? Where are all these networks found on the dial? Who knows the channel numbers for HGTV, Lifetime, VH-1, TLC, etc.? I believe the only reality tv I've ever watched was the first couple of seasons of "The Real World" and the entire run of "Breaking Up With Shannon Doherty."

Tonight I am really excited to stay home and clean my apartment, and it's a Friday night (live it up, Gregory). I'd lost my laundry card, and thus I am wearing my black tank top (this is as "white trash" as my look gets). That's what I was reduced to this week, wearing things I never wear, out of necessity. Tonight I found it, and have already laundered my rock tees, my sexy briefs, my deceptive polos. I can only speculate on what Mama June is wearing, but I'm sure that whatever it is, it is very little.

Franklin Ave

I was wearing my short-sleeved black shirt from Barney's and the same Levi's jeans I've secretly been wearing for two weeks straight now when I made the trek out to Crown Heights to attend the Franklin Park Reading Series. My author Blake Butler was reading that night, and it's always fun to see him, so I was looking forward to the evening. I was almost there when it occurred to me that I was on Franklin Avenue, the site of my late brother Michael's law office. I don't know why this had never occurred to me before. I've been to that reading series at least once or twice before. I decided to walk the two blocks there to see how much it had changed, if at all.

As I was walking there, I marveled at how much the block has changed since the years I used to get taken to "the office" whenever I had been kicked out of school, which was often. Back then, it was mostly bodegas, and men peddling beef patties. Mmmmm...patties. What a strange word: "patty." Now, it's like organic restaurants and trendy bars and such. I wonder if my brother would have been happier there if the gentrification had happened earlier? He hated Franklin Avenue so much, and hated being an attorney, too. Towards the end of his life, I sat with him in his SUV in Queens and he told me that he had a dream to become the captain of a boat. I said, "well, why don't you do that, then?" "I can't," he replied, and then he started crying, and I held him. I felt so sad for him, feeling trapped in his life. I've structured my own life in such a manner that, if I ever needed to, I could just quickly gather up my books and outfits and cat and up and move to California. No kids. Just one family member left in Queens. And she thinks I'm crazy, so a sudden departure wouldn't raise any red flags with her. I would miss Paula and Luther, though. And Mary, and Kayleigh, and Cathy, and Kateri, and Heidi, and Michelle, and Sherie, and William, and Rory, and Greta, and Tina, and Amy, and Alyse. And the rest of y'all. I don't think Michael had the luxury of escaping his life. He was much more influenced by and dependent on his parents than I was. Plus he had that house and that very messed-up wife of his.

I peered inside the office, which is now some kind of investment firm. The front entryway seemed unchanged, but further in, it was totally different. They had gutted my brother's office, it was all hip now, like a f*cking loft or something, and I suddenly was going to cry. There were, like, these people inside, sitting and working. Like he once did. I wanted to run inside and scream at them and tell them to get the hell out, but instead I snapped this selfie of myself in front of the old office at 722 Franklin Ave. And then I went and saw Blake read a passage about the deaths of a million people in America, and Nikki was there, too, and I felt better for some strange reason. For the first part of the reading, I was sitting at the bar, gazing at the bottles, facing away from the readers. Then, I remembered that my purpose on earth is to help other people, and that one of the readers might feel slighted if they spotted me facing away from them on their night, so I turned around at that point. I feel very moved and grateful every time I think of my brother and how his job and his wife killed him, while my job and the people I work with restore me to life--every day--and the sociopaths I date have very little affect on me. I don't think it's luck--I haven't lived a good enough life to deserve luck. It's more like grace.

PACO!!!

On the second day that Alia granted me access to her on her visit to NYC, I went to meet her and Paco in Brooklyn for brunch. I haven't seen Paco since she dared to challenge me to a sing-off during my birthday karaoke party two years ago, and I demolished her with a cover of Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On." Paco, still embittered, spent the entire day trying to make me uncomfortable with excessive body contact, kissing, putting her face thisclose to mine during casual conversation, etc. Little does Paco know, I was not made to feel uncomfortable, though as the day stretched out I began to become a little confused why she wasn't getting tired of her own joke. That said, both Alia and I have an alarming fondness for our own senses of humor, and sometimes our running jokes go on for years, so I guess I can relate. Alia's been doing farting noises when I walk since high school, cracking herself up as though each time she does it is the first time. I've been saying "pound THIS" and "collate THIS" since 1995, when Rebekah from MultiPlan first hipped me to that jive.

I wonder where Rebekah is today? She is one of the few people in my life to have dropped me as a friend because of my sense of humor. She had explained to me her paranoia that she had been secretly filmed for the Michael Moore documentary "Sicko" (she was a drug rep when I knew her). She was so worried that she would be featured in that movie. So, to make fun of her and try to bring her to her senses (because I was worried for her sanity), I kept joking that I would visit her soon, unless she was attending the gala premiere of "her movie." I called her and left messages for her twice after that, but she didn't return my calls, and I got the message and never called again. I feel that when people stop speaking to you, it's the least you can do to respect them and go along with it. I also feel that sometimes people who call themselves "neurotic" should actually just tell the truth and call themselves "egomaniacs."

Last year I stopped speaking with two friends of mine. Both were sober, and I think that in both cases, I was consciously trying to take a step away from that insane sober world where no one shows up and I was always alone, or trying to talk to people with no interest in me at all. But also in both cases, they were sort of control freaks who wouldn't do anything with me unless it was their idea. I'm not the world's best friend, but I sometimes go along with group consensus. These were people who would just not show up unless the activity was their idea. Do you have friends like that? I don't anymore, but I do wish them well, and I do still love them, albeit from afar. It really sucks. :( (And I also think that Johnathan has left me for the gays.)

I told my therapist recently that I have a weird lack of curiosity about people's life stories. Sometimes I'll be talking with people at parties or meetings or such and they'll ask me about my family history. Usually I'll demur, because nothing could derail a party or meeting like Gregory detailing his family's history. But recently I told a couple of people my story--Caitlin Moran and Hanna Rosin. Hanna immediately told me that I had to read A Change of Climate by Hilary Mantel, which I actually already own, but hadn't read yet. (It's now next in my queue). I need to get more curious about other people, I think.

Still, conversations that I prefer to conversations about family and death and so forth are the kind of conversations I ALWAYS have with Alia and Paco. We keep it light, for the most part, and nonsensical. We mocked the host of the so-so restaurant we went to. I was chased, as always, by a bee. We played "you like that?" in Brooklyn, and they both got into it, even Alia, who usually chooses death as the unspoken fourth option in "marry, fuck or kill," rather than having to marry or fuck someone she deems substandard. (Most people). She'll kill willy-nilly, though. Over the course of the day, I got to know a little more about Paco, which was one of my main goals of the day. When I was saying goodbye, I grabbed her by the hips and pulled her close to me, to show her just how uncomfortable I was with her, but I wasn't sure what to do next. Then she spun me around and kissed me, as Alia snapped this pic. I made a funny face, as is my wont, but believe me, I was into it.