Author Archives: Alan Ilagan

Our annual Red Sox game weekend begins tomorrow, as Skip and I make our way to Boston for a game. I’m told the Sox aren’t performing in stellar fashion these days (my nice way of saying someone said they suck) but that doesn’t matter. To change things up a bit, we are doing a few things differently this year, starting with seats way out in right field. Or left field. One of the fields. In the bleachers. I was toying with the idea of bleaching my hair for the event, but that felt extreme for one game. If it was a double header I might have done it, but that will have to wait for another year. This time it’s one game, one night, and I don’t have the energy to be blonde right now.

We’re also going to aim for keeping things casual and cheap – a grand departure from, well, my entire life, but I’m game. It makes packing and planning easier when I only need a pair of sneakers, some ratty shirts, and a pair of shorts or jeans. Maybe that’s why most of my straight guy friends are so mellow – they don’t stress out over dressing well. I could get into that. Come to think of it, a lot of my gay friends do the same thing. Actually, maybe I’m the only person I know who makes such an effort to dress up anymore. This weekend I shall join the masses.

Other new forays, at least for Skip and I together, include Cambridge and Chinatown. We tend to stay closer to the condo – Copley, Newbury, the South End – with the occasional T-ride to Faneuil Hall. We’ll expand our repertoire, at least we’ll attempt it. The best-laid plans have a way of slipping into old habits. We’ve been doing this long enough that the years are blending together, but each trip has its own highlights and moments of demarcation. I can’t wait to see what those will be this time.

How best to introduce a new project when it feels like we just had one?

I find it best to do so quietly, in small, little ways.

Like this flower clock countdown.

Summer

waits

for 

no

one…

Outside of certain classical music circles, it’s rather an obscure piece. Enjoying none of the mainstream appeal of Saint-Saëns’s ‘Carnival of the Animals’ or Sergei Prokofiev’s ‘Peter and the Wolf’, the Flower Clock takes its inspiration from the transient beauty of the floral world. It reminds me of a quintessential summer day, practicing the oboe while the sun shone outside, a warm breeze gently rustling the curtains of the room in which I stood. My teacher had assigned the piece because it was a popular one for oboes. (We took our ducky features when and where we could find them.)

The green of the outside world was at its freshest – the leaves had not yet hardened off or deepened into their darker, more leathery texture. There was still time to stretch and grow into their hardiness. When youth is blushing and bursting forth, you don’t want to hurry the process. A season only lasts so long, and the more of them that pass, the faster they seem to go.

Not an apathy toward the world – quite the contrary.

An apathy to what I wear and how my hair looks.

That’s the best part of summer to me.

I’ll get dolled up in fall and spring.

For summer, and to a lesser extent winter, the weather is too extreme to care about anything other than comfort. Hence the upcoming batch of sleeveless shirts and baggy swimsuits. (Not to worry, I’ll throw in a Speedo shot or two to maintain blog traffic momentum – and maybe it will even be me in it.)

As for other summer wardrobe, I’ve amassed a sizable cadre of caftans and cover-ups for poolside lounging, summer gatherings, and any possible beach trips. (Sadly none of the latter are on our horizon, but a guy can dream of the sea and dress for it even if it’s nowhere near.) Caftans and cover-ups are a godsend for those pesky comfort-food pounds I’ve been packing away since fall. Oh who am I kidding – give me a flowing piece of clothing that approximates a robe and I’m a happy clam.

Yum – fried clams. Bring it on home.